The Economic Singularity with Calum Chace

Have a little time on my hands these days, I went to see a presentation hosted by the London Futurists concerning the impact of artificial intelligence on the world economy. Chace is the author of two books concerning AI:

The first concerns what he terms the technical singularity. This is where AI becomes smarter than humans, attains consciousness, etc. The second book, the main subject of the presentation, concerns the impact of current AI developments on work and society. Jobs that we currently consider safe today, lawyers, truck drivers, doctors, etc. will be replaced by neural network-based AI's. This will lead to social instability and calls for economic reform, leading to a basic universal income state, with AI, or AI supported elites, making the decisions. Sounds awful. The banality of the future.

Back in the real world, the Oxfam shop has been flourishing due to the new precinct opening nearby, what Mark called The John Lewis Effect. "We're a Destination shop now", he proclaimed, to mutual joviality.

From the 3R's to 6 (or 7) D's, with Julia Begbie

Subtitled "Digital Disruption within Education", this was a presentation I attended yesterday, hosted by the London Futurists at Birbeck. Julia and her colleagues at the KLC School of Design have created the U.K.' s first completely on-line Design degree.

Essentially, aside from giving an overview of her experiences creating online education, Julia presentation centred on the affects of MOOC's (Massive Open Online Course) on education. Having been on a few courses via Coursera, this was quite topical, and Julia showed that the initial popularity, failure and resurgence of the MOOC's mirrored the Gartner cycle quite accurately:

The 6D's in the title of the presentation are from the entrepreneur Peter Diamandes, "the 6 D's of Exponential Growth":

Julia added a 7th D, Data. Education (citing Khan Academy in particular) benefits from feedback through the huge data sets created by the courses. She also showed a few sections of Sir Ken Robinson's talk animated by the RSA a while ago:

Overall, it was a good presentation by an enthusiastic speaker. However, there was something that's been bothering me about technological, and with it human, progress, which this presentation illustrates unconsciously. What was preventing all this happening years ago? All the bits where there: Drupal, for example, now at version 7, has been around for fifteen years; Wordpress for about twelve. Why the wait?

The Winning of The Carbon War, with Jeremy Leggett

Yesterday I went to a presentation, hosted by the London Futurists, by Jeremy Leggett, who gave a similar presentation about eighteen months ago. His new book is currently in production and he gave us a brief overview of it's themes and possible content.

His main thrust was that renewables are succeeding to the loss of fossil fuels. Renewables, mostly solar and wind, but also wave and tidal, have become much cheaper over the last few years, in particular solar technology. This contrasts to fossil fuels, which investors are seeing as increasingly risky: in particular he cited the reluctance of Shell's shareholders to back it's exploration of the Arctic and the cost overruns of Kashagan oil field, which has only just started production after more than ten years. As previously, he also highlighted the problem with shale oil and gas production. The third theme is the concerns over climate change and the reduction in greenhouse gasses.

Jeremy was quite bullish, even when some of the audience pointed out flaws in his arguments, and he's almost as myopic in his support for renewables as his opponents are for fossil fuels (one question concerned the degradation of solar cells and the difficulty in recycling them, for which he had no answer).

There seems to be two main problems with renewable energy, and energy in general. The first is that renewables don't seem to be very portable or storable. Most renewables concentrate on generating electricity, which is relatively easy to do, but they are unreliable and to make them truly an alternative to fossil fuels will require the storage of the electrical output. I'm not talking car batteries here, but of the size that can keep a small town supplied for, say, a week. My father was involved, briefly, in the Dinorwic pump storage scheme in Snowdonia. This was designed to allow nuclear power stations to run at a constant rate, storing the excess power at low demand times for use a peak times. On a smaller scale, this is what's needed for renewables to viable as an alternative to, say, gas, which can be used on demand.

The other problem, slightly related, is that electricity cannot be used in places where fossil fuels are used due to energy density. Aviation, i.e. jet, fuel has a density of about 40 MJ/L. Lithium-ion batteries, such as you have in mobile phones, have about 3 MJ/L. You can't power a jet aircraft on batteries. You can create hydrogen using the electrolysis of water, which could then be liquefied. It might also be possible to chemically create hydrocarbon fuels, such as ethanol, which has a energy density of around 20 MJ/L. Still, it's a fair way off and not currently achievable.

Another, more subtle, point is that the "war" hasn't been won at all. The energy companies are starting to look at renewables and investing in them, thus increasing and extending their hold on energy production in the future. On those terms, it doesn't feel like a victory. We've merely swapped one form of cartel for another. Maybe it was the wrong war?

Ultimately, despite Jeremy's hubris, my electric bill is not going to get smaller and there's no renewable answer that gets me to work and back.

Update: As usual, the group has videoed the event and posted it on Youtube.

On the way back home, the train passed by a large solar farm on the outskirts of West Horndon, but, as I looked up, I saw about a dozen contrails criss-crossing the sky.

Blue Skies – The Future of Regenerative Medicine, with Stephen Minger

Last Saturday, I attended a presentation hosted by the London Futurists in the basement at Birkeck College on the subject of stem cell-based regenerative medicine by Dr. Stephen Minger, Chief Scientist at GE Healthcare.

Stephen gave us an overview of what GE Healthcare did (they have a $1 billion budget for research) and a potted history of stem-cell research. He seemed somewhat hesitant to speculate on what the future might be for (stem) cell therapy, although he did highlight both the successes, in particular with leukaemia, and difficulties with the treatment.

The group has been posting the presentation on Youtube, and this one is no exception:

Overall I found the presentation both engaging and informative.

The Proactionary Imperative with Steve Fuller and Veronika Lipinska

Today I went to see a presentation hosted by the London Futurists at Birbeck regarding a new book about transhumanism.

The book is written by Steve and Veronika, two academics, one on science and philosophy, the other in law.

Their idea is that there is a trend in society of being over precautionary (the example was given of the Bush government's restrictions on stem cell development, severely inhibiting biotechnology in the 'States). Their counter to this is to examine the current state of transhumanism and to make some recommendations based on an idea proposed by Max More called the Proactionary Principal. This is to say that instead of trying to avoid the consequences of change by not changing, the risks should be managed on a national or even global scale, underwritten by governments and the benefits distributed by the same to all. They also propose an idea of "hegenetics", which is a portmanteau of genetics and hedge-fund, that when a person, or group, have their DNA exploited they can benefit from it. It's a bit like you or I copyrighting our own DNA.

The presentation was very engaging and the discussion afterwards lively, Steve noting that the Futurists aught to be more politically engaged than currently, and that it seemed to be more of a hobby than a movement.

The Future of Futurism with Amy Zalman

Today I went to see a speech, hosted by the London Futurists, by Amy Zalman, who is CEO of the World Future Society.

Amy introduced herself. She's worked in various strategy think tanks and the like, including the U.S. War College. She wants to promote futurism and the futurist profession, intoducing the idea of the "Now" futurist.

There was a lively Q&A afterwards, which was, to some extent, more interesting that the main speech.

Saturday - The Future of Healthy Longevity

Today, I went to a presentation on longevity, quite a popular subject amongst the London Futurists, second only to the Singularity. It was done in three parts, the first by Phil Micans:

Phil discussed the issue that ran through all the presentations: that absolute longevity (how long you live) is only as important as how healthy you are, otherwise the suffering, and it's associated cost to society, make the extra years pointless. He mentioned various new technologies, especially peptides, which have produced amazing results, including growing back one chap's finger tip:

Next on was Avi Roy, who discussed the possible areas of research and narrowed it down to nine different areas, each area affecting different diseases to a greater or lesser extent:

The effect being that if you address one factor, affecting one type of illness, another illness replaces it. All the nine factors have to be tackled together.

The third speaker was Tuvi Orbach, who discussed the effect of lifestyle on longevity.

He's a bit of an advert for his subject, being 65. Healthy living!

Drugs 2.0 by Mike Power

Today, I went to see a scouser about drugs! Mike Power is a freelance journalist who's written a very intriguing account about the combination of the Internet and the illegal drug business, topical considering the recent arrest of the creator of the Silk Road web site, and he gave a presentation about the background to the book to the London Futurists.

Mike started out, as every Liverpudlian is obliged to do, with the Beatles and he showed this rare photo of them with a common stimulant at the time, Preludin (or phenmetrazine, which is the chemical name).

He'd got interested in the business and culture of drugs while being based in Columbia, which, at the time, was producing 600 tonnes of cocaine a year. He saw first hand the ridiculousness of the War on Drugs, relating a story about visiting a Coca farmer who, upon being raided and having a field of crops destroyed, told him that it would be replaced within six months. It was a similar story with another drug of choice, MDMA, or Ecstacy. This is usually produced using a substance called safrole, extracted from the roots of a type of camphor wood tree from Cambodia, and much time has been spent in vain blowing up stills in the forests there.

When the credit crunch happened, there was a drop in the demand for both drugs, creating a demand for "legal" highs, initially Mephedrone, and the subsequent moral panic leading to the odd situation of an alarmist article on a new drug on the Daily Telegraph web site alongside a Google advert for the same drug.

