London Futurists

The Longevity Summit Dublin took place from 17th to 20th August. In between presentations, Calum and David caught up with a number of the speakers to ask about their experiences at the Summit. This episode features three of these short interviews.First up is Aubrey de Grey, the President and Chief Science Officer of the LEV Foundation - a person deeply involved in the design and planning of the Summit. Next, we hear from Andrew Steele, who is an author and campaigner. The third interview features Liz Parrish, the CEO of BioViva Sciences and COO of Genorasis.Selected follow-ups:https://longevitysummitdublin.com/speakers/https://www.levf.org/https://maiabiotech.com/https://andrewsteele.co.uk/https://bioviva-science.com/https://www.bestchoicemedicine.com/https://www.genorasis.com/Audio engineering assisted by Alexander Chace.Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain DeclarationReal Talk About MarketingAn Acxiom podcast where we discuss marketing made better, bringing you real...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Benjamin Alarie, an expert in the deployment of advanced AI systems in the legal profession, discusses how AI can radically improve the legal industry. Topics include the data-heavy nature of legal work, the slow adoption of technological innovations, automating legal processes, predicting court decisions with AI, surpassing human predictions, and the potential implications of AI in the legal profession.

Our guest in this episode is Aidan McCullen. For ten years from 1998 to 2008, Aidan was a professional rugby player, delighting crowds in Ireland, England, and France. He made the very natural transition from that into sports commentating, but he also moved into digital media.He started as an intern at Communicorp to learn digital media and marketing, and he learned about digital by doing it, living it and building it – as he puts it, by jumping off a cliff and building a plane on the way down. With typical humility, he says he was just a few Google searches ahead of everyone else.With this grounding, Aidan has made himself a genuine expert on innovation. He is a keynote speaker, an executive coach, a board director, a lecturer, and the author of “Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations and Life”.Aidan may be known best as the enthusiastic and generous host of a podcast called the Innovation Show, which offers weekly interviews with leaders in their fields, including writers, academics, inventors, executives and mavericks. The central message of that podcast is that we all need to stay open to new ideas, and always keep learning.Selected follow-ups:https://theinnovationshow.io/about/Topics addressed in this episode include:*) Lessons from Aidan's time as a rugby player*) The gift of discipline*) Being ready to take advantage of unexpected good luck*) Avoiding the "WASP" trap - wandering aimlessly without purpose*) The "centaur" model - half human and half machine*) Aidan's own use of generative AI - embellishing graphics, developing metaphors, suggesting questions for interviews*) An alternative to a lemonade stand: creating an entire cartoon book using generative AI*) Why audiences are leaning in, more than before*) Various ways in which automation will impact the jobs market and the cost of services*) Career advice for a nine year old*) Encouraging students to use and understand generative AI tools*) Tangible examples of Amara's Law*) The special value of skills in communication, collaboration, 'cobot'ing, coordination, and looking after your health*) Actions today in anticipation of being healthy at the age of 100*) Deciding who to collaborate with*) Developing a "stem cell" mindset - knowing our purpose, but keeping our options open*) Bruce Lipton's research on epigenetics*) What drives Aidan: helping people make better decisions and lead better lives*) Building a community of people who are prepared to think differentlyAudio engineering by Alexander Chace.Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain DeclarationReal Talk About MarketingAn Acxiom podcast where we discuss marketing made better, bringing you real...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify Digital Disruption with Geoff Nielson Discover how technology is reshaping our lives and livelihoods.Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Our guest in this episode is Martin O'Dea. As the CEO of Longevity Events Limited, Martin is the principal organiser of the annual Longevity Summit Dublin. In a past life, Martin lectured on business strategy at Dublin Business School. He has been keeping a close eye on the longevity space for more than ten years, and is well placed to speak about how the field is changing. Martin sits on a number of boards including the LEV Foundation, where, full disclosure, so does David.This conversation is a chance to discover, ahead of time, what some of the highlights are likely to be at this year's Longevity Summit Dublin, which is taking place from 17th to 20th August.Selected follow-ups:https://longevitysummitdublin.com/https://www.levf.org/projects/robust-mouse-rejuvenation-study-1Topics addressed in this episode include:*) Emma Teeling and the unexpected longevity of bats*) Steve Austad and a wide range of long-lived animal species, as featured in his recent new book "Methuselah's Zoo"*) Michael Levin and the role of bioelectrical networks in the coordination of cells during embryogenesis and regeneration*) Filling four days of talks - "not an issue at all"*) A special focus on "the hard problems of aging"*) The work of the LEV (Longevity Escape Velocity) Foundation and the vision of Aubrey de Grey*) Various signs of growing public interest in intervening in the biology of aging*) A look back at a conference in London in 2010*) Two events in 2013: academic publications on "hallmarks of aging", and Google's creation of Calico*) Multi-million dollar investments in longevity are increasingly becoming "just pocket change... par for the course"*) Selective interest from media and documentary makers, coupled with some hesitancy*) Playing tennis at the age of 110 with your great grandchildren - and then what?*) The possibility of "a ChatGPT moment for longevity" that changes public opinion virtually overnight*) Why the attainment of RMR (Robust Mouse Rejuvenation) would be a seminal event*) The rationale for trying a variety of different life-extending interventions in combination - and why pharmaceutical companies and academics have both shied away from such an experiment*) The four treatments trialled in phase 1 of RMR, with other treatments under consideration for later phases*) A message to any billionaires listening*) A message to any politicians listening: the longevity dividend, as expounded by Andrew Scott and Andrew Steele*) Another potential seminal moment: the TAME trial (Targeting Aging with Metformin), as advocated by Nir Barzilai*) Why researchers who wanted to work on aging had to work on Parkinson's instead*) Looking ahead to 2033*) The role of longevity summits in strengthening the longevity community and setting individuals on new trajectories in their lives*) The benefits of maintaining a collaborative, open attitude, without the obstacles of NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements)*) Options for progress accelerating, not just from exponential trends, but from intersections of insights from different fields*) Beware naïve philosophical concerns about entropy and about the presumed wisdom of evolution*) The sad example of campaigner Aaron Schwartz*) Important roles for decentralized science alongside existing commercial modelsMusic: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain DeclarationReal Talk About MarketingAn Acxiom podcast where we discuss marketing made better, bringing you real...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Our topic in this episode is investing in AI, so we're delighted to have as our guest John Cassidy, a Partner at Kindred Capital, a UK-based venture capital firm. Before he became an investment professional, John co-founded CCG.ai, a precision oncology company which exited to Dante Labs in 2019.We discuss how the investment landscape is being transformed by the possibilities enabled by generative AI .Selected follow-ups:https://kindredcapital.vc/https://cradle.bio/https://scarletcomply.com/https://www.five.ai/Topics addressed in this episode include:*) The argument for investing not just in "platforms" but also in "picks and shovels" - items within the orchestration or infrastructure layers of new solutions*) Examples of recent investments by Kindred Capital*) Comparisons between the surge of excitement around generative AI and previous surges of excitement around crypto and dot-com*) Companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft kept delivering value despite the crash of the dot-com bubble; will something similar apply with generative AI?*) The example of how Nvidia captures significant value in the chip manufacturing industry*) However, looking further back in history, many people who invested in the infrastructure of railways and canals lost lots of money*) Reasons why generative AI might produce large amounts of real value more quickly than previous technologies*) The example of Cradle Bio as enablers of protein engineering - and what might happen if Google upgrade their protein folding prediction software from AlphaFold 2 to AlphaFold 3*) Despite the changes in technological possibilities, what most interests VCs is the calibre of a company's founding team*) The search for individuals who have "creative destruction in their being" - people with a particular kind of irrational self-belief*) The contrast between crystallized intelligence and fluid intelligence - and why both are needed*) Advantages and disadvantages for investors being located in the UK vs. being located in the US*) Why doesn't Europe have tech giants?*) Complications with government regulation of tech industries*) The example of Scarlet as a company helping to streamline the regulation of medical software that is frequently updated*) Why government regulators need to engage with people in industry who are already immersed in considering safety and efficacy of products*) Wherever they are located, companies need to plan ahead for their products reaching new jurisdictions*) Ways in which AI is likely to impact industries in new ways in the near future*) The particular need to improve the efficiency of the later stages of clinical trials of new medical treatmentsAudio engineering by Alexander Chace.Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain DeclarationReal Talk About MarketingAn Acxiom podcast where we discuss marketing made better, bringing you real...