Future of Humanity

In this episode of Future of Humanity, we will be talking with Professor Margret Bjarnadottir, one of the world's leading experts on using big data and analytics for doing good. With a Ph.D. from MIT, Margret has used big data and AI to improve opioid prescriptions,  predict colorectal cancer mortality, design drug surveillance mechanisms, and patient targeting. She has also studied the best approaches to remedy the pay-gap problem taking into account both equity and economics. Listen in for a very informative and uplifting conversation. 

As artificial intelligence-based applications are becoming pervasive in every sphere of life, there is a movement to make it more "human-centered". We will be talking with Ben Shneiderman whose pioneering work has led to the Human-Centered AI movement. He is passionate about innovation and the good that AI can do in making our lives much better. He talks to us about how human control and AI automation can work together to make humanity better off than mindlessly pursuing AI-based solutions. Ben has interesting views on where the romance of AI falls down and what the future holds when using AI intelligently.

Turns out, the global covid pandemic could be mitigated much faster if only we had a more equitable distribution of vaccines across the world. There were more 5-year-olds being vaccinated in the U.S. than vulnerable people in places like India and Brazil causing the prolonging of the health impacts for even residents of America. We will be talking with a much-published public health activist, Achal Prabhala who is the current coordinator of the AccessIBSA Project and has been honored across the world with Fellowships and Residencies to work on health equity issues. 

In order to provide animal protein (egg, poultry, and meat) we humans use a third of the earth's landmass to feed the animals. In most countries, these animals are factory farmed in horrible conditions and then slaughtered to enable us to eat chicken sandwiches and steaks. There seems to be a way to cultivate meat, save the planet and pursue our values of not causing harm to other life forms. We will be talking with Josh Tetrick, the CEO of Just Food Inc. who has successfully shepherded a company to use modern technology to cultivate meat for human consumption. With success in Singapore, Just Inc might well be at the forefront of a revolution in the way we eat. 

My guest on this episode devoted to Climate Change will be Dipak Dasgupta who is working with IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) on Climate Finance. Turns out that the $3-$4 trillion needed across the world to mitigate global warming dwarfs in comparison to the approx $21 trillion return on the investment made by global financial institutions. Further, renewable technology is already economical but being held back by habit and custom and the strong lobby representing older fuel sources. The dialog is interesting and not to be missed!

In this episode of Future of Humanity, we will be talking about Rare Diseases with Dr. Vijay Chandru, the Founder and Executive-Chairman of Strand Life Sciences based in Bangalore, India. The fact is that very few people, mostly children, get these diseases due primarily to random faulty genes. Given that the market size is small, pharmaceutical companies do not always focus on finding a cure; hence they are sometimes called "orphan" diseases. Even when one finds a cure, the cost to the patients and their families could be prohibitive. Professor Chandru and I will be talking about the different technological interventions that are being pursued across the world to deal with this difficult health issue, and the prognosis for success. 

In this episode of Future of Humanity, we will be talking about AI in Medicine with Ritu Agarwal and Gordon Gao, both professors at the University of Maryland who are moving on to Johns Hopkins University. Ritu and Gordon have a long successful history of doing research on the interface of technology and medicine and are experts on AI in Medicine. They run the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems, and the Healthcare Insights AI Lab which conducts empirical as well as behavioral research on the impact of AI in medicine. In the podcast, they highlight places where Artificial Intelligence can take over medicine and hospital management, and cases where AI can only play a human augmenting role.  

Our guest is Dr. Dermot Kelleher who will discuss how creating partnerships between engineering and medicine will yield new methods of attacking several important diseases affecting humanity. Dermot is the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. who has also been Dean at Imperial College, London, Trinity College Dublin and the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine in Singapore. A globally renowned researcher in immune responses in gastrointestinal disease and cancer, he is on the forefront of creating partnerships between medical and engineering schools to train forward looking doctors of this world.

We will discuss the promises and perils of synthetic biology, CRISPR and genetic engineering with our guest Kimberly Wagner (PhD in medical sciences, Harvard University) who is a scientist, entrepreneur, and business leader with experience advising companies in the agriculture, food, and healthcare sectors on technology and new product development. Kim is also the owner, along with her husband of Stoutridge Vineyard in Marlboro, New York that produces award winning spirits and wines. Even wine making may one day change because of advances in genetic engineering and biological sciences.

We have a long and engaging conversation with Guy Filipelli, Managing Partner of Squadra Ventures, previously the co-founder and CEO of RedOwl Analytics who takes the mystery out of the big data revolution, and of using AI for data driven decision making. With degrees from West Point and Oxford University, and a long stint as an intelligence officer with the U.S. military and an entrepreneur, Filipelli knows inside out the possibilities and limits of data analytics. Our conversation traverses the complex landscape of the big data revolution.