“What I meant when I said there is no AI is that I don't think we serve ourselves well when we put our own technology up as if it were a new God that we created. I think we confuse ourselves too easily. This goes back to Alan Turing, the main founder of computer science, who had this idea of the Turing test. In the test, you can't tell whether the computer has gotten more human-like or the human has gotten more computer-like. People are very prone to becoming more computer-like. When we're on social media, we let ourselves be guided by the algorithms, so we start to become dumb in the way the algorithms want us to. You see that all the time. It's really degraded our psychologies and our society.”

Jaron Lanier is a pioneering technologist, writer, and musician, best known for coining the term “Virtual Reality” and founding VPL Research, the first company to sell VR products. He led early breakthroughs in virtual worlds, avatars, and VR applications in fields like surgery and media. Lanier writes on the philosophy and economics of technology in his bestselling book Who Owns the Future? and You Are Not a Gadget. His book Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality is an inventive blend of autobiography, science writing, and philosophy. Lanier has been named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people and serves as Prime Unifying Scientist at Microsoft’s Office of the CTO—aka “Octopus.” As a musician, he’s performed with Sara Bareilles, Philip Glass, T Bone Burnett, Laurie Anderson, Jon Batiste, and others.

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“AI is obviously the dominant topic in tech lately, and I think occasionally there's AI that's nonsense, and occasionally there's AI that's great. I love finding new proteins for medicine and so on. I don't think we serve ourselves well when we put our own technology up as if it were a new God that we created. I think we're really getting a little too full of ourselves to think that. This goes back to Alan Turing, the main founder of computer science, who had this idea of the Turing test. In the test, you can't tell whether the computer has gotten more human-like or the human has gotten more computer-like. People are very prone to becoming more computer-like. When we're on social media, we let ourselves be guided by the algorithms, so we start to become dumb in the way the algorithms want us to. You see that all the time. It's really degraded our psychologies and our society.”

Jaron Lanier is a pioneering technologist, writer, and musician, best known for coining the term “Virtual Reality” and founding VPL Research, the first company to sell VR products. He led early breakthroughs in virtual worlds, avatars, and VR applications in fields like surgery and media. Lanier writes on the philosophy and economics of technology in his bestselling book Who Owns the Future? and You Are Not a Gadget. His book Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality is an inventive blend of autobiography, science writing, and philosophy. Lanier has been named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people and serves as Prime Unifying Scientist at Microsoft’s Office of the CTO—aka “Octopus.” As a musician, he’s performed with Sara Bareilles, Philip Glass, T Bone Burnett, Laurie Anderson, Jon Batiste, and others.

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Photo credit: Michael Springer

“The position of the United States in the world, economically and politically, is the weakest it has been in my lifetime. I was born in the middle of the 20th century, so I have watched the rise of the American empire and the success of American capitalism in the second half of the 20th century. However, over the last 20 years, I have watched that turn into its opposite—a decline. The decline is visible everywhere. Unless you live in the United States and consume mainstream media, there is a level of denial that will be recorded historically as one of the great examples, not just of a declining empire, which typically has people who cannot face it and who refuse to see it. You can go to Great Britain today and find quite a few people who think we still have the British Empire, even though everyone who isn't crazy knows that is silly. But we are earlier in the decline phase than the British are; they have had to endure it for a century while we have just had to do it for a couple of decades. It is fresh.”

Richard D. Wolff is the co-founder of Democracy at Work and host of their nationally syndicated show Economic Update. He was formerly professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Yale University, the City College of the City University of New York, and the University of Paris Sorbonne. Currently, Wolfe is a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York City.

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

How do urbanization and rural development impact communities differently? How can we make public policy and enlightened self-interest advance climate action?

Dr. Shiv Someshwar is a Development Clinician, diagnosing development of cities and nation states. A Visiting Professor at Columbia University, New York and at Sciences Po, Paris, he was the founder chair-holder of the European Chair for Sustainable Development and Climate Transition at Sciences Po. He helped set up the initial national and regional networks of the global Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

His publications cover a range of issues: planning, institutions and governance of sustainable development; climate change mitigation, adaptation, risks and offsets; and ecosystem management. He edited Re-living the Memories of an Indian Forester: Memoirs of S. Shyam Sunder and is presently writing The Fallacy of Evidence-Based Policy Making.

He convened and chaired the Independent Task Force on Creative Climate Action. Dr. Someshwar received a Ph.D. in urban planning from the University of California, Los Angeles, and he was a Bell-MacArthur fellow at Harvard University. He has two masters’ degrees, on housing and on environmental planning, and is also trained as a professional architect. He has previously worked at the Earth Institute, Columbia University, the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, and the World Bank in Washington D.C.

"So, geoengineering has its champions, and there are people who say we shouldn't be doing anything, but I think we cannot foreclose any options because, as you said a few minutes ago, how far are we from 1.5 or even 2 degrees of change? I think we really need to have work done on all of these things, but when it comes to applying them, we need to be far more prudent and be far more effective with our institutions. It can't just be that we use the same existing institutions because they may not be fit for purpose when it comes to these kinds of institutions. Just on that note, many people fault the United Nations. They say, oh, it's a useless kind of organization. They can't really take action. But actually, that's by design. The UN was never meant to take some of these actions because they are at the behest of member states. And if a single member state says, 'No, we can't. We don't want you to do this.' They're stuck, right? And so, in some sense, it's unfair to blame a system that's not been designed to advance the public good other than through means of communicating the right things and exhorting the policymakers to do the right thing."

https://www.sciencespo.fr/psia/sites/sciencespo.fr.psia/files/ITFClimateReport_Web.pdf www.amazon.com/Reliving-Memories-Indian-Forester-Memoir/dp/9388337131

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

“The wealth of learning that can come from our collective awareness that essentially AI is a fancy-sounding way of saying computers can learn from the collective wisdom that exists throughout the Internet. And if we can empower the local stewards of biodiversity, local landowners, farmers indigenous populations with all of that wealth of information in a smart way, it can be incredibly empowering to many rural communities. AI might also open up an opportunity for us to rethink what life is about.”

Although they comprise less than 5% of the world population, Indigenous peoples protect 80% of the Earth’s biodiversity. How can we support farmers, reverse biodiversity loss, and restore our ecosystems?

Thomas Crowther is an ecologist studying the connections between biodiversity and climate change. He is a professor in the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich, chair of the advisory council for the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, and founder of Restor, an online platform for the global restoration movement, which was a finalist for the Royal Foundation’s Earthshot Prize. In 2021, the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader for his work on the protection and restoration of biodiversity. Crowther’s post-doctoral research transformed the understanding of the world’s tree cover, and the study also inspired the World Economic Forum to announce its Trillion Trees initiative, which aims to conserve and restore one trillion trees globally within the decade.

https://crowtherlab.com/about-tom-crowther
https://restor.eco/?lat=26&lng=14.23&zoom=3

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Although they comprise less than 5% of the world population, Indigenous peoples protect 80% of the Earth’s biodiversity. How can we support farmers, reverse biodiversity loss, and restore our ecosystems?

Thomas Crowther is an ecologist studying the connections between biodiversity and climate change. He is a professor in the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich, chair of the advisory council for the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, and founder of Restor, an online platform for the global restoration movement, which was a finalist for the Royal Foundation’s Earthshot Prize. In 2021, the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader for his work on the protection and restoration of biodiversity. Crowther’s post-doctoral research transformed the understanding of the world’s tree cover, and the study also inspired the World Economic Forum to announce its Trillion Trees initiative, which aims to conserve and restore one trillion trees globally within the decade.

“The wealth of learning that can come from our collective awareness that essentially AI is a fancy-sounding way of saying computers can learn from the collective wisdom that exists throughout the Internet. And if we can empower the local stewards of biodiversity, local landowners, farmers indigenous populations with all of that wealth of information in a smart way, it can be incredibly empowering to many rural communities. AI might also open up an opportunity for us to rethink what life is about.”

https://crowtherlab.com/about-tom-crowther
https://restor.eco/?lat=26&lng=14.23&zoom=3

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"I have very mixed feelings about AI, and I think its future and our future with it is very much up for grabs. And here's the reason why. At the moment, these extraordinary achievements like ChatGPT, I mean literally mind-boggling achievements, are completely indifferent to truth. They crawl around in the web and learn how words go together, and so they produce coherent meaningful strings of words, sentences, and paragraphs that you're astonished could have been produced by a machine. However, there are no filters that weed out the false concatenations of words from the true ones. And so you get something that's totally believable, and totally plausible, and totally grammatical. But is it true? And if AI continues to move in this direction, getting more and more sophisticated as a mock human, and continuing to be indifferent to truth, the problems that we started our conversation with are only going to get worse."

Does having too many choices make us unhappy? How can we learn practical wisdom?

Dr. Barry Schwartz is the Dorwin P. Cartwright Professor Emeritus of Social Theory and Social Action in the psychology department at Swarthmore College. He is the author of many books, including Why We Work, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, and co-author of Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing.

www.swarthmore.edu/profile/barry-schwartz
www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-We-Work/Barry-Schwartz/TED-Books/9781476784861
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-paradox-of-choice-barry-schwartz?variant=32207920234530
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/307231/practical-wisdom-by-barry-schwartz-and-kenneth-sharpe

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Photo credit: Bill Holsinger-Robinson - CC BY 2.0

Does having too many choices make us unhappy? How can we learn practical wisdom?

Dr. Barry Schwartz is the Dorwin P. Cartwright Professor Emeritus of Social Theory and Social Action in the psychology department at Swarthmore College. He is the author of many books, including Why We Work, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, and co-author of Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing.

"I have very mixed feelings about AI, and I think its future and our future with it is very much up for grabs. And here's the reason why. At the moment, these extraordinary achievements like ChatGPT, I mean literally mind-boggling achievements, are completely indifferent to truth. They crawl around in the web and learn how words go together, and so they produce coherent meaningful strings of words, sentences, and paragraphs that you're astonished could have been produced by a machine. However, there are no filters that weed out the false concatenations of words from the true ones. And so you get something that's totally believable, and totally plausible, and totally grammatical. But is it true? And if AI continues to move in this direction, getting more and more sophisticated as a mock human, and continuing to be indifferent to truth, the problems that we started our conversation with are only going to get worse."

www.swarthmore.edu/profile/barry-schwartz
www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-We-Work/Barry-Schwartz/TED-Books/9781476784861
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-paradox-of-choice-barry-schwartz?variant=32207920234530
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/307231/practical-wisdom-by-barry-schwartz-and-kenneth-sharpe

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Photo credit: Bill Holsinger-Robinson - CC BY 2.0

"The idea that the laws of nature are fixed is taken for granted by almost all scientists and within physics, within cosmology, it leads to an enormous realm of speculation, which I think is totally unnecessary. We're assuming the laws of nature are fixed. Most of science assumes this, but is it really so in an evolving universe? Why shouldn't the laws evolve? And if we think about that, then we realize that actually, the whole idea of a law of nature is a metaphor. It's based on human laws. I mean, after all, dogs and cats don't obey laws. And in tribes, they don't even have laws. They have customs. So it's only in civilized societies that you have laws. And then if we think through that metaphor, then actually the laws do change.

All artists are influenced by other artists and by things in the collective culture, and I think that morphic resonance as collective memory would say that all of us draw unconsciously as well as consciously on a collective memory and all animals draw on a collective memory of their kind as well. We don't know where it comes from, but there's true creativity involved in evolution, both human and natural."

How do we navigate ambiguity and uncertainty? Moving beyond linear thinking into instinct and intuition, we might discover other sources within ourselves that lie beyond the boundaries of science and reason.

Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. His many books include The Science Delusion, The Presence of the Past, and Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work. At Cambridge University, Dr. Sheldrake worked in developmental biology as a fellow of Clare College. From 2005 to 2010,  he was director of the Perrott Warrick Project for research on unexplained human and animal abilities, funded by Trinity College Cambridge. He was among the top 100 global thought leaders for 2013, as ranked by the Duttweiler Institute.

www.sheldrake.org

www.amazon.com/Science-Delusion/dp/1529393221/?tag=sheldrake-20

www.amazon.com/Science-Set-Free-Paths-Discovery/dp/0770436722/?tag=sheldrake-20

How do we navigate ambiguity and uncertainty? Moving beyond linear thinking into instinct and intuition, we might discover other sources within ourselves that lie beyond the boundaries of science and reason.

Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. His many books include The Science Delusion, The Presence of the Past, and Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work. At Cambridge University, Dr. Sheldrake worked in developmental biology as a fellow of Clare College. From 2005 to 2010,  he was director of the Perrott Warrick Project for research on unexplained human and animal abilities, funded by Trinity College Cambridge. He was among the top 100 global thought leaders for 2013, as ranked by the Duttweiler Institute.

"The idea that the laws of nature are fixed is taken for granted by almost all scientists and within physics, within cosmology, it leads to an enormous realm of speculation, which I think is totally unnecessary. We're assuming the laws of nature are fixed. Most of science assumes this, but is it really so in an evolving universe? Why shouldn't the laws evolve? And if we think about that, then we realize that actually, the whole idea of a law of nature is a metaphor. It's based on human laws. I mean, after all, dogs and cats don't obey laws. And in tribes, they don't even have laws. They have customs. So it's only in civilized societies that you have laws.

And then if we think through that metaphor, then actually the laws do change.

All artists are influenced by other artists and by things in the collective culture, and I think that morphic resonance as collective memory would say that all of us draw unconsciously as well as consciously on a collective memory and all animals draw on a collective memory of their kind as well. We don't know where it comes from, but there's true creativity involved in evolution, both human and natural."

www.sheldrake.org

www.amazon.com/Science-Delusion/dp/1529393221/?tag=sheldrake-20

www.amazon.com/Science-Set-Free-Paths-Discovery/dp/0770436722/?tag=sheldrake-20

"So we get to a certain stage in Western society, I'd never call it a culture, but a society trying to figure out its birth and how to become mature. Whatever it's doing it has slowed down natural relationships. It took us out of the land, put us into factories, put us into institutions where you can learn a trade. It kept giving you jobs that had nothing to do with Earth. And so if you're living, you're working in this box called a factory, and the farmers out there are becoming less and less. Even the farming, the ideas of farming are foreign. And I think that when the technical language came out, we dropped another natural umbilical cord to and with Earth. And so we severed that relationship. So you can see this gradual severing of relationships to Earth with Earth, that now we have to have retreats to learn empathy again. We do all these Westernized versions of piecing ourselves back together and as Indigenous folks where we're getting that way now, but a lot of traditional people don't need that. We don't need environmental movements. You know, Wild Earth is a foreign concept. There are a lot of words that organizations use to rationalize why we need to teach how to be human beings. So you see technology, the Industrial Machine Age taught us this language of disconnection, taught us things like plug-in, get connected. You know, all these words that came along to fill that information that could be controlled by authority now in the Western process. John Gatto, who won the New York State Teacher of the Year award in 2008, upon his retirement, specifically said, 'It takes 12 years to learn how to become reflexive to authority.' And who is the authority? Who is controlling information? Who's controlling education? Who's controlling knowledge? And now they want to control Wisdom, and all wisdom means is common sense.”

Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio” (formerly “First Voices Indigenous Radio”) for the last 31 years in New York City and Seattle/Olympia, Washington. In 2016, he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Other recent recognitions include: Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Fellowship in Music (2016), National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Nominee (2017), Indigenous Music Award Nominee for Best Instrumental Album (2019) and National Native American Hall of Fame Nominee (2018, 2019). He also was recently nominated for “Nominee for the 2020 Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities”. He is the Founder of Akantu Intelligence.

https://firstvoicesindigenousradio.org/
https://akantuintelligence.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Songs featured on this episode are “Butterfly Against the Wind”
And from the album Somewhere In There
“Spatial Moon” and “Sunrise Moon”
Composed by Tiokasin Ghosthorse and Alex Alexander
Music on this episode is courtesy of Tiokasin Ghosthorse.

How can we learn to speak the language of the Earth and cultivate our intuitive intelligence?

Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio” (formerly “First Voices Indigenous Radio”) for the last 31 years in New York City and Seattle/Olympia, Washington. In 2016, he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Other recent recognitions include: Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Fellowship in Music (2016), National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Nominee (2017), Indigenous Music Award Nominee for Best Instrumental Album (2019) and National Native American Hall of Fame Nominee (2018, 2019). He also was recently nominated for “Nominee for the 2020 Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities”. He is the Founder of Akantu Intelligence.

"So we get to a certain stage in Western society, I'd never call it a culture, but a society trying to figure out its birth and how to become mature. Whatever it's doing it has slowed down natural relationships. It took us out of the land, put us into factories, put us into institutions where you can learn a trade. It kept giving you jobs that had nothing to do with Earth. And so if you're living, you're working in this box called a factory, and the farmers out there are becoming less and less. Even the farming, the ideas of farming are foreign. And I think that when the technical language came out, we dropped another natural umbilical cord to and with Earth. And so we severed that relationship. So you can see this gradual severing of relationships to Earth with Earth, that now we have to have retreats to learn empathy again. We do all these Westernized versions of piecing ourselves back together and as Indigenous folks where we're getting that way now, but a lot of traditional people don't need that. We don't need environmental movements. You know, Wild Earth is a foreign concept. There are a lot of words that organizations use to rationalize why we need to teach how to be human beings. So you see technology, the Industrial Machine Age taught us this language of disconnection, taught us things like plug-in, get connected. You know, all these words that came along to fill that information that could be controlled by authority now in the Western process. John Gatto, who won the New York State Teacher of the Year award in 2008, upon his retirement, specifically said, 'It takes 12 years to learn how to become reflexive to authority.' And who is the authority? Who is controlling information? Who's controlling education? Who's controlling knowledge? And now they want to control Wisdom, and all wisdom means is common sense.”

https://firstvoicesindigenousradio.org/
https://akantuintelligence.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Songs featured on this episode are “Butterfly Against the Wind”
And from the album Somewhere In There
“Spatial Moon” and “Sunrise Moon”
Composed by Tiokasin Ghosthorse and Alex Alexander
Music on this episode is courtesy of Tiokasin Ghosthorse.

