The Next Billion Seconds with Mark Pesce
Sign up for 'The Practical Futurist' newsletter here Hosted by award-winning podcast creator, journalist & futurist Mark Pesce, The Next Billion Seconds is everything you need to know about the future — so you can make the best decisions today. The rate of change we are experiencing is the fastest humanity has ever seen. Stay informed as Mark simplifies the complex technological and societal changes we face. How we will work, connect, use money, drive, eat is all changing at a rapid pace. For more information on The Next Billion seconds with Mark Pesce, please check out https://nextbillionseconds.com For more information about this podcast and The Next Billion Seconds, please visit https://nextbillionseconds.com. The Next Billion Seconds with Mark Pesce is produced by Ampel - https://ampel.com.au.
Episodes
Mark joins RNZ Nine to Noon host Kathryn Ryan to delve into the sudden phenomenon of 'viral' AI videos - getting better at capturing your eyeballs. Did you see those cute bunnies bouncing on a trampoline? Never happened - but made you look. The fusion of TikTok and AI video looks to be potent - and addictive. Next up, shocking and sad story of Adam Raine, a 16 year old who confided his suicidal thoughts to ChatGPT. ChatGPT aided hi...
On a recent trip to the San Francisco Bay Area, Mark rented an EV, drove to a rural town on the Mendocino coast, then drove back again. That trip taught Mark a lot about what it means to drive an EV - and how it changes both thinking and behaviour behind the wheel. Unless we fundamentally revise how we power personal transportation in the US (and Australia) along lines similar to those in China, the EV revolution will fade away in ...
A recent study from MIT shows students tasked with writing essays showed significantly lower levels of brain activity when allowed to use ChatGPT. Mark Pesce reviews the implications of this finding with RNZ NineToNoon host Kathryn Ryan, going on to reveal how an internet filled with AI-generated content becomes increasingly 'toxic' for those same AIs. Plus, would you agree to be 're-animated' as an 'AI ghost'?
In conversatio...
RNZ NINE TO NOON: CAN CHATGPT MAKE YOU CRAZY?
In conversation with host Kathryn Ryan, Mark highlights a number of reports indicating potentially very serious mental health issues associated with the use of chatbots like ChatGPT. These chatbots tend to be very agreeable - a quality known as 'sycophancy'. But being agreeable with someone's delusions only tends to reinforce them, potentially amplifying any underlying mental health iss...
From Radio New Zealand's Nine To Noon: Meta - the parent of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and much more besides - finds itself fighting for its life against a suit from the US Federal Trade Commission, charging abuse of monopoly power - because they acquired Instagram and WhatsApp in order to neutralise up-and-coming competitors. Even in Trump's America, that could result in the break-up of the trillion-dollar social media giant. ...
Originally broadcast on 20th March, 2025 on Radio New Zealand's Nine To Noon with host Kathryn Ryan.
Christie's held its first auction of AI-generated art, earning a million dollars. Those AI artworks had been 'trained' from countless images, owned by other people. Is that legal? OpenAI and Google claim that unless they have free right to use - well, basically everything everywhere ever created by humanity - to train the...
Originally broadcast on Radio New Zealand's Nine to Noon on 13 February 2025
Last week Google amended its ethical AI policies to allow their AI tools to be used in weapons - to preserve 'national security'. They're among the last to embrace a new market for their products - defense and weapons. Is this a new thing? Or is tech simply returning to its roots as a service industry for the military-industrial complex? Is this...
"How did you go bankrupt?" begins the oft-quoted line from Hemingway. "Two ways. Gradually - then suddenly." That's how the automotive sector feels at the end of 2024, with Nissan maybe preparing for bankruptcy and Stellantis firing its CEO and VW struggling with strikes and low sales and GM shuttering Cruise and on and on and on. Sally Dominguez and Drew Smith join Mark Pesce in studio to explore what's really happening - and what...
In 2018, Nick Hazell founded v2food - an amazing startup making plant-based substitutes for meat that got extensive coverage on THE NEXT BILLION SECONDS. Six years later, it's getting difficult to find their product on supermarket shelves - and there's been a broader roll-back from plant-based alternatives. What's happened? Nick Hazel doesn't have all the answers - but he asks some of the right questions...
