The Futurists

This week Brett and Rob take a check on the latest in AI news diving into the growing requirements for AI infrastructure, and the advances being made in Agentic-AI. We dive into Anthropic and Open AI’s latest announcements including the $6.5Bn acquisition by Open AI of Jony Ive’s revenue-less and customer-less startup, and we look at investments in the UAE in the world’s largest AI data center.

Doug Shapiro, a leading analyst in media trends and the writer behind the Mediator newsletter, discusses Hollywood's seismic shifts due to AI. He reveals how the creative landscape is evolving, with generative AI redefining content creation and storytelling. Shapiro emphasizes the migration of value in the media supply chain and the role of platforms like YouTube and TikTok in this transformation. He also examines the demise of traditional middlemen and the rise of new gatekeepers, ultimately predicting an era of infinite content for audiences.

Colin Megill joins the Futurists to describe a new model for finding consensus in a time of political chaos and intense partisan division. He is the inventor of Pol.is, a powerful open-source platform for coordinating the feedback, opinions, and preferences of large dispersed groups. Polis has been successfully deployed by governments in Asia and Europe to find pockets of agreement amid partisan rancor.  If you crave an alternative to political division and polarization, don’t miss this interview.

In this week’s episode of THE FUTURISTS, host Brett King sits down one on one with Dave Birch to talk about the future of AI based payments, money and the concepts around Agentic AI such as KYA (Know-your-Agent instead of KYC Know Your Customer) or how we’ll tell if specific agents have the authority to make payments, etc. And we get into the utility problem of money in a highly autonomous world. This is future of money, identity and payments all wrapped into one with two of the most future thinking people in the finance space today. 

This week, frequent guest and friend of The Futurists, Ross Dawson, takes over the hosting chair to speak with Joanna Lepore about Foresight and Vision(s) of the Future. Ross, founder of AHT Group (Advanced Human Technologies Group) and the futures think tank Future Exploration Network, introduces us to Joanna Lepore. In 2024, Joanna founded and now co-leads Foresight Inside Group (FIG), an invite-only network for corporate futurists. Previously, she established and led Foresight at McDonald’s global HQ and Mars Wrigley, helping to push the strategies of some of the world’s best-known brands into the future. Motivated by the power of diverse perspectives, she also created and hosts Looking Outside, a podcast to share those perspectives. This episode is packed with powerful and practical insights into the future, offering inspiration on how to seize today’s opportunities and drive change in a transforming world. 

In this week’s show Brett and Rob discuss why the Administration were happy to bring the world’s markets to the brink of global recession and why it’s happening now? Is this a massive, economy scale Pump and Dump or is it an existential threat of China surpassing the U.S. as the world’s largest economy? Will these tariffs put any dent in China’s meteoric rise? Let’s find out.

Lauren Ducrey is a poet who developed an authentic persona for Google’s automated assistant in France, Senegal and other Francophone nations. In the process she discovered insights about the intersection of art, linguistics, and human cognition in the age of AI.  She tells the Futurists about artistic integrity, what humans can do that machines cannot, and the benefits of collaborative creativity in the enterprise. 

This week on The Futurists retired-NASA astronaut and pilot of the Space Shuttle, is a former F14 fighter pilot, a test pilot, an engineer, and a veteran of four space flights. Kelly commanded the International Space Station (ISS) on three expeditions and was a member of the year long mission to the ISS. In October 2015, he set the record for the total accumulated number of days spent in space, the single longest space mission by an American astronaut at that time. Host Brett King gets into what he misses about life on station and what Mars crews are likely to face when they land on Mars, along with why we should go to Mars. This is one of our best episodes yet!

Technology strategist Shelly Palmer returns to The Futurists to demystify abstruse concepts of quantum computing in practical terms with his characteristically sharp insights about artificial intelligence. Shelly explains: why code and content will be free;  why quantum encryption won’t create jobs for humans; what happens when Moore’s law compounds with Metcalfe’s and Cooper’s Laws; why we can bank on the proliferation of good ideas; and how to separate hype from reality in the realm of Big Tech research.  

Cory Doctorow, a savvy activist and journalist, delves into the complexities of our tech-driven world. He shares insights from his latest novel, 'Picks and Shovels,' highlighting financial crime in 1980s Silicon Valley. The conversation tackles exploitative economic models, comparing pyramid schemes to cryptocurrency, and discusses the personal journeys of women leaving oppressive faiths. Doctorow emphasizes the need for a sustainable capitalism that fosters innovation while confronting monopolies and climate challenges, urging listeners to navigate digital privacy with care.