Eric Gilliam studies how organizations like Bell Labs, early MIT, and the Rockefeller Foundation helped drive scientific progress — and what made them unusually effective.

In this conversation, we explore how those models worked, why many of them disappeared, and what it would take to bring them back. Eric explains why fast-moving, engineering-driven labs like BBN (which built the first nodes of the internet) may be essential to accelerating progress in fields like AI, biotech, and beyond.

We also cover:

• Why most funders underuse applied history
• How systems engineers at Bell Labs identified billion-dollar problems
• What a $100M research organization should do differently
• What makes Eric hopeful about the future of meta-science

Eric runs FreakTakes, a Substack focused on the organizational infrastructure of scientific progress. He’s a fellow at the Good Science Project and works with ARIA UK and Renaissance Philanthropy to support new models for R&D.

Full transcript, list of resources, and art piece: https://www.existentialhope.com/podcasts

Existential Hope was created to collect positive and possible scenarios for the future so that we can have more people commit to creating a brighter future, and to begin mapping out the main developments and challenges that need to be navigated to reach it. Existential Hope is a Foresight Institute project.

Hosted by Allison Duettmann and Beatrice Erkers

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Most AI discussions focus on its risks to democracy – disinformation, surveillance, centralization of power. But what if AI could make governance better?

Glen Weyl, political economist at Microsoft Research and founder of RadicalxChange, argues that AI could be used to create more participatory, decentralized, and democratic systems, if we design it right. In this interview, he explores what AI governance could look like if we tried to use it for real pluralism.

This interview is a guest lecture in our online course about shaping positive futures with AI. The course is free, and available here: https://www.udemy.com/course/worldbuilding-hopeful-futures-with-ai/

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How can storytelling shape our visions of the future? Ada Palmer—historian, science fiction writer, and futurist—brings a unique perspective on how worldbuilding can be a powerful tool for exploring complex ideas. In this conversation with Beatrice Erkers, she shares her perspective on worldbuilding and storytelling, and her recommendations for how we can think in new ways about the future.

This interview is a guest lecture in our new online course about shaping positive futures with AI. The course is free, and available here: https://www.udemy.com/course/worldbuilding-hopeful-futures-with-ai/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.