Most of the conversations we have about the potential for powerful machine intelligence focus on the technological aspects. Jamais Cascio, senior fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, wants us to think about the social aspects, too. What kinds of legal, ethical, and cultural drivers will shape how we develop intelligent systems? How can we make AI a tool for resilience in a rapidly-changing economic, political, and ecological environment?

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Jamais Cascio writes about the intersection of emerging technologies, environmental dilemmas, and cultural transformation, specializing in the design and creation of plausible scenarios of the future. His work focuses on the importance of long-term, systemic thinking, emphasizing the power of openness, transparency and flexibility as catalysts for building a more resilient society.

Cascio's work appears in publications as diverse as Metropolis, the Atlantic, Technology Review, and ForeignPolicy.com. He was featured in National Geographic Television's SIX DEGREES, its 2008 documentary on the effects of global warming, and on History Channel's SCIENCE IMPOSSIBLE, its 2009 series on emerging technologies. Cascio has spoken about future possibilities around the world, at venues including South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas, FuturShow3000 in Bologna, Italy, the Singularity Summit in San Francisco, and the TED 2006 conference, "The Future We Will Create," in Monterey, California.

Recent projects of note include:

* In early 2009, he released his first book, Hacking the Earth: Understanding the Consequences of Geoengineering.
* In late 2008, he served as scenario design lead for the "massively multiplayer forecasting game," Superstruct, for the Institute for the Future, creating the world of 2019 inhabited by the game's thousands of players.
* In 2007, he served as lead author on the Metaverse Roadmap Overview, a cross-industry examination of the next decade's evolution of online technologies.
* In 2007, his work on calculating the carbon footprint of cheeseburgers went viral, appearing in dozens of newspapers and magazines, multiple radio programs, hundreds of websites, and even as part of a museum exhibit. Increasingly, the cheeseburger has become an icon of the surprising carbon impact of everyday life.

Cascio has worked in the field of scenario development for over a decade, and is currently a Research Affiliate at the Institute for the Future.

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After the talk we'll discuss anything AI related until 2PM.

The meetup will be video recorded.