Welcome to a world of existential threats, philosophers and clever robots
The present is surreal and one thing is for sure, the future will be weirder still. Anders Sandberg of the Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford and other thinkers mull over whether humans might become the pets of intelligent machines; what threat does epidemic disease pose, and why we feel such a need to predict the future anyway.
Producer: Marianna Petrilli
Director: Ryan Harding

videoEthics
What’s an idea worth? How prominent thinkers have understood intellectual property
6 minutes

videoHistory of science
Meet the Quaker pacifist who shattered British science’s highest glass ceilings
14 minutes

videoComputing and artificial intelligence
A future in which ‘artificial scientists’ make discoveries may not be far away
9 minutes

videoComputing and artificial intelligence
Why large language models are mysterious – even to their creators
8 minutes

videoEthics
Plato saw little value in privacy. How do his ideas hold up in the information age?
5 minutes

videoAnimals and humans
Are zoos and natural history museums born of a desire to understand, or to control?
57 minutes

videoPolitical philosophy
The radical activist couple who fought for social change in the courtroom
21 minutes

videoHuman rights and justice
Can providing humanitarian aid be illegal? A troubling case from the US-Mexico border
17 minutes

videoComputing and artificial intelligence
The ‘cloud’ requires heaps of energy to stay aloft. Could synthetic DNA be the answer?
12 minutes