Futurism ⁽¹²⁾

I'm a great supporter of driverless cars. I think they have the potential to dramatically change the world, making much better use of resources, revolutionising mobility for all and radically improving our towns and cities. Paradoxically, however, I am not so keen on Phillip Hammond's…

This is a post over which I have been pondering for quite a while. While the debate rages on daily about whether AI (specifically AGI) is humanity's great saviour or the biggest existential threat we all face, several stories which have emerged over the past…

I was struck this week by the sharp contrast in language styles adopted by two of the world's great tech leaders - Tim Cook and Elon Musk. Tim Cook's keynote at the WWDC was full of the kind of language we have long associated with…

 I've just finished belatedly reading An Optimist's Tour of the Future by Mark Stevenson. I say "belatedly" as it was written in 2011 which wouldn't normally be a problem except that this is about accelerating future technologies (and why they are going to be good for…

Robin Hanson What is the next phase for humanity? Robin Hanson set out to answer this question in a thought-provoking and lively talk to London Futurists on March 19th. He argues that humanity has been through several distinct economic growth phases each of which has been "exponential" in character. The…