Twenty years from now, what is the best-case scenario for humanity? What about the worst-case scenario? Maybe a middle ground? While discussions of our future(s) are often rightly focused on climate change, we’ve brought together experts in lifestyle, politics and evolving technologies to play a little game of hypotheticals, discussing how their extensive research informs their hope – or despair – for the decades to come.
Get back to the future, with Director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program Sam Roggeveen and Chief Scientist of UNSW.AI, UNSW’s new AI Institute Toby Walsh, in conversation with Lifestyle Editor at Guardian Australia and author of All Women Want Alyx Gorman.
Sam Roggeveen is Director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program. He is the author of The Echidna Strategy: Australia’s Search for Power and Peace, published by La Trobe University Press in 2023. Before joining the Lowy Institute, Sam was a senior strategic analyst in Australia’s peak intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments. Sam has a long-standing interest in politics and political philosophy, and in 2019 he wrote Our Very Own Brexit: Australia’s Hollow Politics and Where it Could Lead Us, about the hollowing out of Western democracy and its implications for Australia.
Toby Walsh is an ARC Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor of AI at UNSW and CSIRO Data61. He is Chief Scientist of UNSW.AI, UNSW’s new AI Institute. He has written five books on AI for a general audience, most recently The Shortest History of AI and Faking It! Artificial Intelligence in A Human World.
Alyx Gorman is Lifestyle Editor of Guardian Australia and co-author of their weekly pop culture newsletter. She is a semi-regular guest across ABC’s radio network and her bylines have appeared in Harpers Bazaar, Elle, the Sydney Morning Herald, Time Out and more. Her debut book is All Women Want.
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This event is part of the Main Program and included as part of Platinum, Gold, Silver and Saturday Bronze Passes.
Subject to availability, a limited number of single tickets may become available 9 September.
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This venue is wheelchair accessible. Please visit our Accessibility page or email hello@bluemountainswritersfestival.com.au if you have any other accessibility requirements.