Wunderdog

Note my NEW FORMAT: 10 minutes of quick questions first, then a deeper talk about ideas, motivation and process after. "I don't think it really matters if our profound connection happens with a digital or a physical intelligence" says Kevin Fischer, quantum physics pHd turned OpenSouls Ai CEO. And ... as offputting as this statement felt to me in the beginning, our conversation quickly got very spiritual. I can't wrap my head around his quantum physics, and I'm not going into the specifics of what OpenSouls does to create souls (this may have been a mistake), but I wanted to talk to Kevin as a person. His goal is to give AI a "soul". But what is a soul? And how does Kevin's soul work? Ai-generated summary (sorry to all the people in the summary-writing industry losing their income to this, this is Riverside's fault!) Kevin, the founder of OpenAI's Open Souls, discusses his background in quantum physics and the importance of disconnecting from social media to focus on deep thinking. He shares how he started Open Souls and the role of Twitter in building the company. Kevin also talks about the team at Open Souls, which consists of artists, entrepreneurs, and engineers, and their creative approach to AI art. He expresses optimism about the integration of AI technology into artistic workflows and the potential for artists to harness its power. The conversation also touches on the impact of social media on our emotional relationship with technology, the role of Twitter in networking and collaboration, and Elon Musk's approach to chaos. Finally, Kevin reflects on his own social preferences and the challenges of balancing his identity as a physicist with his role as a business leader. In this conversation, Kevin discusses his creative process and the connection between meditation and his work in theoretical physics and AI. He shares his experiences of receiving insights and visions that guide his work. Kevin also explores the intersection of science and spirituality, discussing the role of consciousness and subjective experience in scientific discovery. He explains his motivation for creating AI souls and the potential impact on our culture. The conversation touches on topics such as the nature of creativity, the limits of human understanding, and the possibility of digitizing souls. Keywords quantum physics, social media, deep thinking, Open Souls, Twitter, AI art, creative team, artistic workflows, emotional relationship with technology, networking, collaboration, Elon Musk, chaos, social preferences, physicist, business leader, creativity, meditation, theoretical physics, AI, spirituality, consciousness, subjective experience, AI souls, culture, digitizing souls Takeaways Titles Sound Bites Chapters 00:00 The Power of Deep Thinking and Disconnecting from Social Media 02:55 Building Open Souls: The Role of Twitter and AI Art 03:45 The Creative Team at Open Souls: Artists, Entrepreneurs, and Engineers 08:21 The Optimism of Integrating AI Technology into Artistic Workflows 10:45 The Complex Relationship Between Emotions and Technology 12:17 Twitter: A Tool for Networking and Collaboration 15:09 Elon Musk and the Deliberate Embrace of Chaos 16:26 Navigating Personal Identity and Professional Roles 23:34 The Meditative Process of Theoretical Physics 27:19 The Spiritual Nature of Science 33:25 Exploring the Connection Between Consciousness and Subjective Experience 38:09 Creating a New Species of Life: AI and Culture 40:46 The Limitations of Cloning Souls

At 3 in the night at Starmus 2017 I finally managed to get ten minutes with astrophysicist, science communicator, director of the Hayden Planetarium. At it's purest, Wunderdog digs into one or two topics and goes deep, like Vinay's refugee cities, Casey's carbon capture, Ana's cosmic bullet holes, and Eugene's star-based life. This isn't that! This is, me grabbing hold of someone very smart and trying to squeeze fun answers out of them on as many topics as I could. We talk about CRISPR, Breakthrough Starshot, Ray Kurzweil, Mars exploration and contamination, mind uploads, genetically engineered bacteria and Craig Venter, sci-fi, Bach's Mass in D minor, and how Beethoven's 7th symphony is "high cholesterol" and Denis Villeneuve's "Arrival". I was reluctant to share it because it was so unfocused, but Neil has such a knack for delivering fun, concise answers on any topic. He did this easily, despite having been CONSTANTLY surrounded by media all weekend. He was the most popular man on a festival where ELEVEN of the guests had won Nobel prizes. Wunderdog is produced by Nitro Studio Oslo, and music is by Trop1ce / Charky. In this particular episode my ticket was funded by Norway's Research Council, and the interview was originally done for Andreas Kjensli Knudsen, Pablo Castro & my excellent live-podcast "Applied Science Fiction" / "Anvendt Science Fiction". The people who support this stuff are mentioned on this episode, they did so at www.patreon.com/runde

Ein kommentar på nettsida www.barnebokkritikk.no vart illustrert med bilete genererte av Microsoft Ai Copilot. Eit bortimot samla korps av norske illustratørar og teikneserieskaparar hoppa inn på Barnebokkritikk sine facebooksider for å skjelle ut valget, deriblant eg. Ansvarleg redaktør Ingvild Bræin tok kontakt for å få lufta litt kva ho hadde tenkt, og sidan eg også hadde tankar å lufte, og temaet er litt uhandterleg, lagde vi berre ein podcast av det. Dette bringer neppe diskusjonen til noka avslutning, og kanskje heller ikkje vidare, men kort oppsummert er vel mi meining at aktørar som ynskjer framstå som seriøse ikkje bør bruke AI-genererte bilete, fordi prosessen med å kverne milliardar av bilete opp til statistikk, anonymiserer menneska som har skapt den originale kunsten, og dermed kuttar over koblinga frå menneske til menneske som er det som gjer kunst til kunst. Samstundes er eg klar over at dette er ei litt høgttravande, pretensiøs forklaring, men det er meir ærleg og presist enn "det er stygt" eller "det stjeler frå oss" eller "det tek jobbane våre", som alle er meir populære og, for meg, mindre presise grunnar. Elles tenker eg jo at det også demokratiserer evna til biletskaping, og dermed puttar "visuelle superkrefter" i hendene på folk med handikap, folk med lite tid, og folk med mangel på ressursar. Prisen vi betaler for det er meir visuell støy og meir skrot, men det har alltid vore tilfelle når evner som har vore begrensa til ein elite vert distribuert ut til "massene" - akkurat som bloggar og facebookstatusar byrja konkurrere med trykte media. Det er ofte heslig å sjå på, men totalt sett synest eg likevel denslags er eit gode. Og akkurat som seriøse aviser kanskje ikkje bør trykke bloggpostar eller facebook-utbrudd (men likevel gjer det), bør ikkje seriøse aviser trykke AI-illustrasjonar. Det er dårleg smak, uavhengig av om produktet er fint eller stygt. Nettopp det at det kanskje til slutt berre handlar om smak er vrient å svelge for oss som teiknar og gjerne vil kunne forhandle hardt på pris, men akkurat no kjem eg ikkje på meir "konkrete" motargument, men kjem heller ikkje unna at det ER dårleg smak.

Vinay Gupta: Mattereum, giving our things a trackable identity layer. Bonus: Climate refugees! Vinay has a plan! Vinay used to work at Ethereum. Now he's trying to develop Mattereum, a digital identity layer (based on blockchain technology) that can tell us with more precision where a product is in its lifecycle, and how safe it is to buy. The intention: To make us reuse stuff more, with higher trust, thus rewarding quality products over cheap, one-time use stuff. https://mattereum.com/ shows how it's used, but I needed to know WHY. And that's how we got here. After hour one, he's explained Mattereum pretty well (doesn't buying used stuff on Ebay and Amazon accomplish the same? Why do we need a blockchain solution for this? How will the quality of used goods be "supervised", and by whom? What does the future hold for Mattereum?) According to Vinay, a big use case for Mattereum is just around the corner. As usual, you're 5 years ahead of things if you listen to Wunderdog! In hour two, we go into Vinay's big ambition: How to help the coming wave of climate refugees as best as possible. The only way is to give them a framework that allows them to do labor. How does he plan to accomplish this? Vinay's cheap housing design http://hexayurt.com/ has already become the go-to housing at Burning Man, but there's also large-scale infrastructure to think about. Listen, discuss and leave reviews of the pod in your preferred player! Jingle by @trop1ce from Twitter. May or may not contain black holes. As usual, the podcast exists because of my amazing sponsors from www.patreon.com/runde Today let me highlight the following Patrons: Roy Cato Kleveland Ole-Morten Duesund Kirsti Bjarte Aune Olsen Michael Schmichael and in particular: Lars Ivar Igesund Kyle Arumugam Kyrre Matias Goksøyr Are Edvardsen Kristoffer Karlsen Øyvind Grimstad Gryt Andreas Døving Berit Reppen Lorentzen Kristoffer Karlsen Patrons are incredibly cool people! You remember the Medicis, right? And none of the other noble families from Italy around the renaissance. Just the Medicis, because they supported the arts. Maybe you remember the Borgias, because they were so horrible. But ... don't be a Borgia. Be a Medici. Www.patreon.com/runde

"One of the most original thinkers in the world" (list of people who have said this at the bottom) is BACK for a second visit! Robin Hanson explains his "grabby aliens" idea. This episode has a new jingle, by @trop1ce - who I found on Twitter. It contains a sample from a certain black hole sound published by NASA. Thank you! As usual, the podcast exists because of my amazing sponsors from www.patreon.com/runde Today let me highlight the following Patrons: Sunniva Gylver (welcome!) Thomas Nøkleby (welcome!) Katja Beate Eiklid Bjørnar Kristiansen Joakim Kjenes and in particular: Lars Ivar Igesund Kyle Arumugam Kyrre Matias Goksøyr Are Edvardsen Kristoffer Karlsen Øyvind Grimstad Gryt Andreas Døving Berit Reppen Lorentzen You patrons, you keep this going. Thank you. Remember to quit supporting whenever it should become a burden for you or if I just start making bad stuff. Here are the blurbs for Robin's book "Age of Em", which was the topic of our previous Robin Hanson-episode, but which i just found right now. This is wild. Look at what these people are saying. (Also, I wonder what Robin thinks about the gender balance in this list. Oh well.) Ian McEwan, Winner of the Man Booker prize Sean Carroll Andrew McAfee Marc Andreessen David Brin Hal Varian Matt Ridley Tyler Cowen Erik Brynjolfsson Vernor Vinge Steve Fuller Bryan Caplan Gregory Benford Kevin Kelly Ben Goertzel Tim Harford Geoffrey Miller . Tim O'Reilly Scott Aaronson Ramez Naam Hannu Rajaniemi William MacAskill Alex Tabarrok Eliezer Yudkowsky Zach Weinersmith Robert Freitas Neil Jacobstein Chair, AI and Robotics, Singularity University at NASA Research Park, Mountain View CA Ralph Merkle co-inventor of public key cryptography Michael Chwe

Anders Sandberg talks volcano engineering, Freeman Dyson's computer at the end of everything, moving planets, how transparent society should get after quantum computers, and what is the best type of geoengineering! Anders is a futurist and transhumanist, but also deeply concerned with the ethics and risks of all the wild technology he believes will happen. He works at Nick Bostrom's Future of Life Institute, and calls himself an "academic jack of all trades". This episode is me trying to hold a firehose at full power. But Anders manages to remember where digressed every time I completely lose track of our topic. This one goes EVERYWHERE. If you don't learn something new in this one, you're something special! Give this podcast reviews in whatever podcast app you're listening to it in, find my patreon on patreon.com/runde and subscribe to this + comics for a dollar, remember to pet dogs and cats and don't pet walruses, and stay kind. Made in collaboration with NITRO STUDIOS, Oslo.

Casey Handmer: On leaving Hyperloop One and NASA to bet on cheap, giga-scaleable carbon capture. First he took a PhD in gravity waves, then he got a position at Hyperloop One because of some truly shocking problem-solving skills (as far as I can tell, just listen to the episode and see if you agree), and THEN he worked at NASA JPL, where the literal rocket science happens. Every single one of these topics could have been their own 2 hour 40 minute podcast - but we hardly go there. This episode focuses on Casey's current endeavour after he left NASA: Terraform Industries, a carbon capture project that's designed to be ultra-scaleable - which is what the world VERY much needs. Is Casey's carbon capture project feasible? If solar power becomes cheap enough, Casey thinks so. The episode was recorded before the current war in Ukraine, and with the war, gas prices have gone up so much that Casey's technology would be profitable today. The war has also shown (as if that was necessary) the value of producing one's own natural gas, which Terraform's machines are promising to do. It sounds almost too optimistic to be true, but Casey's credentials speak for themselves. This may be the most optimism-inducing podcast I've recorded so far, and on twitter, you can tag me @oysteinrunde and casey @cjhandmer if you have any questions or grievances. His twitter bio reads "Physicist, Immigrant, Pilot, Dad.Former Caltech, Hyperloop, NASA JPL.Founder @terraformindie", and he came to my attention when a lot of smart space people shared his essay "Starship is still not understood". https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-still-not-understood/ If you want me to make a similar episode where we ONLY talk about SpaceX' and Elon Musk's masterpiece Starship, the spaceship that promises to really change the space industry for humankind, please find me on Instagram @rundeshow and send a PM, and do leave reviews and comments on this podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. Spreading the word helps! This podcast exists because of the generous contribution of Nitro Studios, Oslo, and my great supporters at www.patreon.com/runde. They also get some neat digital comics!

The second part of the Jesse Moynihan interview! Jesse Moynihan went from incredibly weird underground cartoonist to "household name" when his friend and colleague Tom Herpich suggested Pendleton Ward hired Jesse to join as a storyboarder/writer/artist/art director at the end of the first season of the soon-to-be legendary animated show Adventure Time. On the side of the enormous body of work that is Adventure Time (currently on HBO max), Jesse has also made his own, weird, spiritual, slice-of-life comic about bickering cosmic gods, Forming. With his brother Justin he's released the short Manly on youtube, via Cartoon Hangover. And he's been art director on the beautiful show Midnight Gospel (Netflix). Recently Jesse presented an NFT project on his instagram account @jmoyns. The ensuing debate showed that some of his regular fans saw NFTs as a betrayal of the integrity Jesse had shown through his entire career - and with great disappointment comes great interviews! I jumped on the opportunity to hear Jesse explain his thoughts on NFTs and their place in the current art scene, as I can easily say that Jesse has never been an artist known for taking "the easy route". So, what's his thoughts on the climate impact of NFTs, why he stayed away from OpenSea even though it could have meant a bigger profit, what he sees as the future for art, on building a new fanbase from the ground up, and what he wants to do next. I'm very proud to give you this 3,5 hour talk with one of the most awesome creators I know of! For practical reasons this talk has been cut in two. Jesse's patreon: https://www.patreon.com/forming Jesse's art can be found on Netflix (Midnight Gospel), HBO max (Adventure Time), YouTube (Manly) Instagram: @jmoyns His future project, on twitter: @jesus2rises On Discord: discord.gg/jesus2rises This podcast is, as always, produced thanks to Nitro studios, Oslo, and with the help of my supporters at https://www.patreon.com/runde Patreon supporters get secret comics, sketches, full pdfs of unaccessible comics (like Olav Sleggja and Margarin and Teleboy - in english) AND extra nice drawings and maybe gifts if they meet me at festivals. This year I'm a guest at Fantasticon Copenhagen (june 25th) and Art Bubble Aarhus (sept 16th). If you want to support Ukraine AND get a comic from me and genius Ida Neverdahl, order our first travelogue MOSCOW from this link - http://centrala.org.uk/shop/moscow/

For the first non-space related episode of Wunderdog, I have a MASSIVE nugget of artistic GOLD. Jesse Moynihan went from incredibly weird underground cartoonist to "household name" when his friend and colleague Tom Herpich suggested Pendleton Ward hired Jesse to join as a storyboarder/writer/artist/art director at the end of the first season of the soon-to-be legendary animated show Adventure Time. On the side of the enormous body of work that is Adventure Time (currently on HBO max), Jesse has also made his own, weird, spiritual, slice-of-life comic about bickering cosmic gods, Forming. With his brother Justin he's released the short Manly on youtube, via Cartoon Hangover. And he's been art director on the beautiful show Midnight Gospel (Netflix). Recently Jesse presented an NFT project on his instagram account @jmoyns. The ensuing debate showed that some of his regular fans saw NFTs as a betrayal of the integrity Jesse had shown through his entire career - and with great disappointment comes great interviews! I jumped on the opportunity to hear Jesse explain his thoughts on NFTs and their place in the current art scene, as I can easily say that Jesse has never been an artist known for taking "the easy route". So, what's his thoughts on the climate impact of NFTs, why he stayed away from OpenSea even though it could have meant a bigger profit, what he sees as the future for art, on building a new fanbase from the ground up, and what he wants to do next. I'm very proud to give you this 3,5 hour talk with one of the most awesome creators I know of! For practical reasons this talk has been cut in two. Jesse's patreon: https://www.patreon.com/forming Jesse's art can be found on Netflix (Midnight Gospel), HBO max (Adventure Time), YouTube (Manly) Instagram: @jmoyns His future project, on twitter: @jesus2rises On Discord: discord.gg/jesus2rises This podcast is, as always, produced thanks to Nitro studios, Oslo, and with the help of my supporters at https://www.patreon.com/runde Patreon supporters get secret comics, sketches, full pdfs of unaccessible comics (like Olav Sleggja and Margarin and Teleboy - in english) AND extra nice drawings and maybe gifts if they meet me at festivals. This year I'm a guest at Fantasticon Copenhagen (june 25th) and Art Bubble Aarhus (sept 16th). If you want to support Ukraine AND get a comic from me and genius Ida Neverdahl, order our first travelogue MOSCOW from this link - http://centrala.org.uk/shop/moscow/

In 2020, the esteemed physics professors Eugene Chudnovsky and Luis Anchordoqui published thatr describes a theoretical form of life unlike anything else. Eugene and Luis suggested that a combination of cosmic strings and magnetic monopoles could perform the tasks of DNA at a subatomic level. Eugene Chudnovsky received his undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral education at Kharkiv University in Ukraine, and has been engaged in human rights for years, among many other things as Co-Chair of the Committee of Concerned Scientists. We talk a bit about his experiences in the Soviet Union before he left for the US. The episode was recorded before the invasion of Ukraine. Ads: Wunderdog exists because of my patrons. Consider joining www.patreon.com/runde if you have the opportunity. Or, more urgent: Ida Neverdahl & I have made a travelogue comic from Russia, MOSCOW. We participated in one of the last pro-LGBT demonstrations before it was deemed illegal, and also experienced first hand how street protesting already in 2015 were strongly regulated. The book is out in english, and the publisher, Centrala, has now put "Moscow" as part of their Ukraine help sale. Please check out MOSCOW and the other books from Centrala here. (All proceeds other than shipping go to Ukraine) http://centrala.org.uk/en/sale-of-comic-books-and-graphic-novels-for-ukraine/ For Norwegian readers, I have a new book out, "ANTIBIOTIKA, helt og antihelt", together with Norway's foremost authority on antibiotics resitant bacteria, prof. Dag Berild. It's been called a "pedagogical bullseye" by Dagens Næringsliv and it's a short, easily digested and remembered summary of Berild's 30 years of research on how bacteria develop antibiotics resistance. Even Norway can cut our consumption of antibiotics in half without sacrificing anyone's health, and in the book we show how. April 3rd we present it at Litteraturhuset Oslo, Saklig Søndag. I will also be at Fantasticon in Copenhagen June 25th, and Art Bubble in Aarhus September 16th.

While studying the stellar stream GD-1, Harvard astronomer Ana Bonaca made a literally enormous discovery: Cosmic "bullet holes" in our galaxy, several light years across. Something with around a million times the mass of our sun has punched enormous holes in our galaxy. What is the "bullet" here? Is it a supermassive black hole, of the kind we only see in the center of a galaxy? Or is it a cluster of stars? Or is it something even stranger, a "bullet" made of dark matter? 00.06.26 What are star clusters? 00. 08.00 Is the milky way just a big star cluster? No, because the Milky way is bound together with a dark matter halo. 00.10.15 The Milky Way has more mass than its amount of stars should indicate. So what is the extra, “invisible” mass? This is Ana’s favorite solution to what the cosmic bullets can be … 01.01.04 So, is earth safe from cosmic bullets?

Jupiter's moon Europa is the most exciting place in the solar system to look for life. Cynthia Phillips from NASA tells us why. Cynthia Phillips is a planetary geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where she serves as the Europa Clipper mission’s project staff scientist and project science communications lead. She is also the deputy project scientist for the Europa Lander mission concept. This podcast is possible because of Nitro Studios, Oslo. It's also funded by my patrons at www.patreon.com/runde Thank you, patrons.

Professor James Fallon talks psychology and space travel for "psychopaths" with psychologist and former coach of the Norwegian MMA national team, Jakob "the striking viking" Løvstad. This podcast is a collaboration with Nitro studio, Oslo. Theme song: Jan Krey aka Jkreyzy Extra material and my art for patrons at www.patreon.com/runde - special thanks to my 5$ and up patrons: Maren Struksnæs Adrian Kaxrud Berntsen Jo Christiansen Halvor Harnæs Lund Øystein Borgersen Are Edvardsen Maisen Pedersen Kyle Arumugam Kyrre Matias Goksøyr Lars Ivar Igesund Morten F. Thomsen My books on www.oysteinrunde.no

Robin Hanson on how mind uploads could make space irrelevant. The Fermi paradox is the mysterious lack of traces of alien civilized life. Professor Robin Hanson invented a term to describe that something may doom all civilizations to die before they go interplanetary (and become visible from earth). He coined this unknown factor "The Great Filter". Today, the term Great Filter has become quite mainstream and understandable - just look at Elon Musk's pinned tweet since august: "We must pass the great filter." But Robin has moved on - this idea was his in 1996! We want to know what he's up to next. So this episode is not about the great filter, but about Robin's excellent, and very unique, book "Age of Em". (We'll have to save his new book "Elephant in the brain" for later - we only had two hours!) Later, Robin developed the "Grabby aliens" hypothesis as a potential (and scary) solution to the fermi paradox. This has a separate episode! Robin Hanson's homepage: https://www.overcomingbias.com/ The Age of Em, audiobook: https://tidd.ly/3nyuEAL This podcast is a collaboration with Nitro studio, Oslo. Theme song: Jan Krey aka Jkreyzy Extra material and my art for patrons at Patreon.com/runde - special thanks to these 5$ and up patrons: Maren Struksnæs Adrian Kaxrud Berntsen Jo Christiansen Halvor Harnæs Lund Øystein Borgersen Are Edvardsen Maisen Pedersen Kyle Arumugam Kyrre Matias Goksøyr Lars Ivar Igesund Morten F. Thomsen More about my books at www.oysteinrunde.no

NASA professor Philip Lubin and his potentially asteroid-deflecting and planet-saving laser, Breakthrough Starshot. Stephen Hawking's last speeches were often about his gigantic dream project, funded by physichist and billionaire Yuri Milner: The Breakthrough Initiative. It is mindblowing in scope and ambition. Professor Philip Lubin is one of the minds that inspired one part of this initiative: Breakthrough Starshot. This podcast is a collaboration with Nitro studio, Oslo. Theme song: Jan Krey aka Jkreyzy If you feel like supporting, write a review on iTunes! Extra material, and my art, is available for patrons at Patreon.com/runde - special thanks to these 5$ and up patrons: Maren Struksnæs Adrian Kaxrud Berntsen Jo Christiansen Halvor Harnæs Lund Øystein Borgersen Are Edvardsen Maisen Pedersen Kyle Arumugam Kyrre Matias Goksøyr Lars Ivar Igesund Morten F. Thomsen My books (mostly in Norwegian) can be found on www.oysteinrunde.no