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
Questioning the Fermi Paradox, with Anders Sandberg
In the summer of 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi and some colleagues at the Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico were walking to lunch, and casually discussing flying saucers, when Fermi blurted out “But wh…
Enabling Extended Reality, with Steve Dann
An area of technology that has long been anticipated is Extended Reality (XR), which includes Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR). For many decades, researchers have …
Governing the transition to AGI, with Jerome Glenn
Our guest on this episode is someone with excellent connections to the foresight departments of governments around the world. He is Jerome Glenn, Founder and Executive Director of the Millennium Proj…
Introducing Decision Intelligence, with Steven Coates
This episode features the CEO of Brainnwave, Steven Coates, who is a pioneer in the field of Decision Intelligence.
Decision Intelligence is the use of AI to enhance the ability of companies, organisa…
Developing responsible AI, with Ray Eitel-Porter
As AI automates larger portions of the activities of companies and organisations, there's a greater need to think carefully about questions of privacy, bias, transparency, and explainability. Due to …
Anticipating Longevity Escape Velocity, with Aubrey de Grey
One area of technology that is frequently in the news these days is rejuvenation biotechnology, namely the possibility of undoing key aspects of biological aging via a suite of medical interventions.…
Expanding humanity's moral circle, with Jacy Reese Anthis
A Venn diagram of people interested in how AI will shape our future, and members of the effective altruism community (often abbreviated to EA), would show a lot of overlap. One of the rising stars in…
Hacking the simulation, with Roman Yampolskiy
In the 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher Plato theorised that humans do not perceive the world as it really is. All we can see is shadows on a wall.
In 2003, the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom p…
Pioneering AI drug development, with Alex Zhavoronkov
This episode discusses progress at Insilico Medicine, the AI drug development company founded by our guest, longevity pioneer Alex Zhavoronkov.
1.20 In Feb 2022, Insilico got an IPF drug into phase 1 …
The Singularity Principles
Co-hosts Calum and David dig deep into aspects of David's recent new book "The Singularity Principles". Calum (CC) says he is, in part, unconvinced. David (DW) agrees that the projects he recommends…
Collapsing AGI timelines, with Ross Nordby
How likely is it that, by 2030, someone will build artificial general intelligence (AGI)?
Ross Nordby is an AI researcher who has shortened his AGI timelines: he has changed his mind about when AGI mi…
The terabrain is near, with Simon Thorpe
Why do human brains consume much less power than artificial neural networks? Simon Thorpe, Research Director of CNRS, explains his view that the key to artificial general intelligence is a "terabrain…
AI for organisations, with Daniel Hulme
This episode features Daniel Hulme, founder of Satalia and chief AI officer at WPP. What is AI good at today? And how can organisations increase the likelihood of deploying AI successfully?
02.55 What…
A tale of two cities: Riyadh and Dublin
Calum and David reflect on their involvement in two recent conferences, one in Riyadh, and one in Dublin. Each conference highlighted a potential disruption in a major industry: a country with large …
Stability and combinations, with Aleksa Gordić
This episode continues our discussion with AI researcher Aleksa Gordić from DeepMind on understanding today’s most advanced AI systems.
00.07 This episode builds on Episode 5
01.05 We start with GANs –…
AI Transformers in context, with Aleksa Gordić
Welcome to episode 5 of the London Futurist podcast, with your co-hosts David Wood and Calum Chace.
We’re attempting something rather ambitious in episodes 5 and 6. We try to explain how today’s cutti…
AI overview: 3. Recent developments
In this episode, co-hosts Calum Chace and David Wood explore a number of recent developments in AI - developments that are rapidly changing what counts as "state of the art" in AI.
00.05: Short recap …
AI overview: 2. The Big Bang and the years that followed
In this episode, co-hosts Calum Chace and David Wood continue their review of progress in AI, taking up the story at the 2012 "Big Bang".
00.05: Introduction: exponential impact, big bangs, jolts, and…
AI overview: 1. From the Greeks to the Big Bang
AI is a subject that we will all benefit from understanding better. In this episode, co-hosts Calum Chace and David Wood review progress in AI from the Greeks to the 2012 "Big Bang".
00.05: A predicti…
Why this podcast?
Co-hosts David Wood and Calum Chace share their vision and plans for the London Futurists podcast.
00.20: Why we are launching this podcast. Anticipating and managing exponential impact
02.45: It’s not…