AI Moonshot — Nell Watson on the Near & Not So Near Future of Intelligence

About this episode

Nell Watson discusses the future trajectories of AI development and the importance of ethics and safety in the field.

The launch of ChatGPT was a "Sputnik moment". In making tangible decades of progress it shot AI to the fore of public consciousness. This attention is accelerating AI development as dollars are poured into scaling models. What is the next stage in this journey? And where is the destination? My guest this week, Nell Watson, offers a broad perspective on the possible trajectories. She sits in several IEEE groups looking at AI Ethics, safety & transparency, has founded AI companies, and is a consultant to Apple on philosophical matters. Nell makes a compelling case that we can expect to see agentic AI being soon adopted widely. We might even see whole AI corporations. In the context of these possible developments, she reasons that concerns of AI ethics and safety — so often siloed within different communities — should be understood as continuous. Along the way we talk about the perils of hamburgers and the good things that could come from networking our minds. Links * Nell's book: Taming The Machine: Ethically Harness The Power Of AI [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Taming-Machine-Ethically-Harness-Power/dp/1398614327] * Multiverses home [http://multiverses.xyz]

People in this episode

Host: James Robinson

Guest: Nell Watson

Topics covered

• AI development
• AI ethics
• future of intelligence
• agentic AI
• AI corporations
• safety and transparency

Keywords

• AI
• ChatGPT
• Sputnik moment
• AI ethics
• agentic AI
• Nell Watson
• AI corporations
• safety
• transparency

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: IEEE, Apple

Books & works: Taming The Machine: Ethically Harness The Power Of AI

More episodes of MULTIVERSES

• A Story For Humanity — Minhyong Kim on Why Maths Will Never End · February 9, 2026 · 1h 12m
• Molecules & Mirrors —Vanessa Seifert on the Philosophy of Chemistry · December 5, 2025 · 1h 10m
• Consciousness is not Computation — Christof Koch · May 2, 2025 · 1h 3m
• Where Does It End? — Adrian Moore on The Infinite · March 14, 2025 · 1h 16m
• 37| Mind-Wandering — Kalina Christoff Hadjiilieva on the Science of Spontaneous Thought · January 31, 2025 · 1h 38m
• 36| History of Science: Mythmaking & Contingency — Patricia Fara · December 23, 2024 · 1h 30m