London Futurists

Our subject in this episode may seem grim – it’s the potential extinction of the human species, either from a natural disaster, like a supervolcano or an asteroid, or from our own human activities, such as nuclear weapons, greenhouse gas emissions, engineered biopathogens, misaligned artificial intelligence, or high energy physics experiments causing a cataclysmic rupture in space and time.

These scenarios aren’t pleasant to contemplate, but there’s a school of thought that urges us to take them seriously – to think about the unthinkable, in the phrase coined in 1962 by pioneering futurist Herman Kahn. Over the last couple of decades, few people have been thinking about the unthinkable more carefully and systematically than our guest today, Sean ÓhÉigeartaigh. Sean is the author of a recent summary article from Cambridge University Press that we’ll be discussing, “Extinction of the human species: What could cause it and how likely is it to occur?”

Sean is presently based in Cambridge where he is a Programme Director at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. Previously he was founding Executive Director of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and before that, he managed research activities at the Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford.

Selected follow-ups:

• Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh - Leverhulme Centre Profile
• Extinction of the human species - by Sean ÓhÉigeartaigh
• Herman Kahn - Wikipedia
• Moral.me - by Conscium
• Classifying global catastrophic risks - by Shahar Avin et al
• Defence in Depth Against Human Extinction - by Anders Sandberg et al
• The Precipice - book by Toby Ord
• Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks - by METR
• Cold Takes - blog by Holden Karnofsky
• What Comes After the Paris AI Summit? - Article by Sean
• ARC-AGI - by François Chollet
• Henry Shevlin - Leverhulme Centre profile
• Eleos (includes Rosie Campbell and Robert Long)
• NeurIPS talk by David Chalmers

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Our guest in this episode is Andrea Miotti, the founder and executive director of ControlAI. On their website, ControlAI have the tagline, “Fighting to keep humanity in control”. Control over what, you might ask. The website answers: control deepfakes, control scaling, control foundation models, and, yes, control AI.
The latest project from ControlAI is called “A Narrow Path”, which is a comprehensive policy plan split into three phases: Safety, Stability, and Flourishing. To be clear, the envisioned flourishing involves what is called “Transformative AI”. This is no anti-AI campaign, but rather an initiative to “build a robust science and metrology of intelligence, safe-by-design AI engineering, and other foundations for transformative AI under human control”.

The initiative has already received lots of feedback, both positive and negative, which we discuss.
Selected follow-ups:

• A Narrow Path - main website
• ControlAI
• Conjecture - Redefining AI Safety
• What is Agentic AI - Interface.AI
• Chat GPT’s new O1 model escaped its environment to complete “impossible” hacking task - by Mihai Andrei
• Biological Weapons Convention - United Nations
• Poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal - Wikipedia (use of Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury, UK)
• Gathering of AI Safety Institutes in November in San Francisco
• Conscium - Pioneering safe, efficient AI
• The UK's APPG (All Party Parliamentary Group) on AI

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Our guest in this episode is Martin O'Dea. As the CEO of Longevity Events Limited, Martin is the principal organiser of the annual Longevity Summit Dublin. In a past life, Martin lectured on business strategy at Dublin Business School. He has been keeping a close eye on the longevity space for more than ten years, and is well placed to speak about how the field is changing. Martin sits on a number of boards including the LEV Foundation, where, full disclosure, so does David.
This conversation is a chance to discover, ahead of time, what some of the highlights are likely to be at this year's Longevity Summit Dublin, which is taking place from 17th to 20th August.
Selected follow-ups:
https://longevitysummitdublin.com/
https://www.levf.org/projects/robust-mouse-rejuvenation-study-1
Topics addressed in this episode include:
*) Emma Teeling and the unexpected longevity of bats
*) Steve Austad and a wide range of long-lived animal species, as featured in his recent new book "Methuselah's Zoo"
*) Michael Levin and the role of bioelectrical networks in the coordination of cells during embryogenesis and regeneration
*) Filling four days of talks - "not an issue at all"
*) A special focus on "the hard problems of aging"
*) The work of the LEV (Longevity Escape Velocity) Foundation and the vision of Aubrey de Grey
*) Various signs of growing public interest in intervening in the biology of aging
*) A look back at a conference in London in 2010
*) Two events in 2013: academic publications on "hallmarks of aging", and Google's creation of Calico
*) Multi-million dollar investments in longevity are increasingly becoming "just pocket change... par for the course"
*) Selective interest from media and documentary makers, coupled with some hesitancy
*) Playing tennis at the age of 110 with your great grandchildren - and then what?
*) The possibility of "a ChatGPT moment for longevity" that changes public opinion virtually overnight
*) Why the attainment of RMR (Robust Mouse Rejuvenation) would be a seminal event
*) The rationale for trying a variety of different life-extending interventions in combination - and why pharmaceutical companies and academics have both shied away from such an experiment
*) The four treatments trialled in phase 1 of RMR, with other treatments under consideration for later phases
*) A message to any billionaires listening
*) A message to any politicians listening: the longevity dividend, as expounded by Andrew Scott and Andrew Steele
*) Another potential seminal moment: the TAME trial (Targeting Aging with Metformin), as advocated by Nir Barzilai
*) Why researchers who wanted to work on aging had to work on Parkinson's instead
*) Looking ahead to 2033
*) The role of longevity summits in strengthening the longevity community and setting individuals on new trajectories in their lives
*) The benefits of maintaining a collaborative, open attitude, without the obstacles of NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements)
*) Options for progress accelerating, not just from exponential trends, but from intersections of insights from different fields
*) Beware naïve philosophical concerns about entropy and about the presumed wisdom of evolution
*) The sad example of campaigner Aaron Schwartz
*) Important roles for decentralized science alongside existing commercial models
Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

The launch of GPT-4 on 14th March has provoked concerns and searching questions, and nowhere more so than in the education sector. Earlier this month, the share price of US edutech company Chegg halved when its CEO admitted that GPT technology was a threat to its business model.
Looking ahead, GPT models seem to put flesh on the bones of the idea that all students could one day have a personal tutor as effective as Aristotle, who was Alexander the Great’s personal tutor. When that happens, students should leave school and university far, far better educated than we did.
Donald Clark is the ideal person to discuss this with. He founded Epic Group in 1983, and made it the UK’s largest provider of bespoke online education services before selling it in 2005. He is now the CEO of an AI learning company called WildFire, and an investor in and Board member of several other education technology businesses. In 2020 he published a book called Artificial Intelligence for Learning.
Selected follow-ups:
https://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/
https://www.ted.com/talks/sal_khan_how_ai_could_save_not_destroy_education
https://www.gatesnotes.com/The-Age-of-AI-Has-Begun
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691196451/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Head-Hand-Heart-Intelligence-Over-Rewarded/dp/1982128461/
Topics addressed in this episode include:
*) "Education is a bit of a slow learner"
*) Why GPT-4 has unprecedented potential to transform education
*) The possibility of an online universal teacher
*) Traditional education sometimes fails to follow best pedagogical practice
*) Accelerating "time to competence" via personalised tuition
*) Calum's experience learning maths
*) How Khan Academy and DuoLingo are partnering with GPT-4
*) The significance of the large range of languages covered by ChatGPT
*) The recent essay on "The Age of AI" by Bill Gates
*) Students learning social skills from each other
*) An imbalanced societal focus on educating and valuing "head" rather than "heart" or "hand"
*) "The case against education" by Bryan Caplan
*) Evidence of wide usage of ChatGPT by students of all ages
*) Three gaps between GPT-4 and AGI, and how they are being bridged by including GPT-4 in "ensembles"
*) GPT-4 has a better theory of physics than GPT 3.5
*) Encouraging a generative AI to learn about a worldview via its own sensory input, rather than directly feeding a worldview into it
*) Pros and cons of "human exceptionalism"
*) How GPT-4 is upending our ideas on the relation between language and intelligence
*) Generative AI, the "C skills", and the set of jobs left for humans to do
*) Custer's last stand?
*) Three camps regarding progress toward AGI
*) Investors' reactions to Italy banning ChatGPT (subsequently reversed)
*) Different views on GDPR and European legislation
*) Further thoughts on implications of GPT-4 for the education industry
*) Shocking statistics on declining enrolment numbers in US universities
*) Beyond exclusivity: "A tutor

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Our guest in this episode is Riaz Shah. Until recently, Riaz was a partner at EY, where he was for 27 years, specialising in technology and innovation. Towards the end of his time at EY he became a Professor for Innovation & Leadership at Hult International Business School, where he leads sessions with senior executives of global companies.
In 2016, Riaz took a one-year sabbatical to open the One Degree Academy, a free school in a disadvantaged area of London. There’s an excellent TEDx talk from 2020 about how that happened, and about how to prepare for the very uncertain future of work.
This discussion, which was recorded at the close of 2023, covers the past, present, and future of education, work, politics, nostalgia, and innovation.
Selected follow-ups:
Riaz Shah at EY
The TEDx talk Rise Above the Machines by Riaz Shah
One Degree Mentoring Charity
One Degree Academy
EY Tech MBA by Hult International Business School
Gallup survey: State of the Global Workplace, 2023
BCG report: How People Can Create—and Destroy—Value with Generative AI
Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify