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The big problem with AI, and how to solve it

AI is a transformative technology with enormous economic, scientific and social benefit, one that is driving the fourth industrial revolution. Advanced machine learning algorithms are already dramatically changing how private and public institutions function, by automating numerous cognitive processes, generating new efficiencies, and enabling deeper, data-derived insights and predictions. Despite...

The risks of privatising space

Half a century after humans left footprints on the Moon space exploration, and exploitation, have entered a new era. Private space companies are developing new launch vehicles and spacecrafts, there is a sixth branch of the US military called “Space Force”, and international cooperation in space – whose greatest symbol...

The future of data, AI, work and democracy: an interview

This is an interview for the Cypriot newspaper Fileleftheros. The Greek translation can be found in this link. What follows is the original text in English. The interviewer was Xenia Trouki. Let’s start by understanding what a futurist does, including how you go about forecasting. A futurist aims to predict...

Reinventing liberal democracy in the age of intelligent machines: a talk

[slideshare id=239806582&doc=conwayhallslides-201206081152] Transcript of my talk at Conway Hall Ethical Society of London, and London Futurists. Let me start with the word “democracy”. If you think that you are citizens living in a democracy you are mistaken. You, I, are citizens in a constitutional republic – or monarchy, as is...

Space republics: how to democratise space exploration and accelerate colonisation

I have vivid memories from the hot July night of 1969 when the Eagle landed on the Moon. I was nearly five then. I was woken up[1] and hurried by my parents, still dressed in my pyjamas, to our next-door neighbour who owned one of the very few, black-and-white, television...