This all intrigued Mike and he then set about figuring out how easy it would be to make his own designer drug, a variation of phenmetrazine. Not easily, as he found out, but, through contacts and some considerable study, he managed to find a small, professional pharmaceutical lab in China that produced a small amount of his new drug and shipped the substance via the mail system. It was all a bit dodgy and there was lots of anonymity involved (false names, referring to the drug as "metal cleaning powder", post office boxes, etc.) but he got the drugs, all perfectly legal. Or not illegal. Yet.

He then highlighted the role of the Dark Web, specifically the Silk Road web site and it's many subsequent inheritors, pointing out that it's not sleazy, addled dopers who are doing this but very bright tech people with PhD's. Combined with legal highs, there's a very compelling and rational business case and a lot of money to be made. He also pointed out the scale of the problem: there are currently 200+ new, legal, highs, including two derivatives of LSD.

His solution was somewhat predictable, but based on an unusual premise. The derivatives are usually inferior to the original. He pointed out that only two people died at Woodstock in 1968, and one of those was run over by a tractor, despite there being 500,000 people stoned out of their minds on "normal" drugs. This he contrasted with Brownstock, a festival in Essex attended by 5000 people, where some middle management chap died (and his girlfriend nearly did) taking some new drug, 5-MAPB, hardly anyone had even heard of. So why not, on a case-by-case basis, make the old drugs legal, or at least not criminal.

It was a fascinating presentation about a real, and slightly scary, adventure told in an engaging way.

Saturday - The Energy of Nations: Carbon Bubbles and Shale Games

This was a presentation by Jeremy Leggett, hosted by the London Futurists, concerning his new book.

The presentation covered the current state of energy sources, especially shale gas, peak oil and the carbon asset bubble that some claim could cause the next economic collapse.

Jeremy also talked at length of his experience with the media and their negative view of alternative energy, mostly due to the hydrocarbon companies' use of P.R.

It was an entertaining hour-or-so, which didn't feel like it, despite Jeremy's laid-back style. However, he isn't a technologist (and said so, to his credit), which meant that he couldn't discuss some of the more speculative aspects of his presentation and did become somewhat defensive when asked those kinds of questions. I would also have liked to see him address the issue of energy storage, a part of the alternative energy equation which enables it to replace hydrocarbons and nuclear. His view on shale gas was also revealing.

Saturday - Biomedical Discoveries and the Ageless Generation with Alex Zhavoronkov

Today I attended the first lecture organised by the London Futurists since the end of the summer break. This was a good, if long, presentation by Alex Zhavoronkov whose speciality is the biochemistry of ageing. He's written a book and the presentation was a overview of the subject.

Alex explained that the main problem with an ageing population, i.e. one where the average age is increasing because everyone is living longer, is that old age brings with it infirmity and loss of function. This presents a major challenge to governments, economics and society, but one which might have a solution, or set of solutions, in the form of advanced treatments which enable people to be more functional for longer. He explained the problems that medicine has in making treatments available, citing up to forty years in some cases, but that given this, the next twenty years or so will see some truly remarkable advances, such as stem cell treatments and RNAi.

The presentation also touched on the impact this has on society and he proposed an increase in the retirement age as mandatory. This is where he drew the most comments from the audience. One pointed out that at the moment it difficult to find jobs for young people, much less the old, no matter how capable. It also occurred to me that retirement would become the preserve of the rich, the poor being obliged to work longer, but he had a point. If you live to eighty, forty of those, the first twenty and the last twenty, are unproductive and you are living off other people, your parents in the former and everyone else (directly or indirectly) in the latter. If you can extend, for everyone, that middle forty by even ten years, it would ease the strain on the economy of a country considerably. Alex even went on to say that not dealing with it could cause total economic collapse in some countries.

Overall, despite the length, it was a very good presentation by Alex, and very entertaining.

Update: The Futurists have a new web site, here.

Saturday - 2045: Conscious avatars or wishful thinking?

Today I went to see a review of the Global Futures 2045, an international conference in New York's Lincoln Centre, hosted by the London Futurists.

David Wood, who normally MC's the meetings, gave the presentation, up on the fifth floor of Birbeck College. The conference was set up by a Russian millionaire, Dmitry Itskov, and seemed to be mostly about the advances in cybernetics which seems to be in line with the sponsors aims. He's proposed the idea of moving our minds into Avatars (like the movie) in a five step programme over the next thirty years or so.

It was also a state-of-the-art conference as well, with a heavy emphasis on neuroscience and prosthetics, including a video of a Cambridgeshire man, Nigel Ackland, who lost his right hand and part of the arm in an accident and had it replaced with an advanced prosthesis:

The presentation was well done by David, but, as was pointed out in the Q&A afterwards, his emphasis was on the technological, the "hard" science, rather than the spiritual or psychological, the "soft" science. Also, two of the things missing, which were purported to be amongst the aims of the conference, were future society and culture.