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify Digital Disruption with Geoff Nielson Discover how technology is reshaping our lives and livelihoods.Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Our guest in this episode is Jeremy Kahn, a senior writer at Fortune Magazine, based in the UK. He writes about artificial intelligence and other disruptive technologies, from quantum computing to augmented reality. Previously he was at Bloomberg for eight years, again writing mostly about technology, and in moving to Fortune he was returning to his journalistic roots, as he started his career there in 1997, when he was based in New York.David and Calum invited Jeremy onto the show because they think his weekly newsletter “Eye on AI” is one of the very best non-technical sources of news and views about the technology.Jeremy has some distinctive views on the significance of transformers and the LLMs (Large Language Models) they enable.Selected follow-ups:https://www.fortune.com/newsletters/eye-on-aihttps://fortune.com/author/jeremy-kahn/Topics addressed in this episode include:*) Jeremy's route into professional journalism, focussing on technology*) Assessing the way technology changes: exponential, linear with a steep incline, linear with leaps, or something else?*) Some characteristics of LLMs that appear to "emerge" out of nowhere at larger scale, can actually be seen developing linearly when attention is paid to the second or third prediction of the model*) Some leaps in capability depend, not on underlying technological power, but on improvements in interfaces - as with ChatGPT*) Some leaps in capability require, not just step-ups in technological power, but changes in how people organise their work around the new technology*) The decades-long conversion of factories from steam-powered to electricity-powered*) Reasons to anticipate significant boosts in productivity in many areas of the economy within just two years, with assistance from AI co-pilots and from "universal digital assistants"*) Related forthcoming economic impacts: slow-downs in hiring, and depression of some wages (akin to how Uber drivers reduced how much yellow cab drivers could charge for fares)*) The potential, not just for companies to learn to make good use of existing transformer technologies, but for forthcoming next generation transformers to cause larger disruptions*) Models that predict, not "the next most likely word", but "the next most likely action to take to achieve a given goal"*) Recent AI startups with a focus on using transformers for task automation include Adept and Inflection*) Risks when LLMs lack sufficient common sense, and might take actions which a human assistant would know to check beforehand with their supervisor*) Ways in which LLMs could acquire sufficient common sense*) Ways in which observers can be misled about how much common sense is possessed by an LLM*) Reasons why some companies have instructed their employees not to use consumer-facing versions of LLMs*) The case, nevertheless, for companies to encourage bottom-up massive experimentation with LLMs by employees*) The possibility for companies to have departments without any people in them*) Implications of LLMs for geo-security and international relations*) A possible agency, akin to the International Atomic Energy Agency, to monitor the training and use of next generation LLMs*) Interest by the Pentagon (and also in China) for LLMs that can act as "battlefield advisors"*) A call to action: people need to get their heads around transformers, and understand both the upsides and the risksAudio engineering assisReal Talk About MarketingAn Acxiom podcast where we discuss marketing made better, bringing you real...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

An intriguing possibility created by the exponential growth in the power of our technology is that within the lifetimes of people already born, death might become optional. Show co-hosts Calum and David are both excited about this idea, but our excitement is as nothing compared to the exuberant enthusiasm of our guest in this episode, José Cordeiro.José was born in Venezuela, to parents who fled Franco’s dictatorship in Spain. He has closed the circle, by returning to Spain (via the USA) while another dictatorship grips Venezuela. His education and early career was thoroughly blue chip – MIT, Georgetown University, INSEAD, and then Schlumberger and Booz Allen.Today, José is the most prominent transhumanist in Spain and Latin America, and indeed a leading light in transhumanist circles worldwide. He is a loyal follower of the ideas of Ray Kurzweil, and in 2018 he co-wrote "La Muerte de la Muerte", which has since been updated and is being published in English as “The Death of Death”. By way of full disclosure, his co-author was David.Selected follow-ups:https://thedeathofdeath.org/https://cordeiro.org/Forthcoming anti-aging conferences:New York, 10-11 Aug: https://www.lifespan.io/ending-age-related-diseases-2023Dublin, 17-20 Aug:  https://longevitysummitdublin.comJohannesburg, 23-24 Aug: https://conference.taffds.orgCopenhagen, 28 Aug - 1 Sept: https://agingpharma.orgAnaheim (CA), 7-10 Sept: https://raadfest.com/2023Topics addressed in this episode include:*) An engineering approach to improving health and longevity*) Some cells and some organisms are already biologically immortal*) How José met Marvin Minsky and Ray Kurzweil at MIT*) Does death give purpose to life?*) Why people have often resolved "to live with death"*) Potential timescales for the attainment of longevity escape velocity for humans*) Examples of changing lifespans for various animal species*) The significance of the Nobel prize-winning research of Shinya Yamanaka*) Limits of the capabilities of evolution*) Different theories as to why aging happens: wear-and-tear vs. built-in obsolescence*) Learning from animals that have extended lifespans - including anti-cancer mechanisms*) Exponential progress: more funding, more people, more resources, more discoveries*) Why longevity may soon become the largest industry in the history of humanity*) The Longevity Dividend: "making money out of people not aging"*) The role of politicians in accelerating the benefits of the Longevity Dividend*) Which bold political leader will change history by being the first to declare aging as a curable disease?*) The case for a European anti-aging agency*) Things to say to people who insist that 80 to 85 years is a sufficiently long lifespan*) The case for optimism, from Victor Frankl*) The prevalence of irrational attitudes toward curing aging vs. curing cancer*) How the MIT Technology Review changed its tune about longevity pioneer Aubrey de Grey*) The three phases in the reception of powerful new ideas*) Aspects of our present lifestyles that will be viewed, in 2045, as being barbaric*) The world's most altruistic causeMusic: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain DeclarationReal Talk About MarketingAn Acxiom podcast where we discuss marketing made better, bringing you real...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Our guest in this episode is Shamus Rae. Shamus is the co-founder of Engine B, a startup which aims to expedite the digitisation of the professional services industry (in particular the accounting and legal professions) and level the playing field, so that small companies can compete with larger ones. It is supported by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (the ICAEW) and the main audit firms.Shamus was ideally placed to launch Engine B, having spent 13 years as a partner at the audit firm KPMG, where he was Head of Innovation and Digital Disruption. But his background is in technology, not accounting, which will become clear as we talk: he is commendably sleeves-rolled-up and hands-on with AI models. Back in the 1990s he founded and sold a technology-oriented outsourcing business, and then built a 17,000-strong outsourcing business for IBM in India from scratch.Selected follow-ups:https://engineb.com/https://www.icaew.com/Topics addressed in this episode include:*) AI in many professional services contexts depends on the quality of the formats used for the data they orchestrate (e.g. financial records and legal contracts)*) "Plumbing for accountants and lawyers"*) Why companies within an industry generally shouldn't seek competitive advantage on the basis of the data formats they are using*) Data lakes contrasted with data swamps*) Automated data extraction can coexist with data security and data privacy*) The significance of knowledge graphs*) Will advanced AI make it harder for tomorrow’s partners to acquire the skills they need?*) Examples of how AI-powered "co-pilots" augment the skills of junior members of a company*) Should junior staff still be expected to work up to 18 hours a day, "ticking and bashing" or similar, if AI allows them to tackle tedious work much more quickly than before?*) Will advanced AI will destroy the billable hours business model used by many professional services companies?*) Alternative business models that can be adopted*) Anticipating an economy of abundance, but with an unclear transitional path from today's economy*) Reasons why consulting reports often downplay the likely impact of AI on jobs*) Some ways in which Google might compete against the GPT models of OpenAI*) Prospects for improved training of AI models using videos, using new forms of reinforcement learning from human feedback, and fuller use of knowledge graphs*) Geoff Hinton's "Forward-Forward" algorithm as a potential replacement for back propagation*) Might a "third AI big bang" already have started, without most observers being aware of it?*) The book by Mark Humphries, "The Spike: An Epic Journey Through the Brain in 2.1 Seconds"*) Comparisons between the internal models used by GPT 3.5 and GPT 4*) A comparison with the globalisation of the 1990s, with people denying that their own jobs will be part of the change they foreseeAudio engineering assisted by Alexander Chace.Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain DeclarationReal Talk About MarketingAn Acxiom podcast where we discuss marketing made better, bringing you real...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

In this episode our guest is David Giron, the Director at what is arguably one of the world's most innovative educational initiatives, Codam College in Amsterdam. David was previously the head of studies at Codam's famous parent school 42 in Paris, and he has now spent 10 years putting into practice the somewhat revolutionary ideas of the 42 network. We ask David about what he has learned during these ten years, but we're especially interested in his views on how the world of education stands to be changed even further in the months and years ahead by generative AI.Selected follow-ups:https://www.codam.nl/en/teamhttps://42.fr/en/network-42/Topics addressed in this episode include:*) David's background at Epitech and 42 before joining Codam*) The peer-to-peer framework at the heart of 42*) Learning without teachers*) Student assessment without teachers*) Connection with the "competency-based learning" or "mastery learning" ideas of Sir Ken Robinson*) Extending the 42 learning method beyond software engineering to other fields*) Two ways of measuring whether the learning method is successful*) Is it necessary for a school to fail some students from time to time?*) The impact of Covid on the offline collaborative approach of Codam*) ChatGPT is more than a tool; it is a "topic", on which people are inclined to take sides*) Positive usage models for ChatGPT within education*) Will ChatGPT make the occupation of software engineering a "job from the past"?*) Software engineers will shift their skills from code-writing to prompt-writing*) Why generative AI is likely to have a faster impact on work than the introduction of mechanisation*) The adoption rate of generative AI by Codam students - and how it might change later this year*) Code first or comment first?*) The level of interest in Codam shown by other educational institutions*) The resistance to change within traditional educational institutions*) "The revolution is happening outside"*) From "providing knowledge" to "creating a learning experience"*) From large language models to full video systems that are individually tailored to help each person learn whatever they need in order to solve problems*) Learning to code as a proxy for the more fundamental skill of learning to learnMusic: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain DeclarationReal Talk About MarketingAn Acxiom podcast where we discuss marketing made better, bringing you real...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Alex Zhavoronkov is our first guest to make a repeat appearance, having first joined us in episode 12, last November. We are delighted to welcome him back, because he is doing some of the most important work on the planet, and he has some important news.In 2014, Alex founded Insilico Medicine, a drug discovery company which uses artificial intelligence to identify novel targets and novel molecules for pharmaceutical companies. Insilico now has drugs designed with AI in human clinical trials, and it is one of a number of companies that are demonstrating that developing drugs with AI can cut the time and money involved in the process by as much as 90%. Selected follow-ups:https://insilico.com/ARDD 2023: https://agingpharma.org/Topics addressed in this episode include:*) For the first time, an AI-generated molecule has entered phase 2 human clinical trials; it's a  candidate treatment for IPF (idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis)*) The sequence of investigation: first biology (target identification), then chemistry (molecule selection), then medical trials; all three steps can be addressed via AI*) Pros and cons of going after existing well-known targets (proteins) for clinical intervention, versus novel targets*) Pros and cons of checking existing molecules for desired properties, versus imagining (generating) novel molecules with these properties*) Alex's experience with generative AI dates back to 2015 (initially with GANs - "generative adversarial networks")*) The use of interacting ensembles of different AI systems - different generators, and different predictors, allocating rewards*) The importance of "diversity" within biochemistry*) A way in which Insilico follows "the Apple model"*) What happens in Phase 2 human trials - and what Insilico did before reaching Phase 2*) IPF compared with fibrosis in other parts of the body, and a connection with aging*) Why probability of drug success is more important than raw computational speed or the cost of individual drug investigations*) Recent changes in the AI-assisted drug development industry: an investment boom in the wake of Covid, spiced-up narratives devoid of underlying substance, failures, downsizing, consolidation, and improved understanding by investors and by big pharma*) The AI apps created by Insilico can be accessed by companies or educational institutes*) Insilico research into quantum computing: this might transform drug discovery in as little as two years*) Real-world usage of quantum computers from IBM, Microsoft, and Google*) Success at Insilico depended on executive management task reallocation*) Can Longevity Escape Velocity be achieved purely by pharmacological interventions?*) Insilico's Precious1GPT approach to multimodal measurements of biological aging, and its ability to suggest new candidate targets for age-associated diseases: "one clock to rule them all"*) Reasons to mentally prepare to live to 120 or 150*) Hazards posed to longevity research by geopolitical tensions*) Reasons to attend ARDD in CopenhaReal Talk About MarketingAn Acxiom podcast where we discuss marketing made better, bringing you real...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify Digital Disruption with Geoff Nielson Discover how technology is reshaping our lives and livelihoods.Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify