Tech, Innovation & Society - The Creative Process: Technology, AI, Software, Future, Economy, Science, Engineering & Robotics Interviews

Are we living in a Simulated Universe? How will AI impact the future of work, society & education?Dr. Melvin M. Vopson is Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Portsmouth, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Chartered Physicist and Fellow of the Institute of Physics. He is the co-founder and CEO of the Information Physics Institute, editor-in-chief of the IPI Letters and Emerging Minds Journal for Student Research. He is the author of Reality Reloaded: The Scientific Case for a Simulated Universe. Dr. Vopson has a wide-ranging scientific expertise in experimental, applied and theoretical physics that is internationally recognized. He has published over 100 research articles, achieving over 2500 citations."With the speed and the precision of the AI, make no mistake, we are becoming creators of something that is far more advanced than humans. Is this a bad thing? I see it as a very bad thing, but I also see it as a natural evolution. We are becoming creators and in our evolution process, we are evolving ourselves to something much more advanced. It's what the world, what the universe, what nature wants us to become: stronger so we reach our limit in terms of biological capacity. So this is the fascinating thing, the creation and evolution go hand in hand. It's a circle that feeds into each other."https://www.port.ac.uk/about-us/structure-and-governance/our-people/our-staff/melvin-vopsonhttps://ipipublishing.org/index.php/ipil/RRwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"Meta reaches between three and four billion people every day through their platforms, right? That's way more people than any government legitimately can claim to govern. And yet this one company with four major platforms that many of us use is able to reach so many people and make decisions about content and access that have real consequences. It's been shown they fueled genocide in multiple places like in Ethiopia and Myanmar. And I think that's exactly why human rights matter because human rights are obligations that states have signed on for, and they're supposed to protect human values. And I think from a human rights perspective, it's important to argue that we shouldn't be collecting certain types of data because it's excessive. It's violating autonomy. It starts violating dignity. And when you start violating autonomy and dignity through the collection of data, you can't just go back and fix that by making it private.”Does privacy exist anymore? Or are humans just sets of data to be traded and sold?Wendy H. Wong is Professor of Political Science and Principal's Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. She is the author of two award-winning books: Internal Affairs: How the Structure of NGOs Transforms Human Rights and (with Sarah S. Stroup) The Authority Trap: Strategic Choices of International NGOs. Her latest book is We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age.www.wendyhwong.comhttps://mitpress.mit.edu/author/wendy-h-wong-38397www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Does privacy exist anymore? Or are humans just sets of data to be traded and sold?Wendy H. Wong is Professor of Political Science and Principal's Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. She is the author of two award-winning books: Internal Affairs: How the Structure of NGOs Transforms Human Rights and (with Sarah S. Stroup) The Authority Trap: Strategic Choices of International NGOs. Her latest book is We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age."Meta reaches between three and four billion people every day through their platforms, right? That's way more people than any government legitimately can claim to govern. And yet this one company with four major platforms that many of us use is able to reach so many people and make decisions about content and access that have real consequences. It's been shown they fueled genocide in multiple places like in Ethiopia and Myanmar. And I think that's exactly why human rights matter because human rights are obligations that states have signed on for, and they're supposed to protect human values. And I think from a human rights perspective, it's important to argue that we shouldn't be collecting certain types of data because it's excessive. It's violating autonomy. It starts violating dignity. And when you start violating autonomy and dignity through the collection of data, you can't just go back and fix that by making it private.”www.wendyhwong.comhttps://mitpress.mit.edu/author/wendy-h-wong-38397www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.org IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

The more the science of intelligence (both human and artificial) advances, the more it holds the potential for great benefits and dangers to society.Max Bennett is the cofounder and CEO of Alby, a start-up that helps companies integrate large language models into their websites to create guided shopping and search experiences. Previously, Bennett was the cofounder and chief product offi­cer of Bluecore, one of the fastest growing companies in the U.S., providing AI technologies to some of the largest companies in the world. Bluecore has been featured in the annual Inc. 500 fastest growing com­panies, as well as Glassdoor’s 50 best places to work in the U.S. Bluecore was recently valued at over $1 bil­lion. Bennett holds several patents for AI technologies and has published numerous scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals on the topics of evolutionary neuro­science and the neocortex. He has been featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list as well as the Built In NYC’s 30 Tech Leaders Under 30. He is the author of A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains."One of the crowning achievements of humanity is self-delusion. We like to convince ourselves that the thing that's best for us is also the best for everyone else. So it doesn't mean that people are inherently being bad, but whenever someone comes and says you should regulate thing ABC, and it just so turns out that if you do ABC, it will enrich that individual and their company.We should just be somewhat skeptical to make sure that is in fact the best way to regulate it. So in terms of the regulations themselves, I think a lot of them are really good ideas. I think Yann LeCun has some of my favorite philosophies on this at Meta. Where I do think we should not be regulating is research. And I think we should absolutely be supporting open source. And I do think it's much more reasonable to regulate products. So this is a very important distinction. Regulating research is effectively telling scientists they're not allowed to look into certain forms of AI. They're not allowed to test certain forms of AI. I think this is. Or at least, if we do regulate research, we should have a higher burden of proof for restraining research."www.abriefhistoryofintelligence.com/ www.alby.com www.bluecore.com www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.org IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

How can we resolve conflicts without compromising our ethics and moral vision? Each year, wars are being fought in our name or with our support that citizens never get an opportunity to vote on. How can we make our voices heard?“Warism, taking war for granted as morally acceptable, even morally required, is the primary obstacle to peace.” Duane L. Cady is a philosopher and Professor Emeritus at Hamline University. He was nominated for the 1991 Grawemeyer World Order Award, was named Outstanding Educator of the Year by the United Methodist Foundation for Higher Education, and a festschiff in his honor was published in 2012. Cady is best known for his works on pacifism, including Moral Vision: How Everyday Life Shapes Ethical Thinking, and From Warism to Pacifism: A Moral Continuum.https://duanelcady.comwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"We live on the one hand in very exciting times with technological development, but on the other hand, we should also be careful. And I've seen studies showing the effects of screen time on brain development that are worrisome, in my opinion.So as a mother, I continuously engaged in a battle to minimize screen time for my children. Not always successfully because I also understand that the world that we live in requires a lot of screen time. I think that social media in particular and again, I can't take this interview out of context, I am continuously exposed to hatred in social media from all sides. People are scared. People are afraid. People are angry and that finds its way into social media. And I read things on (now it's called X) Twitter. and I'm horrified and disappointed and saddened. So did I disconnect? No, I'm also a part of the system, but I also want to raise a critical voice concerning that."How we think, feel, and experience the world is a mystery. What distinguishes our consciousness from AI and machine learning?Liad Mudrik studies high level cognition and its neural substrates, focusing on conscious experience. She teaches at the School of Psychological Sciences at Tel Aviv University. At her research lab, her team is currently investigating the functionality of consciousness, trying to unravel the depth and limits of unconscious processing, and also researching the ways semantic relations between concepts and objects are formed and detected.https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/mudriklabhttps://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/mudriklab/people/#gkit-popupwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

How we think, feel, and experience the world is a mystery. What distinguishes our consciousness from AI and machine learning?Liad Mudrik studies high level cognition and its neural substrates, focusing on conscious experience. She teaches at the School of Psychological Sciences at Tel Aviv University. At her research lab, her team is currently investigating the functionality of consciousness, trying to unravel the depth and limits of unconscious processing, and also researching the ways semantic relations between concepts and objects are formed and detected."We live on the one hand in very exciting times with technological development, but on the other hand, we should also be careful. And I've seen studies showing the effects of screen time on brain development that are worrisome, in my opinion.So as a mother, I continuously engaged in a battle to minimize screen time for my children. Not always successfully because I also understand that the world that we live in requires a lot of screen time. I think that social media in particular and again, I can't take this interview out of context, I am continuously exposed to hatred in social media from all sides. People are scared. People are afraid. People are angry and that finds its way into social media. And I read things on (now it's called X) Twitter. and I'm horrified and disappointed and saddened. So did I disconnect? No, I'm also a part of the system, but I also want to raise a critical voice concerning that."https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/mudriklabhttps://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/mudriklab/people/#gkit-popupwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