The impacts of global heating have become persistent and profound, so we need to do as much as we can to lesson those impacts, as quickly as we can. The best paths forward lean into existing, natural processes - and this is exactly where Nick Hazell has arrived with Algenie. Can algae restore balance to our ecosystem? Is it the moonshot we need to transform our future?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this final year in review episode, Sally Dominguez, Drew Smith and Mark Pesce address the big, smelly elephant in the room: The change of government - and direction - over in the United States of America. Could massive tariffs plus 'drill, baby, drill' together land a knockout punch on the US EV industry? Plus - predictions for 2025. We're bringing the year to a thrilling close on this episode of THE NEXT BILLION CARS.
Whenever Mark, Sal and Drew get together, sparks will fly. So much has happened since our visit to CES 2024, we reckoned it time to draw all the year's threads together: Are we pulling back from EVs? Will China dominate manufacturing? And what about all that data vehicles are collecting? It's been full on - enough to require a bit of a 'group hug'. Part one of two.
The $100,000,000,000 Lie — “In 2016, Tesla CEO Elon Musk instructed his team of engineers to 'hard code' the first demo of what would become 'Full Self Driving'. A faked video drove panic across the entire automotive sector, leading to massive (and mostly failed) investments in technologies for autonomy.”
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Next Billion Cars co-host Drew Smith... has something to say.
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Hosted by Drew Smith, Sally Dominguez and futurist Mark Pesce, The Next Billion Cars is everything you need to know about the future of Cars.
For more information about this podcast and The Next Billion Seconds, please visit https://nextbillionseconds.com. The Next Billion Seconds with Mark Pesce is produced by Am...
The Next Billion Cars co-host Sally Dominguez examines at the data hungry nature of modern vehicles. What does privacy look like in the age of 'artificial intimacy'? You have nothing to hide, right?
Sign up for 'The Practical Futurist' newsletter here
Hosted by Drew Smith, Sally Dominguez and futurist Mark Pesce, The Next Billion Cars is everything you need to know about the future of Cars.
Sign up for 'The Practical Futurist' newsletter here
Hosted by award-winning podcast creator, journalist & futurist Mark Pesce, The Next Billion Seconds is everything you need to know about the future — so you can make the best decisions today. The rate of change we are experiencing is the fastest humanity has ever seen. Stay informed as Mark simplifies the complex technological and societal changes we face. How we will work,...
A special episode of The Next Billion Cars with Drew Smith and Mark Pesce - car brand ZEEKR: HOW DOES A NEW BRAND SURVIVE? With Gustaf Gunér - head of brand, Zeekr Design. Sign up for 'The Practical Futurist' newsletter here.
In this series of THE NEXT BILLION SECONDS we'll explore the enormous changes that are taking place right now - almost everywhere we look. Because things are moving fast.The future has suddenly become the pr...
Sign up for 'The Practical Futurist' newsletter here.
In this series of THE NEXT BILLION SECONDS we'll explore the enormous changes that are taking place right now - almost everywhere we look. Because things are moving fast.The future has suddenly become the present.
Hosted by award-winning podcast creator, journalist & futurist Mark Pesce, The Next Billion Seconds is everything you need to know about the future — so you can ma...
Live at SXSW: A Fine Line between technology and anthropology with Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau, CEO and Publisher of MIT Technology Review
Ever since the release of ChatGPT it's changed how we think about what we can do.That revelation continues unrolling across a vast front...Students getting ChatGPT to write their essays... Teachers writing prompts, constructing densely detailed historical worlds for those same students to explore...
On this episode, we stare into the abyss of one of our deepest fears - that AI has suddenly made us all obsolete. Or has it?
Sign up for 'The Practical Futurist' newsletter here.
In this series of THE NEXT BILLION SECONDS we'll explore the enormous changes that are taking place right now - almost everywhere we look. Because things are moving fast.The future has suddenly become the present.
Hosted by award-winning podcast creator, j...
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