Former CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame exposes the future of espionage and spy craft. The advent of artificial intelligence, especially deep fakes and a flood of disinformation, has made the task of gathering reliable intelligence exponentially more difficult, with big implications for democracies. Listen to this episode to learn about the 17 US intelligence agencies, how 9/11 changed spy craft, the impact of disinformation on civic society and government, how undercover agents cultivate sources, and how artificial intelligence raises the stakes in the effort to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Tech entrepreneur Byron Reese has a pragmatic approach to the future. He has launched several startup companies, exiting three via M&A and two via IPO. He’s also the author of several books, including his newest, Agora. Byron spoke to the Futurists about superintelligence, collective intelligence, super organisms, and emergence. What can human organizations learn from bee hives? The conflict between AI Doomers and the Accelerationists. Why humanity is going to be all right!

In this week’s Futurist network we are joined live in the Dubai studio with two active AI architects, Jean-Baptiste Isnard (founder of Quantum Spirit) and Dr Julia Michelin (founder of LumaBrush AI) a returning guest. The issue of whether AI is conscious continues to be debated at large but the question is perhaps not about if they are conscious but how the debate itself will change the view of human consciousness itself. In this very philosophical conversation Jean Baptiste and Julia present us with many of the challenges that emerge when mankind has to deal with embedded AI that is smarter than us collectively, while not necessarily being conscious or aligned. There’s no debate that AI is coming, but perhaps the biggest contribution it will make is helping us instead our own consciousness and the breadth of intelligence in the world around us

In episode #4 of The Futurists, Regina Joseph talks us through the mechanics of the methodology known as Superforecasting. From her work with Pytho, Sibylink, the National Science Foundation, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) and beyond, we learn how forecasting extends well into the future through human collective intelligence techniques and statistical analysis. What does it take to see the trends of the future emerging as the world seems chaotic, disruptive and unpredictable?