Azeem Azhar's Exponential View

Scott Santens is a writer and an advocate for universal basic income. His articles have been featured in TechCrunch, the Boston Globe, and Politico, among other places. Scott has coauthored two books: What Do We Do About Inequality? and Surviving the Machine Age: Intelligent Technology and the Transformation of Human Work. He also moderates the sub-Reddit /r/BasicIncome.

Scott talks about why he believes “citizen’s salary” is a necessary measure for our societies to deal with tech unemployment by providing an independent income floor. He finds it paradoxical that we keep on developing technology to help us do more, while also being afraid of tech taking over our jobs. In these circumstances, he notes, a new model of ownership needs to be implemented, with everyone starting from the same point.

For further reading on Scott’s work and UBI, visit:

• FAQ about Universal Basic Income
• Basic Income sub-Reddit
• Basic Income Earth Network

Our society has become increasingly reliant on data, but its value is not accessible to all. Of the 16 billion terabytes of data created globally in 2016, only 1% was analyzed. Among other discrepancies, the growing data monopolies concentrate power over certain technologies such as artificial intelligence precluding their positive impact on society.

Trent McConaghy, AI researcher and the founder of the decentralized data exchange, Ocean Protocol, is aiming to solve this by enabling individuals and organizations to share, monetize, and access data.

In this conversation, Trent and Azeem Azhar discuss:

• The real-world impact of deep learning and error reduction, and why we have not yet fully leveraged data’s learning potential.
• Early use cases of successful data exchange in mining and autonomous driving.
• Drawing distinctions between human rights and tradable property, should ownership of personal data be protected as a human right?

Further Reading:

• “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data” (2009)
• “The Web3 Data Economy Towards a Transparent, Permissionless Ecosystem to Spread the Benefits of AI” (Nov. 22, 2018)
• “Major Automakers, Startups, Technology Companies and Others Launch Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative (MOBI)” (May 4, 2018)
• “Is It Your Data” (Jan. 22, 2019)
• “Should we treat data as labor? Let’s open up the discussion” (Feb. 21, 2018)
• “We need to own our data as a human right — and be compensated for it” (Jan. 21, 2019)
• “This AI Company Is The Future Of Gold Exploration” (February, 2019)
• Open Data Impact Map

Trent McConaghy @trentmc0
Azeem Azhar @azeem
www.exponentialview.co

More than half of the world’s population believe capitalism is doing more harm than good. But is it beyond repair, or can it be fixed from within? Harvard Business School professor Rebecca Henderson joins Azeem Azhar to share her vision of purpose-driven capitalism, where companies can make good profits by doing the right thing.

They also explore:

• Why strong government and civil society are fundamental for healthy capitalism.
• Why highly-rated ESG companies have proved to be more profitable and resilient.
• The flaw in relying on a few philanthropists to fund public services.

Further reading:

• “The Business Case for Saving Democracy” (Harvard Business Review, 2020)
• “ESG Passes the Covid Challenge” (Financial Times, 2020)
• “Reimagining Capitalism” (Rebecca Henderson, 2020)
• “The Innovation Economy” (Exponential View podcast, 2019)

@RebeccaReCap
@Azeem
@exponentialview

Exponential View newsletter

SUPPORT US!
If you love what we do, please take a moment to vote for us: British Podcast Awards, Listener’s Choice.

Regina Dugan, CEO of new biomedical non-profit Wellcome Leap and former director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the U.S., joins Azeem Azhar to explore how she approaches delivering breakthrough technologies, and why she has now set her sights on global health.

They also discuss:

• The thinking behind DARPA’s early support of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine technology.
• How the DARPA model of innovation can apply to advancing medical technologies.
• How the lessons from her experience of childhood cancer have guided Dugan’s career.

Further resources

• “Understanding the Enduring Consequences of Covid-19” (Exponential View podcast with Professor Nicholas Christakis, 2020)
• “The Covid-19 Pandemic May Be a ‘Sputnik Moment’” (Bloomberg New Economy, 2020)
• “The Health Age” (Wellcome Leap, 2020)

@azeem
@ExponentialView
@WellcomeLeap

Marko Ahtisaari is the CEO and cofounder of The Sync Project, a collaborative venture of scientists, musicians, technologists, and patients, working toward developing functional music that responds to each individual body and serves as precision medicine.

Marko is also a director’s fellow at the MIT Media Lab, working on the Open Music Initiative to develop a new distributed ledger system to identify and compensate music rights holders and creators. He was the executive vice president of design at Nokia and worked on award-winning N9 and Lumia products. His startup Dopplr was acquired by Nokia.

Marko presents ideas and undergoing projects born out of the vision that in the near future people will use non-drug modalities to heal, enhance well-being, and assist in therapy. He guides us through the recent experiment Unwind.ai, which uses your heart rate to select the tracks that will bring you peace of mind — at least for 5 minutes.

For further reading on the Sync Project and music in medicine, please see:

• Understanding Music as Precision Medicine
• Sync Music Bot (cutting-edge music recommendation technology)
• UNWIND.AI (using biometric data to generate music for sleep)
• Studies in neuroscience reveal music’s effect on the reward system
• Using music to manage pain
• Using music to support physical activity and sports training
• More on music recommendation/analysis technology in general