We Mustn’t Talk Ourselves Into Helplessness. We Have Agency - Says Simon Bell
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
We we cre we create something powerful. And we kind of the knee jerk is almost instantly to look forward s as an aggressor. I don't know whether that's our own internal Viking being projected onto whatever we make. But Why do we necessarily think that something we make will aggressively seek to destroy us? I think that says more about the psychology of group mentality than it does about the actual things we make.
Yeah, we have Professor Simon Bell here, Professor Emeritus, and under the name of SG Bell, he is also a science fiction author. And how those things connect his research on AI, on sustainability, and uh how his novels actually incorporate AI. This will be a topic of today, and I have to tell you one thing, or have I want to tell you something. It's a positive episode. We Uh I went out uh with uh lifted spirits, so stay tuned. And yeah, great that you are here again for another episode of the Beginner's Guide to AI. It's Dietmar from Algo Berlin, the digital marketing agency at the microphone again. And um, we are in search for sponsors. You know that I have ads on the podcast, but I want to have a AI related ads on the podcast, and this is why I need you to now say, hmm, my product could be in front of this thousands of people that Dietmar has here.
So just give me a message, just send me a message, and we'll talk about how we can help you there. But before I talk too long here, one quick thing, go to beginnersguy2.ai and get the newsletter to never miss an episode. And now let's go and jump right into the episode.
Yeah, I can talk a lot about Simon, but the most important thing is he's here on the podcast and he wrote a great book. Um Simon, first of all, tell us something about you. You wrote about AI, you thought a lot about AI. What's so interesting about AI for you?
Um, it was an accident, Demar. It was an accident. Um in 2010, I was part of a research project at the Open University in the UK. And we were studying, we had a great our research project was called Ibisol, infinite bandwidth zero latency. So we were we did workshops all around the UK. Asking people what they thought would emerge if we had infinite bandwidth and zero latency. Now, first of all, we had to explain to a lot of people what we meant by infinite bandwidth and zero latency, but this was two thousand and ten. So large language models and stuff like that were still around, but they were really hidden away in research centers owned by private corporations all over the place. But they weren't common knowledge.
So most people we w we hoped we'd find the next Facebook. or you know, we'd we'd find some great commodity which we could then sort of do something with. Uh it was really weird. We went I say we talked to specialists, we talked to uh just ordinary people, and we talked in mixed groups, say around the UK. And we came up with some cool stuff. And we published a research paper in a journal called Futures. And um it didn't get read by anybody because it was kind of um, you know, the sort of thing we talked about virtual avatars. There were various things, but they weren't amazing. But what stuck with me in 2010 was um I we asked the question, what happens when you have infinite bandwidth and zero latency?
And somebody in one of the workshops said, And artificial intelligence? And I said, Well, sure, okay. And they said, Well, God. And um That stopped me. I mean I mean, maybe I'm just dumb, but I I really hadn't thought round that particular corner. And in two thousand and ten, it got a whole train of thinking going, which had nothing to do with my research or my academic work. I couldn't put any of that in a novel or sorry, in a in a research paper or anything like that. But it stuck with me and I started writing uh about it in a my personal journal. And that personal journal eventually turned into fictional novels, science fiction novels, because I wanted to explore it in a way I couldn't explore. while grounded in the world of facts and truth and uh peer review, I wanted to go off the track completely and just let my mind go it's little crazy.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–9:56
2
How did Simon Bell’s 2010 research on infinite bandwidth lead to his AI‑focused dystopian novels?
9:56–25:23
3
What is the connection between climate‑change research, sustainability, and AI in Simon’s work?
25:23–32:15
4
Why does Simon argue there is no single AI tipping point and how do small decisions create change?
32:15–50:40
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from A Beginner's Guide to AI
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