Unbox Your World

Mark Bünger is the co-founder and CTO of Futurity Systems, who has built Herbie as part of the 'Plantiverse' project. 

In this episode, you’ll learn: 

1. How a plant can be given autonomy to rule the world
2. How the project could be scaled to large ecosystems, like Antarctica or rainforests
3. How a piece of land could sue the government 
4. What a future of 'non-humans' ruling the world could look like

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About the the guest Mark Bünger

Mark is co-founder and CTO of Futurity Systems an observatory for deeptech: science-driven technologies that will have disruptive impacts on industry, such as synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, private spaceflight, or quantum computing. His clients include venture capitalists, product developers, and R&D teams at more than 150 of the world’s largest companies.

Happy to heard your thoughts and ideas for future episodes. For more content or to book a talk, go to phuturist.se. Talk to you in the next episode!

In today's episode, I'm stepping out of my comfort zone to share my own thoughts in a solo podcast format. In this debut episode, we'll explore AI through the lens of parenting. I wrote an article a few years ago about how we don't truly understand the potential of what we can become, until we've already become. The current AI boom is no different.

In the recent AI safety discussions, I've come to think of parallels between AI creation and parenting. Who's responsible for ensuring well-behaved children, or creations? Just as parents shape their kids, creators shape AI, but to what extent? These are the topics we'll dive into today.

We'll discuss:

• The Parenting Analogy. Most would agree that parents are responsible for their children's actions until they grow up - but to what extent?
• The Transition to Adulthood. When does this responsibility end? Is it at age 18 or does it extend further? The choice to become a parent is sometimes not planned, but with AI, creators have a conscious decision. Control is another factor; you can't choose your children, but you can design your own AI. Lastly, we'll dive into accountability—should AI creators bear the burden of every action taken by their creations?
• The Ripple Effect. A single invention or child can lead to paradigm shifts. Inventions always have unforeseen side effects. Should scientists bear responsibility for these ripple effects, even if they can't predict them?
• Societal Responsibility. Like parenting, laws regulate certain aspects, rights, and obligations. As we debate AI regulations and solutions, do we need a similar infrastructure for AI as with parents?
• Reflections and Conclusion. Just like in parenting, AI creators birth new entities into the world, and we can't predict their potential until they've evolved. We cannot know the answers, but we can spark essential questions.

I'd love to hear your reflections on this episode and whether you enjoyed this format. If you did, and if you would like to reach out to me or book a talk, visit phuturist.se/talks. Stay curious and keep questioning. See you in the next episode!

In today's episode, we're interviewing the crypto-professional Ludvig Öberg, co-founder of Safello and the Swedish Bitcoin Association, currently developing an open-source blockchain at ChromaWay. In other words, he is a true blockchain expert. He has recently pioneered one of the first theses on management controls within so-called Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, which are members-driven organizations powered by Blockchain technologies.

Blockchain technologies have opened new possibilities for how we organize ourselves. In the past, it has been challenging to maintain control in decentralized organizations as the number of members grows, however, blockchain technologies enable control in decentralized organizations at scale through so-called smart contracts, voting rights, ownership through tokens etc. This way, we can avoid the "tragedy of the commons" as members feel invested with clear owner rights and responsibilities.

However, is it really possible to maintain a decentralized organization at scale? How do you maintain management controls in large Decentralized Autonomous Organizations as they grow? Is it even possible to avoid corporate governance, or is it an inevitable must?

In today's episode you'll learn:

• What is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization
• What are some common management control systems
• The findings from his research studying different types of DAOs

Tune in to learn more!

Two years ago, ⁠Devin Gonier,⁠ TEDx speaker and CTO at ⁠Wageup⁠, joined the show to talk about how AI can be taught morality and ethics by replicating the way humans learn ethics as kids. 

Devin has now founded a new company, ⁠DebaterHub⁠, hoping to help secure AI safety through another process humans use to learn ethics: debate. He also has a Master’s degree in machine learning and a double major in philosophy and religion. 

In today’s episode, Devin provides an overview of the methods and research on AI safety that exist as of today, along with their respective pros and cons. 

Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode: 

• Three methods to teach AI morality and ethics (including the method OpenAI used)

• How debate could be used to teach ethics to machines

• How we can think of consciousness as a gradient in the AI space

Tune in to learn more!

Together with Brett Scott, who is an author, monetary anthropologist and former financial broker, we investigated this seemingly simple, but in reality very complex question. 

You'll learn: 

• The different types of money and the different roles they play in our society
• How digital money is created
• The unknown role of cash (and we're not talking about the right to pay with physical money)
• Why we should care about how money is created

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About the guest

Brett Scott is a journalist, campaigner, monetary anthropologist and former financial broker. He is the author of Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto and the War for our Wallets (2022), and The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance (2013). He publishes the Altered States of Monetary Consciousness newsletter and tweets as @suitpossum

OASA is a non-profit focusing on innovating and building these Smart Villages at scale. They are currently building a regenerative farm outside Lisbon called Traditional Dream Factory. To fuel further investments and enable governance at scale, they’ve just launched Europe’s first land-based conservation token.

The project is ground-breaking as this is the first time in Europe a regenerative village has issued a token with legal status giving token holders access to real-world assets. (compared to a virtual asset in the digital world).

With the launch, OASA hopes to lead the way and inspire more enthusiasts to take action and join them on the quest to restore Mother Earth through regenerative living.

In the episode, you’ll learn:

• What is ‘DAO’ (Decentralized Autonomous Organisation)
• What regenerative living means
• What web3 is and how tokens can be used in the real world
• How the first land-based legal token works
• How the legal setup could be replicated to scale regenerative living

This is what Nomali Perera does professionally, as an executive coach and facilitator, applying the theory of Spiral Dynamics and other developmental tools to help teams and individuals perform at their highest capability.

Although Nomali specifically presents the stages very simply here, the actual study of Spiral Dynamics is complex and takes time. As with everything else, Spiral Dynamics is a tool that should be used wisely and most importantly with humility.

Tune in to the show to learn more.

Anders Varger, the founder of Hubville, is building one of the world’s first self-sustaining city districts in Vetlanda in Sweden. Hubville is fundamentally rethinking sustainability and reinventing how we can live together, and the project is optimising sustainability from 16 different perspectives such as relationships, education and social security.

The project is being built together with the local municipality - which is in fact a starting point to create systemic change at scale.

In today’s episode, Anders Varger shares his learnings so far from building a Smart Village together with the government.

You’ll learn:

• What Hubville is and the philosophy behind it
• How you can expand sustainability into 16 different areas
• Pros and cons of working with the government to create change
• What needs to happen for Smart Villages to go mainstream and create systemic change

Alan Laubsch is an internationally recognized risk management thought-leader and impact investor. His mission is to protect life and regenerate Earth’s ecosystems by growing an Earth Positive economy that includes nature in global accounting systems.

You'll learn:

• What an impact economy could look like and the philosophy behind it
• How currency in an impact economy could work
• The role of blockchain to create an impact economy
• If there exist any impact economies already today
• What needs to happen in order for us to transition to an impact economy

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About the guest Alan is a co-founder of EarthPulse, a super brain (and heart) to empower protectors of Mother Earth with exponential technologies. Previously, Alan established Natural Capital Markets at Swiss based Lykke AG, where he pioneered blockchain-based Blue Carbon backed tokens to restore mangrove forests.. Alan founded Generation Blue, a venture studio for nature, and advises impact ventures including Vlinder Climate, Treebuddy.Earth, Global Mangrove Trust, and YesWeTrust. Alan has over two decades of risk management experience advising the world’s leading financial institutions, and was one of 25 founding members of the RiskMetrics Group. Alan is an avid surfer and ocean lover.

In today’s episode we interview Dr Brennan Jacoby, founder of Philosophy at Work, who holds a Ph.D in philosophy and is specialized in the philosophy of trust.

Blockchain is argued to solve the human trust issue, or even scaling human trust. However is this really what blockchain is doing? What is the actual benefit of blockchain? And what is trust really, according to philosophy?

You’ll learn:

• The definition of trust from a philosophy point of view
• Why blockchain is argued to solve human trust
• What the Dunbar’s number is and how this can help explain blockchain
• The difference between removing the need for trust and solving trust

This is something that David Ernst, CEO of Secure Internet Voting, Liquid Democracy Technologies, and Secure ID, set out as a mission to build. By building a modern technological platform his company is enabling states to integrate liquid democracy solutions into their already existing democratic systems.

You’ll learn:

• What liquid democracy is
• The role of blockchain in a liquid democracy voting system
• How liquid democracy could change the political landscape
• How the role of politicians could change in a liquid democracy system

David has spent a decade building empowering software across many fields, including social coordination, cryptography, finance, education, and more. He ran for the California Statehouse in 2018 as one of more than a dozen digital democracy candidates.

Today's guest is Stephan Schwartz, who is a scientist, futurist, award-winning author, columnist for the journal EXPLORE, and editor of the daily web publication Schwartzreport.net. He is a Distinguished Consulting Faculty of Saybrook University,  and a BIAL Foundation Fellow who has spent 40 years as an experimentalist researching the nature of consciousness. He has also studied creativity and found during his research a pattern that all creative geniuses throughout history seem to follow.

In today’s episode, he shares the secret path and what you need to do to unlock your creative genius inside you.

You’ll learn:

• How you can unlock the hidden path to creativity
• What the most common blocker to creativity is
• How to successfully master social transformation
• How small everyday choices, so call quotidian choices, can create a movement of change and how it mathematically can change society for the better

Stephen Bau is also the founder of the Builder's Collective, Director of BLDRS Collective Inc, member of the Buckminster Fuller Institute and writes about social architecture at socialarc.com

In today's episode, it's exciting to host one of the brain's behind Universal Basic Income; professor and author Guy Standing who is a founding member of Basic Income Earth Network. 

Guy Standing has been working on the concept of Basic Income, a new political system for wealth distribution, for over 30 years. During the last years the concept of Basic Income has gained rapid traction and interest across the globe and he is one of the few to have been able to test his ideas in real. The Basic Income pilots have turned out with positive results. 

Nowadays, even tech billionaires such as Elon Musk and the co-founder of Facebook Chris Hughes support Basic Income. 

Would Basic Income work in practice? Would people work? Could we afford it? Could we not afford it? 

In today's episode, professor Guy Standing provide some in-depth insights to the theory, the arguments for it and why it would be financially viable.

In today's episode you'll learn:

• What Basic Income is 
• How it would work in practice 
• The financial arguments behind it 
• The results from Basic Income pilots in India
• What underlying societal changes has prompted a need for a new political system 
• What "the precariat" is - the rise of a new working class 
• In his opinion, why we cannot afford not to implement Basic Income 

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About Guy Standing
Guy Standing is Professorial Research Associate, SOAS University of London. An economist with a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, he is a Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences, and the Royal Society of Arts, co-founder and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), and member of the Progressive Economy Forum. He is the author of multiple books, including The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, published in 23 languages and The Corruption of Capitalism; Basic Income: And how we can make it happen. 

To help ourselves understand each other better, Nina and Niloo built an AI matchmaker that worked over SMS which went into Techstars in 2019. The algorithm analysed the user’s personality by using only 160 words of free-word text - and the accuracy was astonishing.

In the end, they found the answer not in technology, but in community.

After having built all of this advanced technology they pivoted into a community service called Good People - which is a cohort-based community program to find like-minded people.

In this episode, they will share their journey and all the learnings they gathered along the way - where the one mission has been to help people build better and more meaningful relationships.

James Ehrlich started the Regen Villages research initiative at Stanford in 2012, which in 2016 turned into an impact spin-off company called Regen Villages, to realize the future of living in regenerative and self-sustaining neighborhoods. His work has been influential - in fact, he has worked on regenerative infrastructure under the Obama White House administration.

He is essentially building a B2B SaaS tool, which enables architects to build and run ecovillages in a resource-efficient way - or a “Tesla for ecovillages.” With the tap of a finger, you can upgrade your ecovillage operating system with the latest software improvements.

Episode learnings:
- What regenerative living means
- What an ecovillage is and what life in an eco-village could look like
- How we can save our planet by living in a regenerative way
- What is fueling this trend

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James Ehrlich has an impressive resume. On top of all the achievements mentioned above, he started his career within lighting design working with world-famous artists such as Tina Turner and Joe Jackson. He then transitioned into video game design, followed by a career in television. He produced a TV series called the Organic Living and Hippy Gourmet, watched by over 35 million homes per week, and authored a best selling cooking book to accompany the TV series. All of this background brought him to Regen Villages research initiative, marrying technology, nature and storytelling to create a better future for the younger generation.

Devin Gonier has also written a paper on this topic and is currently starting a blog to share more of his ideas. Visit his work at lastgreatinvention.com.

Someone that understands this is John Bunzl, a businessman and a political activist from the UK. He’s the founder of Simpol, the International Simultaneous Policy Organisation, a new political innovation to overcome the obstacles that are today refraining governments to cooperate with each other.

By applying game theory from business school, he explains the concept "The Political Prisoner's Dilemma" to visualise why governments are held back on taking true action to solve global problems. Simpol is a solution to overcome this obstacle that keeps governments from true cooperation and is designed in such an ingenious way so that all countries can keep their competitiveness and only gain benefits from supporting it.

Episode learnings:
- What is Simpol
- Why governments refrain from cooperating
- What needs to be done to overcome the obstacles that keep us from global cooperation
- How you can design a system to solve global matters
- How evolutionary biology has solved big problems for humanity in the past - and what we can learn from it
- How the future of global votes can change democracy

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To support the cause, go to Simpol.org and make your global vote count.

Want to learn more about the research behind it, evolutionary biology and how to design a global vote system? Listen to the ebook - it is a highly recommended read.

The political initiative Simpol is today supported by over 100 Members of the Parliament in the UK, and growing internationally as well. It is supported by many eminent professionals and researchers across the globe, such as José Ramos-Horta, previous Noble Peace Prize Laureat.