London Futurists
Anticipating and managing exponential impact - hosts David Wood and Calum Chace
Calum Chace is a sought-after keynote speaker and best-selling writer on artificial intelligence. He focuses on the medium- and long-term impact of AI on all of us, our societies and our economies. He advises companies and governments on AI policy.
His non-fiction books on AI are Surviving AI, about superintelligence, and The Economic Singularity, about the future of jobs. Both are now in their third editions.
He also wrote Pandora's Brain and Pandora’s Oracle, a pair of techno-thrillers about the first superintelligence. He is a regular contributor to magazines, newspapers, and radio.
In the last decade, Calum has given over 150 talks in 20 countries on six continents. Videos of his talks, and lots of other materials are available at https://calumchace.com/.
He is co-founder of a think tank focused on the future of jobs, called the Economic Singularity Foundation. The Foundation has published Stories from 2045, a collection of short stories written by its members.
Before becoming a full-time writer and speaker, Calum had a 30-year career in journalism and in business, as a marketer, a strategy consultant and a CEO. He studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford University, which confirmed his suspicion that science fiction is actually philosophy in fancy dress.
David Wood is Chair of London Futurists, and is the author or lead editor of twelve books about the future, including The Singularity Principles, Vital Foresight, The Abolition of Aging, Smartphones and Beyond, and Sustainable Superabundance.
He is also principal of the independent futurist consultancy and publisher Delta Wisdom, executive director of the Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV) Foundation, Foresight Advisor at SingularityNET, and a board director at the IEET (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies). He regularly gives keynote talks around the world on how to prepare for radical disruption. See https://deltawisdom.com/.
As a pioneer of the mobile computing and smartphone industry, he co-founded Symbian in 1998. By 2012, software written by his teams had been included as the operating system on 500 million smartphones.
From 2010 to 2013, he was Technology Planning Lead (CTO) of Accenture Mobility, where he also co-led Accenture’s Mobility Health business initiative.
Has an MA in Mathematics from Cambridge, where he also undertook doctoral research in the Philosophy of Science, and a DSc from the University of Westminster.
- Update frequency
- every 8 days
- Average duration
- 37 minutes
- Episodes
- 120
- Years Active
- 2022 - 2025
Tsetlin Machines, Literal Labs, and the future of AI, with Noel Hurley
Our guest in this episode is Noel Hurley. Noel is a highly experienced technology strategist with a long career at the cutting edge of computing. He spent two decade-long stints at Arm, the semicondu…
Intellectual dark matter? A reputation trap? The case of cold fusion, with Jonah Messinger
Could the future see the emergence and adoption of a new field of engineering called nucleonics, in which the energy of nuclear fusion is accessed at relatively low temperatures, producing abundant c…
AI agents, AI safety, and AI boycotts, with Peter Scott
This episode of London Futurists Podcast is a special joint production with the AI and You podcast which is hosted by Peter Scott. It features a three-way discussion, between Peter, Calum, and David,…
The remarkable potential of hydrogen cars, with Hugo Spowers
The guest in this episode is Hugo Spowers. Hugo has led an adventurous life. In the 1970s and 80s he was an active member of the Dangerous Sports Club, which invented bungee jumping, inspired by an i…
AI and the end of conflict, with Simon Horton
Can we use AI to improve how we handle conflict? Or even to end the worst conflicts that are happening all around us? That’s the subject of the new book of our guest in this episode, Simon Horton. Th…
The AI disconnect: understanding vs motivation, with Nate Soares
Our guest in this episode is Nate Soares, President of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, or MIRI.
MIRI was founded in 2000 as the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence by Elieze…
Anticipating an Einstein moment in the understanding of consciousness, with Henry Shevlin
Our guest in this episode is Henry Shevlin. Henry is the Associate Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge, where he also co-directs the Kinds …
The case for a conditional AI safety treaty, with Otto Barten
How can a binding international treaty be agreed and put into practice, when many parties are strongly tempted to break the rules of the agreement, for commercial or military advantage, and when chea…
Humanity's final four years? with James Norris
In this episode, we return to the subject of existential risks, but with a focus on what actions can be taken to eliminate or reduce these risks.
Our guest is James Norris, who describes himself on hi…
Human extinction: thinking the unthinkable, with Sean ÓhÉigeartaigh
Our subject in this episode may seem grim – it’s the potential extinction of the human species, either from a natural disaster, like a supervolcano or an asteroid, or from our own human activities, s…
The best of times and the worst of times, updated, with Ramez Naam
Our guest in this episode, Ramez Naam, is described on his website as “climate tech investor, clean energy advocate, and award-winning author”. But that hardly starts to convey the range of deep know…
PAI at Paris: the global AI ecosystem evolves, with Rebecca Finlay
In this episode, our guest is Rebecca Finlay, the CEO at Partnership on AI (PAI). Rebecca previously joined us in Episode 62, back in October 2023, in what was the run-up to the Global AI Safety Summ…
AI agents: challenges ahead of mainstream adoption, with Tom Davenport
The most highly anticipated development in AI this year is probably the expected arrival of AI agents, also referred to as “agentic AI”. We are told that AI agents have the potential to reshape how i…
Post-labour economics, with David Shapiro
In this episode, we return to a theme which is likely to become increasingly central to public discussion in the months and years ahead. To use a term coined by this podcast’s cohost Calum Chace, thi…
Longevity activism at 82, 86, and beyond, with Kenneth Scott and Helga Sands
Our guests in this episode have been described as the world’s two oldest scientifically astute longevity activists. They are Kenneth Scott, aged 82, who is based in Florida, and Helga Sands, aged 86,…
Models for society when humans have zero economic value, with Jeff LaPorte
Our guest in this episode is Jeff LaPorte, a software engineer, entrepreneur and investor based in Vancouver, who writes Road to Artificia, a newsletter about discovering the principles of post‑AI so…
From ineffective altruism to effective altruism? with Stefan Schubert
Our subject in this episode is altruism – our human desire and instinct to assist each other, making some personal sacrifices along the way. More precisely, our subject is the possible future of altr…
The global energy transition: an optimistic assessment, with Amory Lovins
Our guest in this episode is Amory Lovins, a distinguished environmental scientist, and co-founder of RMI, which he co-founded in 1982 as Rocky Mountain Institute. It’s what he calls a think do and s…
Building brain-like AIs, with Alexander Ororbia
Some people say that all that’s necessary to improve the capabilities of AI is to scale up existing systems. That is, to use more training data, to have larger models with more parameters in them, an…
To sidestep death, preserve your connectome, with Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston
In David's life so far, he has read literally hundreds of books about the future. Yet none has had such a provocative title as this: “The future loves you: How and why we should abolish death”. That’…