Heavy-Tailed Distributions: What Lurks Beyond Our Intuitions?
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Heavy-Tailed Distributions: What Lurks Beyond Our Intuitions?

Understanding heavy-tailed distributions are important to assessing likelihoods and impact scales when thinking about possible disasters – especially relevant to xRisk and Global Catastrophic Risk analysis. How likely is civilization to be devastated by a large scale disaster or even go extinct? Anders discusses how heavy-tailed distributions account for more than our intuitions tell us….

AI: The Story So Far – Stuart Russell
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AI: The Story So Far – Stuart Russell

Awesome to have Stuart Russell discussing AI Safety – a very important topic. Too long have people been associating the idea of AI safety issues with Terminator – unfortunately the human condition seems such that people often don’t give themselves permission to take seriously non-mainstream ideas unless they see a tip of the hat from…

Singularity Skepticism or Advocacy – to what extent is it warranted?
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Singularity Skepticism or Advocacy – to what extent is it warranted?

Why are some people so skeptical of the possibility of Super-intelligent Machines, while others take it quite seriously? Hugo de Garis addresses both ‘Singularity Skepticism’ and advocacy – reasons for believing machine intelligence is not only possible but quite probable! The Singularity will likely be an unprecedentedly huge issue that we will need to face…

Grand Unifying Theories in Physics with Sundance
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Grand Unifying Theories in Physics with Sundance

Sundance describes particle physics and covers two grand unifying theories: super string theory and quantum loop gravity, then discusses the distribution of beliefs among experts on grand unifying theories and concludes by emphasisng the need for a wider research program in physics (and science in general) – as well as the funding to back it…

Brian Greene on Artificial Intelligence, the Importance of Fundamental Physics, Alien Life, and the Possible Future of Our Civilization
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Brian Greene on Artificial Intelligence, the Importance of Fundamental Physics, Alien Life, and the Possible Future of Our Civilization

March 14th was Albert Einstein’s birthday, and also PI day, so it was a fitting day to be interviewing well known theoretical physicist and string theorist Brian Greene – the author of a number of books including, The Elegant Universe, Icarus at the Edge of Time, The Fabric of the Cosmos, and The Hidden Reality!…

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Media series with James Hughes

James Hughes the Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, is a bioethicist and sociologist at Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut where he teaches health policy and serves as Director of Institutional Research and Planning. Dr. Hughes is a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of Humanity+, the Neuroethics Society,…

Michio Kaku – A History of a Time to Come
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Michio Kaku – A History of a Time to Come

Science, Technology & the Future interviews Dr. Michio Kaku on Artificial Intelligence and the Singularity, Biotech and Nanotechnology What is it that is driving this revolution? How do you think your background in Theoretical Physics shape your view on the future of the mind? Intelligence enhancement, Internet of the mind – brain-net, like a hive…

Michio Kaku – The Future of the Mind – Intelligence Enhancement & the Singularity
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Michio Kaku – The Future of the Mind – Intelligence Enhancement & the Singularity

Scifuture interview with popular scientist Michio Kaku on the Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance & Empower the Mind! The audio of this interview is found here. Dr. Michio Kaku advocates thinking about some of the radical Transhumanist ideas we all know and love – here he speaks on the frontiers of Neuroscience, Intelligence Enhancement, the…

Jamais Cascio – The Future and You! Security, Privacy, AI, Geoengineering
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Jamais Cascio – The Future and You! Security, Privacy, AI, Geoengineering

Jamais Cascio discusses the Participatory Panopticon, Privacy & Secrecy, the ramifications of Disconnecting from the Chorus, what it means to be a Futurist, the Arc of Human Evolution, Artificial Intelligence, the Need for Meaning, Building Agents to Listen to Us, WorldChanging.com / OpenTheFuture.com, Geoengineering and the Viridian Green movement. We pollute our data-streams, to control…

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The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets with Simon Singh

You may have watched hundreds of episodes of The Simpsons (and its sister show Futurama) without ever realizing that cleverly embedded in many plots are subtle references to mathematics, ranging from well-known equations to cutting-edge theorems and conjectures. That they exist, Simon Singh reveals, underscores the brilliance of the shows’ writers, many of whom have…