Dear Futurists,
At this time of year, minds sometimes become preoccupied with activities around the Christmas and New Year holidays. But as futurists, we should of course look further ahead. So in this newsletter, I’ll be encouraging you to consider travelling to the Dutch city of Utrecht toward the end of January…
and to Panama City in Central America at the end of February:
I’ve been helping with the planning of each of these events over the last few months, and I will be speaking at both.
In case you’re unable to travel, don’t worry, there are plenty of other events in which you can participate. Read on for the details!
1.) Pre-Christmas get-together: Visions for 2024 and beyond
Members and friends of London Futurists – whether in the UK or overseas – are welcome to join our pre-Christmas online get-together, hosted by Telepresent, from 4pm UK time this Saturday (9th December).
We’ll be discussing different visions for 2024 and beyond:
- Which developments are likely to shape the next few years, on the personal, national, or global levels?
- Which projects would you like London Futurists to prioritise in 2024?
- What would you like to see more in 2024, and what would you like to see less?
Note: Telepresent is an in-person online event venue. You will be able to see everyone and talk with anyone. Be prepared to switch on your camera so you can participate.
Please be aware that the Telepresent environment is designed for laptop or desktop computers. Access via a tablet or iPad is NOT supported, and access via a mobile phone is NOT recommended. See the registration page for more advice as well as a link where you can test out your system’s suitability in advance.
The event will feature a combination of plenary sessions, with short talks and general moderated discussion, and table discussions on different topics, where attendees can move from table to table as time progresses – similar to how you might move around a pub or other networking venue.
The plenary talks will be limited to seven minutes each. If you would like to give one of these talks, please let me know in advance! You’ll be able to share your screen to show a few slides as you speak. These talks should fit with the event description “Visions for 2024 and beyond”.
For more details, and for the link to register, click here.
To help cover the costs incurred by Iain Beveridge of Telepresent in hosting this event (he has to pay Remo around $10 for each participant), attendees are requested to visit Iain’s “Buy me a coffee” page, and donate some coffee-drinking (or beer-drinking) money!
2.) Tranvision comes to Utrecht
In what will be the 17th Tranvision conference, in a series dating all the way back to 1998, Transvision 2024 will be taking place in the Dutch city of Utrecht on 20th and 21st January (with an optional pre-summit workshop on the afternoon of Friday 19th January on the subject of “open longevity”).
The themes for Transvision 2024 are:
- Envisioning and creating transhumanist futures
- Futures for the brain and mind
- Physical rejuvenation and beyond
- The coming wave of AI
- Transhumanism locally and globally
The schedule also includes time for smaller focus groups to brainstorm and take deep dives into particular areas of common interest or concern.
More details of speakers are being announced regularly.
For more information, and to register while tickets are still available, click here.
I booked my travel to Utrecht a couple of days ago. Eurostar will take me as far as Rotterdam Centraal, and then it’s just one short additional train journey to Utrecht Centraal.
I hope to see many of you there. After all, it’s just a short distance from where the very first Transvision Conference was held, namely Weesp. As one of the speakers from Transvision 1998 said at the time, “This is the start of something great.” Take a bow, Anders Sandberg: you are a true visionary!
3.) From AGI to BGI
As the world is waking up to the prospect of AI attaining abilities in general reasoning (abstraction, “common sense”, taking out-of-distribution examples in stride, etc), the world is increasingly wondering: What (if anything) needs to be done, to ensure that the resulting AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) is a BGI (Beneficial General Intelligence)?
That’s the driving idea behind the Beneficial AGI Summit which will be taking place in Panama City from 27 Feb to 1 Mar.
The summit website describes the purpose of the summit as follows:
Envisioning a radically better future at a critical moment
This extraordinary inaugural event will guide us all in leveraging human wisdom and values to guide the evolution of Artificial General Intelligence.
Join us in the vibrant heart of Panama City or virtually via a combination of metaverse and traditional video conferencing tools.
The speakers for this Summit haven’t been announced yet, but you can get an idea of the calibre of people involved from viewing the Summit’s Advisory Board:
That’s in addition to the teams working inside SingularityNET and TrueAGI, the main organisers of the Summit.
4.) A conversation with four futurists
What skills will be the most important in 2024?
What is a credible path forward for humanity to benefit hugely from emerging technologies, rather than being manipulated and diminished by them?
These are two of the questions I expect to be discussing with some distinguished futurist colleagues in an online free-to-attend webinar at 1pm UK time on Tuesday 19th December.
For more information, and to join this event, click here.
5.) A good year for the Existential Risk Observatory
2023 has been a breakthrough year for friends of London Futurists, the Existential Risk Observatory.
6.) The Vital Syllabus – renewed focus in 2024
As I conduct my own lookback at 2023, and consider where to focus my efforts in 2024, I’ve reached the decision that one of the London Futurists projects has been unfairly neglected during 2023, and will receive more of my attention in 2024. It’s the Vital Syllabus.
After all, almost every serious discussion about improving the future turns into, sooner or later, a serious discussion about improving education. That’s the purpose of the Vital Syllabus project.
I won’t say much about it now, but I do encourage you to take another look at that site. You could start with the Connect page, which has links to groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Discord. These groups have all been sleepy in 2023, but I look forward to more activity in 2024!
Or you could click on the News page, where I offer a picture to illustrate my thinking.
// David W. Wood
Chair, London Futurists
London Futurists 