MAX STOSSEL - Youth & Education Advisor, Center for Humane Technology, Award-winning Poet

MAX STOSSEL - Youth & Education Advisor, Center for Humane Technology, Award-winning Poet

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Award-winning Poet, Filmmaker & Speaker
Creator of the Stand-Up Poetry Special Words That Move

Technology has very much changed the way we read and take in information and shortened it into quick bursts and attention spans. We're living in a new world, for sure. And how do we communicate in this new world? Not just in a way that gets the reach, because there are whole industries aimed at what do I do to get the most likes or the most attention, and all of that, which I don't think is very fulfilling as artists.

It's sort of a diminishing of our art form to try and play the game because then we're getting the attention and getting the hits, as opposed to what do I really want to create? How do I really want to create it? How do I want to display this? And can I do it in a way that breaks through so that if I do it my way, it's still going to get the attention, great. But if it doesn't, can I be cool with that? And can I be okay creating what I want to create, knowing that that's what it's about. It's about sharing in an honest, authentic way what I want to express without letting the tentacles of social media drip into my brain and take over why I'm literally doing the things that I'm doing.

Highlights - BRIAN DAVID JOHNSON - Director of the ASU Threatcasting Lab - Author of The Future You

Highlights - BRIAN DAVID JOHNSON - Director of the ASU Threatcasting Lab - Author of The Future You

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Author of The Future You: How to Create the Life You Always Wanted
Director of the Arizona State University’s Threatcasting Lab
Futurist in Residence, ASU’s Center for Science & the Imagination

Let's talk about technology and the role of humanity and the role of being human and what it means to be present in that. We need to keep humans at the center of everything that we do, that everything that we do in our life is about humans. It begins with humans and ends with humans. There might be technologies and businesses and all these things in between, but we should measure the effect on humans.

When I talk to people about artificial intelligence or technology, I'm generally asking them two questions. What are you optimizing for? What's the effect that you're trying to get? Developing technology for technology's sake, although it can be kind of interesting...then is why you're doing it because you think it's interesting? But then ultimately, if you're doing it beyond your own gratification, why are you doing it?

So much of what I do in that is talking to governments and militaries and large organizations to say we always have to keep humans in the loop. You have to keep humans in the center because it's about us. That really is incredibly important. And that's one of the central ideas in the future. The future should be about humans, and where are humans going. And what do we want as humans? And how are we using technology to make us more human, or healthier, or happier, or more productive?

BRIAN DAVID JOHNSON - Author of The Future You: How to Create the Life You Always Wanted - Futurist in Residence, ASU’s Center for Science & the Imagination

BRIAN DAVID JOHNSON - Author of The Future You: How to Create the Life You Always Wanted - Futurist in Residence, ASU’s Center for Science & the Imagination

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Author of The Future You: How to Create the Life You Always Wanted
Director of the Arizona State University’s Threatcasting Lab
Futurist in Residence, ASU’s Center for Science & the Imagination

Let's talk about technology and the role of humanity and the role of being human and what it means to be present in that. We need to keep humans at the center of everything that we do, that everything that we do in our life is about humans. It begins with humans and ends with humans. There might be technologies and businesses and all these things in between, but we should measure the effect on humans.

When I talk to people about artificial intelligence or technology, I'm generally asking them two questions. What are you optimizing for? What's the effect that you're trying to get? Developing technology for technology's sake, although it can be kind of interesting...then is why you're doing it because you think it's interesting? But then ultimately, if you're doing it beyond your own gratification, why are you doing it?

So much of what I do in that is talking to governments and militaries and large organizations to say we always have to keep humans in the loop. You have to keep humans in the center because it's about us. That really is incredibly important. And that's one of the central ideas in the future. The future should be about humans, and where are humans going. And what do we want as humans? And how are we using technology to make us more human, or healthier, or happier, or more productive?

Highlights - ALLEN STEELE - Hugo Award-winning Science Fiction Author of the Coyote Trilogy, Arkwright

Highlights - ALLEN STEELE - Hugo Award-winning Science Fiction Author of the Coyote Trilogy, Arkwright

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Winner of the Hugo · Asimov's Readers & Locus Awards
Served on the Board of Directors of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America

I'm really very glad. I was happy to see that within my lifetime that the prospects of not just Mars, but in fact interstellar space is being taken seriously. I've been at two conferences where we were talking about building the first starship within this century. One of my later books, Arkwright, is about such a project. I saw that Elon Musk is building Starship One, I wish him all the best. And I envy anybody who goes.

I wish I were a younger person and in better health. Somebody asked me some time ago, would you go to Mars? And I said, “I can't do it now. I've got a bum pancreas, and I'm 65 years old, and I'm not exactly the prime prospect for doing this. If you asked me 40 years ago would I go, I would have said: in a heartbeat!” I would gladly leave behind almost everything. I don't think I'd be glad about leaving my wife and family behind, but I'd be glad to go live on another planet, perhaps for the rest of my life, just for the chance to explore a new world, to be one of the settlers in a new world. We've got to be careful about how we do this. And we've got to be careful, particularly about the rationale of the people who are doing this.

ALLEN STEELE - Hugo Award-winning Science Fiction Author of the Coyote Trilogy, Arkwright

ALLEN STEELE - Hugo Award-winning Science Fiction Author of the Coyote Trilogy, Arkwright

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Winner of the Hugo · Asimov's Readers & Locus Awards
Served on the Board of Directors of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America

I'm really very glad. I was happy to see that within my lifetime that the prospects of not just Mars, but in fact interstellar space is being taken seriously. I've been at two conferences where we were talking about building the first starship within this century. One of my later books, Arkwright, is about such a project. I saw that Elon Musk is building Starship One, I wish him all the best. And I envy anybody who goes.

I wish I were a younger person and in better health. Somebody asked me some time ago, would you go to Mars? And I said, “I can't do it now. I've got a bum pancreas, and I'm 65 years old, and I'm not exactly the prime prospect for doing this. If you asked me 40 years ago would I go, I would have said: in a heartbeat!” I would gladly leave behind almost everything. I don't think I'd be glad about leaving my wife and family behind, but I'd be glad to go live on another planet, perhaps for the rest of my life, just for the chance to explore a new world, to be one of the settlers in a new world. We've got to be careful about how we do this. And we've got to be careful, particularly about the rationale of the people who are doing this.

Highlights - SUSAN SCHNEIDER - Author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, Fmr. Distinguished Scholar, US Library of Congress

Highlights - SUSAN SCHNEIDER - Author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, Fmr. Distinguished Scholar, US Library of Congress

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Founding Director · Center for the Future Mind · Florida Atlantic University
Author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind
Fmr. NASA Chair at NASA · Fmr. Distinguished Scholar at US Library of Congress

So it's hard to tell exactly what the dangers are, but that's certainly one thing that we need to track that beings that are vastly intellectually superior to other beings may not respect the weaker beings, given our own past. It's really hard to tell exactly what will happen. The first concern I have is with surveillance capitalism in this country. The constant surveillance of us because the US is a surveillance capitalist economy, and it's the same elsewhere in the world, right? With Facebook and all these social media companies, things have just been going deeply wrong. And so it leads me to worry about how the future is going to play out. These tech companies aren't going to be doing the right thing for humanity. And this gets to my second worry, which is how's all this going to work for humans exactly? It's not clear where humans will even be needed in the future.