“Coral reefs are the most biodiverse habitat on the planet, despite covering less than 1 percent of the ocean area, over a quarter of all marine life exists in these rainforests of the sea. And if you think of a coral reef as a rainforest, the trees are the coral themselves. Which are incredible organisms, so, magic is really the right word to describe them. They're these animals that are one of the original forms of animal life, the second branch of the animal kingdom is actually Cnidaria, which includes coral and jellyfish. So, an ancient animal, but they have a symbiotic relationship with algae, and so inside the animal tissue are these zooxanthellae, these algae that do photosynthesis, like algae do, like plants do. It's able to capture sunlight and convert it into sugars and energy. And so, it's an animal, but it's got plants that live inside it, this algae, and then even more wild - it grows a skeleton that is rock!So coral skeleton is actually calcium carbonate, which is limestone. And most of the limestone that exists on the earth was grown by these organisms. And so they're animals with plants inside of them that grow rock as skeleton. And the rock skeletons form these incredibly intricate structures that are coral reefs that can grow for thousands of miles and the corals can live for thousands of years to be seen from space and to create these essential ecosystems that are really the cornerstone of all of life in the ocean and, and therefore much of life on Earth.”Coral reefs are the most biodiverse habitat on the planet, despite covering less than 1 percent of the ocean. Over a quarter of all marine life exists in these rain forests of the sea. Gator Halpern is the Co-founder and President of Coral Vita, a mission-driven company working to restore our world’s dying coral reefs. He is a lifelong entrepreneur who is passionate about starting projects that can help create a better harmony between society and nature. His work has earned him a number of awards including being named a United Nation’s Young Champion of the Earth, a Forbes 30 Under 30 social entrepreneur, and an Echoing Green fellow. Before founding Coral Vita, he worked on development projects in Brazil, Peru, and South Africa. During his career, he has helped distribute millions of baby fish for aquaculture to remote villages in the Amazon, he’s analyzed the environmental effects of land-use change projects on three different continents, and worked for the World Wildlife Fund Global Marine Program. Gator founded Coral Vita during his graduate studies at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and he lives and works in the Bahamas where Coral Vita operates the world’s first commercial land-based coral farm for reef restoration.https://coralvita.cowww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Coral reefs are the most biodiverse habitat on the planet, despite covering less than 1 percent of the ocean. Over a quarter of all marine life exists in these rain forests of the sea. Gator Halpern is the Co-founder and President of Coral Vita, a mission-driven company working to restore our world’s dying coral reefs. He is a lifelong entrepreneur who is passionate about starting projects that can help create a better harmony between society and nature. His work has earned him a number of awards including being named a United Nation’s Young Champion of the Earth, a Forbes 30 Under 30 social entrepreneur, and an Echoing Green fellow. Before founding Coral Vita, he worked on development projects in Brazil, Peru, and South Africa. During his career, he has helped distribute millions of baby fish for aquaculture to remote villages in the Amazon, he’s analyzed the environmental effects of land-use change projects on three different continents, and worked for the World Wildlife Fund Global Marine Program. Gator founded Coral Vita during his graduate studies at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and he lives and works in the Bahamas where Coral Vita operates the world’s first commercial land-based coral farm for reef restoration.“Coral reefs are the most biodiverse habitat on the planet, despite covering less than 1 percent of the ocean area, over a quarter of all marine life exists in these rainforests of the sea. And if you think of a coral reef as a rainforest, the trees are the coral themselves. Which are incredible organisms, so, magic is really the right word to describe them. They're these animals that are one of the original forms of animal life, the second branch of the animal kingdom is actually Cnidaria, which includes coral and jellyfish. So, an ancient animal, but they have a symbiotic relationship with algae, and so inside the animal tissue are these zooxanthellae, these algae that do photosynthesis, like algae do, like plants do. It's able to capture sunlight and convert it into sugars and energy. And so, it's an animal, but it's got plants that live inside it, this algae, and then even more wild - it grows a skeleton that is rock!So coral skeleton is actually calcium carbonate, which is limestone. And most of the limestone that exists on the earth was grown by these organisms. And so they're animals with plants inside of them that grow rock as skeleton. And the rock skeletons form these incredibly intricate structures that are coral reefs that can grow for thousands of miles and the corals can live for thousands of years to be seen from space and to create these essential ecosystems that are really the cornerstone of all of life in the ocean and, and therefore much of life on Earth.”https://coralvita.cowww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"I think, oftentimes, what'll happen as a trap when we talk about technology. People say, 'Well, what do you think is the future of artificial intelligence? Or what is the future of neural interfaces? Or what is the future of this?' And I always pause them and say, 'Wait a minute. If you're just talking about the technology, you're having the wrong conversation because it's not about the technology.'So when people talk about what's the future of AI? I say, I don't know. What do we want the future of AI to be? And I think that's a shift that sounds quite subtle to some people, but it's really important because if you look at any piece of news or anything like that, they talk about AI as if it was a thing that was fully formed, that sprang out of the Earth and is now walking around doing things. And what will AI do in the future and how will it affect our jobs? It's not AI that's doing it. These are people. These are companies. These are organizations that are doing it. And that's where we need to keep our focus. What are those organizations doing. And also what do we want from it as humans?"Brian David Johnson is Futurist in Residence at Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination, a professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, and the Director of the ASU Threatcasting Lab. He is Author of The Future You: How to Create the Life You Always Wanted,  Science Fiction Prototyping: Designing the Future with Science Fiction, 21st Century Robot: The Dr. Simon Egerton Stories, Humanity in the Machine: What Comes After Greed?, Screen Future: The Future of Entertainment, Computing, and the Devices We Love.https://csi.asu.edu/people/brian-david-johnson/www.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast