Olle Häggström: Technology and the Future of Humanity

Olle Häggström is a Professor of mathematical statistics at Chalmers University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and the member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science. He is also a leading Swedish public intellectual and prolific debater in science, pseudoscience, technology, and education. We talk to Olle about the potential dangers associated with various emerging technologies—how do we start thinking about the catastrophic risks that may be associated with scientific advances that we have not completed? Our focus at Cast IT are potential advances in Artificial Intelligence towards general “Superintelligence,” sometimes called the intelligence explosion, the technological Singularity, or the robot apocalypse. Olle’s 2016 book about these issues is called “Here Be Dragons: Science, Technology and the Future of Humanity,” published by Oxford University Press.Recorded on 8 May 2017.