Ep 428: Byron Reese | The Future of Humanity
There are the people who hope the future will be better, then there are the people who reason the future will be better, Byron is the second variety. Both a futurist and optimist, Byron believes we are approaching a Fourth Age for humanity that promises to be infinitely better than anything we have seen before.
Byron’s newest book, “The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity,” is described as “entertaining and engaging” by the New York Times, was named this year on JP Morgan’s Summer Reading List and is a Gary’s Book Club pick for CES 2019. As the CEO and Publisher of GigaOm, Byron leads the company in their mission to help business leaders understand the implications of emerging technologies and their impacts on business, media, and society. Byron produces and hosts GigaOm’s podcasts Voices in AI and The AI Minute and is also the author of “Infinite Progress: How Technology and the Internet Will End Ignorance, Disease, Hunger, Poverty, and War.”
Byron possesses a diverse body of patented work, and enjoys talking about the intersection of technology, history and the future to both technical and non-technical audiences around the world. Byron brings his experience as a technologist, his passion for history, and his proven business acumen to illuminate how today’s technology can solve many of our biggest global challenges. As a lifelong entrepreneur with multiple IPOs and successful exits under his belt, Byron also frequently speaks to business audiences on how to excel in the world of tomorrow, and how to deploy technology successfully.
He states: “Technology multiplies human ability. That’s its trick. It magnifies us. We can move more bricks with a fork lift than we can on our back. Technological advancement is not to be feared, rather it should be welcomed, for by enhancing human ability, we enhance our productivity and therefore our standard of living. This is the entire reason why we live so much more lavish and prosperous lives than did our great grandparents. An hour of our time is vastly more productive than was an hour of theirs.”
Bloomberg Businessweek credits Byron with having “quietly pioneered a new breed of media company.” The Financial Times of London reported that he “is typical of the new wave of internet entrepreneurs out to turn the economics of the media industry on its head.”
Byron and his work have been featured in hundreds of news outlets, including New York Times, Washington Post, Entrepreneur Magazine, USA Today, Reader’s Digest, NPR, and the LA Times Magazine.
Specialties: Entrepreneurship, executive leadership, product conception and creation, and an optimistic can-do, scrappy, “anything is possible” attitude. As a public speaker, Byron has addressed hundreds of corporations and professional organizations on almost every continent and reports that he is open to traveling to Antarctica to round it all out.
The Forth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity
We are now on the doorstep of a fourth change brought about by two technologies: AI and robotics. Byron Reese’ book “The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity” provides extraordinary background information on how we got to this point, and how—rather than what—we should think about the topics we’ll soon all be facing: machine consciousness, automation, employment, creative computers, radical life extension, artificial life, AI ethics, the future of warfare, super-intelligence, and the implications of extreme prosperity. By asking questions like “Are you a machine?” and “Could a computer feel anything?” Reese leads readers through a discussion along the cutting edge in robotics and AI, and, provides a framework by which we can all understand, discuss, and act on the issues of the Fourth Age, and how they’ll transform humanity
Connect w/ Byron