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.

Alex Serdiuk is the co-founder and CEO of AI voice company Respeecher in Kiev. Alex and Rob Tercek discuss how synthetic voice generation will transform the motion picture industry, including some surprising reversals such as: how AI voices will change the global distribution strategy for feature films; how human actors can benefit from AI voice clones; why ethical approaches to AI yield optimal results; how the talent guilds have come to accept AI in film production; the business value of trust in times of rapid change; new legislation to prevent deep fakes.

Independent AI researcher Mark Pesce returns to the Futurists with an update on the latest advances in open source artificial intelligence. Mark talks to co-hosts Brett King and Rob Tercek about a wide range of topics: small open-source models that run on the desktop and the smartphone; AI agents that work the “night shift”; NVIDIA’s pivot to open source AI; the disruptive threat to the leading US AI labs; the rapid rise of AI-enabled intrusions and the threat to the smartphone; personal AI filtering and assistants; AI agents to manage the smart home; faceless appliances as a precursor to liquid interfaces and the end of apps; fostering cognitive dependency and offloading cognitive work to companion apps; pacing the frontier; super intelligence; geopolitical rivalry.