Riskgaming

We hosted an epic one-day festival to human expression in New York City a few weeks ago called the Lux AI Summit, bringing together hundreds of founders, artists, engineers and visionaries who are redefining the future of media. Two of our speakers, Kirby Ferguson and Ale Matamala Ortiz joined us on the Riskgaming podcast to talk about the future of filmmaking in a generative AI world.Kirby is a filmmaker, and he’s most well-known for his work around remix culture in a documentary series titled “Everything is a Remix.” Ale is the co-founder and Chief Design Officer of Runway, a Lux portfolio company that builds a generative AI studio for anyone producing films.Together with hosts Danny Crichton and Laurence Pevsner, our quad talks about the current economics of the film industry and the recession underway in Los Angeles, why filmmaking would have changed even without the rise of AI, how to think about remixing through software versus remixing through culture, the coming convergence of narrative forms like films and video games, and what the future of artists will look like with co-intelligences.

Last week, Lux convened about 300 AI engineers, scientists, researchers and founders in New York City to discuss the frontiers of the field under the banner of “the AI canvas.” The idea was to move the conversation away from what can be built, to what should be built and why. AI tools have made extraordinary progress since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, and we are still just figuring out all of the ways we can use these miraculous correlation machines.Even so, there remains prodigious work on the research frontiers of artificial intelligence to identify ways of improving model performance, merging models together, and ensuring that training and inference costs are as efficient as possible. To that end, we brought together two stars of the science world to talk more about the future of AI.Kyunghyun Cho is a computer science professor at New York University and executive director of frontier research at the Prescient Design team within Genentech Research & Early Development (gRED). Shirley Ho is Group Leader of Cosmology X Data Science at the Flatiron Institute of the Simons Foundation as well as Research Professor in Physics at New York University.Together with hosts Danny Crichton and Laurence Pevsner, we talk about the state of the art in AI today, how scientific discovery can potentially be automated with AI, whether PhDs are a thing of the past, and what the future of universities is in a time of funding cuts and endowment taxes.

In this episode, Danny Crichton and Laurence Pevsner do a special outdoor recording from Carmel, where they reflect on the successful launch of their latest game, Gray Matter, at multiple locations, including the Lux Leaders retreat. The hosts discuss the emergent gameplay that surprised them, from spontaneous character-driven debates to unexpected trading outcomes. They explore the game's core mechanics around information markets, attention economies, and strategic publication decisions—examining how players navigate the tension between keeping information proprietary versus making it public for advantage.The conversation shifts to Southwest Silicon, their recently launched deep-dive simulation focused on Arizona's semiconductor industry and water security challenges. Danny and Laurence discuss how this immersive format differs from their larger salon experiences, highlighting the complex world of water rights in the American Southwest and how players grappled with resource allocation decisions that mirror real-world policy dilemmas.Looking ahead, the hosts preview upcoming games exploring urban automation, critical mineral supply chains, university research funding, civil infrastructure security, and the future of international development institutions. They discuss their philosophy of using game design to model emerging technologies and reimagine institutional frameworks for an AI-driven future.

One of the best parts of running a game studio and policy shop here at Riskgaming at Lux Capital is the actual public launch of a new game. That day is today, because we are dropping Southwest Silicon to the world. It’s a game that models the tensions between residents, farmers as well as old and new industries in the context of the rise of chip fabs in Arizona. Water security is one of the most challenging and complex issues facing the American Southwest, and through the lens of nine characters in the game, we hope to leave every player with a more profound set of questions on what’s next as America continues to grow.On the podcast today, host Danny Crichton talks with the game’s designer, Ian Curtiss. Ian previously designed our Chinese electric vehicle scenario, Powering Up, and now he brings his hometown lens to bear on the future of advanced manufacturing and economic development.The two talk about the game’s design, its implications and what we’ve witnessed as we have watched players the world over compete over the future of silicon and sand. Listen in, and we hope you join a live runthrough soon — or host your own.

It’s fun to play a game of superlatives with China. From the awe-inspiring and cyberpunk scale of the metro trains cruising through apartment blocks in Chongqing to the stupendous rate of its shipbuilding, housing construction and waterworks, China has shown that it can build like no other. That includes the just-announced Medog Hydropower Station, which at $167 billion would be one of the largest and most expensive construction projects ever seen. Behind all of this activity is a state organized for engineering, designed for speed and scale.That’s one half of the thesis of Breakneck, the new book out by Dan Wang, which was already long listed for book of the year by the Financial Times. The other half of the thesis is that America is ruled by a lawyerly society, one that holds up projects across years of red tape and lawsuits in the name of everything from noise pollution to just good old-fashioned trolling. Can we have growth without the lawyers? And what are the costs when every project can’t be debated to its most minute detail?Dan and host Danny Crichton talk about Dan’s trips across China, the massive growth he witnessed while living in the country for six years, and comparisons between China, America, South Korea and Japan, and why the virtuous cycle of construction is so absent from America today.

Building great Riskgaming scenarios is far more of an art than science. The designer needs to understand the players — what they know and what they don’t — and then carefully construct a landscape of decisions that has fidelity to the real world while not being overwhelming. Parsimony is key, and that means a designer really has to grok the fundamentals of the issue under hand to be able to offer the best experience.That’s where Randy Lubin shines. Through his studio Leveraged Play, he has designed a whole suite of fun and profound policy simulations, focusing on the intricacies between tech and culture. Now, he’s also designing a new Riskgaming scenario for Lux, focused on AI, automation and the future of cities, exploring policy issues like employment and housing.With host Danny Crichton, Randy talks about his design process, what’s going on with his upcoming scenario, how AI is changing the future of game design, and a bit about his game design community Foresight Games.

There has been a massive influx of defense funding into Europe since Putin’s war on Ukraine started in early 2022. A sea change is underway, with Germany loosening its debt brake and countries from Poland and the United Kingdom to the Baltics all reseting their expectations for defense this century. But after several years, it’s time to take a retrospective look and ask, “What’s next?”To do that, host Danny Crichton talks with Eric Slesinger today. Eric is general partner of 201 Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund focused on advancing freedom and autonomy in Europe. He’s based in Madrid, and brings a deep local perspective on the future of the Old Continent and its new tech.The two talk about the current defense tech situation in Europe, how EU countries are trying to band together around procurement, the history and future of gray zone and multi-domain combat, and where Europe competes and even out-excels America in the defense world.

AI and education seem like a match made in heaven, and certainly, much work and dollars are being spent trying to bring the two together. As more and more people eschew reading and outsource deep thought to Deep Research though, do we still have a chance to build up our critical thinking skills?It’s an open question, and one that host Danny Crichton has been exploring this summer. In this episode, he narrates excerpts on the concepts of the psychology of decision making, risk-taking and dopamine to consider the broader question of whether we can ever truly grapple with radical uncertainty in the age of AI. Included in today’s episode are Ian Curtiss, Graham Norris, Nicholas Rush Smith, Kelly Clancy, Paul Collier and Brian Klaas.