"With the speed and the precision of the AI, make no mistake, we are becoming creators of something that is far more advanced than humans. Is this a bad thing? I see it as a very bad thing, but I also see it as a natural evolution. We are becoming creators and in our evolution process, we are evolving ourselves to something much more advanced. It's what the world, what the universe, what nature wants us to become: stronger so we reach our limit in terms of biological capacity. So this is the fascinating thing, the creation and evolution go hand in hand. It's a circle that feeds into each other."

Dr. Melvin M. Vopson is Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Portsmouth, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Chartered Physicist and Fellow of the Institute of Physics. He is the co-founder and CEO of the Information Physics Institute, editor-in-chief of the IPI Letters and Emerging Minds Journal for Student Research. He is the author of Reality Reloaded: The Scientific Case for a Simulated Universe. Dr. Vopson has a wide-ranging scientific expertise in experimental, applied and theoretical physics that is internationally recognized. He has published over 100 research articles, achieving over 2500 citations.

https://www.port.ac.uk/about-us/structure-and-governance/our-people/our-staff/melvin-vopson

https://ipipublishing.org/index.php/ipil/RR

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

When capitalism stops serving the needs of the people, what can we do to create a fairer more equitable society? What can we learn from China's success and economic growth? Are we witnessing the decline of the American Empire and what comes next?

Richard D. Wolff is the co-founder of Democracy at Work and host of their nationally syndicated show Economic Update. He was formerly professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Yale University, the City College of the City University of New York, and the University of Paris Sorbonne. Currently, Wolfe is a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York City.

“The position of the United States in the world, economically and politically, is the weakest it has been in my lifetime. I was born in the middle of the 20th century, so I have watched the rise of the American empire and the success of American capitalism in the second half of the 20th century. However, over the last 20 years, I have watched that turn into its opposite—a decline. The decline is visible everywhere. Unless you live in the United States and consume mainstream media, there is a level of denial that will be recorded historically as one of the great examples, not just of a declining empire, which typically has people who cannot face it and who refuse to see it. You can go to Great Britain today and find quite a few people who think we still have the British Empire, even though everyone who isn't crazy knows that is silly. But we are earlier in the decline phase than the British are; they have had to endure it for a century while we have just had to do it for a couple of decades. It is fresh.”

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Are we living in a Simulated Universe? How will AI impact the future of work, society & education?

Dr. Melvin M. Vopson is Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Portsmouth, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Chartered Physicist and Fellow of the Institute of Physics. He is the co-founder and CEO of the Information Physics Institute, editor-in-chief of the IPI Letters and Emerging Minds Journal for Student Research. He is the author of Reality Reloaded: The Scientific Case for a Simulated Universe. Dr. Vopson has a wide-ranging scientific expertise in experimental, applied and theoretical physics that is internationally recognized. He has published over 100 research articles, achieving over 2500 citations.

"With the speed and the precision of the AI, make no mistake, we are becoming creators of something that is far more advanced than humans. Is this a bad thing? I see it as a very bad thing, but I also see it as a natural evolution. We are becoming creators and in our evolution process, we are evolving ourselves to something much more advanced. It's what the world, what the universe, what nature wants us to become: stronger so we reach our limit in terms of biological capacity. So this is the fascinating thing, the creation and evolution go hand in hand. It's a circle that feeds into each other."

https://www.port.ac.uk/about-us/structure-and-governance/our-people/our-staff/melvin-vopson

https://ipipublishing.org/index.php/ipil/RR

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"Meta reaches between three and four billion people every day through their platforms, right? That's way more people than any government legitimately can claim to govern. And yet this one company with four major platforms that many of us use is able to reach so many people and make decisions about content and access that have real consequences. It's been shown they fueled genocide in multiple places like in Ethiopia and Myanmar. And I think that's exactly why human rights matter because human rights are obligations that states have signed on for, and they're supposed to protect human values. And I think from a human rights perspective, it's important to argue that we shouldn't be collecting certain types of data because it's excessive. It's violating autonomy. It starts violating dignity. And when you start violating autonomy and dignity through the collection of data, you can't just go back and fix that by making it private.”

Does privacy exist anymore? Or are humans just sets of data to be traded and sold?

Wendy H. Wong is Professor of Political Science and Principal's Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. She is the author of two award-winning books: Internal Affairs: How the Structure of NGOs Transforms Human Rights and (with Sarah S. Stroup) The Authority Trap: Strategic Choices of International NGOs. Her latest book is We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age.

www.wendyhwong.com
https://mitpress.mit.edu/author/wendy-h-wong-38397

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Does privacy exist anymore? Or are humans just sets of data to be traded and sold?

Wendy H. Wong is Professor of Political Science and Principal's Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. She is the author of two award-winning books: Internal Affairs: How the Structure of NGOs Transforms Human Rights and (with Sarah S. Stroup) The Authority Trap: Strategic Choices of International NGOs. Her latest book is We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age.

"Meta reaches between three and four billion people every day through their platforms, right? That's way more people than any government legitimately can claim to govern. And yet this one company with four major platforms that many of us use is able to reach so many people and make decisions about content and access that have real consequences. It's been shown they fueled genocide in multiple places like in Ethiopia and Myanmar. And I think that's exactly why human rights matter because human rights are obligations that states have signed on for, and they're supposed to protect human values. And I think from a human rights perspective, it's important to argue that we shouldn't be collecting certain types of data because it's excessive. It's violating autonomy. It starts violating dignity. And when you start violating autonomy and dignity through the collection of data, you can't just go back and fix that by making it private.”

www.wendyhwong.com
https://mitpress.mit.edu/author/wendy-h-wong-38397

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

The more the science of intelligence (both human and artificial) advances, the more it holds the potential for great benefits and dangers to society.

Max Bennett is the cofounder and CEO of Alby, a start-up that helps companies integrate large language models into their websites to create guided shopping and search experiences. Previously, Bennett was the cofounder and chief product offi­cer of Bluecore, one of the fastest growing companies in the U.S., providing AI technologies to some of the largest companies in the world. Bluecore has been featured in the annual Inc. 500 fastest growing com­panies, as well as Glassdoor’s 50 best places to work in the U.S. Bluecore was recently valued at over $1 bil­lion. Bennett holds several patents for AI technologies and has published numerous scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals on the topics of evolutionary neuro­science and the neocortex. He has been featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list as well as the Built In NYC’s 30 Tech Leaders Under 30. He is the author of A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains.

"One of the crowning achievements of humanity is self-delusion. We like to convince ourselves that the thing that's best for us is also the best for everyone else. So it doesn't mean that people are inherently being bad, but whenever someone comes and says you should regulate thing ABC, and it just so turns out that if you do ABC, it will enrich that individual and their company.

We should just be somewhat skeptical to make sure that is in fact the best way to regulate it. So in terms of the regulations themselves, I think a lot of them are really good ideas. I think Yann LeCun has some of my favorite philosophies on this at Meta. Where I do think we should not be regulating is research. And I think we should absolutely be supporting open source. And I do think it's much more reasonable to regulate products. So this is a very important distinction. Regulating research is effectively telling scientists they're not allowed to look into certain forms of AI. They're not allowed to test certain forms of AI. I think this is. Or at least, if we do regulate research, we should have a higher burden of proof for restraining research."

www.abriefhistoryofintelligence.com/
www.alby.com
www.bluecore.com

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How can we resolve conflicts without compromising our ethics and moral vision? Each year, wars are being fought in our name or with our support that citizens never get an opportunity to vote on. How can we make our voices heard?

“Warism, taking war for granted as morally acceptable, even morally required, is the primary obstacle to peace.” Duane L. Cady is a philosopher and Professor Emeritus at Hamline University. He was nominated for the 1991 Grawemeyer World Order Award, was named Outstanding Educator of the Year by the United Methodist Foundation for Higher Education, and a festschiff in his honor was published in 2012. Cady is best known for his works on pacifism, including Moral Vision: How Everyday Life Shapes Ethical Thinking, and From Warism to Pacifism: A Moral Continuum.

https://duanelcady.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"We live on the one hand in very exciting times with technological development, but on the other hand, we should also be careful. And I've seen studies showing the effects of screen time on brain development that are worrisome, in my opinion.

So as a mother, I continuously engaged in a battle to minimize screen time for my children. Not always successfully because I also understand that the world that we live in requires a lot of screen time. I think that social media in particular and again, I can't take this interview out of context, I am continuously exposed to hatred in social media from all sides. People are scared. People are afraid. People are angry and that finds its way into social media. And I read things on (now it's called X) Twitter. and I'm horrified and disappointed and saddened. So did I disconnect? No, I'm also a part of the system, but I also want to raise a critical voice concerning that."

How we think, feel, and experience the world is a mystery. What distinguishes our consciousness from AI and machine learning?

Liad Mudrik studies high level cognition and its neural substrates, focusing on conscious experience. She teaches at the School of Psychological Sciences at Tel Aviv University. At her research lab, her team is currently investigating the functionality of consciousness, trying to unravel the depth and limits of unconscious processing, and also researching the ways semantic relations between concepts and objects are formed and detected.

https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/mudriklab
https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/mudriklab/people/#gkit-popup

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

How we think, feel, and experience the world is a mystery. What distinguishes our consciousness from AI and machine learning?

Liad Mudrik studies high level cognition and its neural substrates, focusing on conscious experience. She teaches at the School of Psychological Sciences at Tel Aviv University. At her research lab, her team is currently investigating the functionality of consciousness, trying to unravel the depth and limits of unconscious processing, and also researching the ways semantic relations between concepts and objects are formed and detected.

"We live on the one hand in very exciting times with technological development, but on the other hand, we should also be careful. And I've seen studies showing the effects of screen time on brain development that are worrisome, in my opinion.

So as a mother, I continuously engaged in a battle to minimize screen time for my children. Not always successfully because I also understand that the world that we live in requires a lot of screen time. I think that social media in particular and again, I can't take this interview out of context, I am continuously exposed to hatred in social media from all sides. People are scared. People are afraid. People are angry and that finds its way into social media. And I read things on (now it's called X) Twitter. and I'm horrified and disappointed and saddened. So did I disconnect? No, I'm also a part of the system, but I also want to raise a critical voice concerning that."

https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/mudriklab
https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/mudriklab/people/#gkit-popup

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

“Coral reefs are the most biodiverse habitat on the planet, despite covering less than 1 percent of the ocean area, over a quarter of all marine life exists in these rainforests of the sea. And if you think of a coral reef as a rainforest, the trees are the coral themselves. Which are incredible organisms, so, magic is really the right word to describe them. They're these animals that are one of the original forms of animal life, the second branch of the animal kingdom is actually Cnidaria, which includes coral and jellyfish. So, an ancient animal, but they have a symbiotic relationship with algae, and so inside the animal tissue are these zooxanthellae, these algae that do photosynthesis, like algae do, like plants do. It's able to capture sunlight and convert it into sugars and energy. And so, it's an animal, but it's got plants that live inside it, this algae, and then even more wild - it grows a skeleton that is rock!

So coral skeleton is actually calcium carbonate, which is limestone. And most of the limestone that exists on the earth was grown by these organisms. And so they're animals with plants inside of them that grow rock as skeleton. And the rock skeletons form these incredibly intricate structures that are coral reefs that can grow for thousands of miles and the corals can live for thousands of years to be seen from space and to create these essential ecosystems that are really the cornerstone of all of life in the ocean and, and therefore much of life on Earth.”

Coral reefs are the most biodiverse habitat on the planet, despite covering less than 1 percent of the ocean. Over a quarter of all marine life exists in these rain forests of the sea.

Gator Halpern is the Co-founder and President of Coral Vita, a mission-driven company working to restore our world’s dying coral reefs. He is a lifelong entrepreneur who is passionate about starting projects that can help create a better harmony between society and nature. His work has earned him a number of awards including being named a United Nation’s Young Champion of the Earth, a Forbes 30 Under 30 social entrepreneur, and an Echoing Green fellow. Before founding Coral Vita, he worked on development projects in Brazil, Peru, and South Africa. During his career, he has helped distribute millions of baby fish for aquaculture to remote villages in the Amazon, he’s analyzed the environmental effects of land-use change projects on three different continents, and worked for the World Wildlife Fund Global Marine Program. Gator founded Coral Vita during his graduate studies at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and he lives and works in the Bahamas where Coral Vita operates the world’s first commercial land-based coral farm for reef restoration.

https://coralvita.co

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Coral reefs are the most biodiverse habitat on the planet, despite covering less than 1 percent of the ocean. Over a quarter of all marine life exists in these rain forests of the sea.

Gator Halpern is the Co-founder and President of Coral Vita, a mission-driven company working to restore our world’s dying coral reefs. He is a lifelong entrepreneur who is passionate about starting projects that can help create a better harmony between society and nature. His work has earned him a number of awards including being named a United Nation’s Young Champion of the Earth, a Forbes 30 Under 30 social entrepreneur, and an Echoing Green fellow. Before founding Coral Vita, he worked on development projects in Brazil, Peru, and South Africa. During his career, he has helped distribute millions of baby fish for aquaculture to remote villages in the Amazon, he’s analyzed the environmental effects of land-use change projects on three different continents, and worked for the World Wildlife Fund Global Marine Program. Gator founded Coral Vita during his graduate studies at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and he lives and works in the Bahamas where Coral Vita operates the world’s first commercial land-based coral farm for reef restoration.

“Coral reefs are the most biodiverse habitat on the planet, despite covering less than 1 percent of the ocean area, over a quarter of all marine life exists in these rainforests of the sea. And if you think of a coral reef as a rainforest, the trees are the coral themselves. Which are incredible organisms, so, magic is really the right word to describe them. They're these animals that are one of the original forms of animal life, the second branch of the animal kingdom is actually Cnidaria, which includes coral and jellyfish. So, an ancient animal, but they have a symbiotic relationship with algae, and so inside the animal tissue are these zooxanthellae, these algae that do photosynthesis, like algae do, like plants do. It's able to capture sunlight and convert it into sugars and energy. And so, it's an animal, but it's got plants that live inside it, this algae, and then even more wild - it grows a skeleton that is rock!

So coral skeleton is actually calcium carbonate, which is limestone. And most of the limestone that exists on the earth was grown by these organisms. And so they're animals with plants inside of them that grow rock as skeleton. And the rock skeletons form these incredibly intricate structures that are coral reefs that can grow for thousands of miles and the corals can live for thousands of years to be seen from space and to create these essential ecosystems that are really the cornerstone of all of life in the ocean and, and therefore much of life on Earth.”

https://coralvita.co

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"I think, oftentimes, what'll happen as a trap when we talk about technology. People say, 'Well, what do you think is the future of artificial intelligence? Or what is the future of neural interfaces? Or what is the future of this?' And I always pause them and say, 'Wait a minute. If you're just talking about the technology, you're having the wrong conversation because it's not about the technology.'

So when people talk about what's the future of AI? I say, I don't know. What do we want the future of AI to be? And I think that's a shift that sounds quite subtle to some people, but it's really important because if you look at any piece of news or anything like that, they talk about AI as if it was a thing that was fully formed, that sprang out of the Earth and is now walking around doing things. And what will AI do in the future and how will it affect our jobs? It's not AI that's doing it. These are people. These are companies. These are organizations that are doing it. And that's where we need to keep our focus. What are those organizations doing. And also what do we want from it as humans?"

Brian David Johnson is Futurist in Residence at Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination, a professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, and the Director of the ASU Threatcasting Lab. He is Author of The Future You: How to Create the Life You Always Wanted,  Science Fiction Prototyping: Designing the Future with Science Fiction, 21st Century Robot: The Dr. Simon Egerton Stories, Humanity in the Machine: What Comes After Greed?, Screen Future: The Future of Entertainment, Computing, and the Devices We Love.

https://csi.asu.edu/people/brian-david-johnson/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

“My mandate focuses on the protection of those trying to protect the planet. Protection of defenders is my main topic. When I'm speaking to states or companies, it's always related to cases of defenders facing threats, attacks, or penalization by companies or governments, like the recent case of Paul Watson (founder of Sea Shepherd) in Denmark… When I travel to places like Peru, Colombia, or Honduras and meet Indigenous people, I realize they have a relationship with nature that we don't have anymore. They express that the food they eat, the water they drink, and the air they breathe goes beyond just air and food; it represents what they call Pachamama or Mother Earth. This is a cosmovision shared across various communities, not only in Latin America but globally.”

Michel Forst is a prominent human rights advocate and the UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention. He previously served as the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders (2014–2020) and has worked with Amnesty International, UNESCO, and the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions, championing protections for activists worldwide. Forst’s career is marked by his unwavering commitment to defending those at risk for advancing justice, environmental protection, and human rights globally.

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Brian David Johnson is Futurist in Residence at Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination, a professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, and the Director of the ASU Threatcasting Lab. He is Author of The Future You: How to Create the Life You Always Wanted,  Science Fiction Prototyping: Designing the Future with Science Fiction, 21st Century Robot: The Dr. Simon Egerton Stories, Humanity in the Machine: What Comes After Greed?, Screen Future: The Future of Entertainment, Computing, and the Devices We Love.

"I think, oftentimes, what'll happen as a trap when we talk about technology. People say, 'Well, what do you think is the future of artificial intelligence? Or what is the future of neural interfaces? Or what is the future of this?' And I always pause them and say, 'Wait a minute. If you're just talking about the technology, you're having the wrong conversation because it's not about the technology.'

So when people talk about what's the future of AI? I say, I don't know. What do we want the future of AI to be? And I think that's a shift that sounds quite subtle to some people, but it's really important because if you look at any piece of news or anything like that, they talk about AI as if it was a thing that was fully formed, that sprang out of the Earth and is now walking around doing things. And what will AI do in the future and how will it affect our jobs? It's not AI that's doing it. These are people. These are companies. These are organizations that are doing it. And that's where we need to keep our focus. What are those organizations doing. And also what do we want from it as humans?"

https://csi.asu.edu/people/brian-david-johnson/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"I am the type of person who's endlessly interested in different topics, and that can lead to really fun things. I'm also very worried about the future of humanity. Maybe that's an outgrowth of being a parent. I have three teenagers, and I worry about where AI is headed. We are at a really interesting point in technology, and it's sort of an honor to be alive right now to witness all this. But to go back to consciousness, this is a key aspect of my sense of life, and it always bothers me when people haven't thought about it. Like I asked my husband the other day: how can people go through life without really thinking about or appreciating the fact that they are conscious beings?"

