Recent news

I've been very quiet for a few months. But actually, there's been a lot going on.

Following my talk at the Emtech meeting in October, the author Calum Chace has asked me to join a very interesting group of people who share the view that technological unemployment caused by AI and Robotics is going to have a very big impact on society. I've already been to a couple of evening events in London and we have some interesting ideas in the pipeline. Calum has written 2 excellent books that I can thoroughly recommend:

Surviving AI: The promise and peril of artificial intelligence, published in July 2015

The Economic Singularity : Artificial intelligence and the death of capitalism which came out in July 2016


Last Thursday (15th February), I gave a TEDx talk in Toulouse (in French) entitled "Survivre à la révolution de l'Intelligence Artificielle". Here's a link to the event, and the Youtube version should be coming out soon (I hope). I gave examples of the new chips that are coming out that only cost about $10, and which can do trillions of calculations per second on very low power devices (under 1 watt) that are only about 7 mm across. I predict that such devices are going to make it possible to automate many of the jobs that people currently do to make a living. The consequences will be catastrophic - IF we continue with the current economic model where everyone is supposed to be able to earn enough to live on. But there's a simple solution - a Universal Basic Income. And in my talk, I detailed three different ways that would allow such a system to be introduced.

In other posts, I will and answer some of the questions I have been asked about the details of the proposal.