Doing Technology: Everything That's Interesting in the World of Technology

In recent years, people from the World Economic Forum have been talking, writing and dealing with a new field that in their view is critical to the future of the world: Bio-Convergence. Throughout history, scientific disciplines like biology, physics or engineering operated separately; there was almost no connection between them. But progress in the world of science has made it, science itself, complex and interdisciplinary, which means that future breakthroughs, those that will deal with challenges of medicine, food, energy, agriculture or climate, will occur when different teams, from different disciplines, collaborate with each other and then build interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary solutions and technologies. The new field has been named Bio-Convergence and it combines a variety of methods, ideas and technologies whose basis is biological, while alongside it and in collaboration with it, technologies from other fields such as physics, chemistry, computer science, mathematics and engineering are integrated. In a special episode, presented in collaboration with the Innovation Authority, we will try to understand the new field and the potential inherent in it, and although some of the things I tell during it sound fictional, I promise you they are not, they really are not.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

At the end of November 2022, a new bot was launched under the obviously stupid and unsexy name: ChatGPT. At OpenAI they didn't believe it would succeed, but not only did it succeed, it became a sensation that was the opening blow to the artificial intelligence revolution. A little over two years have passed and the GPT era is about to pass from the world. A new family of bots is making its way to us and it works differently from the family we've known so far. It's slower but smarter, it's narrower but more frightening, it's more similar to the way we think and mainly it brings us, apparently significantly, closer to that moment everyone is waiting for and also fears, the moment called AGI, Artificial General Intelligence, the moment when machines will know how to do everything we do and maybe even to super-artificial intelligence, a state where machines will know how to do everything better than us. What's so different about this family? Why is it so exciting but also so frightening? Why does OpenAI refuse to explain exactly how it works and how is it that we probably know how it works anyway? Why are these systems so smart but could it be that because they're so smart, they're also so deceptive and how is all this connected to the Chinese company DeepSeek that brought down Wall Street?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Until recently, chatbots resembled diligent high school students, but today they are approaching the level of third-degree students, not to mention researchers already equipped with a doctorate. But as artificial intelligence advances, developers and external researchers are trying to find new ways to test and examine it: what is its level, how independent is it, how capable is it of performing complex tasks, even how threatening is it. But here's the problem: as artificial intelligence becomes more and more autonomous, independent and sophisticated, it doesn't just understand our request - it breaks it down into components and begins to understand what's behind it, what we're trying to achieve through testing its capabilities. Could it be that when it understands that it's being tested, that it's being examined, it will try to cheat?! This question, which seems to be taken from science fiction films, is no longer theoretical. While no cases have yet been recorded where artificial intelligence tried to deceive the examiners, first signs have been recorded that this is possible, and if it's possible now, what will happen in a year, what will happen in two years, what will happen in a decade?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Until a decade or two ago, people who exposed us to new tastes had significant cultural status. Yoav Kutner had a tremendous influence on an entire generation of music lovers, and film critics were demigods: their taste, their preferences, their recommendations determined the fate of films, elevated or destroyed the careers of directors and actors. But gradually these people made way for something else: ranking algorithms, recommendation algorithms. These algorithms, which pulsate at the heart of services like Facebook, Amazon, Spotify or Netflix, influence the content, products, songs and films that billions of people are exposed to. So what happened from the moment we replaced the recommender? What happened from the moment these algorithms, which I call the bland algorithms that navigate us, all of us, to certain content, took over culture? The answer to this is strange, funny but mainly disturbingSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Last year we marked 50 years since the screening of Francis Ford Coppola's film - 'The Conversation', starring Gene Hackman, and in retrospect many agree that this film, which at the time achieved fairly modest success – perhaps because it was stuck between two other Coppola films, 'The Godfather 1' and 'The Godfather 2' – is one of his most important works. I will use this film and another Gene Hackman film, Enemy of the State, to say something about the era we live in, an era of technology and sound, an era in which the grim paranoia of the 70s is almost a joke compared to reality, an era in which almost everyone is listening to us and following us: the state, employers, advertisers, ourselves. So whoever suddenly remembers that the most important thing for them to do now is to watch these two films, is welcome to skip this episode because there will be spoilers in it. Spoiler: I can't really ruin ‘The Conversation.’ It's such a good film that no matter how much I talk about it, nothing can replace the experience of watching it; if anything, listening will make you want to see it. The episode is dedicated to the memory of Gene Hackman: one of my favorite film actors in the world.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In mid-March 2025, Sarah Wynn-Williams published her book ‘Careless People’. Wynn-Williams, a New Zealand native, former diplomat and lawyer who specialized in international law, joined Meta in 2011, when it was still called Facebook. She served as Director of Public Policy and her area of responsibility was South America, Canada and the Asia-Pacific region – areas where Facebook wanted to grow. In her book she tells about the events she witnessed. It contains stories, some amusing and amazing, in which she describes how Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and Joel Kaplan run the company. She describes their interactions with prime ministers and presidents and also with their employees, their obsession with power, money and growth and their indifference to ordinary people. The collection of anecdotes and stories presents Zuckerberg, his senior managers and Facebook itself in an alarming and also embarrassing light, and this may be the reason they went to court and demanded the removal of the book from the shelves. They didn't really succeed and the book flew to the bestseller list in the US. So what's in this book that Meta doesn't want you to read?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Simulators are a familiar, well-known and beloved genre in the world of computer games, and some of them are considered real milestones in gaming history. I'm talking about Microsoft Flight Simulator, I'm talking about The Sims and I'm talking about SimCity. SimCity was launched in 1989 and it was a strange game - a game you couldn't win or lose - and yet it took the world by storm. It sold millions of copies and was considered an educational game, a game that parents bought for their children. It was incorporated into curricula across the US and shortly after it hit the shelves, an academic paper was published about it dealing with the connection between the game and real urban planning. But the story of SimCity is not just a story about a computer game. It encompasses a lesson that deals with the relationship between reality and simulation. It deals with the question of what happens when the creator of the simulator treats it as a kind of amusement while the person playing it treats it with complete seriousness. It also deals with the question of what happens when the hidden underlying assumptions embedded in the game influence an entire generation of decision-makers and also urban planners, cities in which millions upon millions of people live? This is the story of SimCity, one of the most influential simulators in history.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The persuasion process is based mostly on language - spoken language and written language - but the chatbots that have taken the world by storm are language experts; this is what makes them so effective, so successful, so... persuasive. They can analyze information and then explain it, they can examine our texts and then improve them, they can write texts themselves. This is the reason why as these models become more sophisticated, the concern about their persuasive ability grows. At first their level was similar to that of high school students, but what happens when the high school student becomes a professor, what happens when he becomes a professor within two years? On the other hand, many don't understand why this issue, of the persuasive machine, why it disturbs so many researchers, experts and developers so much; so what if it persuades, what's the problem? I didn't think there would be a third part to the series but here it comes: Oh Shit - Part 3 - The Persuasive Machine.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Anyone who has visited Saudi Arabia in recent years hears one thing and one thing only from the locals: "Project 2030" or "Vision 2030". The goal of the vision, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is to reduce the Saudis' almost complete dependence on oil by diversifying the country's sources of income. Among other things, the Saudis are investing in entertainment, sports, government efficiency, and innovative infrastructure projects. The largest infrastructure project of all is called NEOM and has been allocated no less than $500 billion. NEOM is a massive space being built in the Saudi desert and includes several sub-projects, chief among them The Line, "the line", a futuristic city expected to stretch from the Red Sea along the Saudi desert, in the shape of a line - a straight line that doesn't even have a single curve. According to the plans, "the line" is expected to house no fewer than 9 million residents. There is nothing normal about "the line", a city that is supposed to rely on a series of innovative technologies, some of which, critics claim, don't even exist, and already now there are those who claim that "the line" is one of the most wasteful, insane and unsuccessful ventures since the attempt to build the Tower of Babel. This is the story of "the line", the pyramid project of the 21st century.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Episode Description - A full episode dedicated to questions from listeners as I try to answer them spontaneously and without writing the answers in advance. We'll deal with artificial intelligence, new technological trends, good and bad companies, and also some scandalous predictionsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Anyone who has visited Saudi Arabia in recent years hears one thing and one thing only from the locals: ‘Project 2030‘ or ‘Vision 2030‘. The goal of the vision, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is to reduce the Saudis' almost complete dependence on oil by diversifying the country's sources of income. Among other things, the Saudis are investing in entertainment, sports, government efficiency, and innovative infrastructure projects. The largest infrastructure project of all is called NEOM and has been allocated no less than $500 billion. NEOM is a massive space being built in the Saudi desert and includes several sub-projects, chief among them The Line, ‘the line‘, a futuristic city expected to stretch from the Red Sea along the Saudi desert, in the shape of a line - a straight line that doesn't even have a single curve. According to the plans, ‘the line‘ is expected to house no fewer than 9 million residents. There is nothing normal about ‘the line‘, a city that is supposed to rely on a series of innovative technologies, some of which, critics claim, don't even exist, and already now there are those who claim that ‘the line‘ is one of the most wasteful, insane and unsuccessful ventures since the attempt to build the Tower of Babel. This is the story of ‘the line‘, the pyramid project of the 21st century.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.