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
AI agents: challenges ahead of mainstream adoption, with Tom Davenport
The most highly anticipated development in AI this year is probably the expected arrival of AI agents, also referred to as “agentic AI”. We are told that AI agents have the potential to reshape how individuals and organizations interact with technology.
Our guest to help us explore this is Tom Davenport, Distinguished Professor in Information Technology and Management at Babson College, and a globally recognized thought leader in the areas of analytics, data science, and artificial intelligence. Tom has written, co-authored, or edited about twenty books, including "Competing on Analytics" and "The AI Advantage." He has worked extensively with leading organizations and has a unique perspective on the transformative impact of AI across industries. He has recently co-authored an article in the MIT Sloan Management Review, “Five Trends in AI and Data Science for 2025”, which included a section on AI agents – which is why we invited him to talk about the subject.
Selected follow-ups:
- Tom Davenport - personal site
- Five Trends in AI and Data Science for 2025 - MIT Sloan Management Review
- Michael Martin Hammer - Wikipedia
- AI winter - Wikipedia
- AI is coming for the OnlyFans chat industry - Fortune
- How Gen AI and Analytical AI Differ — and When to Use Each - Harvard Business Review
- Truth Terminal - The AI Bot That Became a Crypto Millionaire - a16z
- Jim Simons - Wikipedia
- Why The "Godfather of AI" Now Fears His Own Creation - Curt Jaimungal
interviews Geoffrey Hinton - Attention Is All You Need - Google researchers
- Apple suspends error-strewn AI generated news alerts - BBC News
- Gen AI cuts costs by 30% - London Futurists Podcast episode featuring David Wakeling, partner at A&O Shearman
- The path to agentic automation is UiPath - UiPath
- Microsoft CEO Predicts: "AI Agents Will Replace ALL Software" - AI Insights Explorer
- NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang Keynote at CES 2025 - Nvidia
- Pioneering Safe, Efficient AI - Conscium
- A New Survey Of Generative AI Shows Lots Of Work To Do - October 2023 article by Tom Davenport
Agency in Amsterdam dives into topics like Tech, AI, digital marketing, and more drama...
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
