Constellation: Making the Graphic Novel

We're back! After a prolonged hiatus, Ted and Jon return joined by guest Robin Hanson, the economics professor and blogger at Overcoming Bias, who discusses the central concept of his new book, The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life when Robots Rule the Earth. We discuss his assumption that whole brain emulations will emerge before theoretically-driven AGI, and that this development will lead to a population explosion of "Em" minds that perfectly substitute for human labor. Will humans not be needed anymore, as Robin predicts? What will the world of ems look and feel like? Is it possible to be purely analytic when predicting the future?

In today's podcast, we review an episode of the British television series Black Mirror. Black Mirror is an anthology show that presents a dark spin on our relationship with technology. The series, despite its flaws, is highly entertaining and full of interesting thought experiments. Today we are focusing on the Christmas special, a longer episode that deals with some our favorite topics: augmented reality, privacy, and emulated brains. Although we recommend watching the episode before listening to this podcast, we do summarize the plot as we go for the benefit of people who have not yet seen Black Mirror.

In today's podcast we offer a broad survey of augmented reality. How will the social and economic aspects of our lives be different in a world where computers are constantly altering our vision? What are the main benefits that AR has over VR? How does one even define augmented reality anyway?

In today’s podcast we get philosophical about work and the meaning of life. Repeat guest John Danaher steers us away from the traditional arguments surrounding technological unemployment and towards a different set of questions: Is it possible for humans to have a meaningful existence in a world where they’ve been completely sidelined by machines? Is a life […]

In today's podcast, we discuss cryonics, a topic we only recently became interested in. After a general overview of what cryonics is and where it comes from, we try to determine whether or not cryonics is a service we would sign up for. The rational arguments in favor of cryonics seem to be very strong, and the cost of cryonics, while significant, is not so high as to be out of reach. However, we do still have some reservations. For now we remain "cryo-curious" - sympathetic to the technology but not yet signed up. Hopefully this episode will trigger our listeners to begin their own thought process regarding this fascinating proposition.

In today's podcast, Jon talks with futurist and bioethicist George Dvorsky about the future of human enhancement. Topics covered include radical life extension, editing the human germline, multiplex parenting, artificial wombs, intelligence augmentation, moral enhancement, and more. How cautious should we be when it comes to enhancing human beings? Is there any merit to the arguments of bioconservatives or are most of their concerns lacking solid grounding? How can we get over the creepiness hurdle and begin to normalize these conversations?

In today's podcast, we discuss the future of virtual assistant software. A long list of major companies and startups are racing to develop voice activated software that can help organize your life. Today's assistant apps are still incredibly primitive, but it appears they may get considerably better in the near future. We identify and analyze three major trends that are poised to make computers into more powerful assistants: natural language interfaces, big data, and increasing autonomy. Will you be able to trust your virtual assistant not to steer you toward products you don't need? Will social interactions be increasingly influenced by the realtime suggestions of virtual advisors? Will "being good with computers" stop being a relevant descriptor once everyone has easy access to powerful natural language interfaces?

In today's episode, Jon speaks with Calum Chace, author of the new nonfiction book Surviving AI. The potential risk posed by superintelligent AI has recently gained unprecedented coverage in the mainstream press, thanks to the release of Nick Bostrom's book Superintelligence and public statements by the likes of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Stephen Hawking. In our discussion we explore some of the fundamental questions surrounding this issue such as: how soon will artificial general intelligence arrive? How likely is it to be dangerous? And is a hard takeoff or soft takeoff more likely? While AGI may still be a long way off, the extraordinarily high stakes suggest we should devote a few more resources to studying this highly unique issue facing humanity.

Our Kickstarter is LIVE! In this bonus mini-episode, we discuss our sci fi graphic novel project LET GO, and how you can help. We also respond to some listener feedback and Jon gives a recommendation for the indie sci fi film ADVANTAGEOUS.

In today's episode we talk about brain-computer interfaces. We discuss the range of available invasive and non-invasive sensor options, the difficulties of processing brain signals, and the wide variety of ways computers might use realtime brain data. While it's clear that BCIs promise incredible benefits to people who are paralyzed, it's less clear how extensively BCIs will benefit able-bodied humans. We explore what some of those benefits (and dangers) might be.

In today's podcast, we discuss the future of movies. We begin by addressing virtual reality and asking what impacts it will have on traditional moviemaking. In recent times, the cost of making an independent film has gone way down, and we consider whether those costs can drop even further, possibly as a result of better virtual filmmaking and machinima tools. Next, we analyze the shift towards greater serialization in movies and the rising dominance of television. Finally, we speculate wildly about the length of future movies, the effect of accelerating change on storytelling settings, personalized algorithmic movie production, and more.

In today's episode we are joined by basic income advocate Scott Santens. Scott explains his version of a basic income and how it might be paid for. Although future technological unemployment might increase the need for a basic income, there are actually many reasons besides concerns about automation to adopt such a policy. We discuss the various advantages of basic income over our current social programs and consider the Alaska model as one that might be exportable to the rest of the US. Lastly, we address the issue of feasibility: basic income sounds nice on paper, but could such a program ever actually get implemented?

In today's episode, we discuss the future of advertising, which we define as the 'sale of attention.' People mostly hate ads, but why do they? Is it possible to make ads so well targeted that people actually enjoy the experience? We discuss the remarkably constant amount of advertising as a percent of GDP over a long stretch of history. We ponder the ways accelerating technologies might allow for better metrics and better ad designs in the future, and we wonder whether a large-scale consumer collapse might disrupt advertising's steady growth. Speculating on the future, we imagine that nearly everything that remains scarce in the future might one day be ad-supported.

In today's episode we give a comprehensive list of the sci-fi tropes that bother us the most. While not all science fiction has an obligation to be speculative, we would like to see more science fiction that avoids certain cliches when it comes to predicting the future. We discuss the following tropes: The Prometheus Problem, The Boot-in-the-face Dystopia. Societal Regression, Super Now, Isolated technological Advancement, The Lone Inventor, Human Specialness, Primacy of the Real, Unnecessary Anthropomorphism, The Sofalarity To find out what these terms mean, listen to the episode!

In today's podcast we are joined by Nikola Danaylov, host of the popular Singularity 1 on 1 podcast, and a man who has interviewed 170 experts about singularity related topics. After establishing the meaning of the term singularity, we discuss the wide range of opinions held by thinkers in the field. We learn that although there is no single consensus. there are some clusterings of opinion, a few of which fall upon disciplinary lines. Nikola reveals that after doing his show for five years, he is less convinced the singularity will happen then he used to be. After walking through the various routes that could get us to a singularity, we discuss the validity of accelerating returns and the need for diversity in the future. Finally, we conclude by considering the current state of the futurist community.