This special episode features Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen in conversation with University College London's Professor Geoff Mulgan. They reflect on the year 2023, delve into trends shaping technology's impact on society, and discuss the critical interplay between science, governance, and power dynamics. Mulgan, renowned for his work on technology's societal implications, shares insights from his varied career in policy, academia, and technology. They explore the evolving landscape of AI and its broader societal implications and the "billionaire problem," which underscores the urgent need for informed leadership and innovative institutional design in navigating these transformative times. For more on this talk, please go to: #ethics #internationalaffairs #artificialintelligence #ai #podcast

Sir Geoffrey John Mulgan CBE (born 1961) is Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London (UCL). From 2011 to 2019 he was Chief Executive of the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA)[1] and visiting professor at University College London, the London School of Economics, and the University of Melbourne. In 2020, he joined the Nordic think tank Demos Helsinki as a Fellow.

Science and politics have collaborated throughout human history, and science is repeatedly invoked today in political debates, from pandemic management to climate change. But the relationship between the two is muddled and muddied. In this IPR event, leading policy analyst Geoff Mulgan calls attention to the growing frictions caused by the expanding authority of science, which sometimes helps politics but often challenges it. He dissects the complex history of states’ use of science for conquest, glory and economic growth and shows the challenges of governing risk – from nuclear weapons to genetic modification, artificial intelligence to synthetic biology. He shows why the governance of science has become one of the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century, ever more prominent in daily politics and policy. This IPR event took place on 26 March 2024.

What could be done about the crisis of imagination that is afflicting much of the world? We can easily imagine ecological disaster or technological futures but struggle to picture how welfare, health or democracy could be better a generation from now. Geoff Mulgan, author of Another World is Possible will share both diagnosis and prescription, looking in particular at the role of universities in helping societies to think ahead.  This event will be moderated by Professor Ngaire Woods. Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford http://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/

Governments around the world are ever more dependent on science and technology when making decisions. Yet while many countries have amazingly high quality science advice pouring into government, this knowledge often disappears into a black hole. Not only are processes not designed to synthesise and mobilise diverse sets of knowledge towards effective decision making, but public officials and politicians aren’t trained with the capacities needed to imagine things differently. What would it take to change that? How could governments embed collective intelligence organisation at their core? And how could we ensure a next generation of agile bureaucrats fluent in both synthesising complex evidence and dynamic speculative imagining? These are some of the questions tackled in this interview with Sir Geoff Mulgan. Currently professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London (UCL), Geoff draws on decades of experience moving between academia, government, business and the practicalities of how governments work to shed light on these questions and more. Follow the Creative Bureaucracy Festival -------------- Official Website: https://creativebureaucracy.org Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CreativeBureaucracyFestival Twitter: https://twitter.com/CreatBureauFest Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/creativebureaucracyfest/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/15837395/ About the Creative Bureaucracy Festival -------------- Every year over 1,000 international participants from government, politics, civil society and other change-making organisations join the Creative Bureaucracy Festival to share and celebrate outstanding examples of innovative public administrations. Under the headline “Creative Bureaucracy Festival Meets Science”, the festival joined the Berlin Science Week in 2022 and hosted daily digital conversations with leading experts on specific topics to take a closer look at the relationship between the public sector and science. Even in government there are excellent, creative solutions to almost all community issues - the Creative Bureaucracy Festival puts these solutions and the minds behind them in the limelight. The festival, according to its president Charles Landry, represents a shift from a "no because" culture to a "yes if" culture that embraces experimentation and new ideas. In doing so, the festival also aims to refresh the reputation of public administrations and attract imaginative new talent.

On this podcast, and in the world of science advice studies generally, we spend a lot of time discussing the science-policy interface and what should exist on the 'science' side of it in order to most effectively support policymaking. But Professor Sir Geoff Mulgan asks a different question: what happens on the other side of the interface, when policymakers are landed with a vast array of knowledge, theory and opinion, and have to somehow construct from that — and their own political and economic realities — an intelligible way forward.

In society and as individuals we have lost our imaginative skills. We no longer imagine a utopian society, only dystopic social futures. Is there an imagination crisis? If so, why? And how can we overcome it and find new paths to social imagination? How can we quicken social and public imagination in our organisations and in society? And what can we do as individuals and as a collective? Watch Sir Geoff Mulgan, Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London, talk about social imagination.

Time to find a new way to measure happiness. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our event is called TEDxObserver, where x = independently organized TED event. At our TEDxObserver event, TEDTalks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organized. http://www.ted.com/tedx

The floodgates are set to open when it comes to AI and machine thinking tools, but human wisdom will need to channel the flow, says Geoff Mulgan, Chief Executive of NESTA. العقل الكبير للذكاء الجماعي: جيف مولغن يتحدّث عن الذكاء الاصطناعي سيكون هناك فيض هائل من الذكاء الاصطناعي ووسائل التفكير الآلي، ولكن على الحكمة الإنسانية "أن تضبط هذا التيار الجارف، بحسب ما أعرب عنه جيث مولغن، الرئيس التنفيذي في "نيستا.