The impacts of global heating have become persistent and profound, so we need to do as much as we can to lesson those impacts, as quickly as we can. The best paths forward lean into existing, natural processes – and this is exactly where Nick Hazell has arrived with Algenie. Can algae restore balance to our ecosystem? Is it the moonshot we need to transform our future?
TNBS
The Next Billion Cars – 2024 in review (part 1)
Whenever Mark, Sal and Drew get together, sparks will fly. So much has happened since our visit to CES 2024, we reckoned it time to draw all the year’s threads together: Are we pulling back from EVs? Will China dominate manufacturing? And what about all that data vehicles are collecting? It’s been full on – enough to require a bit of a ‘group hug’. Part one of two.
The Next Billion Cars – The $100,000,000,000 Lie
In 2016, Tesla CEO Elon Musk instructed his team of engineers to ‘hard code’ the first demo of what would become ‘Full Self Driving’. A faked video drove panic across the entire automotive sector, leading to massive (and mostly failed) investments in technologies for autonomy.
The Next Billion Cars: Neo-Malaise
What does it mean to walk away from the dream of a lifetime? For series co-host Drew Smith, this is exactly what he’s doing. For over 20 years, he’d dedicated himself to driving positive change in an industry that has resisted it at almost every turn, and he’s done. In this episode of The Next Billion Cars, he explores how the automotive industry has become its own worst enemy, and what might happen next.
The Next Billion Cars – LIVE at SxSW Sydney with ZEEKR’s Gustaf Gunér: How does a new brand survive?
ZEEKR launched their EV brand in Australia at SxSW Sydney. Drew Smith – who worked for predecessor of ZEEKR – scored The Next Billion Cars a live interview with head of brand Gustaf Gunér. What does it mean to launch a new car brand? And how does a brand establish itself within a market for EVs where everything is… very much the same? A deep conversation about design, brand, and the future of the car industry.
Series 2024 – Halloween Special: Ghosts in the Machine
Google’s new NotebookLM digests documents to create AI summaries, and provides an incredible new way to search a vast set of information. One little throwaway feature became a viral hit – “Audio Overview”, which creates a ‘podcast’ featuring two clever, chipper – and entirely synthetic – personas, engaging in a ‘deep dive’ on the content within NotebookLM. In the spirit of Halloween, we uploaded the scripts for the first four episodes of Series 2024 – and NotebookLM rose to the occasion. Is this the future of podcasting? And — HAVE I JUST BEEN PUT OUT OF A JOB?
Series 2024 – Episode 4: AI UNEMPLOYED?
I had a great gig writing for COSMOS Magazine – until I was replaced by an AI. I never even knew – until months later. Here’s the whole story how I became ‘AI unemployed’ – and what happened next.
Series 2024 – Episode 3: CHIPS AND CHAINS
The semiconductor sector has seen more upheaval over the last 3 years than in the previous 30, fueled by the rise of AI. Nvidia now rivals Microsoft for most valuable company on the planet, while Intel – which started the Microprocessor revolution over 50 years ago – seems to be losing ground, in a downward spiral into complete collapse. What does this mean for our devices – and for the geopolitical balance between the US and China?
Series 2024 – Episode TWO: THE FOUR DAY WEEK IS ALREADY HERE
The pandemic permanently broke the link between work and place. In the aftermath we’ve rejiggered everything connected to work-life balance – in favour of life. This means we’ve stumbled into a new reality: the ‘four-day week’ is a reality for most office workers – even if no one wants to name it. How did this happen? Have a listen and find out.
Series 2024 – Episode ONE “All Change”
The last two years (hello, ChatGPT!) have seen more change than the previous 20. How do we operate when the future has suddenly become the present? In this series opener, host Mark Pesce touches several of the topics we’ll explore in depth across the latest series of THE NEXT BILLION SECONDS.
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VALE: Vernor Vinge – creator of a ‘Technological Singularity’ (our interview from 2019)
Science fiction legend Vernor Vinge inspired the title of this podcast – and his influence extends far beyond fiction. His novella “True Names” gave readers a first taste of the metaverse, and in a 1993 talk for NASA, Vinge described a ‘technological singularity’ – a time when computers get so good so fast that they ‘run away’ from human control. That’s a scenario haunting every big company working in AI today, possibly an element in the behind-the-scenes dynamic that got Sam Altman (briefly) fired as CEO of ChatGPT creator OpenAI in November 2023. This 2019 interview – one of his last, before his passing on 21 March 2024 – explores Vinge’s thinking about ‘The Singularity’ – and asks what happens when a goldfish tries to talk to a human…
Over a billion seconds ago, sci-fi legend Vernor Vinge conceived of a “Technological Singularity”, when our machines outthink us. Should we worry?
Be sure to read Vernor’s 1993 paper, “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era” – it’s linked here.
A rerun of episode 3.01 of The Next Billion Seconds.
For more information about this podcast and The Next Billion Seconds, please visit https://nextbillionseconds.com.
The Next Billion Seconds with Mark Pesce is produced by Ampel – https://ampel.com.au.
Chief Audio Officer: Josh Butt
Edited by: Isabel Vanhakartano
Audio Mixed by: Carter Quinn
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