SUSAN SCHNEIDER - Director, Center for the Future Mind, FAU, Fmr. NASA Chair at NASA

SUSAN SCHNEIDER - Director, Center for the Future Mind, FAU, Fmr. NASA Chair at NASA

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Founding Director · Center for the Future Mind · Florida Atlantic University
Author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind
Fmr. NASA Chair at NASA · Fmr. Distinguished Scholar at US Library of Congress

So it's hard to tell exactly what the dangers are, but that's certainly one thing that we need to track that beings that are vastly intellectually superior to other beings may not respect the weaker beings, given our own past. It's really hard to tell exactly what will happen. The first concern I have is with surveillance capitalism in this country. The constant surveillance of us because the US is a surveillance capitalist economy, and it's the same elsewhere in the world, right? With Facebook and all these social media companies, things have just been going deeply wrong. And so it leads me to worry about how the future is going to play out. These tech companies aren't going to be doing the right thing for humanity. And this gets to my second worry, which is how's all this going to work for humans exactly? It's not clear where humans will even be needed in the future.

AI & THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY

AI & THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY

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What will the future look like? What are the risks and opportunities of AI? What role can we play in designing the future we want to live in? In this first episode of our new channel, philosophers, futurists, AI experts, science fiction authors, activists, and lawyers reflect on AI, technology, and the Future of Humanity..

Highlights - SIR GEOFF MULGAN - Fmr. UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit Director, Downing Street’s Head of Policy

Highlights - SIR GEOFF MULGAN - Fmr. UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit Director, Downing Street’s Head of Policy

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Author of Another World is Possible: How to Reignite Social & Political Imagination
Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy & Social Innovation at University College London

The great thing about a complex society is there is space for lots of different kinds of people. There's space for wildly visionary poets and accountants and actuaries and engineers. And they all have a slightly different outlook, but it's the combination of this huge diversity, which makes our societies work. But what we probably do need a bit more of are the bilingual people, the trilingual people who are as at ease spending a day, a week, a year designing how a criminal justice system could look in 50 years and then getting back to perhaps working in a real court or real lawyer's office.

SIR GEOFF MULGAN - Author of Another World is Possible - Prof. Collective Intelligence, Public Policy & Social Innovation, UCL

SIR GEOFF MULGAN - Author of Another World is Possible - Prof. Collective Intelligence, Public Policy & Social Innovation, UCL

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Author of Another World is Possible: How to Reignite Social & Political Imagination
Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy & Social Innovation at University College London

The great thing about a complex society is there is space for lots of different kinds of people. There's space for wildly visionary poets and accountants and actuaries and engineers. And they all have a slightly different outlook, but it's the combination of this huge diversity, which makes our societies work. But what we probably do need a bit more of are the bilingual people, the trilingual people who are as at ease spending a day, a week, a year designing how a criminal justice system could look in 50 years and then getting back to perhaps working in a real court or real lawyer's office.

Highlights - ADAM ALTER - Author of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology - Professor NYU’s Stern School of Business

Highlights - ADAM ALTER - Author of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology - Professor NYU’s Stern School of Business

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Author of NYTimes Bestseller Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked ·
Anatomy of a Breakthrough · Drunk Tank Pink

The other thing from a creativity perspective is we know that more people around you is good for creativity. It's one of the axioms in thinking about creativity in general. You need time. An artist, a writer. I'm a writer. I need time on my own. I also paint and draw. I cannot do that with other people around. It's just my process. But before you get there, before you get to that point where you need that time alone, that space apart, for almost everyone being around other people is good. It's good for creativity. It's both about diversity of opinion and idea and just about having more - just more information, more thoughts, more ways of looking at the world. And some of the most profound research I've come across in preparing for this book suggested that it's better to be around people who are deeply incompetent than it is to be around no one, which I found very surprising.

ADAM ALTER - Author of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology - Anatomy of a Breakthrough

ADAM ALTER - Author of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology - Anatomy of a Breakthrough

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Adam Alter is a Professor of Marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business and the Robert Stansky Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellow. Adam is the New York Times bestselling author of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked, and Drunk Tank Pink, which investigates how hidden forces in the world around us shape our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. He has written for the New York Times, New Yorker, The Atlantic, Washington Post, and a host of TV, radio, and publications. His next book Anatomy of a Breakthrough will be published in 2023.

Highlights - NICHOLAS CHRISTAKIS - Author of Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society - Director of Human Nature Lab, Yale

Highlights - NICHOLAS CHRISTAKIS - Author of Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society - Director of Human Nature Lab, Yale

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Author of Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society
Director of the Human Nature Lab at Yale · Co-director of the Yale Institute for Network Science

So these kinds of problems in what I call hybrid systems of humans and machines are a key focus of my lab right now. Margaret Traeger, who's now at Notre Dame, she did a wonderful project in which we made these groups of three humans and a humanoid robot work together to solve a problem.

We manipulated the humanity of the robot. For example, sometimes we had the robot tell stupid dad jokes, like corny jokes. Or we had the robot break the ice by saying, "You know, robots can make mistakes, too." This kind of stuff. And what we found was that the human interactions could be changed by the simple programming of the robot.

NICHOLAS CHRISTAKIS - Director of Human Nature Lab, Yale - Author of Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society

NICHOLAS CHRISTAKIS - Director of Human Nature Lab, Yale - Author of Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society

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Author of Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society
Director of the Human Nature Lab at Yale · Co-director of the Yale Institute for Network Science

We're not attempting to invent super smart AI to replace human cognition. We are inventing dumb AI to supplement human interaction. Are there simple forms of artificial intelligence, simple programming of bots, such that when they are added to groups of humans – because those humans are smart or otherwise positively inclined - that help the humans to help themselves? Can we get groups of people to work better together, for instance, to confront climate change, or to reduce racism online, or to foster innovation within firms?

Can we have simple forms of AI that are added into our midst that make us work better together? And the work we're doing in that part of my lab shows that abundantly that's the case. And we published a stream of papers showing that we can do that.

Highlights - NICK BOSTROM - Author of Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies - Founding Director, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford

Highlights - NICK BOSTROM - Author of Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies - Founding Director, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford

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Founding Director of Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford
Philosopher, Author of Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

I do think though that there is a real possibility that within the lifetime of many people who are here today, we will see the arrival of transformative AI, machine intelligence systems that not only can automate specific tasks but can replicate the full generality of human thinking. So that everything that we humans can do with our brains, machines will be able to do, and in fact do faster and more efficiently. What the consequences of that are, is very much an open question and, I think, depends in part on the extent to which we manage to get our act together before these developments. In terms of, on the one hand, working out our technical issues in AI alignment, figuring out exactly the methods by which you could ensure that such very powerful cognitive engines will be aligned to our values, will actually do what we intend for them to do, as opposed to something else. And then, of course, also the political challenges of ensuring that such a powerful technology will be used for positive ends. So depending on how well we perform among those two challenges, the outcome, I think, could be extremely good or extremely bad. And I think all of those possibilities are still in the cards.

NICK BOSTROM - Founding Director, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford
 - Philosopher, Author

NICK BOSTROM - Founding Director, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford
 - Philosopher, Author

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Founding Director of Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford
Philosopher, Author of Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

I do think though that there is a real possibility that within the lifetime of many people who are here today, we will see the arrival of transformative AI, machine intelligence systems that not only can automate specific tasks but can replicate the full generality of human thinking. So that everything that we humans can do with our brains, machines will be able to do, and in fact do faster and more efficiently. What the consequences of that are, is very much an open question and, I think, depends in part on the extent to which we manage to get our act together before these developments. In terms of, on the one hand, working out our technical issues in AI alignment, figuring out exactly the methods by which you could ensure that such very powerful cognitive engines will be aligned to our values, will actually do what we intend for them to do, as opposed to something else. And then, of course, also the political challenges of ensuring that such a powerful technology will be used for positive ends. So depending on how well we perform among those two challenges, the outcome, I think, could be extremely good or extremely bad. And I think all of those possibilities are still in the cards.