The Futurists

In every work environment, from factories, hospitals, retail shops to elder care homes, the future workforce will include robots. Dr Harry Kloor, the founder and CEO of Beyond Imagination has blazed a trail toward building reliable, strong robots that can operate safely alongside human workers. Harry tells the Futurists how to design a robot for a variety of workplaces at an affordable price, and what type of artificial intelligence is best for autonomous robot workers. Harry also answers key questions: why insurability for robot co-workers is a challenge; how to create a friendly-looking robot;  the best places to put robots to work; why legless robots are superior;  robots for elder care; how hydraulic robots compare to electronic systems; and why it’s so difficult for a robot to open a bottle of soda.

AI safety pioneer Roman Yampolskiy believes that artificial intelligence presents a challenge unlike anything humanity has ever faced. He says we have just one chance to get it right. A single AI model can cause an existential crisis, and there are already more than 500,000 open source AI models available. In his view, the AI arms race is creating an infinite range of possibilities for catastrophe. Roman returns to The Futurists to share perspectives from his new book, "AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable" delivering a devastating critique of the current state of safety in AI and an urgent call to action.

What’s next for retail shops and shopping malls? The previous decade was excruciating for national retail chains. Steve Dennis, the author of Remarkable Retail and Leaders Leap, explains how shopping will evolve in the aftermath of pandemic, e-commerce and the "collapse of the middle”. Why Amazon gets too much blame and the real reason why differentiation is the key to success.

This week we get into AI in health care, generative and personalized medicine, the cure for cancer and why CoVID helped supercharge that and how AI is helping us live longer, healthier lives. Alex Zhavoronkov, the founder of AI-MedTech player Insilico joins us on TF to talk how health care is going to radically change over the next decade or two. An amazing deep dive. Don’t miss it!

For decades, we cursed at evil cable and satellite TV companies. Now TV has been “unbundled.” Streaming on-demand video is available on every device. Surprise, surprise, nobody is happy. The cost of television has skyrocketed, audiences are fragmented across hundreds of services, and it’s a pain to find what we want to watch. Veteran TV analyst Alan Wolk of TV REV tells The Futurists about the chaos in the TV industry and the future conflict between Big Tech, Big Media and Big Retail to control the digital living room.

In this podcast, they discuss the shift from capitalism to ecoeconomics on Mars, the urgency of addressing climate crisis, and the challenges of governance in a poly crisis world. They explore utopian societies, climate adaptation, and personal transcendence in the Sierra Mountains.

This week The Futurists hosts Brett and Rob host a guest that NY Times calls "one of the world's most acclaimed living science fiction writers" - Kim Stanley Robinson. We dive into the Mars Trilogy and interplanetary colonization and exploration, we tackle climate shift and the economics of the world of the future. We get some background on his early career in sci-fi, we delve into KSR's world building and how real world places influenced story settings, his interest in fields like terraforming, geology and even genetics. This is part 1 of a two part special episode. You're going to love it, we did!

Dr. Markku Wilenius is the Unesco Chair in Learning Society and Futures Education. This week on The Futurists, Markku shares his global perspective on emerging trends and regional conflicts, including the fate of the EU, the newly-active BRICs, Chinese military projection, the end of US hegemony, the emergence of new trade blocks and what lies beyond the limits of global society.  Dr Markku Wilenius on the web: https://www.markkuwilenius.net/

Author Yanis Varoufakis discusses the shift from capitalism to techno-feudalism, the impact of central bank money on the economy, and the emergence of Cloud Capitalism. He critiques cryptocurrency solutions, proposes wealth redistribution models, and reflects on the consequences of automation and algorithm ownership.

In this weeks TF, Brett King interviews Swedish Biohacker and Futurist, Hannes Sjoblad. The two futurists get into the evolution of biohacking and longevity treatments, the merging of man and machine through implants, neural/brain control interfaces and advanced robotic prosthetics. This is advanced application of technology for the future of health and life span.