Drawing connections between longevity science, AI, neuroscience, philosophy, and the arts, the Human+ AI Project offers thought-provoking explorations of today and the future. We aim to demystify the ecosystem of AI tools and techniques. Originating from a paper I presented at the inaugural Artificial General Intelligence Conference in 2008, this project continues to evolve. (Original paper and updated paper.) This project is associated with the AI Strategic Foresight Board.
Episode #1. Why Ray Kurzweil?
Ray Kurzweil is a world class inventor, thinker, and futurist, with a thirty-five-year track record of accurate predictions. He has been a leading developer in artificial intelligence for 61 years—longer than any other living person. Ray was the principal inventor of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, omni-font optical character recognition, print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, text-to-speech synthesizer, music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments and commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition software.
Ray received a Grammy Award for outstanding achievement in music technology; he is the recipient of the National Medal of Technology and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He has written five best-selling books including The Singularity Is Near and How To Create A Mind, both New York Times bestsellers, and Danielle: Chronicles of a Superheroine, winner of multiple young adult fiction awards. Ray is a Principal Researcher and AI Visionary at Google. Book link: The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil
Episode #2. Why AGI?
Peter Voss is a Serial Entrepreneur, Engineer, Inventor and a Pioneer in Artificial Intelligence. While Peter started out in electronics engineering, he moved into software. He developed a comprehensive ERP software package and remarkably took his first software company from a zero to 400-person IPO in seven years.
Fueled by the fragile nature of software, Peter embarked on a 20-year journey to study intelligence and to replicate it in software. His research culminated in the creation of a natural language intelligence engine that can think, learn, reason, and adapt to and grow with the user. He even developed the term “AGI” (Artificial General Intelligence) with fellow luminaries in the field of AI.
Peter founded SmartAction.ai in 2009, which developed the first AGI-based call center automation technology. Now, in his latest venture, Aigo.ai, he is taking that technology a step further with the commercialization of the second generation of his ‘Conversational AI’ technology with a bold mission of providing hyper-intelligent hyper-personal assistants for everyone.
In addition to being an entrepreneur, engineer, inventor and AI pioneer, Peter often writes and presents on various philosophical topics including rational ethics, free will and artificial minds; is on the AI Strategic Foresight Board of Humanity+ and is deeply involved with futurism and racial life extension, a term many of us in the 1990s at Extropy Institute favored.
Episode #3. Why Study AI-AGI?
Sadie Stock is a senior at the University of Southern California, studying computational neuroscience and business. She is one of the youngest rising voices in global conversations around AI and the human future.
Sadie has spoken internationally on AI’s role in higher education, sharing her unique perspective on youth attitudes towards the future of technology. Soon after the release of ChatGPT-3.5, Sadie presented independent survey data at UC Berkeley showing overwhelming student and faculty support for full-scale institutional AI adoption. Sadie has also been invited to moderate various panels, including at the upcoming Beneficial AGI Summit in Istanbul.
She currently leads a university-focused startup initiative for Socratic Sciences, where she serves as College Launch Director and has an eight-person team working to harness the power of questioning to foster understanding, connection, and mentorship across student populations.
Sadie serves on the AI Strategic Foresight Board of Humanity+ and is Chair of the NextGen Advisory Board at Human Energy, a nonprofit focused on the future of humanity and the evolution of the Noosphere. She is developing a video course on LLM applications for Total Seminars, and is co-author of The Book of Questions: College and Life, both to be released in the fall of 2025. Her work centers on youth perspectives and institutional change in navigating the future of AI.
Episode #4. Why Philosophy?
Marouane Jaouat is a postdoctoral researcher within the Chair of Transitions at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University. With a doctorate in sociology, his research examines the philosophical and sociological implications of efforts to ensure humanity's long-term future. Marouane has devoted eight years to studying humanity and the future with an aim is to help raise awareness about important ideas by organizing a series of seminars that make these complex concepts more accessible to a broader audience.
As a Lecturer and Researcher at the University of Caen Normandy (France), he contributed to a report for the French Ministry of Justice on "Transhumanism(s) and Law(s)" (2021) and to the book "Regards Croisés sur les Transhumanismes" (2022). He also co-authored the White Paper of Transitions (2024) and co-edited a special issue on "Transhumanisms" (2024) for France Forum Journal with Prof. Raphaël Liogier. His current research focuses on transhumanism and longtermism", particularly how these movements intersect with questions of existential risks and the future of humanity. Marouane is on the AI Strategic Foresight Board of Humanity+.
