dw-2.bsky.social
Chair, London Futurists. Executive Director of LEV Foundation. Author or Lead Editor of 12 books about the future. PDA/smartphone pioneer. Symbian co-founder
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I'm also speaking at the same venue in Austin tomorrow afternoon (Monday), when my topic is "Solving aging: Is AI all we need?" - If you're in the area, please consider registering to attend lu.ma/lu5jkgb4?tk=...
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But if the mentality that prevails is "turbocharged race" rather than "let's build superabundance together", principles such as safety, choice, integrity, and privacy, are likely to be discarded in the rush
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For anyone who prefers text to video: dw2blog.com/2025/03/01/e...
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For links to book to attend one or more of these events, see lu.ma/user/jrp
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PS This webinar is part of what I had in mind when I circulated "My Christmas wishes, 2024-2025" at the end of last year. Look out for more news of other webinars in this same series!
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For more details of tomorrow's webinar, and to register to attend (there is no charge), click www.meetup.com/london-futur...
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Along the way, Rönn explains the "group selection vs. individual selection vs. gene selection" controversy in evolutionary theory. He shows how, when matters are organised appropriately, selection happens on multiple levels in parallel. This has implications for humanity today!
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Rönn reviews at two ways in which destructive incentives can be changed: top-down control (which, alas, involves its own risks of catastrophe) and bottom-up decentralised adoption of reputation markets (which have their own drawbacks). The best solution may be a hybrid.
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The book analyses three fundamental races - the race for more resources, the race for more power, and the race for more intelligence. In our present world, each of these races is poised to bring humanity to catastrophe. Can we organise Darwinian angels in time?
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In his book, Kristian Rönn introduces the concept of "Darwinian demon", to describe destructive incentives, but he also postulates that "Darwinian angels" can arise, which lead individuals away from behaviours that cause group-harm and ultimately self-harm.
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Why do people sometimes do bad things? We may blame them for bad behaviour, bad philosophy, bad psychology, and so on, but from another level of analysis, we should expect that kind of bad behaviour (etc) to continue until destructive incentives are removed from our environment.
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The book - subtitled "The hidden evolutionary forces that explain our world (and threaten our future)" - provides excellent insight into why individuals keep pursuing objectives that end up harming the group in which they belong - and, in time, harming themselves too.
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"The UK can secure the benefits and mitigate the risks of AI by delivering on its promise to introduce binding regulation on the most powerful AI systems." (3/3)
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"Specialised AIs - such as those advancing science and medicine - boost growth, innovation, and public services. Superintelligent AI systems would compromise national and global security." (2/3)
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From the campaign statement:
"Nobel Prize winners, AI scientists, and CEOs of leading AI companies have stated that mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority." (1/3)
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That was the same topic - the possibility of a single solution to aging vs. multiple solutions required in parallel - that I addressed in this recent Mindplex article magazine.mindplex.ai/is-there-one...
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As such, this video has the potential to spark useful conversations, encouraging more people to consider aging as a subject worthy of study.
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There's one other reason why I like this video so much: it transcends ideology or metaphysics - the kinds of things which can prevent clear thinking on the topic of aging