More Intelligent Tomorrow: a DataRobot Podcast

Soylent Green, the movie based on Harry Harrison's novel, Make Room! Make Room!, interpreted what a future of pollution, poverty, overpopulation, and depleted resources could mean for humanity and ended up recruiting millions of people to environmentalism. Nineteen Eighty-Four was a cautionary tale about the consequences of totalitarianism that alerted hundreds of millions of people around the world to fear “big brother”. Movies like Dr. Strangelove, War Games, and The Day After portended the different ways that nuclear war might happen accidentally.

Each of these works of science fiction became relevant at a time when the dystopian outcomes they illustrated seemed imminently possible. David Brin is a highly influential scientist and renowned science fiction author who speaks, advises, and writes about artificial intelligence and human augmentation.

In this episode of More Intelligent Tomorrow, Ari Kaplan and David Brin delve into the role of science fiction in our society, and the role Hollywood plays in science fiction. They explore underlying themes that shape the way we look at everything, from the safety of our institutions, to trust in our neighbors, to foresights that help us avoid catastrophe.

“Our job as science fiction authors is not to predict the future. It is to prevent it.”

David also serves on the advisory council of NASA's Innovative and Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, and advises government agencies and corporations on topics from national defense to astronomy and space exploration, nanotechnology, philanthropy, and predicting the future.

Ari and David direct their conversation toward the latest advances in space exploration technologies like the Webb telescope, along with upcoming missions that could provide unprecedented insight into our universe, such as the hycean class of exoplanets and the possibility of Martian moon exploration.

They also talk about the work that is happening today in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), and possible reasons why we don't yet see signs, such as the very complexity of a sapient species.

“There may be lots of life out there. There may even be lots of complex life, but the leap to our type of intelligence may be very difficult.”

Don’t miss this fascinating and provocative episode of More Intelligent Tomorrow, densely packed with insights on space exploration, artificial intelligence, human augmentation, including:

• The secondary mirror and wonders of the cosmos
• The Project Artemis and the great age of lunar tourism
• The eight phase of the American civil war
• Polemical Judo and the war on science
• GPT-3 and the race toward advanced intelligence

Technology has always played a key role in the world of music, with things like digital production software, loop pedals, and multi-track recording transforming the industry forever. Artificial intelligence (AI), however, is about to be the most disruptive technology in music.

In today’s episode, Ben Taylor sits down with Alex Mitchell, Founder, and CEO of Boomy, to discuss the future of AI in music.

Boomy is an industry leader, using artificial intelligence to create "instant music.” Alex shares how he has tried to solve the question of what good music is with data and why he believes that, ultimately, good music is whatever people want to listen to. The music industry is evolving as we move into a time of growth, as evidenced by the explosion of content on TikTok and the billions of streams that have resulted from it, and why he believes that the least efficient way to invest in musicians today would be to start a traditional record label.

Boomy presents the opportunity for a new consumption dynamic, using AI to look forward, not backward, and develop a native format for the next generation of listeners. On the topic of AI, Alex reflects on whether this emerging technology helps or hinders artists, saying that Boomy is not designed to replace musicians but rather provide the necessary tools to those who don’t have the same resources and access that many musicians do. In the end, great songs aren’t created by optimization algorithms, but by people with the tools to express themselves!

Taking a minute to look toward the future of technology in music, Alex speaks to the likelihood of using real-time EEG neurofeedback or brain-computer interfaces (BCI) to accelerate trends, saying that, while there are companies that are already working on this technology, we probably won’t see it realized in our lifetime. When asked about the future impact of AI on music, Alex explains how Boomy facilities personalization or what he calls ‘context-aware algorithmic music’, which he believes is currently hindered by the difficulty to monetize it. What is missing, in his opinion, is a way to incentivize the business models of those systems, which is one of Boomy’s core goals.

Reflecting on the two components of what musicians do, the first being skill and the second bringing taste, Alex explains how Boomy is building an interface where technology fills in the skill gap and allows everyone to become a composer in their own right. As the technology evolves, there will be greater opportunities to create and consume hyper-personalized content more rapidly and, as our appetite for short-form video content grows, Alex also thinks that the way the music industry operates will continue to evolve too.

Regardless of what we think is ‘good' music or ‘bad’ music, the only data we have to go on is consumption and Alex believes that it’s what we each bring to music that makes it good, not some set of universal criteria. As a musician himself, Alex isn’t on a mission to replace musicians; he is leveraging the latest technology to create a whole new generation of creators and explore a new consumption dynamic that blurs the line between performer and audience.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Defining what good (and bad) music is and what the future of the music industry looks like.
• How Boomy uses AI to present the opportunity for a new music consumption dynamic.
• Creating a new generation of artists, not replacing existing ones.
• Future technologies in music and how AI facilitates context-aware algorithmic music.
• Why there are no universal criteria that defines good or bad music; it’s personal!

Singularities have been explored in science fiction; authors such as William Gibson and Phillip K. Dick have speculated what life could be like in a world beyond them, and video games such as Cyberpunk 2077 have invited us to experience them firsthand.

Singularities may have once been a philosophical flight of fancy, but today they are an important topic for consideration by scientists, politicians, and other thought leaders.

In this episode of More Intelligent Tomorrow, artificial intelligence expert Daniel Hulme discusses singularities and their importance with host Ben Taylor.

“I think we all have an innate desire to try to make the world better for the next generation.”

Hulme starts the episode sharing the realization that he may only have another 500 months to live. That is not a lot of time in the grand scheme of things. It caused him to wonder what a person should do with the time they have left. He believes the meaning of life is to maximize good. Therefore, an ideal way to spend the time we each have left is to work towards an economic singularity, where humanity is free from the burden of having to meet our basic needs. This freedom would enable us to make the world a better place and enrich all of humanity.

Together, Hulme and Taylor speculate on what might come out of an AI singularity. What would happen if we created an AI that was able to iterate on itself? Could it solve humanity's greatest puzzles or make Nobel Prize winning discoveries in a matter of moments? Or would it decide humanity’s existence stands in the way of the universe reaching a state of maximized good?

“Once you birth a silicon god, it will be difficult to really understand how it operates.”

Both agree however, that the risks of creating a digital consciousness are outweighed by the possibility of an AI being able to solve our long-standing problems as a species. Fields like medicine, mathematics, and farming could all benefit from an AI singularity and help to bring about an economic singularity.

Taylor asks Hulme about the questions of ethics surrounding a sentient AI. How do we define what is right and wrong or good and evil and would an AI have the same views? Hulme shares his self-described controversial views on AI ethics, which leads to talking about how AI is used to track our digital existence and what that means for our privacy.

He proposes the idea of an open-source social network aimed at improving humanity as an alternative to the way social media users are currently bought and sold as products to advertisers. A decentralized social network would allow people to connect for humanity’s betterment instead of maximizing profits for shareholders.

Finally, they wrap up the episode by talking about the ways AI can be employed to personalize your educational experience. Imagine being taught lessons with methods that were individually tailored to your interests and presented in ways optimal to your modes of learning.

Prepare for a fascinating discussion of singularities which include:
What is a singularity and how many of them are there?

• The ramifications from achieving singularities.
• Will an AI singularity be a glorious event or humanity's biggest existential threat?
• Metaverses and how we might interact within them in the future.
• The ethics of creating an AI singularity.
• What it means to be human and how singularities might change this definition.
• Using social media to improve humanity’s experience.
• How AI can customize our educational experience.

Dr. Hannah Fry is a brilliant advocate for math as she discusses the mathematics around us. Ranging from the mathematics of love, to pandemics, to a future of skill-sharing through modeling. Hanna's passion for mathematics is contagious as she celebrates the math fabric around us.

In a world where companies like Meta, Google, and Apple collect and benefit from vast amounts of data about you, what would it be like if you were in control of your data instead? Specifically, what would it be like if you were in control of your health data? And what if you had it all in one easy to access place?

CEO and Co-Founder Ardy Arianpour came on the podcast to tell Dave Anderson how and why Seqster is giving people that kind of control over their own health data. Adry says patient-centric data interoperability is healthcare’s biggest challenge and it’s his number one mission.

Seqster is a technology company working to break down the silos within the world of healthcare and make health data interoperability easy and universal.
Making Health Data Interoperable
Data is the gold of the twenty-first century. But interoperability of data is the moonshot. It’s not enough to collect the data, it also needs to be accessible and usable, and it turns out interoperability is hard to do. Ardy says that Seqster is the first company to make the idea work.

Dave asks why interoperability is so hard to do. It’s because lab data is different from wearable data, which is different from data from your doctor, which is different from data from your dentist, and so on. All your data needs to be extracted and keyed in such a way it can be cross referenced.

But putting it all together isn't enough. You must also think about the patient’s experience.

“How do you connect the dots quickly and how do you visualize this data?"

The data needs to be easy for both patients and providers to access and read.

"What are they going to do with my data?”

You're already giving your doctor and other providers access to your data. But you’re not really in control of it from that point on. This year, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services interoperability rules stated that every single patient must have access to their healthcare data. Seqster wants to put the patient in control.

Dave follows up by asking what is being done with all this data? Who is using it and how?

It’s mostly clinical and decentralized trials, Ardy says. By using these data sets, both the cost and the time required to complete trials and develop new pharmaceuticals and therapies are vastly reduced.

Imagine what happens when you can collect a million patients’ data in an hour versus 18 months and then look at them all in one place? Ardy says we get more accurate information which results in better and faster development of new medicines and vaccines. Breaking down the silos that contain health data allows for a bigger picture of health for all of us.

With enough data, from enough patients, and with the right funding, Ardy thinks cancer is a problem we can solve. Dave wonders if health data could be like being an organ donor. Could we mark a box on a form and agree to donate our health data to science after our deaths?

Listen to this episode to learn more about:

• The problems around siloed health data and his solution
• How to address privacy concerns around healthcare data
• Ardy’s personal journey that brought him to this field
• Why Big Pharma isn't evil
• Bill Gates's advice to Ardy on getting Seqster to scale
• The decade of biological revolution
• The business model to make this work