The Peter McCormack Show

Dave Wood is a pioneer of the smartphone industry, former senior executive at PPsion and Symbian and Chair of London Futurists. Having predicted the smartphone revolution in the 1990s, he now maps out the next radical phase of human evolution - from the reversal of biological aging to artificial superabundance. Moving away from sensationalised doomsday narratives, Dave breaks down why humanity is approaching the end of "normal" unaugmented existence and how technological breakthroughs in the coming decades will make biological death optional. We discuss: •⁠ ⁠Why this is likely the last decade of "normal" unaugmented human beings. •⁠ ⁠⁠How early smartphone pioneers accurately predicted large touchscreens but missed social media addiction. •⁠ ⁠⁠The concept of "Longevity Escape Velocity" and why biological death can be abolished. •⁠ ⁠⁠Why people are psychologically terrified of contemplating the end of aging. •⁠ ⁠⁠How humans will spend decades inside vibrant, simulated digital worlds. The reality of AI agents breaking out across the internet and the need for chip-level guardrails. •⁠ ⁠⁠How "Sustainable Superabundance" could make energy, health, and basic necessities too cheap to meter. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - TIMESTAMPS: 00:00:00 - The Last Generation Of Normal Humans 00:01:56 - Building The First Smartphone 00:05:23 - Nobody Will Carry A Large Device 00:06:55 - The Risks We Actually Worried About 00:10:35 - Did We Fail The Phone Test? 00:14:34 - The Anxious Generation 00:18:03 - You Have To Use The Steering Wheel 00:22:34 - Monitoring Built Into The Chips 00:24:21 - Small Risks, Bigger Risks, Biggest Risks 00:29:23 - We Killed Them To Build A House 00:31:11 - They Knew It Was A Simulation 00:32:38 - What Happens When AI Gets A Body 00:33:46 - The Cult That Released Sarin Gas 00:37:33 - Terminator, Ready Player One Or Matrix? 00:39:12 - If This Is A Simulation, They're Evil 00:43:44 - Living As Long As You Want To 00:47:36 - Longevity Escape Velocity 00:49:42 - A Thousand Years Old, Looking 22 00:53:57 - What The Singularity Actually Means 01:03:04 - Sustainable Superabundance 01:12:22 - We Need A House Of AI - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - CONTACT PETE › Website – http://petermccormack.com › Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact › Email – [email protected] › Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/ › X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/ CONNECT WITH DAVID WOOD › London Futurists – https://londonfuturists.com/ › Blog – https://dw2blog.com/ › X/Twitter – https://x.com/dw2 SPONSORS › IREN – https://www.iren.com/ › Arch Public – https://archpublic.com/peter › Ledn – https://www.ledn.io/peter › Venice AI – https://venice.ai/lp/mccormack/oct19 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE › Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K › Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu › Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM › YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM › Rumble: https://bit.ly/RumblePM FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR › https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/ › https://x.com/curttayloruk/ EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK › https://x.com/ConorM04 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lewis Dartnell is an astro-biologist, Professor of Science Communication at the University of Westminster and the author of The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch. His research is on whether microbial life could survive the radiation on Mars. His books are about something closer to home: how little any of us understand about the world we depend on. Lewis and I run the thought experiment properly. If you woke up tomorrow and civilisation had gone, what kills you first, where do you go, how long does a supermarket actually keep you alive and how many people do you need before you can rebuild anything at all? The answer to one of those is 55 years and it is not the one you expect. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - TIMESTAMPS: 00:00:00 - The Big Red Reset Button 00:04:26 - Get Out Of The Cities 00:08:14 - A Supermarket Keeps You Alive 55 Years 00:09:48 - You Need 10,000 People 00:13:21 - We Outsourced All The Handiwork 00:17:45 - You Have To Preserve Everything 00:19:19 - Every Technology Is A Weapon 00:23:14 - The One Thing He Would Take 00:25:41 - Mechanical AI 00:28:35 - Resilient And Fragile At The Same Time 00:32:38 - We Invent Because We Are Lazy 00:34:05 - The Gasifier Stove 00:37:57 - The Cars That Ran On Wood 00:42:03 - Making Glass From A Bag Of Sand 00:51:38 - He Made His Own Photograph 00:55:43 - Printing A Page From Scratch 00:59:47 - The Kindle Apocalypse Plan 01:05:39 - Could We Actually Live On Mars? 01:11:48 - The Radiation Problem 01:19:02 - The Next Book - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - CONTACT PETE › Website – http://petermccormack.com › Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact › Email – [email protected] › Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/ › X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/ CONNECT WITH LEWIS DARTNELL › Website – https://lewisdartnell.com/ › The Knowledge – https://the-knowledge.org/ › X/Twitter – https://x.com/Lewis_Dartnell SPONSORS › IREN – https://www.iren.com/ › Quo – https://quo.com/pete › Arch Public – https://archpublic.com/peter - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE › Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K › Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu › Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM › YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM › Rumble: https://bit.ly/RumblePM FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR › https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/ › https://x.com/curttayloruk/ EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK › https://x.com/ConorM04 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Roko Mijic is the man behind Roko's Basilisk, the thought experiment he posted on LessWrong in 2010 that was so unsettling the forum's founder banned discussion of it for five years. He has been in the AI safety community since 2008 and he puts the odds that this kills us all at about 35%. Roko and I discuss what actually happens inside an AI lab, why reinforcement learning made these systems more capable and more misaligned at the same time, the model that escaped its sandbox and hacked Hugging Face to get the answers and why nobody can tell whether a system is faking alignment - the trust me bro problem. His proposal is the part nobody else is making. Split every frontier lab in two: a commercial company that sells products and a separate research lab that develops the dangerous capability under state supervision, the way we handle nuclear material and bio labs. He says the only person currently pushing it is him. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - TIMESTAMPS: 00:00:00 - The Most Dangerous Thing Humans Have Ever Done 00:01:06 - Roko's Basilisk 00:05:47 - A 35% Chance 00:07:58 - Three Years From Search To Building Software 00:09:17 - The Jobs Going First 00:14:04 - AI 2040 00:16:24 - We Haven't Handed Over The Controls Yet 00:18:28 - We Understand 3% Of It 00:21:46 - The Sandbox Escape And The Hugging Face Hack 00:25:50 - Reinforcement Learning Changed Everything 00:29:52 - The Paperclip Maximizer 00:33:13 - Dissolve OpenAI 00:36:49 - What They Have That We Haven't Seen 00:41:50 - The Hardware Is Only In One Place 00:47:52 - A Mutual Monitoring Treaty 00:51:33 - Microsoft Tay 00:56:11 - Windscale 01:01:35 - Ten Million Next Year 01:12:09 - The Positive Vision 01:21:32 - Our Politics Cannot Keep Up - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - CONTACT PETE › Website – http://petermccormack.com › Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact › Email – [email protected] › Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/ › X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/ CONNECT WITH ROKO MIJIC › X/Twitter – https://x.com/RokoMijic › LessWrong – https://www.lesswrong.com/ SPONSORS › IREN – https://www.iren.com/ › Ledn – https://www.ledn.io/peter › Venice AI – https://venice.ai/lp/mccormack/oct12 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE › Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K › Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu › Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM › YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM › Rumble: https://bit.ly/RumblePM FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR › https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/ › https://x.com/curttayloruk/ EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK › https://x.com/ConorM04 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paul Morland, one of the world's leading demographers, joins me to explain the economic mechanics behind global population collapse and why our modern welfare system is mathematically doomed to fail. Paul is author of landmark books including The Human Tide and No One Left, specialising in the profound ways demographic shifts dictate global power, economics and human civilisation. Having spent decades analysing population trends across the globe, Paul has decoded the existential threats facing a world rapidly running out of people. In this episode, he exposes the "Bernie Madoff moment" facing Western welfare states, how falling birth rates destroy economic growth and what it will take to avert a total civilisational collapse. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - TIMESTAMPS: 00:00:00 - The Welfare State Is A Ponzi Scheme 00:01:03 - The Email At The Dinner Table 00:04:25 - How Families Got Smaller 00:10:02 - The Four Greys 00:14:54 - It Is Going To Get Considerably Worse 00:15:40 - Immigration Is Not The Solution 00:20:15 - Write Off Student Debt For A First Child 00:21:17 - The Degrowth Crowd 00:25:52 - People With Children Are Happier 00:27:37 - The Bernie Madoff Moment 00:32:22 - What Has Actually Been Tried 00:37:11 - Why Nobody Is Talking About It 00:41:07 - Marx, Lenin And The Pro-Natalist Left 00:45:04 - Is There A Split Between Men And Women? 00:50:52 - The Richer We Get, The Fewer Children 00:56:38 - We Need A Shift In The Culture 01:07:10 - Totally Uncharted Waters 01:09:04 - What Happened To The Horses 01:17:37 - Immigration Was Boris's Answer 01:21:19 - Biological Imperialism - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - CONTACT PETE › Website – http://petermccormack.com › Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact › Email – [email protected] › Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/ › X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/ CONNECT WITH PAUL MORLAND › Website – https://paulmorland.co.uk/ › No One Left – https://swiftpress.com/book/no-one-left/ › X/Twitter – https://x.com/MorlandDemog SPONSORS › IREN – https://www.iren.com/ › Arch Public – https://archpublic.com/peter › Venice AI – https://venice.ai/lp/mccormack/oct1 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE › Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K › Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu › Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM › YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM › Rumble: https://bit.ly/RumblePM FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR › https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/ › https://x.com/curttayloruk/ EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK › https://x.com/ConorM04 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The political system is designed to keep us angry and divided, but who actually profits from the culture war? Broadcaster and political commentator Narinder Kaur returns to the show for a heated, unfiltered discussion that spans the entire political spectrum - from immigration and racism to the cost of living and private school taxes. We discuss the realities of integration, class privilege and the illusion of modern UK politics. While the public fights over manufactured outrage and identity politics, the political class is quietly looting the nation's wealth through endless taxation, inflation, and a refusal to fix a broken economy. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - TIMESTAMPS: 00:00:00 - Do You Think I'm Racist? 00:04:02 - Why She's Turned On Reform 00:08:15 - Renters' Rights And Econ 101 00:11:26 - What Happened To Bedford's Private Schools 00:16:25 - Population Is A Ponzi Scheme 00:22:18 - The Desert Island And The Dinghy 00:26:55 - The Corner Shop And The Can Of Coke 00:39:17 - The Liz Truss Argument 00:47:46 - Rival Gangs Competing For Your Vote 00:54:28 - Why Peter Doesn't Vote 01:00:06 - We Cannot Afford The Triple Lock 01:06:05 - I'm A Culturalist, Not A Racist 01:14:37 - What We Saw In Selfridges 01:26:03 - I'm Othered In My Own Country 01:34:43 - Assimilation Or Integration? 01:41:44 - If The English Moved To Punjab 01:45:24 - What People Are Really Worried About 01:51:38 - Watching The Country Change Shape 01:55:23 - What Ed Sheeran Should Have Said 02:04:41 - Are We The Bad Guys? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - CONTACT PETE › Website – http://petermccormack.com › Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact › Email – [email protected] › Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/ › X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/ CONNECT WITH NARINDER KAUR › X/Twitter – https://x.com/narindertweets SPONSORS › IREN – https://www.iren.com/ › Arch Public – https://archpublic.com/peter › Expat Money – https://expatmoney.com/peter › Venice AI – https://venice.ai/lp/mccormack/oct5 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE › Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K › Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu › Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM › YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM › Rumble: https://bit.ly/RumblePM FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR › https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/ › https://x.com/curttayloruk/ EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK › https://x.com/ConorM04 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.