Crazy Diamond, the fourth episode of Amazon’s anthology of Philip K Dick adaptations, is the subject of this week’s episode. We discuss the primary technical supposition in the story, chimeric genetically engineered pig-people, and use that as a window to discuss human genetic engineering and enhancement more generally. We also discuss the elusive tone of Dick and how close this show gets to representing it.
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We discuss Annalee Neuwitz’s novel Autonomous, a sci fi story set in a world of biotech and aggressive patent enforcement. The book is a two hander about a drug pirate named Jack Chen and a robot named Paladin who awakens and finds love. It’s thematically about the meaning of autonomy, both in terms of political and personal freedom. We use it as a jumping off point to discuss speculation of human and robot indenture, the future of intellectual property enforcement, and more.
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We’re back! In this return episode we’re looking back at the prediction made for this year, 2019, twenty years ago in Ray Kurzweil’s 1999 book The Age of Spiritual Machines. This list was impressively specific and bold, and as we show not all of the predictions panned out. But is Kurzweil just a bit optimistic, maybe by ten years or so, or is he fundamentally wrong? We take a pretty unscientific look at how each of his predictions fared, then give our own gut assessments of how the future’s coming along.
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In this week’s discussion Ted and Jon talk about the new Robin Hanson article positing a future ‘hypocralypse’ in which useful hypocrisies become impossible to pull off because of technology. How will people and culture react? What might happen to laws and norms that are very influenced by symbolic concerns? Also they discuss the four main purposes of punishment and ways that various technical advances might better serve those purposes, and what that might look like.
PS: Our graphic novel LET GO is now available digitally through ComiXology!
We discuss Moore’s law and how it undergirds most futurist predictions, and what that means now that it appears to be coming to an end. We cover the benefits of predictable gains for software developers versus the low hanging opportunities to optimize. We then cover the abstract idea of optimism vs. pessimism in argumentation and posit that a desire to inspire or negatively motivate to prevent leads to insincere argumentation.
We discuss AI risk argument through two recent articles, one written by sci fi author Ted Chiang and one by Steven Pinker, both of which dismiss the strongest version of the arguments as put forth by Nick Bostrom and others, in this episode. Is insight the same as morality, as Chiang seems to think? Does Steven Pinker even understand the basics of Bostrom’s claims? Does the foom argument need to be true to worry about AI risk? And at the end, a bit of fun (before we’re all turned into paperclips).
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Impressive demos promise that new technologies will democratize the kind of high-end audio and video fakery we usually associate only with blockbuster films. In this episode Jon and Ted extrapolate on that idea: what happens when many things can be faked, and everyone knows it? We discuss previous eras of forgery and modern forensics, posit an arms race to fake and spot fakes, and talk about the very real dangers of even momentarily misleading a diplomat or military officer — but also how much fun this ability will be for comedians and satirists. Finally we imagine how much better Nigerian Prince scams are going to get.
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With the explosion of possibilities in new interactive systems brought by ubiquitous computing and VR, we thought it made sense to try to nail down some precise language for how to discuss all these types of systems. In this episode we explore a possible categorization schema for interactive systems along two axes: Variability and Goal-Orientation. We walk through the ways that goal structures and variable outcomes give and take power from the creator and user of an interactive system, and discuss a wide range of systems from books and movies to sports and immersive VR, but also websites, choose-your-own-adventures, triple-A video games, and many other points between.
In this episode, we talk about how to train your AI recommendation engine to give you better results, and discuss the growth in music recommendation quality in particular. How much of the future is about the actual work of training your AI assistants? The reinforcement that you give them develops a model of you but simultaneously, you develop a model of it. What about if we got an algorithm admin panel to fine tune our AIs? How will algorithms handle context? We also dive into the mailbag and discuss some of the listener feedback we’ve gotten. In wondering who would be the mainstream spokesperson for futurology, we ask: Who is the Neil DeGrasse Tyson of the future? Tweet us your ideas @RTF_Podcast.
In this Future Express, Jon and Ted discuss bringing AI to legal finance and whether that might push us toward rationalizing our laws. We mention the parking ticket fighting app DoNotPay, and imagine that type of technology growing to cover most legal needs, starting an arms race between assistant software and bureaucracies that will force them to change strategy, because they are no longer protected by the inertia of time consuming obstacles. Responding to listener feedback, we reexamine the idea of elder care robots. In our continuing discussion of technological unemployment, we wonder whether the whole issue doesn’t really come down to the superstar effect, and we wonder: can capitalism survive until the singularity arrives? Should it?
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In this Express episode Jon and Ted answer a listener question about the future of citizenship, and wonder how it will be challenged and whether it’s even necessary at all. We respond to another question asking for a beginner’s reading list. We follow up on our discussion with Calum Chace and talk through Jon’s skepticism of technological unemployment problems. How long will the era of technological unemployment last? Long enough to matter or is it another blip on the road to superintelligence? Will robot housekeepers be replaced all at once or piecemeal as things like Roombas get better? Is it practical to think most people will become digital non-consumers or are people driven to acquire status to the point that an endless pyramid of positional goods can keep capitalism going forever? How about the meaning of an infinite movie?
In the podcast, Jon gives his Beginners and Hardcore reading lists. Here they are:
Beginners
Hardcore
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Author Calum Chace returns to discuss his new book, “The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism” We discuss the likelihood of long-term technological unemployment and universal basic income, and whether the distribution challenges of our increasingly abundant economy require rethinking some of the basic elements of our current capitalist system. With something like 5 million people employed as drivers in the US, what will they do when AI can drive vehicles?
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In this extra bonus Express episode we weigh in on two topics of the moment: robots being used by police to kill civilian suspects and Pokemon Go. We cover the case for ethical use of unmanned vehicles in police work and wonder about the future of lethal and improvised technological use cases in police work, and then we switch gears to talk about the new AR / Location / IP sensation that’s sweeping the nation.
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On Future Express this time Jon and Ted follow up on their discussion of Kevin Kelly’s new book THE INEVITABLE, exploring the rhetoric and wondering whether a more straightforward economic analysis might have turned up more insight than the evolutionary arguments that Kelly relies on in parts of the book. We discuss whether IP reform is desirable or possible in the near future, and we wonder whether Kevin’s dismissal of intelligence explosion fears is warranted.
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In our first “regular” episode in a while, we are joined by Wired cofounder Kevin Kelly to discuss his new book “The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future.” The book takes 12 trends in digital technology and speculates as to what results we might see in the future as digital technology, with its peculiar biases and tendencies, continues to grow into more fields. The resulting conversation was far reaching and varied, touching on the Internet as the world’s largest copier and tracking machine, the difference between industrial monopolies and “natural” monopolies like Google and Facebook, the amount of privacy enjoyed by forager bands. Kevin is an internet pioneer with a long history of innovating on the web, and he’s refreshingly honest about the things he got both right and wrong along the way.
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In this week’s Future Express, we discuss the ConsScale twelve-level consciousness scale and the increasing threat of violence from ever-cheaper weaponry. ConsScale describes a continuum from molecule to supergod and attempts to place some mile-markers on the road to consciousness. We discuss the levels and try to figure out where a dog fits in. Murder is getting cheaper every day, so we wonder whether a draconian civilization with either strong weapon controls or strong surveillance is inevitable. We coin the term “Feel Good Dystopia” to describe the Huxleyan vision, and relate that not enough time travel movies feature people from the past hassling people from the present about the world.
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The first of a new type of episode, this Future Express features a looser, less polished take on some of the issues raised by Robin Hanson’s recent book The Age of Em. As an addendum to our interview with Hanson last week, this tackles Jon and Ted’s review of the book, whether or not they’d recommend it to others, and looks into some criticism brought up by Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex. We wonder about what happens to the baseline scenario if Robin’s assumptions about research turn out to be too conservative, and discuss stories that might come from such unusual ideas in the book as mind theft and spur safes.
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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?
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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 questions about social networking in virtual reality. To what extent will modern day websites be replaced by virtual counterparts? Finally, Jon gives a short review of the indie sci fi film ADVANTAGEOUS.
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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.
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In today’s podcast we are joined by Steve Anderson PhD, an associate professor of cinematic arts at USC. We discuss the depiction of computers and surveillance in Hollywood films and the many factors, such as the need to tell a visual story and the convenience of certain props, that contribute to Hollywood’s often skewed portrayals. We also identify ways in which Hollywood both over and underestimates the power of technology and examine the inability of most films to make strong systemic critiques or imagine anything other than a human-centric future. Lastly, we look at Hollywood caricatures of both gamers and television viewers and ask if economic incentives might be partially to blame. Along the way, we mine the archive of old films and learn about some of the more fun and bizarre examples of super computers that have shown up in the history of cinema.
Projects by Steve Anderson
Movies and TV
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In this week’s episode, we consider the rapid progress and recent impressive demos in the realm of speech recognition technology. We consider the difference between transcribing and understanding language, and work out a thought experiment of what might change when full transcription is widely and cheaply available. We talk about the challenges facing current generation technologies and speculate which are likely to be improved soon and which are sticky. We wonder whether even machine-readable transcription might be enough to help search engines do things like jump you directly to a movie quote’s location in a film, or to help YouTube and Facebook mine your private videos for marketing purposes. We also cover the effects on lifelogging, surveillance, interface design — and of course, jobs. At the end of the episode, we debut a new listener mailbag feature and respond to your comments.
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Other Recent Content by Review the Future
There are many reasons to reduce or eliminate meat production, and in this week’s episode we cover them and ask the question: are we soon going to be eating synthetic meat? From resources to ethics, there is tremendous pressure to bring down the costs associated with meat. We discuss the challenges tissue engineers face in creating meat that is delicious and affordable, and discuss the limitations of recent successes like the famous $300,000 synthetic burger. We also discuss some of the most promising companies and approaches in the synthetic meat space. Finally we consider other future alternatives to livestock farming such as insect protein, soylent, and the eventual decoupling of our nutritional needs from the pleasure of eating.
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In today’s podcast, we review our experiences at the VRLA Expo, a Los Angeles based event that showcases the latest in virtual reality entertainment. We describe our experiences with a wide variety of Oculus and Gear VR applications and ask the question: what are the most exciting uses for this new medium? Is this just the next generation of 3D gaming? Or are we witnessing the birth of an all new artistic medium with its own yet-to-be-hashed-out strengths and weaknesses? We also recount our impressions of various interface and feedback solutions from companies like Leap Motion, Sub Pac, and Stompz.
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Intelligence is the most powerful force in the world, and humans are increasingly losing out to computers in various intellectual pursuits. Can you take a pill that will make you smarter? If you could, would you? We would, and so would our guest Jesse Lawler, the host of the excellent podcast Smart Drug Smarts. We cover the gamut of currently available substances that are claimed to have the effect of enhancing intelligence. We discuss how current drugs and supplements on the market are not exactly silver bullet ‘smart’ pills but rather push us in one direction or another, with trade-offs. We also discuss some of the more speculative technology coming down the pike, and what might be the next big thing in nootropics.
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