This week on The Digital Life, our guest is Pam Pedersen, Principal of Innovations Early College High School in Salt Lake City, Utah. There’s perhaps no better way to invest in the future than in preparing students for their life and careers ahead. How that may be best achieved, however, is subject to debate. It’s clear that the US educational system is ripe for change. But what teaching philosophies or methodologies are best? Innovations Early College High School is designed to facilitate blended learning and to allow for flexibility in order to best meet the academic goals of each individual student. It’s an approach far different from the typical high school. Join us as we discuss.

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Innovations Early College High School

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about automation and reinventing yourself in the job market. Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of books like Sapiens and Homo Deus had this to say about automation and the difficulties of reinventing your career on the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast:

“It’s questionable how many times a human being can reinvent himself or herself during your lifetime—and your lifetime is likely to be longer, and your working years are also likely to be longer. So would you be able to reinvent yourself four, five, six times during your life? The psychological stress is immense. So I would like to see a science fiction movie that explores the rather mundane issue of somebody having to reinvent themselves, then at the end of the movie—just as they settle down into this new job, after a difficult transition period—somebody comes and announces, ‘Oh sorry, your new job has just been automated, you have to start from square one and reinvent yourself again.’”

Have you ever had to reinvent yourself during your career, maybe due to automation? Personal characteristics like flexibility and creativity play a role as well as external factors like work availability and the market. Join us as we discuss.

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Why Science Fiction is the Most Important Genre

On The Digital Life this week we chat about human / machine hybrids — the combination of AI and people — into advanced teams that produce amazing creative output. From chess to photography, art to science, these so-called “Centaurs” may represent the future of work for many fields. Join us as we discuss.

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Art by algorithm

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about the next step in art and AI. While AI has certainly been used to create artwork like the Next Rembrandt project, these pieces have been more curiosity or proof-of-concept. But, is the art world really ready for pieces generated by Artificial Intelligence? We’ll find out this fall, in October, when Christie’s New York — a branch of the British auction house, founded in 1766 — sells an AI-produced work of for the first time. The print itself was created by an algorithm developed by the French art collective Obvious. Is AI the new tool for artists? Join us as we discuss.

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Is the Art Market Ready to Embrace Work Made by Artificial Intelligence? Christie’s Will Test the Waters This Fall

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about synthetic biology and the new categories of emergent life that will result from its practice. The work of synthetic biologists is changing the way that life evolves. How can we sort through the new categories of life that will be designed by humans, not necessarily evolved through natural selection? And what is the nature and role of digital information — genetic data that will now define a blueprint of a newly designed life form? Join us as we discuss.

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If we made life in a lab, would we understand it differently?