“When you strike at a king, you must kill him”
New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast
06/27/23
•38m
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A few days ago the world watched in amazement as Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the infamous paramilitary Wagner Group, turned his ambition from defeating Ukraine to challenging the Russian army and—although he continues to deny it—Vladimir Putin himself. Wagner’s fighters seized some Russian territory and rapidly advanced towards Moscow, before abruptly halting, accepting a deal negotiated by Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko, and standing down.
Details are still in short supply, but it’s hard to imagine that this brief insurrection won’t have consequences for the war on Ukraine, for Russia’s relations with its few allies, and—most importantly—on Putin’s future.
Yevgenia Albats, Distinguished Journalist in Residence at NYU’s Jordan Center in forced exile from Russia, thinks that Prigozhin is a “dead man walking.” Maybe Putin, too?
Do you think this is the beginning of the end for the Russian dictator?
"When you strike at a king, you must kill him” ― is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson
Previous Episode
What Does ChatGPT Think?
June 22, 2023
•38m
Although inflection points are better judged in retrospect, OpenAI's release of ChatGPT late last year may have touched off a new era in how mankind relates to machines—perhaps in how civilization works. From medicine and legal briefs and sonnets in the style of Shakespeare to John Lennon’s long-dead voice, the combination of generative artificial intelligence and massive computing power is producing endless wonders across wide ranges of human activity, some trivial but some incredibly sophisticated.
"What can't AI do?" is the question. The answer seems to be, "Anything a human can do, AI can do better."
Because of that perception, right or wrong, the only thing growing seeming to grow faster than AI's capability is hysteria about AI's capability. Suddenly industry leaders are warning about the risk of humanity’s extinction by an ever more powerful AI and pleading for regulation to save us from their creation and its future iterations.
But once Pandora’s box has been opened, can it be closed? Can artificial intelligence actually be regulated? Can what happens in thousands of labs worldwide, who have access to unlimited computing power and open-source code, be controlled? If so, how and by whom? Who decides what’s good and what’s bad?
Rebecca Finlay, CEO of the Partnership on AI whose stakeholders include many of the biggest players in North America and Europe, is thinking deeply about these issues and is optimistic that there are positive answers. She recently joined host Alan Stoga for a New Thinking for a New World podcast.
We didn’t ask ChatGPT what it thinks, because we care more about what you think. Can AI be regulated?
Next Episode
Our Blue Planet
July 6, 2023
•14m
The planet “Earth” should probably be called “Water” since 70% of it is ocean. Of course, that also means any discussion of climate issues should start with the oceans. Increasing temperatures, rising sea levels, declining biodiversity, growing acidification and other changes driven by climate change have profound impact on the overall degradation of the planet and on mankind’s future.
Marine biologist Asha de Vos knows as much as anyone about our blue planet. She has done pioneering work on blue whales, the largest animal on earth, and founded Oceanswell in 2017, Sri Lanka’s first marine conservation research and education organization. In 2021 she was awarded the Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize.
Asha recently joined New Thinking for a New World host Alan Stoga for a conversation about her work in Sri Lanka.
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