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
Can AI be conscious? with Nicholas Humphrey
In this episode we return to the subject of whether AIs will become conscious, or, to use a word from the title of the latest book from our guest today, whether AIs will become sentient.
Our guest is Nicholas Humphrey, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at London School of Economics, and Bye Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge. His latest book is “Sentience: the invention of consciousness”, and it explores the emergence and role of consciousness from a variety of perspectives.
The book draws together insights from the more than fifty years Nick has been studying the evolution of intelligence and consciousness. He was the first person to demonstrate the existence of “blindsight” after brain damage in monkeys, studied mountain gorillas with Dian Fossey in Rwanda, originated the theory of the “social function of intellect”, and has investigated the evolutionary background of religion, art, healing, death-awareness, and suicide. Among his other awards are the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, the Pufendorf Medal, and the International Mind and Brain Prize.
The conversation starts with some reflections on the differences between the views of our guest and his long-time philosophical friend Daniel Dennett, who had died shortly before the recording took place.
Selected follow-ups:
- The website of Nicholas Humphrey
- The book Sentience: The Invention of Consciousness
- How did consciousness evolve? - Recording of talk at the Royal Institution
- The book Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett
- Penrose triangle (article contains "real impossible triangles")
- Keith Frankish (philosopher of mind)
- The psychonic theory of consciousness - a theory included in the 1929 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Lawrence (Larry) Weiskrantz - the supervisor of Nicholas Humphrey
- Blindside patient 'TN'
- The Tin Men by Michael Frayn
- What’s it like to be an AI: Anil Seth on London Futurists Podcast
- Joe Simpson (mountaineer)
- The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness
- Scientific Declaration on Insect Sentience and Welfare
- Rupert Sheldrake
- Alternative Natural Philosophy Association (ANPA)
Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration
