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AI & The Future of Humanity: Artificial Intelligence, Technology, VR, Algorithm, Automation, ChatBPT, Robotics, Augmented Re
AI & The Future of Humanity: Artificial Intelligence, Technology, VR, Algorithm, Automation, ChatBPT, Robotics, Augmented Re
A podcast exploring the impact of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies on humanity. Through interviews with scientists, philosophers, technologists, and other experts, it examines the risks, dangers, and opportunities of AI, including the future of work in an age of automation. Hosted by educator Mia Funk, the show considers how individuals, governments, and organizations can shape a future where powerful technologies benefit everyone.
Episodes
Art as the Ultimate Technology: Preserving the Human Core in the Age of AI w/ LINCOLN CENTER’S SHANTA THAKE
“Lincoln Center is multiple stages. I think probably over three dozen stages across 16 acres. It is a vast canvas in and of itself. And then we have this beautiful plaza that leads to this beautiful campus, and that’s the visual I think that most people have when they think of Lincoln Center is this beautiful fountain in the center and these three gorgeous buildings.It’s New York’s biggest plaza,
AI, Robotics, VR, Bio-plastics: LINCOLN CENTER’S Shanta Thake on the Power of Performing Arts in the Age of AI - Highlights
"I really do believe that the arts are critical to how we move forward together, and live performance in particular, I think, is a way of us practicing how to move across our ideological boundaries and find one another and imagine these new worlds together and create together."Shanta Thake is the Chief Artistic Officer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts—the nation's largest performing arts
Surviving the AI Hype Cycle Without Losing Your Mind (or Your Job) w/ NACHO DE GREGORIO - Highlights
“ I'm a believer in this technology. I believe that the cheaper it is, the more people will use it. So, even if we assume that models will get smaller for the same level of intelligence, the demand to actually have more compute is going to be enormous. And the reason why you want to have the, the compute close to you is not only in terms of performance. As a national security threat, I'm not sayin
AI, Algorithms & Preserving the Human Core of Memory with GEORGI GOSPODINOV & ANGELA RODEL - Highlights
Today, we have a conversation about time, memory, and the bittersweet geography of human sorrow. Georgi Gospodinovis widely considered one of the most daring voices in contemporary European literature. His acclaimed novel, The Physics of Sorrow, won the prestigious Jan Michalski Prize in 2016, blending ancient myth and quantum physics to chronicle the delicate realities of post-socialist Eastern E
The $7.5 Trillion Gamble on AI Domination & The Future of Humanity w/ NACHO DE GREGORIO
For over a decade, technology has promised to make life easier. Social media was meant to connect us, we were told smartphones would simplify our lives, and now artificial intelligence promises to lift even more daily burdens. Yet these advances also raise an important question: when do tools enhance human creativity, and when do they replace the very experiences that give life meaning? While AI h
Architecture, AI & Preserving the Human Core of Expression with SALWA & SELMA MIKOU
Salwa and Selma Mikou are the founders of Paris-based Mikou Architecture. Born in Fez, Morocco and educated in Paris, they have spent the last two decades reimagining the relationship between the built environment and the cultural landscape.After honing their craft under two of the world’s most iconic architects, Jean Nouvel and Renzo Piano, they founded their own studio. For them, architecture is
Why Do We Listen to the Talkers More Than the Builders Saving the Planet? - TOM CHI - Highlights
Why does our economy treat environmental destruction as an inevitable side effect rather than a massive design flaw? How can shifting our focus from polarizing "talkers" to practical "builders" literally save the planet? We are repeatedly told that the climate crisis is too vast and volatile to solve, but what if the true obstacle is simply bad design?Tom Chi is a physicist, designer, invento
Climate Capital with TOM CHI - Google X Co-founder, Founding Partner At One Ventures
“In the book I spend a bunch of time basically teaching skills and teaching frameworks of thinking. Not to indoctrinate, it's not a framework like an ideology where you need to believe exactly these things. This is a lot more about how does one use their minds effectively to solve problems that have been solved before. Of course, I work on things that have to do with investment and climate and the
AI, Escaping the Screen & Listening to the Living World: DAVID HASKELL on the Songs of Nature - Highlights
Step into the deep time of the forest floor, where a single fallen leaf contains the history of the world, and invisible fungal networks hum with ancient conversations. Biologist and acclaimed author David George Haskell reveals a staggering truth: we are completely dependent on the botanical world, and our belief in strict human individuality is a biological illusion.Haskell has spent much of his
Game Over: Metrics, Big Data & Why We Need to Stop Keeping Score w/ C. THI NGUYEN - Highlights
"To be in the process of making things, to be in the process of talking to people about what things mean. The creative process is actually, I think, the most meaningful part of life, but it's very hard to measure. When we get shoved towards a world that demands easy measurables, it's very hard to optimize away from the creative process and optimize towards things that are more static."On this epis
The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game with C. THI NGUYEN
We live in a world obsessed with tracking. From our sleep scores to our social media engagement, invisible systems constantly quantify our worth. But when we replace our deepest values with these thin, easily measurable numbers, we lose a part of our humanity. It is time to step outside the magic circle of optimization and reclaim the unstructured joy of being alive. C. Thi Nguyen is a p
Beyond the Plagiarism Machine: Reclaiming Imagination from AI Slurry w/ AL KENNEDY
"The thing that puzzled him was why people don't agree to be fully expressed while they're alive. Why does it only happen in their last moment? Why wouldn't you live being fully expressed?"My guest today is AL Kennedy. She is one of Britain’s most acclaimed and versatile literary voices, a writer who can inhabit the internal life of a soldier in a POW camp, as she did in her Costa Book Award-
SIRI HUSTVEDT on Love, Grief, AI, Creativity & the Future of Humanity
“Grief happens because you don't stop loving the person who died. The person doesn't exist in your reality anymore. The everyday is not colored and shaped by this other human being, but you don't stop loving the person. So grief is a particular kind of unrequited love. And probably without that dynamic relationship with this person, I would be someone else. And he would've been someone else. I mea
ART CURE: How the Arts Can Transform Our Health with DAISY FANCOURT
"Within society, we seem to have separated the arts out, so they're not so much a part of our daily lives. Often there's something that we feel we should do as a kind of leisure activity or hobby if we have enough time or if we have enough money to engage in them. And this is so fundamentally different to how humans engaged with the arts. When we look back thousands of years, it just was part of t
AI, Muse Cells & The Future of Health: Why Stars like Chris Hemsworth & Tony Robbins Turn to Regenerative Medicine
“They're kind of like a hidden superhero in your body and we just didn't know they existed. Muse cells eat the damaged cells, and they can actually turn into new cells using the cellular machinery.”Dr. Adeel Khan is a global thought leader in regenerative medicine. He is the CEO and Founder of and founder of Eterna Health, whose work with MUSE cell therapy—developed in collaboration with its
Speaking Out of Place - DAVID PALUMBO-LIU on Reclaiming Our Political Voices - Highlights
On the urgent need to reclaim our political voices, the forces that silence dissent, and how art and poetry are crucial tools for survivalOur guest today is an activist scholar who believes the classroom is inseparable from the public square. David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University and a founding faculty member of Stanford’s Program
Reclaiming the American Dream with DAVID PALUMBO-LIU – Stanford Professor, Author & Host, Speaking Out of Place
On the urgent need to reclaim our political voices, the forces that silence dissent, and how art and poetry are crucial tools for survival“There is a dispute about what the American Dream is or how it would play out in different circumstances. The American dream has essentially been narrowed into a white Christian nationalist notion of things so that everything that falls outside what they imagine
The AI Wager: Betting on Technology’s Future w/ Philosopher & Author SVEN NYHOLM - Highlights
“ I think we're betting on AI as something that can help to solve a lot of problems for us. It's the future, we think, whether it's producing text or art, or doing medical research or planning our lives for us, etc., the bet is that AI is going to be great, that it's going to get us everything we want and make everything better. But at the same time, we're gambling, at the extreme end, with the fu
The Ethics of AI w/ SVEN NYHOLM, Author & Lead Researcher, Munich Centre for Machine Learning
As we move towards 2026, we are in a massive “upgrade moment” that most of us can feel. New pressures, new identities, new expectations on our work, our relationships, and our inner lives. Throughout the year, I've been speaking with professional creatives, climate and tech experts, teachers, neuroscientists, psychologists, and futureists about how AI can be used intelligently and ethically as a p
HOWARD GORDON & DANIEL PEARLE on THE BEAST IN ME, AI & The Future of Storytelling
“How do you render something interior filmically? How do you communicate the details of the lost child, of the amount of time of the stuck creative process, and even the exterior, or the externalization of the house as a kind of hellish thing that's barely staying together—literally flooding with waste—and that you can't afford? So those are the details that we had to carefully figure out how to w
In the Presence of the DALAI LAMA - Doc. Director of WISDOM OF HAPPINESS - Highlights
“I can change my mind. I can reduce anger, hatred. Nothing to do with religion. All religions carry the message of love, loving kindness, and tolerance. With different views, there is a possibility to synthesize new ideas. If majority of the world leaders become female, world become safer. I feel that. Compassion is the key factor. Non-violence, compassion and self-confidence, these are key factor
WISDOM OF HAPPINESS - Heart-to-Heart w/ DALAI LAMA - Conversation w/ Director Barbara Miller
“ Everybody wants happiness, joyfulness, peaceful world. Our 21st century will not be easy century. Fear, anger, hatred. In our mind we created distinctions. Different nationality, different color, different religion. Strong concept of “we” and “they”. Brothers and sisters of this small planet, we are same human beings. Meanwhile, global warming is a serious problem. Destruction of this planet is
AI & The Future of Life with RISTO UUK, Head of EU Policy & Research, FUTURE OF LIFE INSTITUTE
“The Future of Life Institute has been working on AI governance-related issues for the last decade. We're already over 10 years old, and our mission is to steer very powerful technology away from large-scale harm and toward very beneficial outcomes. You could think about any kind of extreme risks from AI, all the way to existential or extinction risk, the worst kinds of risks and the benefits. You
How to Make an Algorithm in the Microwave with Poet MAYA SALAMEH
“Poetry is like one of the great loves of my life, and I think it's probably the longest relationship I'll ever have. I read a lot of poetry. I also wrote these short stories even when I was pretty young, like in second grade, and the stories kept getting shorter and shorter. My family used to go to Damascus in Syria and Lebanon every summer for three months until 2011, when the Civil War broke ou
Art is a Fundamental Element of Life - Gallerist HANNAH BARRY on a Life in Art
“There's something fundamental about the value of art and culture. Not just being integrated for vocational reasons, but because the experience of art and having a cultural element in one's life brings enjoyment, learning, relief, or any of the many experiences and feelings that art provides. I think this is quite fundamental as an element of life. Creativity is key in any career and also in perso
Empire of AI: Dreams & Nightmares in Sam Altman's Open AI with KAREN HAO
“My book is called Empire of AI because I'm trying to articulate this argument and illustrate that these companies operate exactly like empires of old. I highlight four features that essentially encapsulate the three things you read. However, I started talking about it in a different way after writing the book.The four features are: they lay claim to resources that are not their own, which is the
Healing, Connection & Creativity in the Age of AI - ETGAR KERET on Why We Need Stories in Times of Crisis - Highlights
“I feel that when you don't tell your story, it's as if you have a limited existence. We can always have some kind of choice, but I'm saying that the story we choose may be the most crucial choice that we make, because this story will affect all the other choices.”Etgar Keret is one of the most inventive and celebrated short story writers of his generation, a voice that captures the absurdities an
AI & Finding Humanity Through Storytelling with Author & Filmmaker ETGAR KERET
“When I write my stories, I don't want to solve things in life. I just want to persuade myself that there is a way out. Maybe I am in a cell, maybe I'm trapped. Maybe I won't make it, but if I can imagine a plan for escape, then I'll be less trapped because at least in my mind, there is a way. I think that my parents are survivors. They always talked about this idea of humanity. My parents always
