London Futurists
Anticipating and managing exponential impact - hosts David Wood and Calum Chace
Calum Chace is a sought-after keynote speaker and best-selling writer on artificial intelligence. He focuses on the medium- and long-term impact of AI on all of us, our societies and our economies. He advises companies and governments on AI policy.
His non-fiction books on AI are Surviving AI, about superintelligence, and The Economic Singularity, about the future of jobs. Both are now in their third editions.
He also wrote Pandora's Brain and Pandora’s Oracle, a pair of techno-thrillers about the first superintelligence. He is a regular contributor to magazines, newspapers, and radio.
In the last decade, Calum has given over 150 talks in 20 countries on six continents. Videos of his talks, and lots of other materials are available at https://calumchace.com/.
He is co-founder of a think tank focused on the future of jobs, called the Economic Singularity Foundation. The Foundation has published Stories from 2045, a collection of short stories written by its members.
Before becoming a full-time writer and speaker, Calum had a 30-year career in journalism and in business, as a marketer, a strategy consultant and a CEO. He studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford University, which confirmed his suspicion that science fiction is actually philosophy in fancy dress.
David Wood is Chair of London Futurists, and is the author or lead editor of twelve books about the future, including The Singularity Principles, Vital Foresight, The Abolition of Aging, Smartphones and Beyond, and Sustainable Superabundance.
He is also principal of the independent futurist consultancy and publisher Delta Wisdom, executive director of the Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV) Foundation, Foresight Advisor at SingularityNET, and a board director at the IEET (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies). He regularly gives keynote talks around the world on how to prepare for radical disruption. See https://deltawisdom.com/.
As a pioneer of the mobile computing and smartphone industry, he co-founded Symbian in 1998. By 2012, software written by his teams had been included as the operating system on 500 million smartphones.
From 2010 to 2013, he was Technology Planning Lead (CTO) of Accenture Mobility, where he also co-led Accenture’s Mobility Health business initiative.
Has an MA in Mathematics from Cambridge, where he also undertook doctoral research in the Philosophy of Science, and a DSc from the University of Westminster.
London Futurists
The Politics of Transhumanism, with James Hughes
Our guest in this episode is James Hughes. James is a bioethicist and sociologist who serves as Associate Provost at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is also the Executive Director of the IEET, that is the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, which he co-founded back in 2004.
The stated mission of the IEET seems to be more important than ever, in the fast-changing times of the mid-2020s. To quote a short extract from its website:
The IEET promotes ideas about how technological progress can increase freedom, happiness, and human flourishing in democratic societies. We believe that technological progress can be a catalyst for positive human development so long as we ensure that technologies are safe and equitably distributed. We call this a “technoprogressive” orientation.
Focusing on emerging technologies that have the potential to positively transform social conditions and the quality of human lives – especially “human enhancement technologies” – the IEET seeks to cultivate academic, professional, and popular understanding of their implications, both positive and negative, and to encourage responsible public policies for their safe and equitable use.
That mission fits well with what we like to discuss with guests on this show. In particular, this episode asks questions about a conference that has just finished in Boston, co-hosted by the IEET, with the headline title “Emerging Technologies and the Future of Work”. The episode also covers the history and politics of transhumanism, as a backdrop to discussion of present and future issues.
Selected follow-ups:
https://ieet.org/
James Hughes on Wikipedia
https://medium.com/institute-for-ethics-and-emerging-technologies
Conference: Emerging Technologies and the Future of Work
Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration