Dr. Bart Kosko is a Professor of Electrical Engineering in the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering and a Professor of Engineering and Law in USC's Gould School of Law. Since part of Kosko’s background is in defense, he discussed his take on the North Korean nuke situation, which he believes is one of the greatest challenges in the modern world. He said he "would ignore the rhetoric" and concentrate on the capabilities of the regime, which he thinks that the U.S. has "consistently underestimated." As of now, Kosko believes that the cost of stopping North Korea now may be too high, but that doing nothing may be worse, and that if the U.S. does anything, he believes it will be within the next two or three months.
Kosko also discussed the latest in artificial intelligence and how the third great wave of machine learning and robotics will change the landscape of society. He says that this third wave is a "gold rush" of innovation and investment to harness the newest ideas, such as "deep learning," which is used in facial and speech recognition. As for the question of automation in the workplace and whether it will take away jobs such as the trucking industry, Kosko believes that there is so much more involved in the job than just simply driving a truck, and the work that requires the most repetitive tasks will be the first to go. Kosko also believes that the future of humanity will be a push to "back up the brain." Based on his and others’ research, Kosko predicts that we will be able to upload our brains onto computer chips "within the next century."
------------------------------------------------
Award-winning author Lynne McTaggart is one of the central authorities on the new science of consciousness. She is also editorial director of What Doctors Don’t Tell You, one of the world’s most respected health magazines, and architect of the Intention Experiments, a web-based "global laboratory." In the second half, she discussed the miraculous power of group intention. McTaggart says she "started out as a skeptic" about this issue when she was a journalist, but started to find evidence from medical doctors that suggested an intention to heal had tangible effects. She set up an online experiment and asked participants all over the world to try and affect the properties of physical objects such as the pH of water, improving health problems, and leaf growth, for example. The results were so encouraging she continued to develop the methods.
The next step was experiments with groups of people. Even more dramatic effects were observed, such as the healing of chronic health problems. Another startling finding was that the people in the groups also reported positive effects in their own lives. McTaggart said that "when people get off of themselves and start intending for someone else, improvements happen in their own lives." McTaggart found that groups of eight people seemed to be the optimal number for the best effects, which she began to refer to as "the power of eight." Her newest project will attempt to use the power of intention in an online experiment to see if violence can be reduced in the most violent place in the United States, which will be revealed when the experiment begins. After all her experiences McTaggart said that she had "gone from a Doubting Thomas to becoming a reluctant apostle for the power of intention."