What's Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis with MALCOLM HARRIS
“One day, I woke up with this concept of oil being tied up in our lives in ways that we don't talk about. It’s sort of a value-theoretical approach to climate change and the climate crisis. Something that's impersonal and goes to the root of our entire social metabolic structure.”In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liuwelcomes Malcolm Harris back to t
Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ & the Capitalism of the Far Right with QUINN SLOBODIAN
“The origin was really trying to make sense of that 2016-2017 moment and to ask whether the alt-right was, as we were being told, a return to the 1930s, a kind of awakening of the sleeping beast of white supremacy armed in the streets in the United States. There are many explanations, but I decided to take this kind of curious route in with the distorted readings and reinterpretations of the works
AI, UFOs, Perception & Reality with Artist, Geographer, Author TREVOR PAGLEN - Highlights
“If we look at the entire history of the human experience, if you saw some text or you heard some spoken language, you could 100 percent reliably infer that there was a human who created that. Our experience of having that text or that image generated for us is very akin to the experience of a magic trick, and we sort of pre-subconsciously want to attribute some kind of intelligence to what's goin
How AI is Shaping Perception, How Deception is Sculpting Our Reality with Artist TREVOR PAGLEN
“There's a word for this brain rot, right? I think that's very real. There are studies coming out now that are showing that the more and more of our cognitive labor we offload to AI systems, the less creative we become, the less critical we become, and the less of our human faculties for reason we use. There's something sad about that, but there’s also something dangerous about it because that lea
Abolish Silicon Valley—How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism
“Abolishing Silicon Valley means freeing the development of technology from a system that will always relegate it to a subordinate role, that of entrenching existing power relations. It means designing a new system that isn't deluged in the logic of the bucket. It means liberating our worlds from the illegitimate ring of capital. Perhaps this sounds unfair to capital. Perhaps I sound like I'm
Life As No One Knows It - Exploring AIR Aspen with NICOLA LEES - Highlights
“For us, I think it really is about trust and commitments, and I don't think that has necessarily changed over the years. As we work on that, obviously, we are very much invested in how we can engage an audience and spark the curiosity that people are looking for. The most important thing often is how we can spark that curiosity in ourselves. As a way of working, which I think is the most importan
Writing, AI & The Future of Humanity w/ VIET THANH NGUYEN
“As a writer, I do believe that art and literature in and of themselves are important. I'm going to keep on writing novels, and one of the most important reasons why is because, as you mentioned, language is crucial. Part of the way that states and authoritarian regimes exercise their power is not just through physical violence and intimidation, but through a maltreatment of language itself. Trump
The First Artist-Led Global Summit & The Future of Museums - NICOLA LEES, Director, Aspen Art Museum
“It's a complicated time to think about how we can slow down, be still, and bring a brilliant group of people together to do something that feels purposeful and can be productive. It's a moment where things are moving so fast. When I brought up the idea of a hinge generation, I think it's impossible to know how we will look back and reflect on this time and these moments. We are very invested in e
‘Genius’ Entrepreneurs, Technofacists & Phobic Misogynists with BECCA LEWIS
“I think I've always been interested in the far-right end of technology, or I should say for several years that’s what I’ve been studying. However, I kept feeling that gender was understudied in these elements. When I was studying the alt-right online, the focus more than anything else was frequently on white nationalism and the racial dynamic. The scholars whose work really inspired me, like soci
AI, Universities & Student Surveillance in the Digital Age - LINDSAY WEINBERG & ROBERT OVETZ
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Lindsay Weinberg and Robert Ovetz about the use of Artificial Intelligence in higher education. Under the guise of “personalizing” education and increasing efficiency, universities are increasingly sold on AI as a cure to their financial ills as public funds dry up and college applications drop.
THE DREAM HOTEL with LAILA LALAMI
What happens when the state, with the pretext of protecting public safety, can detain indefinitely certain individuals whose dreams seem to indicate they may be capable of committing a crime? Set in a precarious world where sleep-enhancing devices and algorithms provide the tools and formulae for making one’s unconscious a witness to one’s possible waking life, this novel touches on a myriad
Examining Monuments, Memory & The History of White Supremacy IRVIN WEATHERSBY JR. - Highlights
“I'm hopeful for revolution. I'm optimistic. I want radical change. I think there's such a disinterest in education in America that it is sickening. I think we are repeating history. We are going through a cycle of fascism and greed, and I think we're going to see a lot of states collapse. As a result of that, I think people are going to be forced back to their primal needs and concerns, but I thi
From Spy Thrillers to Police Dramas w/ Writer, Creator, Showrunner ALEXI HAWLEY
“There used to be a time when leading men were okay with falling down as a character. Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones is a prime example of that. Even going back to the fifties, they understood that failure and falling down, but getting back up, is an endearing quality. It's a universal human quality. We have gotten to a point in the last 10 or 15 years, or maybe longer, where leading men often wan
JARON LANIER on Tech, Music, Creativity & Who Owns the Future - Highlights
“What I meant when I said there is no AI is that I don't think we serve ourselves well when we put our own technology up as if it were a new God that we created. I think we confuse ourselves too easily. This goes back to Alan Turing, the main founder of computer science, who had this idea of the Turing test. In the test, you can't tell whether the computer has gotten more human-like or the human h
AI, Virtual Reality & Dawn of the New Everything w/ JARON LANIER, VR Pioneer, Musician, Author
“AI is obviously the dominant topic in tech lately, and I think occasionally there's AI that's nonsense, and occasionally there's AI that's great. I love finding new proteins for medicine and so on. I don't think we serve ourselves well when we put our own technology up as if it were a new God that we created. I think we're really getting a little too full of ourselves to think that. This goe
How Can AI-moderated Deliberation Cure the Ills of Democracy? JAMES FISHKIN - Highlights
“The three ills of democracy that I propose to address with this method, which we've perfected over the last several decades. Democracy is supposed to make some connection with the "will of the people." But how can we estimate the will of the people when everyone is trying to manipulate it?”James S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where h
How Can AI be Part of Bringing Deliberative Democracy to the Masses? w/ JAMES S. FISHKIN
“Deliberative democracy is itself, when properly done, a kind of democracy that can speak to the interests of a community. And we need that all over the world.” James S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where he is Professor of Communication, Professor of Political Science (by courtesy), Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for In
The Imagination Emporium with Fmr. VP of Innovation & Creativity at Disney DUNCAN WARDLE
How can we free our minds to cultivate curiosity, innovation, and creativity in our daily lives? In this age of AI, where creative tasks are increasingly being performed for us, what is intelligence? And what is the future of education?Duncan Wardle was Vice President of Innovation and Creativity at Disney and has helped organizations like Apple, the NBA, Coca-Cola, and Spotify to innovate. The Im
The Hidden Humans Behind Artificial Intelligence & the Sociopathology of Elon Musk
In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Sarah T. Roberts about the hidden humans behind Artificial Intelligence, which is reliant on executives and business managers to direct AI to promote their brand and low-level, out-sourced, and poorly paid content managers to slog through masses of images, words, and data before they get fed into the machine. T
Art, Technology & Society with Author T.C. BOYLE
“What I have done in my career is just try to assess who we are, what we are, why we are here, and how come we, as animals, are able to walk around and wear pants and dresses and talk on the internet, while the other animals are not. It's been my obsession since I was young. I think if I hadn't become a novelist, I might have been happy to be a naturalist or a field biologist.There is some kind of
On Regulating the Attention Market & Prevent Algorithmic Emotional Governance w/ FABIEN GANDON & FRANCK MICHEL
“The fact that technologies are being used and combined to capture our attention is concerning. This is currently being done with no limitations and no regulations. That's the main problem. Attention is a very private resource. No one should be allowed to extract it from us by exploiting what we know about the human mind and how it functions, including its weaknesses. We wrote this paper as a call
PAY ATTENTION: A Call to Regulate the Attention Market & Prevent Algorithmic Emotional Governance
AI competes for our attention because our attention has been commodified. As our entire lives revolve more and more around the attention economy, what can we do to restore our autonomy, reclaim our privacy, and reconnect with the real world.Computer scientist Fabien Gandon and research engineer Franck Michel are experts in AI, the Web, and knowledge systems. Fabien is a senior researcher at Inria
Who Defends the Defenders? UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders MICHEL FORST
“My mandate focuses on the protection of those trying to protect the planet. Protection of defenders is my main topic. When I'm speaking to states or companies, it's always related to cases of defenders facing threats, attacks, or penalization by companies or governments, like the recent case of Paul Watson (founder of Sea Shepherd) in Denmark… When I travel to places like Peru, Colombia, or Hondu
AI & The Limits to Growth w/ Co-President of The Club of Rome PAUL SHRIVASTAVA
“I think AI is sort of inevitable in some ways. It is not very intelligent right now; it is probably closer to artificial stupidity, but it's a question of time before it becomes smarter and smarter. We need to tackle the right to use question and the value question now as it is developing. It can amplify both the positive possibilities as well as the negative consequences, and we want to make sur
The Club of Rome & The Limits to Growth w/ Co-President PAUL SHRIVASTAVA
Less than two weeks into the new year and the world’s wealthiest 1% have already used their fair share of the global carbon budget allocated for 2025. 2024 was hottest year on record. How can we change our extractive mindset to a regenerative mindset? How can we evolve our systems from economic growth to a vision of regenerative living and eco-civilization?Paul Shrivastava is Co-President of
Elon Musk, Putin's Russia, Murdoch's Fox News: How Billionaires Shape Our World with DARRYL CUNNINGHAM
What influence do billionaires have on politics, journalism, and the technology that shapes our lives? What drives people to seek absolute power, and how can we hold them accountable?Darryl Cunningham is a cartoonist and author of Science Tales, Psychiatric Tales, The Age of Selfishness, and Billionaires: The Lives of the Rich and Powerful. Cunningham is also well-known for his comic strips, whic
AI, Technology, Art & Culture - Artists, Philosophers, Economists & Scientists discuss the Future
How can we shape technology’s impact on society? How do social media algorithms influence our democratic processes and personal well-being? Can AI truly emulate human creativity? And how will its pursuit of perfection change the art we create?Daniel Susskind (Economist · Oxford & King’s College London · Author of Growth: A Reckoning · A World Without Work) shares insights on the nature of grow
Photographer & Musician JULIAN LENNON on AI, Art, Empathy & Creativity (Copy)
“I think a lot of joy comes from helping others. One of the things that I've been really focusing on is finding that balance in life, what’s real and what’s true and what makes you happy. How can you help other people feel the same and have a happier life? I think whatever that takes. So if that's charity, if that's photography, if that's documentary, if that's music, and I can do it, then I'm goi
AI & The Pathway to Flow with Neuroscientist, Fmr. Dancer DR. JULIA CHRISTENSEN
“So, syncopation is now the big thing. It will induce people to groove and to like your music more. So let's have a lot of syncopation inside your music and you'll sell a lot. By chasing superficial beauty, which is what AI gives us at the moment, it aims for perfect outcomes. Not that anything these models produce is perfect, because how do you evaluate perfection? But they are based on the data
AI, Technological Progress & the Growth Dilemma w/ Economist DANIEL SUSSKIND - Highlights
“The running theme in all of my work has been technology. The first book that I co-authored with my dad was published in 2015. The second book I wrote was A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond, published in 2020, just before the pandemic began. My new book Growth: A Reckoning is about growth, but also technological progress, because what drives growth is technolog
Growth: A Reckoning with Economist DANIEL SUSSKIND
How can we look beyond GDP and develop new metrics that balance growth with human flourishing and environmental well-being? How can we be more engaged global citizens? In this age of AI, what does it really mean to be human? And how are our technologies transforming us?Daniel Susskind is a Research Professor in Economics at King's College London and a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for
The Human Smart City: Balancing Ecology & Economy with CARLOS MORENO - Highlights
“This is the difference between a technological smart city and a real human smart city towards a 15-minute city as the expression of a human-centered urban approach. This is our challenge for the next decades and our target, to humanize our cities. The Olympic Games in Paris have shown the world that it is possible to recreate, to regenerate a really vibrant city with harmonious life between distr
The 15-Minute City: A Solution to Saving Our Time & Our Planet with CARLOS MORENO
How can the 15-minute city model revolutionize urban living, enhance wellbeing, and reduce our carbon footprint? Online shopping is turning cities into ghost towns. We can now buy anything anywhere anytime. How can we learn to stop scrolling and start strolling and create more livable, sustainable communities we are happy to call home.Carlos Moreno was born in Colombia in 1959 and moved to France
Neuroscience, AI & The Future of Humanity - DR. BEN SHOFTY - Highlights
“I'm one of the people who believe that anything that we as human beings can imagine will eventually happen. So, if somebody has raised the question possibility of having brain implants that augment the brain and generate additional functions, I feel like it will eventually happen. There are a lot of private companies, like Elon Musk's Neuralink and others, that are busy designing these interfaces
The Neuroscience of Creativity with DR. BEN SHOFTY
Where do creative thoughts come from? How can we harness our stream of consciousness and spontaneity to express ourselves? How are mind-wandering, meditation, and the arts good for our creativity and physical and mental well-being?Dr. Ben Shofty is a functional neurosurgeon affiliated with the University of Utah. He graduated from the Tel-Aviv University Faculty of Medicine, received his PhD in ne
What is good design? How AI is Shaping OurWorld? - SCOTT DOORLEY & CARISSA CARTER - Co-authors of Assembling Tomorrow - Highlights
“The way we understand the world and how the world actually works is just not mapped perfectly. That kind of leads to problems because we don't know exactly what we're doing in the world. We can't see all the repercussions of the things we create until later on. One silver lining about the technologies we're creating is that technologies like AI could be used to help us with this issue, with the f
Can Design Save the World? - SCOTT DOORLEY & CARISSA CARTER - Co-authors of Assembling Tomorrow - Directors of Stanford’s d.School
How can we design and adapt for the uncertainties of the 21st century? How do emotions shape our decisions and the way we design the world around us?Scott Doorley is the Creative Director at Stanford's d. school and co author of Make Space. He teaches design communication and his work has been featured in museums and architecture and urbanism and the New York Times. Carissa Carteris the Academic D
AI, Tech & The Future of Museums - STEPHEN REILY, Founding Director of Remuseum on Transforming Cultural Spaces
“The opportunity is that we have never had a public that is more passionate and obsessed with visual imagery. If the owners of the best original imagery in the world can't figure out how to take advantage of the fact that the world has now become obsessed with these treasures that we have to offer as museums, then shame on us. This is the opportunity to say, if you're spending all day scrolling on
AI, Curiosity, Cognition & Creativity with Neuroscientist DR. JACQUELINE GOTTLIEB
“We have an onslaught of information the moment we open our eyes. We evolved to deal with an onslaught of information, and we are masters at focusing and ignoring vast amounts of information. Now, AI in this digital age is a relatively new stream of information, which is man-made, so we make it more salient. So, yes, it's harder to ignore it, but people can learn to ignore it, and indeed, it
AI, Cognitive Bias & the Future of Journalism w/ Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist NICHOLAS KRISTOF
“There have been some alarming experiments that show AI arguments are better at persuading people than humans are at persuading people. I think that's partly because humans tend to make the arguments that we ourselves find most persuasive. For example, a liberal will make the arguments that will appeal to liberals, but the person you're probably trying to persuade is somebody in the center. We're
AI, Populism & Consumer Society with Historian FRANK TRENTMANN
“The bridge between Out of the Darkness and my previous work, which looked at the transformation of consumer culture in the world, is morality. One thing that became clear in writing Empire of Things was that there's virtually no time or place in history where consumption isn't heavily moralized. Our lifestyle is treated as a mirror of our virtue and sins. And in the course of modern history, ther
Is AI capable of creating a protest song that disrupts oppression & inspires social change? - JAKE FERGUSON, ANTHONY JOSEPH & JERMAIN JACKMAN
“There's something raw about The Architecture of Oppression, both part one and part two. There's a raw realness and authenticity in those songs that AI can't create. There's a lived experience that AI won't understand, and there's a feeling in those songs. And it's not just in the words from the spoken word artists, if it's not in the instruments that are being played. It's in the voice that you h
