Future Tense on Audible

It was an absolute privilege to work with Warwick Davis and Richard Ayoade on this new podcast commissioned by Audible/ My se-Audiobook/B0FBMH1L3H. Looking forward to hearing it!

Thanks to Jedi News for this summary of the series: https://www.jedinews.com/film-music-tv/articles/future-tense-podcast-with-richard-ayoade-and-warwick-davis-available-now-on-audible/

"Audible has announced the launch of a new comedy podcast, Future Tense, with the determinedly pessimistic Richard Ayoade and inexplicably cheerful Warwick Davis, ready to interrogate the future we’re all being told to look forward to across six fun filled episodes.

Reflecting on the podcast, Warwick Davis said “I’m absolutely thrilled to have worked with Richard Ayoade on Audible’s brilliant new podcast series, Future Tense. His brilliantly dry wit was the perfect counterpoint to my optimism and made for a fun, dynamic collaboration, and I learned a lot along the way too.”

Technology promises to save humanity. How’s that working out?

In this comedy-science podcast, comedy legends Richard Ayoade (determinedly pessimistic) and Warwick Davis (inexplicably cheerful) venture beneath Audible HQ to the Future Tense lab, fully equipped to interrogate the future we’re all being told to look forward to.

With help from science wrangler Helen Keen and expert guests providing actual facts (how inconvenient), they try to determine if the likes of self-driving cars, AI relationships, lab-grown meat, and digital immortality are cause for celebration—or another reason to basically just stay underground forever, actually, thanks.

Richard and Warwick bring to the party equal parts naive enthusiasm and sharp scepticism, as well as a healthy dose of sci-fi chops: Warwick having started his career in Return of the Jedi and gone on to star in films and series as diverse as Willow, Harry Potter and Leprechaun; and Richard bringing his no-lesser experience as Ice Cream Cone in Lego Movie 2.

A funny and surprisingly informative journey into a future nobody ordered but everyone will receive…

Episode 1: Robots

Mechanical overlords or helpful household assistants? Our hosts debate whether being replaced by technology is terrifying or merely a welcome retirement plan. And will Richard’s voice being cloned lead to the dismay of both humans and machines? Featuring guests Alan Hayling, Prof. Andy Miah, and Stephen Follows .

Episode 2: Immortality

Would you want to celebrate your 150th birthday? Richard considers the brown bin option for his remains, while Warwick ponders eternal digital replicas. Our experts debate whether fighting ageing is revolutionary or just plainly undignified. Featuring guests Prof. John Tregoning and Prof. Elaine Kasket .

Episode 3: Holidays

Climate change threatens Magaluf, space could be the final frontier of annual leave, and VR promises beach vibes without the sand in uncomfortable places. Will future holidays liberate us, or just make Richard even more reluctant to leave his flat? Featuring guests Simon Calder and Maggie Aderin

Episode 4: Food

Cricket cookies, lab-grown chicken, and meals in pill form face our hosts’ scrutiny. Warwick reluctantly samples insects while Richard advocates for a future where eating becomes entirely optional. Featuring guests James Collier and Tom Cheesewright .

Episode 5: Cars

Warwick embraces a future where vehicles drive themselves, while Richard questions whether civilisation peaked with the penny-farthing. Self-driving ethics, laser headlights, and the alarming prospect of polite British AI traffic jams. Featuring guests Suze Kundu and Jon Bentley.

Episode 6: Relationships

AI companions promise perfect partners who never forget birthdays or finish the milk. Richard probes into whether a digital companion might solve (his) age-old problem of completely avoiding humans, while Warwick wonders if robots might finally appreciate his anecdotes. Featuring guests Prof. Nigel Crook and Dr. James Muldoon"

The Journal of Future Robot Life

I am very pleased to share my involvement with this new journal, for which I will join its inaugural Editorial Board. Here’s an overview of what it will cover

What will robots be like ten, twenty and more years from now? What will they be able to accomplish? How will human–robot relationships have advanced? What place in society will be occupied by robots? These are just some of the questions which will be debated in the pages of this new publication – the Journal of Future Robot Life.

Computer science and artificial intelligence (AI) have had a huge impact on society, an impact that will only increase with further advances in hardware and software technologies. Robots are the most remarkable product of these developments in computing and AI, many of them being designed in a humanlike form and endowed with humanlike capabilities: talking, hearing, seeing, moving and performing complex tasks such as dancing, conducting an orchestra, rescuing victims at disaster sites, playing musical instruments, and beating a world champion at chess.

As robots become more humanlike in their appearance and their capabilities, and as they come to be regarded more and more as our companions and assistants in all aspects of daily life, different questions beg to be answered. We need to contemplate what life will be like when robots can imitate human behavior sufficiently to be regarded, in some sense, as our equals. And when we humans have adapted our ways of life in order to interact fully with robots as alternative people, and to benefit fully from our relationships with them, such questions on the future of human–robot interactions and human–robot relationships are the raison d’etre of this journal. What civil rights and legal rights should robots be granted? What are the ethics of humankind’s interactions with robots? Will robots have empathy? Will their personalities and emotions mimic our own? Will robots be programmed with social intelligence, or can they acquire it through a learning process? Will robots be alive in any humanlike sense, and if so, how?

The Journal of Future Robot Life will attempt to answer these questions and many more. The topics which we group under the umbrella phrase “future robot life” are many and varied, and the list will doubtless expand with time. We shall start with the following:

Animal–robot interfaces
Are robots alive?
Biological behaviors
Companion robots
Evolutionary robots
Human–robot reproduction
Human–robot interfaces
Implanted cyborg technologies
Laws relating to robots
Nanorobots in medicine
Plant–robot interfaces
Robot emotions
Robot ethics
Robot personalities
Robot reproduction
Robot rights
Robot–human parents
Robots as doctors
Robots as economists
Robots as lovers
Robots as politicians
Robots as psychiatrists/therapists
Robots as spouses
Robots as teachers
Robots in Entertainment
Robots in government
Robots on the battlefield
Social intelligence in robots
Swarm robot behavior.

Once of the nicest discussions about robots I’ve been involved with was a Tomorrow’s Live World event, which took place within the Manchester Science Festival programme of 2018. Here’s what that was like.

One of the nicest science communication events I’ve ever produced focused on inter-generational conversations about the future of robotics, which featured as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science. Here’s a glimpse into what we did.

Sheffield International Documentary Festival

This week, I was in Sheffield for Doc Fest, taking part in a discussion about the film “Hi, Ai”, which documents the lives of people who are building new relationships with humanoid robots.

The debate took us in lots of directions, but crucial for me is how the cultural context of robotics varies. We see a family in Japan and a single man in the USA, each of which are creating new kinds of experience with their robots.

Living with Robots #ESRCfestival

As part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science, I produced an event that explores our future with robots in an experiment of public engagement, science communication, and social science. We invited families to come to the Museum of Science and Industry to discuss together what this future might be, while undertaking a Lego robot building workshop with Nick Hawken and creating Noisy Toys, Steve Summers - robot instruments. 

I really wanted to create an event that explored a novel social science methodology and we combined a number of techniques to give people an insight into the role of social science in developing our understanding and comprehension of the future. This is a really challenging proposition for areas where we have yet to work with a demographic of users, but is crucial to help us build a greater comprehension for the issues that might arise.

As a catalyst for the discussions, we had input from world leading experts on this field who asked the following questions of our participants:

We had fantastic support from Salford University student volunteers and the amazing contributions of Dr Marieke Navin, Salford Uni Science Communicator in Residence and Dr Gary Kerr, PhD researcher in Science Communication.

Here's a little overview