Will AI become conscious? President Biden has just unveiled a new executive order on AI — the U.S. government’s first action of its kind — requiring new safety assessments, equity and civil rights guidance, and research on AI’s impact on the labor market. With this governance in place, can tech companies be counted on to do the right thing for humanity? 

Susan Schneider is a philosopher, artificial intelligence expert, and founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University. She is author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, and The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. She held the NASA Chair with NASA and the Distinguished Scholar Chair at the Library of Congress. She is now working on projects related to advancements in AI policy and technology, drawing from neuroscience research and philosophical developments and writing a new book on the shape of intelligent systems.

www.fau.edu/artsandletters/philosophy/susan-schneider/index
www.fau.edu/future-mind/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Will AI become conscious? President Biden has just unveiled a new executive order on AI — the U.S. government’s first action of its kind — requiring new safety assessments, equity and civil rights guidance, and research on AI’s impact on the labor market. With this governance in place, can tech companies be counted on to do the right thing for humanity? 

Susan Schneider is a philosopher, artificial intelligence expert, and founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University. She is author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, and The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. She held the NASA Chair with NASA and the Distinguished Scholar Chair at the Library of Congress. She is now working on projects related to advancements in AI policy and technology, drawing from neuroscience research and philosophical developments and writing a new book on the shape of intelligent systems.

"I am the type of person who's endlessly interested in different topics, and that can lead to really fun things. I'm also very worried about the future of humanity. Maybe that's an outgrowth of being a parent. I have three teenagers, and I worry about where AI is headed. We are at a really interesting point in technology, and it's sort of an honor to be alive right now to witness all this. But to go back to consciousness, this is a key aspect of my sense of life, and it always bothers me when people haven't thought about it. Like I asked my husband the other day: how can people go through life without really thinking about or appreciating the fact that they are conscious beings?"

www.fau.edu/artsandletters/philosophy/susan-schneider/index
www.fau.edu/future-mind/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

What will the future look like? What are the risks and opportunities of AI? What role can we play in designing the future we want to live in?

Voices of philosophers, futurists, AI experts, science fiction authors, activists, and lawyers reflecting on AI, technology, and the Future of Humanity. All voices in this episode are from our interviews for The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast.

Voices on this episode are:

DR. SUSAN SCHNEIDER
American philosopher and artificial intelligence expert. She is the founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University. Author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, and The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness.
www.fau.edu/artsandletters/philosophy/susan-schneider/index

NICK BOSTROM
Founder and Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford, Philosopher, Author of NYTimes Bestseller Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Bostrom’s academic work has been translated into more than 30 languages. He is a repeat main TED speaker and has been on Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list twice and was included in Prospect’s World Thinkers list, the youngest person in the top 15.
https://nickbostrom.com
https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk

BRIAN DAVID JOHNSON

Futurist in residence at Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination, a professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the Director of the ASU Threatcasting Lab. He is Author of The Future You: How to Create the Life You Always Wanted, Science Fiction Prototyping: Designing the Future with Science Fiction, 21st Century Robot: The Dr. Simon Egerton Stories, Humanity in the Machine: What Comes After Greed?, Screen Future: The Future of Entertainment, Computing, and the Devices We Love.

https://csi.asu.edu/people/brian-david-johnson

DEAN SPADE
Professor at SeattleU’s School of Law, Author of Mutual Aid, Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), and Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law.

www.deanspade.net

ALLEN STEELE
Science Fiction Author. He has been awarded a number of Hugos, Asimov's Readers, and Locus Awards. of the Coyote Trilogy, Arkwright, and other books. His books include Coyote Trilogy and Arkwright. He is a former member of the Board of Directors and Board of Advisors for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He has also served as an advisor for the Space Frontier Foundation. In 2001, he testified before the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics of the U.S. House of Representatives in hearings regarding space exploration in the 21st century.

www.allensteele.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"It's such a difficult and huge, huge, huge issue. And for me, it's absolutely not one-sided. And it's not a simple answer. Anybody who thinks that AI is going to completely save us is fooling themselves. And anybody who thinks that AI is just evil or harmful is also overlooking the very obvious benefits from drug and cancer research and other illnesses. And there are so many things that AI can help us solve very quickly that we don't yet have solutions to. That said, AI is made by us and it is filled with our own biases. And when you enable an incredibly smart, but biased and flawed thing to rule your life, that's never going to end up with a good outcome.

So I think we need a lot of regulations and that we should be very scared of what happens when we allow AI to become too smart because at that point regulations aren't going to help. I honestly don't know if we've crossed that threshold. If we haven't, we're very close to crossing the threshold, in my opinion, of not being able to control what we've created, and that does scare me.

For the creative process in particular, beyond the fact that it wouldn't make any sense for people to use AI because you can't copyright it, so studios and networks wouldn't own their own material, I can't even begin to tell you how many problems I see with using AI in the writing or directing process.

I think science fiction is its own animal. This is why it has always been my first love. And it really allows you to think about our connection to the universe, to kind of be a futurist and think about what society could look like or has looked like. And I think there's no other genre for me, at least, where I feel like action and consequence and forecasting and imagination, all of those things can kind of come together in one story. Stories are inherently subjective. There's only one way to tell a great story and that is for the subject and the storyteller to have an authentic and strong point of view."

Lindsey Anderson Beer wrote and executive produced the hit Netflix original dramedy Sierra Burgess is a Loser before making the jump to direct the horror genre with Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, starring Jackson White and Natalie Alyn Lind. The story is based on an untold chapter of Stephen King's self-proclaimed, scariest property of all time. Up next, she will helm Paramount’s Sleepy Hollow reboot as the writer, director, and producer. She also has several projects in various phases of development and production, including Disney's live action remake of Bambi, New Line's Hello Kitty, and Universal's Fast and Furious spinoff, which she wrote with Geneva Robertson-Dworet. Under her production banner Lab Brew, Lord of the Flies will be directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Patrick Ness for Warner Bros.

www.imdb.com/name/nm5170222/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Lindsey Anderson Beer wrote and executive produced the hit Netflix original dramedy Sierra Burgess is a Loser before making the jump to direct the horror genre with Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, starring Jackson White and Natalie Alyn Lind. The story is based on an untold chapter of Stephen King's self-proclaimed, scariest property of all time. Up next, she will helm Paramount’s Sleepy Hollow reboot as the writer, director, and producer. She also has several projects in various phases of development and production, including Disney's live action remake of Bambi, New Line's Hello Kitty, and Universal's Fast and Furious spinoff, which she wrote with Geneva Robertson-Dworet. Under her production banner Lab Brew, Lord of the Flies will be directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Patrick Ness for Warner Bros.

"It's such a difficult and huge, huge, huge issue. And for me, it's absolutely not one-sided. And it's not a simple answer. Anybody who thinks that AI is going to completely save us is fooling themselves. And anybody who thinks that AI is just evil or harmful is also overlooking the very obvious benefits from drug and cancer research and other illnesses. And there are so many things that AI can help us solve very quickly that we don't yet have solutions to. That said, AI is made by us and it is filled with our own biases. And when you enable an incredibly smart, but biased and flawed thing to rule your life, that's never going to end up with a good outcome.

So I think we need a lot of regulations and that we should be very scared of what happens when we allow AI to become too smart because at that point regulations aren't going to help. I honestly don't know if we've crossed that threshold. If we haven't, we're very close to crossing the threshold, in my opinion, of not being able to control what we've created, and that does scare me.

For the creative process in particular, beyond the fact that it wouldn't make any sense for people to use AI because you can't copyright it, so studios and networks wouldn't own their own material, I can't even begin to tell you how many problems I see with using AI in the writing or directing process.

I think science fiction is its own animal. This is why it has always been my first love. And it really allows you to think about our connection to the universe, to kind of be a futurist and think about what society could look like or has looked like. And I think there's no other genre for me, at least, where I feel like action and consequence and forecasting and imagination, all of those things can kind of come together in one story. Stories are inherently subjective. There's only one way to tell a great story and that is for the subject and the storyteller to have an authentic and strong point of view."

www.imdb.com/name/nm5170222/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

But at the same time, the world is building new megacities that are going to house tens of millions of people, and we now have the opportunity to build them for the 21st century. We don't have to follow the same design patterns of the past. So, this now opens up enormous creativity, experimentation, and innovation. One study has found that the single thing that makes people most unhappy in America is commuting time, being stuck in traffic. That makes people more frustrated and depressed than anything.”

Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide.

"Cities are going to be core to solving this problem. However, the whole world is vulnerable to climate change in different ways. So cities are going to be critical. Let's not forget we already have 8 billion people on the planet, and it's growing.

And so there is a lot that we need to do to both retrofit our existing cities, which is expensive and hard because they were laid down, sometimes, hundreds of years ago with different assumptions about how one should live. For example, L.A. was built on the highway and based on the automobile, so it's very difficult for L.A. as a city to now go, okay, we want to get back to providing rail transit for everybody. And they're doing it, but it's expensive, and it's hard to retrofit but essential work that has to be done.

https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitz
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu
www.yaleclimateconnections.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide.

"Cities are going to be core to solving this problem. However, the whole world is vulnerable to climate change in different ways. So cities are going to be critical. Let's not forget we already have 8 billion people on the planet, and it's growing.

And so there is a lot that we need to do to both retrofit our existing cities, which is expensive and hard because they were laid down, sometimes, hundreds of years ago with different assumptions about how one should live. For example, L.A. was built on the highway and based on the automobile, so it's very difficult for L.A. as a city to now go, okay, we want to get back to providing rail transit for everybody. And they're doing it, but it's expensive, and it's hard to retrofit but essential work that has to be done.

But at the same time, the world is building new megacities that are going to house tens of millions of people, and we now have the opportunity to build them for the 21st century. We don't have to follow the same design patterns of the past. So, this now opens up enormous creativity, experimentation, and innovation. One study has found that the single thing that makes people most unhappy in America is commuting time, being stuck in traffic. That makes people more frustrated and depressed than anything.”

https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitz
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu
www.yaleclimateconnections.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with Professor Veena Dubal about how such companies have exported globally a technique of algorithmic wage discrimination that pays workers based on data to which they have no access. Owners dangle bonuses before workers but take away work from them as they draw close to achieving their targets; they use psychological tricks derived from video games to create a casino-like environment where the house always wins. Dubal urges us not to fall into the trap of competing against the house, but back to “good old-fashioned organizing.” This is one of the most powerful and significant episodes of Speaking Out of Place.

Professor Veena Dubal’s research focuses broadly on law, technology, and precarious workers, combining legal and empirical analysis to explore issues of labor and inequality. Her work encompasses a range of topics, including the impact of digital technologies and emerging legal frameworks on workers' lives, the interplay between law, work, and identity, and the role of law and lawyers in solidarity movements.

Dubal has written numerous articles in top law and social science journals and publishes essays in the popular press. Her research has been cited internationally in legal decisions, including by the California Supreme Court, and her research and commentary are regularly featured in media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, CNN, etc. TechCrunch has called Prof. Dubal an “unlikely star in the tech world,” and her expertise is frequently sought by regulatory bodies, legislators, judges, workers, and unions in the U.S. and Europe.  Professor Dubal is completing a book manuscript that presents a theoretical reappraisal of how low-income immigrant and racial minority workers experience and respond to shifting technologies and regulatory regimes. The manuscript draws upon a decade of interdisciplinary ethnographic research on taxi and ride-hail regulations and worker organizing and advocacy in San Francisco.

Prof. Dubal received a B.A. from Stanford University and holds J.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, where she conducted an ethnography of the San Francisco taxi industry. The subject of her doctoral research arose from her work as a public interest attorney and Berkeley Law Foundation Fellow at the Asian Law Caucus where she founded a taxi worker project and represented Muslim Americans in civil rights cases. Prof. Dubal completed a post-doctoral fellowship at her alma mater, Stanford University. She returned to Stanford again in 2022 as a Residential Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.  Prof. Dubal is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the Fulbright, for her scholarship and previous work as a public interest lawyer.

www.palumbo-liu.com 
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20

"I'm really very glad. I was happy to see that within my lifetime that the prospects of not just Mars, but in fact interstellar space is being taken seriously. I've been at two conferences where we were talking about building the first starship within this century. One of my later books, Arkwright, is about such a project. I saw that Elon Musk is building Starship One, I wish him all the best. And I envy anybody who goes.

I wish I were a younger person and in better health. Somebody asked me some time ago, would you go to Mars? And I said, 'I can't do it now. I've got a bum pancreas, and I'm 65 years old, and I'm not exactly the prime prospect for doing this. If you asked me 40 years ago would I go, I would have said: in a heartbeat!' I would gladly leave behind almost everything. I don't think I'd be glad about leaving my wife and family behind, but I'd be glad to go live on another planet, perhaps for the rest of my life, just for the chance to explore a new world, to be one of the settlers in a new world.

And I think this is something that's being taken seriously. It is very possible. We've got to be careful about how we do this. And we've got to be careful, particularly about the rationale of the people who are doing this. It bothers me that Elon Musk has lately taken a shift to the Far Right. I don't know why that is. But I'd love to be able to sit down and talk with him about these things and try to understand why he has done such a right thing, but for what seems to be wrong reasons."

What does the future of space exploration look like? How can we unlock the opportunities of outer space without repeating the mistakes of colonization and exploitation committed on Earth? How can we ensure AI and new technologies reflect our values and the world we want to live in?

 Allen Steele is a science fiction author and journalist. He has written novels, short stories, and essays and been awarded a number of Hugos, Asimov's Readers, and Locus Awards. He’s known for his Coyote Trilogy and Arkwright. He is a former member of the Board of Directors and Board of Advisors for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He has also served as an advisor for the Space Frontier Foundation. In 2001, he testified before the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics of the U.S. House of Representatives in hearings regarding space exploration in the 21st century.

www.allensteele.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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Photo from a field trip to Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth NH, now closed. Photo credit: Chuck Peterson

“I think AI is sort of inevitable in some ways. It is not very intelligent right now; it is probably closer to artificial stupidity, but it's a question of time before it becomes smarter and smarter. We need to tackle the right to use question and the value question now as it is developing. It can amplify both the positive possibilities as well as the negative consequences, and we want to make sure that it benefits the largest number of people on Earth.

And systems themselves. Are there guidelines? Are there principles? The Club of Rome group has subgroups who are looking at AI, proposing a constitution for AI, and trying to influence its development, understanding fully well that almost $300 billion has been poured into AI already by the United States venture capital, and it is going to start having impacts. We can't stop it, but while the train is moving, we are trying to make sure some guardrails get into place that everybody plays by. All these transformations cannot be done one by one; they have to happen together in order to have an overall impact, and that is the challenge that not a single organization like the Club of Rome or a university or somebody can accomplish alone. All of us need to get involved.”

Paul Shrivastava is Co-President of The Club of Rome and a Professor of Management and Organisations at Pennsylvania State University. He founded the UNESCO Chair for Arts and Sustainable Enterprise at ICN Business School, Nancy, France, and the ONE Division of the Academy of Management. He was the Executive Director of Future Earth, where he established its secretariat for global environmental change programs, and has published extensively on both sustainable management and crisis management.

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

What does the future of space exploration look like? How can we unlock the opportunities of outer space without repeating the mistakes of colonization and exploitation committed on Earth? How can we ensure AI and new technologies reflect our values and the world we want to live in?

 Allen Steele is a science fiction author and journalist. He has written novels, short stories, and essays and been awarded a number of Hugos, Asimov's Readers, and Locus Awards. He’s known for his Coyote Trilogy and Arkwright. He is a former member of the Board of Directors and Board of Advisors for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He has also served as an advisor for the Space Frontier Foundation. In 2001, he testified before the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics of the U.S. House of Representatives in hearings regarding space exploration in the 21st century.

"I'm really very glad. I was happy to see that within my lifetime that the prospects of not just Mars, but in fact interstellar space is being taken seriously. I've been at two conferences where we were talking about building the first starship within this century. One of my later books, Arkwright, is about such a project. I saw that Elon Musk is building Starship One, I wish him all the best. And I envy anybody who goes.

I wish I were a younger person and in better health. Somebody asked me some time ago, would you go to Mars? And I said, 'I can't do it now. I've got a bum pancreas, and I'm 65 years old, and I'm not exactly the prime prospect for doing this. If you asked me 40 years ago would I go, I would have said: in a heartbeat!' I would gladly leave behind almost everything. I don't think I'd be glad about leaving my wife and family behind, but I'd be glad to go live on another planet, perhaps for the rest of my life, just for the chance to explore a new world, to be one of the settlers in a new world.

And I think this is something that's being taken seriously. It is very possible. We've got to be careful about how we do this. And we've got to be careful, particularly about the rationale of the people who are doing this. It bothers me that Elon Musk has lately taken a shift to the Far Right. I don't know why that is. But I'd love to be able to sit down and talk with him about these things and try to understand why he has done such a right thing, but for what seems to be wrong reasons."

www.allensteele.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"I believe that AI will be an incredibly useful tool. Humanity has endured primarily because of its inherent characteristics. I see things like NFTs and AI and Spotify and file sharing, and there was a time when I moved to New York where I could drift through the empty museum galleries of the moment, and have my epiphanies. Now you go to the same museum, it's like the Tokyo subway. You're, you know, it's a bunch of sardines. That's what's happening because there are too many people in the world for the delivery system to any longer be affected. Museums are delivery systems. We're moving into a world of the private museum now because the great collectors are building their own museums.

I am happy to report since I've seen you, I have a museum in South Korea in my name. So, you know, I'm funneling, channeling, putting hundreds and hundreds of prints into this museum in Busan in an attempt to personalize the situation, but by the time you've got eight billion people living on the planet Earth for a hundred years, which I plan to do. There's a lot of people like me. We know that people are living longer now thanks to medicine and nutrition. 

I do tend to think that with file sharing, more people are listening to more music than ever before. You would have previously had to put a Tower Records on every street corner in order to effectively distribute that much music. Now, with NFTs, obviously, I, as the artist, as the audience spreads for a work of art quite often the content goes down. You could have a photograph and sell the original print and have 100 percent of your attention, or it could be reproduced on the cover of the New York Times at 72 dpi, 3 by 4 inches, and you'd get some of it, but you wouldn't get the whole thing, but a million people would see it. Now with the digital situation, working digitally, if the image stays in that digital space permanently, the only real shortcoming is the excessively bright, heavy saturated screen on your computer that tends to exaggerate things a bit."

How does the mind influence the mind? The mind cannot function without memory. And memory is just the mind aware of itself. So how do images tell us how we see and who we are?

Ralph Gibson is one of the most interesting American photographers of our time. His international renown is based on his work, which is shown and collected by some of the world’s leading museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J.P. Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Creative Center for Photography in Tucson, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, and the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland.

Gibson’s works reveal a meticulous aesthetic and visual territory edging on the surreal. His recent books include his memoir Self Exposure, Sacred Land: Israel before and after Time, and Secret of Light, which accompanied his exhibition at the Deichtorhallen House of Photography in Hamburg. He is a Leica Hall of Fame Inductee and has been awarded the French Legion of Honor. In 2022, The Gibson | Goeun Museum of Photography devoted to his work opened in Busan, South Korea.

www.ralphgibson.com
www.deichtorhallen.de/en/ausstellung/ralph-gibson
www.gibsongoeunmuseum.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

How does the mind influence the mind? The mind cannot function without memory. And memory is just the mind aware of itself. So how do images tell us how we see and who we are?

Ralph Gibson is one of the most interesting American photographers of our time. His international renown is based on his work, which is shown and collected by some of the world’s leading museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J.P. Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Creative Center for Photography in Tucson, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, and the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland.

Gibson’s works reveal a meticulous aesthetic and visual territory edging on the surreal. His recent books include his memoir Self Exposure, Sacred Land: Israel before and after Time, and Secret of Light, which accompanied his exhibition at the Deichtorhallen House of Photography in Hamburg. He is a Leica Hall of Fame Inductee and has been awarded the French Legion of Honor. In 2022, The Gibson | Goeun Museum of Photography devoted to his work opened in Busan, South Korea.

"I believe that AI will be an incredibly useful tool. Humanity has endured primarily because of its inherent characteristics. I see things like NFTs and AI and Spotify and file sharing, and there was a time when I moved to New York where I could drift through the empty museum galleries of the moment, and have my epiphanies. Now you go to the same museum, it's like the Tokyo subway. You're, you know, it's a bunch of sardines. That's what's happening because there are too many people in the world for the delivery system to any longer be affected. Museums are delivery systems. We're moving into a world of the private museum now because the great collectors are building their own museums.

I am happy to report since I've seen you, I have a museum in South Korea in my name. So, you know, I'm funneling, channeling, putting hundreds and hundreds of prints into this museum in Busan in an attempt to personalize the situation, but by the time you've got eight billion people living on the planet Earth for a hundred years, which I plan to do. There's a lot of people like me. We know that people are living longer now thanks to medicine and nutrition. 

I do tend to think that with file sharing, more people are listening to more music than ever before. You would have previously had to put a Tower Records on every street corner in order to effectively distribute that much music. Now, with NFTs, obviously, I, as the artist, as the audience spreads for a work of art quite often the content goes down. You could have a photograph and sell the original print and have 100 percent of your attention, or it could be reproduced on the cover of the New York Times at 72 dpi, 3 by 4 inches, and you'd get some of it, but you wouldn't get the whole thing, but a million people would see it. Now with the digital situation, working digitally, if the image stays in that digital space permanently, the only real shortcoming is the excessively bright, heavy saturated screen on your computer that tends to exaggerate things a bit."

www.ralphgibson.com
www.deichtorhallen.de/en/ausstellung/ralph-gibson
www.gibsongoeunmuseum.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Rob Verchick is one of the nation’s leading scholars in disaster and climate change law and a former EPA official in the Obama administration. He holds the Gauthier-St. Martin Eminent Scholar Chair in Environmental Law at  Loyola University New Orleans. Professor Verchick is also a Senior Fellow in Disaster Resilience at Tulane University and the President of the Center for Progressive Reform, a research and advocacy organization that advocates for solutions to our most pressing societal challenges. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including The Octopus in the Parking Garage. A Call for Climate Resilience.

“Well, there are good stories and bad stories. So the good stories are, Oh my gosh, renewable energy is just a wonderful technology story with solar panels getting as cheap as almost anything. Wind turbine technology. We're working on offshore wind farm planning in the Gulf right now, and we're going to build wind turbines that can survive hurricanes. So there's a lot of technology going on in energy storage that involves batteries. And I'm hoping that at some point we're going to get to batteries that don't use things like lithium so much, so that we don't have to be involved so much in the mining of those kinds of things.

There's a lot of really interesting technology going on with using natural landscapes to protect against flooding and storms. So we have a coastal restoration effort in Louisiana, one of the largest in the world. And what we're experimenting with is diverting water from the Mississippi River to replenish sediment and grow new wetlands on our tattered shores. And that's technology, too. I mean, we've got some of the best engineering firms in the world down here, and NASA trying to figure out exactly how to do that. And if we can do it, we'll export that technology all over the place and help rebuild coastlines. So those are some really bright spots in terms of the technology that I see.”
https://robverchick.com
https://works.bepress.com/robert_verchick
www.progressivereform.org/

Twitter/X/Instagram/Facebook: @robverchick @robsoctopusbook

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But I would also like to see the government really start to restrict new fossil fuel developments because it's been made very clear by the IPCC, by the International Energy Agency, by every scientific paper you could read that promoting new developments is completely incompatible with a safe climate."

Now in the 21st century, with an abundance of renewable technologies, why is the world still using 18th-century energy technology? How can each of us harness our unique skills to help solve the climate crisis?

Lesley Hughes is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and Interim Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science & Engineering at Macquarie University. She is an ecologist whose main research interest has been the impacts of climate change on species and ecosystems, and the implications of climate change for conservation. She was a Lead Author of the IPCC’s 4th and 5th Assessment Report, Director for the WWF Australia and federal Climate Commissioner and is now a Councillor and Director with the Climate Council of Australia. She is also a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.

"We need a radical transformation of investment in emissions reduction. We need some pretty strong regulatory policies. I think we've been relying on voluntary action for so long, and it's clear that that has not been enough. So I'm an advocate of far more stringent stepping in of governments to regulate. I don't know whether we are going to achieve the 43% emissions reduction target. I hope we meet and beat that. At the moment, things are not looking all that good. But on the other hand, Australia is a country with almost unlimited renewable resources. We're the sunniest country in the world. One of the windiest. We have great engineers and great scientists. We have the means and the public concern and support to move much faster. It's going to be a matter for the government to bring in policies that accelerate the transition from using 18th-century energy technology to 21st-century energy technology.

https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/lesley-hughes
www.climatecouncil.org.au

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Now in the 21st century, with an abundance of renewable technologies, why is the world still using 18th-century energy technology? How can each of us harness our unique skills to help solve the climate crisis?

Lesley Hughes is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and Interim Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science & Engineering at Macquarie University. She is an ecologist whose main research interest has been the impacts of climate change on species and ecosystems, and the implications of climate change for conservation. She was a Lead Author of the IPCC’s 4th and 5th Assessment Report, Director for the WWF Australia and federal Climate Commissioner and is now a Councillor and Director with the Climate Council of Australia. She is also a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.

"We need a radical transformation of investment in emissions reduction. We need some pretty strong regulatory policies. I think we've been relying on voluntary action for so long, and it's clear that that has not been enough. So I'm an advocate of far more stringent stepping in of governments to regulate. I don't know whether we are going to achieve the 43% emissions reduction target. I hope we meet and beat that. At the moment, things are not looking all that good. But on the other hand, Australia is a country with almost unlimited renewable resources. We're the sunniest country in the world. One of the windiest. We have great engineers and great scientists. We have the means and the public concern and support to move much faster. It's going to be a matter for the government to bring in policies that accelerate the transition from using 18th-century energy technology to 21st-century energy technology.

But I would also like to see the government really start to restrict new fossil fuel developments because it's been made very clear by the IPCC, by the International Energy Agency, by every scientific paper you could read that promoting new developments is completely incompatible with a safe climate."

https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/lesley-hughes
www.climatecouncil.org.au

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

What happens when we die? What happens to our memories and consciousness when our bodies cease to be?  In the end, is it the things we did and the people we loved that give our lives meaning?

Shehan Karunatilaka is the multi-award winning author. He is known for his novels dealing with the history, politics, and folklore of his home country of Sri Lanka. He won the Commonwealth Book Prize and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for his debut novel, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, and the Booker Prize 2022 for his second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. In addition to novels, he has written rock songs, screenplays and travel stories. Born in Colombo, he studied in New Zealand and has lived and worked in London, Amsterdam, and Singapore.

www.shehanwriter.com
https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324064824

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Photo credit: David Parry/Booker Prize Foundation

What happens when we die? What happens to our memories and consciousness when our bodies cease to be?  In the end, is it the things we did and the people we loved that give our lives meaning?

Shehan Karunatilaka is the multi-award winning author. He is known for his novels dealing with the history, politics, and folklore of his home country of Sri Lanka. He won the Commonwealth Book Prize and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for his debut novel, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, and the Booker Prize 2022 for his second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. In addition to novels, he has written rock songs, screenplays and travel stories. Born in Colombo, he studied in New Zealand and has lived and worked in London, Amsterdam, and Singapore.

"But I always think new ideas are what have led us forward. And new ideas, they come out of the humanities. They come out of understanding the classics, psychology, philosophy, and sociology, and being able to think.

I think I'm okay for a couple more books before the robots start writing Booker Prize-winning novels. At the moment I think we're okay because I've tried this technology, and I think it's at the level of a junior copywriter who works hard. The first draft and all of that. But who knows where it's going to go? And we're all reminded this technology is in its infancy. So it's conceivable that these things are going to be writing novels and writing pretty good novels. Perhaps AI can write a formulaic detective thriller? But I don't think it's going to produce a Margaret Atwood or a Salman Rushdie. I think the real challenge is to write stuff that hasn't been written before. And that's what we are all trying to do. So the technology can replicate what's been done before, but the real novels that are going to move us, the stories that are going to move us, are the stuff that hasn't been done before. And that's where I think writers come in. And that's where an understanding of the humanities and being able to come up with new ideas rather than just replicate or rehash new ideas...I think we're still going to need human brains. And there's still room for originality because we think everything's been done, but I think it's just a fraction. There are lots of ideas out there, so I'm hopeful. I'm not too worried. And if this ChatGPT will help me. Instead of spending seven years on a novel, if I can knock out a novel in seven weeks, I'll be happier. The more writing I can do."

www.shehanwriter.com
https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324064824

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Photo credit: David Parry/Booker Prize Foundation

"Death is the imperfection of life. Because life is just a fleeting thing for everyone, for all of us. And so there's no way that a black box AI can know death. So AI can never, in that sense, know life, because every day you walk, you think. So AI doesn't touch us because we exist on a level of such mortal frailty and mortal cruelty, and mortal love, and hate, and jealousy, and insecurity and freedom and joy and wackiness, and being in the moment.

We used to edit film on a flatbed. And every time you would take a scissors and make a cut and if you made the wrong cut you had to put the pieces back together and it wasn't a simple little thing.

I believe Angels and Insects was the last film edited on a flatbed. Anybody who looks at that film sees the difference in the edit because when you choose to do something really thoughtfully and carefully as opposed to like, you know, I could put that scene there and I could put that scene here and what we've done today is we've made everything so fast and so easy that I think there's something to the creative process about it being a little bit more of an exploration than it is wham bam, it's done. Let's go have lunch. And I think there is something to the creative process where it's allowed to develop. It's called process because it is a process." -Catherine Curtin

Why do we make art? What can the performing arts teach us about how to engage in dialogues to overcome conflict and division?

Our guests today are actress Catherine Curtin and artistic director Kate Mueth. Curtin is known for her roles on Stranger Things, Homeland, and Insecure. She played correctional officer Wanda Bell in Orange Is the New Black, and for this role she was a joint winner of two Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series.

Mueth is the Founder and Artistic Director of the award-winning dance theater company The Neo-Political Cowgirls that seeks to deepen and challenge the ways in which audiences experience stories and awaken their human connection. Based in East Hampton, New York they have performed to audiences in America and Europe.

www.imdb.com/name/nm0193160/
www.npcowgirls.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Why do we make art? What can the performing arts teach us about how to engage in dialogues to overcome conflict and division?

Our guests today are actress Catherine Curtin and artistic director Kate Mueth. Curtin is known for her roles on Stranger Things, Homeland, and Insecure. She played correctional officer Wanda Bell in Orange Is the New Black, and for this role she was a joint winner of two Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series.

Mueth is the Founder and Artistic Director of the award-winning dance theater company The Neo-Political Cowgirls that seeks to deepen and challenge the ways in which audiences experience stories and awaken their human connection. Based in East Hampton, New York they have performed to audiences in America and Europe.

"Death is the imperfection of life. Because life is just a fleeting thing for everyone, for all of us. And so there's no way that a black box AI can know death. So AI can never, in that sense, know life, because every day you walk, you think. So AI doesn't touch us because we exist on a level of such mortal frailty and mortal cruelty, and mortal love, and hate, and jealousy, and insecurity and freedom and joy and wackiness, and being in the moment.

We used to edit film on a flatbed. And every time you would take a scissors and make a cut and if you made the wrong cut you had to put the pieces back together and it wasn't a simple little thing.

I believe Angels and Insects was the last film edited on a flatbed. Anybody who looks at that film sees the difference in the edit because when you choose to do something really thoughtfully and carefully as opposed to like, you know, I could put that scene there and I could put that scene here and what we've done today is we've made everything so fast and so easy that I think there's something to the creative process about it being a little bit more of an exploration than it is wham bam, it's done. Let's go have lunch. And I think there is something to the creative process where it's allowed to develop. It's called process because it is a process." -Catherine Curtin

www.imdb.com/name/nm0193160/
www.npcowgirls.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

What influence do billionaires have on politics, journalism, and the technology that shapes our lives? What drives people to seek absolute power, and how can we hold them accountable?

Darryl  Cunningham is a cartoonist and author of Science Tales, Psychiatric Tales, The Age of Selfishness, and Billionaires: The Lives of the Rich and Powerful. Cunningham is also well-known for his comic strips, which have been featured on the websites Forbidden Planet and Act-i-vate collective, among others. others. His more recent work includes a graphic novel on Elon Musk, titled Elon Musk: Investigation into a New Master of the World.

“It's far too early to say how AI is going to shake out. A lot of it will come to nothing, like many new technologies. VR came along, and people thought it would be a big thing, but it became a niche for a few kinds of people. AI might find a place ultimately, but it has to come from people. We have to make choices. Will people be happy with processed movies done with a few keywords, or will they want to hear the actual voice of a human being? In the end, it's up to the audience, and that's us. We will shape it.”

Episode Website with Feature Article

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

"One of the things we have to do is we have to increase the rate of learning. We are entering into increasingly uncharted territory and not just in terms of climate change, but in many other areas of activity, AI being one of those, of course. And I think what we need to do is we need to find ways to learn more quickly, as a society, as communities, as villagers, as professional groups. And there are advantages of using some of those technologies in terms of accelerating that learning.

We need to be discerning about the technologies we use, and we need to think about the relationships between those technology and social outcomes, environmental outcomes, how to redesign our systems, and how to redesign our governance. So I think there's going to be a need for a lot more thought and creativity in the future."

Our window to adapt to a warming world is narrowing quickly. What it will take to avert the climate crises?
Mark Howden is Director of the Climate Change Institute at The Australian National University and a Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a member of the Australian National Climate Science Advisory Committee. He has been a major contributor to the IPCC since 1991, with roles in the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and now Sixth Assessment Reports, sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with other IPCC participants and Al Gore. He was on the US Federal Advisory Committee for the 3rd National Climate Assessment and contributes to several major national and international science and policy advisory bodies. Mark has worked on climate variability, climate change, innovation and adoption issues for over 30 years in partnership with many industry, community and policy groups via both research and science-policy roles.

https://iceds.anu.edu.au/people/academics/professor-mark-howden
https://iceds.anu.edu.au/
www.ipcc.ch

www.creativeprocess.info
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Our window to adapt to a warming world is narrowing quickly. What it will take to avert the climate crises?
Mark Howden is Director of the Climate Change Institute at The Australian National University and a Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a member of the Australian National Climate Science Advisory Committee. He has been a major contributor to the IPCC since 1991, with roles in the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and now Sixth Assessment Reports, sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with other IPCC participants and Al Gore. He was on the US Federal Advisory Committee for the 3rd National Climate Assessment and contributes to several major national and international science and policy advisory bodies. Mark has worked on climate variability, climate change, innovation and adoption issues for over 30 years in partnership with many industry, community and policy groups via both research and science-policy roles.

"One of the things we have to do is we have to increase the rate of learning. We are entering into increasingly uncharted territory and not just in terms of climate change, but in many other areas of activity, AI being one of those, of course. And I think what we need to do is we need to find ways to learn more quickly, as a society, as communities, as villagers, as professional groups. And there are advantages of using some of those technologies in terms of accelerating that learning.

We need to be discerning about the technologies we use, and we need to think about the relationships between those technology and social outcomes, environmental outcomes, how to redesign our systems, and how to redesign our governance. So I think there's going to be a need for a lot more thought and creativity in the future."

https://iceds.anu.edu.au/people/academics/professor-mark-howden
https://iceds.anu.edu.au/
www.ipcc.ch

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Photo credit: Lannon Harley/ANU

Wildfire season is starting earlier and lasting longer due to global warming across the world. What will we do to save the world on fire? How can we cure our addiction to fossil fuels which is verging on pyromania?

Simon Dalby is author of Pyromania: Fire and Geopolitics in a Climate-Disrupted World and Professor Emeritus at Wilfrid Laurier University. His other books are Rethinking Environmental Security, Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalization, Security, Sustainability, and Security and Environmental Change. He’s co-editor of Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, and Reframing Climate Change: Constructing Ecological Geopolitics.

"It's crucial because of how we design cities so we can live better together. If we are going to be sustainable: less personal car ownership, a lot more public transport, a lot more bicycles or scooters - they dramatically reduce pollution and they allow everybody to breathe easier because there's much less pollution from internal combustion engines actually in cities. All of this suggests that we need to reimagine cities as public spaces that are not dependent on the individual use of cars."

https://experts.wlu.ca/simon-dalby-1
www.agendapub.com/page/detail/pyromania/?k=9781788216500

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