The SDGs, AI & UN Summit of the Future - GUILLAUME LAFORTUNE - VP, UN SDSN, Paris
“The SDSN has been set up to mobilize research and science for the Sustainable Development Goals. Each year, we aim to provide a fair and accurate assessment of countries' progress on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The development goals were adopted back in 2015 by all UN member states, marking the first time in human history that we have a common goal for the entire world. Our goal each ye
AI & How Utopian Visions Shape Our Reality & Future - Highlights - S. D. CHROSTOWSKA
“There’s the existing AI and the dream of artificial general intelligence that is aligned with our values and will make our lives better. Certainly, the techno-utopian dream is that it will lead us towards utopia. It is the means of organizing human collectivities, human societies, in a way that would reconcile all the variables, all the things that we can't reconcile because we don't have enough
Utopia in the Age of Survival with S. D. CHROSTOWSKA
As Surrealism turns 100, what can it teach us about the importance of dreaming and creating a better society? Will we wake up from the consumerist dream sold to us by capitalism and how would that change our ideas of utopia?S. D. Chrostowska is professor of humanities at York University, Canada. She is the author of several books, among them Permission, The Eyelid, A Cage for Every Child, and, mos
AI’s Role in Society, Culture & Climate with CHARLIE HERTZOG YOUNG
The planet’s well-being unites us all, from ecosystems to societies, global systems to individual health. How is planetary health linked to mental health? Charlie Hertzog Young is a researcher, writer and award-winning activist. He identifies as a “proudly mad bipolar double amputee” and has worked for the New Economics Foundation, the Royal Society of Arts, the Good Law Project, the Four Day Week
The Future of Energy - RICHARD BLACK - Director, Policy & Strategy, Ember - Fmr. BBC Environment Correspondent
Richard Black spent 15 years as a science and environment correspondent for the BBC World Service and BBC News, before setting up the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit. He now lives in Berlin and is the Director of Policy and Strategy at the global clean energy think tank Ember, which aims to accelerate the clean energy transition with data and policy. He is the author of The Future of Energy
DIANE VON FÜRSTENBERG: Woman in Charge & How AI Will Change Storytelling w/ Oscar-winning Director SHARMEEN OBAID-CHINOY
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is an Oscar and Emmy award-winning Canadian-Pakistani filmmaker whose work highlights extraordinary women and their stories. She earned her first Academy Award in 2012 for her documentary Saving Face, about the Pakistani women targeted by brutal acid attacks. Today, Obaid-Chinoy is the first female film director to have won two Oscars by the age of 37. In 2023, it was announc
Does AI-generated Perfection Detach Us from Reality, Life & Human Connection? - Highlights - HENRY AJDER
“Having worked in this space for seven years, really since the inception of DeepFakes in late 2017, for some time, it was possible with just a few hours a day to really be on top of the key kind of technical developments. It's now truly global. AI-generated media have really exploded, particularly the last 18 months, but they've been bubbling under the surface for some time in various different us
How is AI Changing Our Perception of Reality, Creativity & Human Connection? w/ HENRY AJDER - AI Advisor
How is artificial intelligence redefining our perception of reality and truth? Can AI be creative? And how is it changing art and innovation? Does AI-generated perfection detach us from reality and genuine human connection?Henry Ajder is an advisor, speaker, and broadcaster working at the frontier of the generative AI and the synthetic media revolution. He advises organizations on the opportunitie
How to Fight for Truth & Protect Democracy in A Post-Truth World? - Highlights - LEE McINTYRE
“When AI takes over with our information sources and pollutes it to a certain point, we'll stop believing that there is any such thing as truth anymore. ‘We now live in an era in which the truth is behind a paywall and the lies are free.’ One thing people don't realize is that the goal of disinformation is not simply to get you to believe a falsehood. It's to demoralize you into giving up on
On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth & Protect Democracy in the Age of AI - LEE McINTYRE
How do we fight for truth and protect democracy in a post-truth world? How does bias affect our understanding of facts?Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and a Senior Advisor for Public Trust in Science at the Aspen Institute. He holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Michigan. H
