The Technoprogressive Opportunity: The future of ethics and emerging technologies
We live in a time of dramatic changes in the capabilities of technologies. Political and social norms are being disrupted as never before. Humanity faces both unprecedented risks and unprecedented opportunities.
How can society make wise decisions about which technologies to encourage and which to constrain?
How can society ensure that these decisions are followed in practice, rather than being ignored or subverted by powerful short-sighted forces?
How can a technoprogressive coalition grow in strength, as a decisive counter to existing worldviews which are more likely to leave humanity diminished, fragmented, or even extinct?
Join members of London Futurists and the IEET (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies) in this free-to-attend event, held in the LSBU Hub in London SE1.
Please register for this event only if you plan to attend the actual venue, at the LSBU Hub.
Schedule
The event will run from 9:30 to 17:00 on Saturday 19th September, and from 10:00 to 17:00 on Sunday 20th September. Both days will include a 90 minute break for lunch and networking , and another 30 minute refreshment break in the afternoon.
In more detail (some aspects are subject to change):
>> Saturday morning <<
09:30 Registration & morning coffee
10:00 Rohit Talwar, Global futurist and publisher, Fast Future
Technopolitics 2035: How geopolitics and the technoprogressive agenda could shape each other
10:30 Marc Roux, President, Technoprog
Changing human nature or changing human institutions?
11:00 Eva Pascoe, Vice Chair, Royal Society of Arts
Anticipating the technoprogressive future of commerce and work
11:30 Pravar Petkar, Head of Strengthening Democracy Desk, International Centre for Sustainability
Can technology make democracy more democratic?
12:00 Lunch break (lunch not provided)
>> Saturday early afternoon <<
13:30 Tony Czarnecki, Managing Partner, Sustensis
Trust and democracy in the wake of AI
13:45 Didier Coeurnelle, Co-chair, Heales (Healthy Life Extension Society)
Navigating dual existential challenges: Defeating aging & safeguarding AGI
14:00 James Hughes, Executive Director, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Strengthening the technoprogressive current
14:30 Alex Williams, Political theorist and author, University of East Anglia
The paradoxes of contemporary AI capitalism
15:00 Afternoon break
>> Saturday late afternoon <<
15:30 Parmy Olson, Technology Columnist, Bloomberg
Supremacy: The AI race that is changing the world
16:00 Mark Robinson, Senior Science Diplomacy Advisor, Oxford Martin School AI Governance Initiative
The future International Artificial Intelligence Agency
16:30 Audience participation
Which policies and strategies should we prioritise?
17:00 Day 1 ends
17:30 Optional continuation of the conversation in a nearby pub/restaurant: The Prince of Wales Pub, 51 St George's Road, Southwark, London SE1 6ER
>> Sunday morning <<
10:00 Registration & morning coffee
10:30 Matteo MacDermant, Researcher and podcaster, Bread and Robots
Technoprogressive Worldbuilding 101
11:00 Indra Adnan and Pat Kane, Co-Initiators and Founders, The Alternative UK
A Parallel Polis For The Regenerative Era
11:30 Indy Johar, Co-Founder, Dark Matter Laboratories
The Corrigible State
12:00 Lunch break (lunch not provided)
>> Sunday early afternoon <<
13:30 Paul Mason, Journalist, The New World; Author, “PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future”
PostCapitalism and Agentic AI
14:00 Steve Keen, Economist and author, Debunking Economics
How economists will destroy capitalism
14:30 Carissa Véliz, Professor in Philosophy, University of Oxford
Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future
15:00 Afternoon break
>> Sunday late afternoon <<
15:30 Mark Cliffe, Visiting Fellow, Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter
Tipping Points - How Positive Should We Be?
16:00 Laiba Rehman, Focused on existential risk, governance, and the future, at PauseAI UK
How I went from aspiring blue-sky researcher to extinction risk activism
16:30 Aubrey de Grey, President and Chief Science Officer, LEV Foundation
Lessons from building a pro-longevity movement
17:00 Day 2 ends
17:30 Optional continuation of the conversation in a nearby pub/restaurant: Elephant & Castle Pub (basement bar), 119 Newington Causeway, London, SE1 6BN
Speakers
This conference brings together leading thinkers from technology, economics, politics, philosophy, sustainability, and futures studies. Together they will explore both the opportunities opened by accelerating technology and the institutional and political changes needed to ensure those opportunities benefit humanity.
Rather than discussing emerging technologies in isolation, the speakers will examine how technological possibilities might interact radically with economics, politics, institutions, culture, and the planetary environment.
Additional biographical information about each speaker is available here.
For more details
A fuller description is provided on the London Futurists website - including some suggestions for nearby accommodation.
A note on the image used
The image at the top of this page — a broad spiral with branching connections — depicts a growing technoprogressive current.
As the spiral expands, it encounters increasingly complex outer regions: denser networks, ambiguous structures, turbulence, competing currents, and darker zones.
This is no smooth inevitable ascent. Some pathways double back. Some branches terminate. Some are visibly rerouted after encountering instability. At several points, thin luminous “verification gates” cross the spiral, suggesting that greater capability is admitted only after scrutiny.
The image contains multiple distinct streams entering from different directions and joining the spiral without losing all their individuality. This represents pluralism, distributed participation, dissent, institutional diversity, and the principle of “by everyone, appropriately coordinated”.
The overall movement is from uncertainty toward earned trust and coherence, but without reaching a perfect final utopia. The outermost region remains open-ended.