This week journalist and bestselling author of The Guttenburg Parenthesis, What Would Google Do? and Geeks Bearing Gifts, Jeff Jarvis joins us to talk media and content in the AI age. Jarvis is considered one of the Top 100 most influential media leaders (WEF/Davos). He believes AI’s impact on our society will be as impactful as the printing press, and helps us understand how institutions and society will likely adapt. We forget the lessons of the past at our future’s peril.

For decades, we cursed at evil cable and satellite TV companies. Now TV has been “unbundled.” Streaming on-demand video is available on every device. Surprise, surprise, nobody is happy. The cost of television has skyrocketed, audiences are fragmented across hundreds of services, and it’s a pain to find what we want to watch. Veteran TV analyst Alan Wolk of TV REV tells The Futurists about the chaos in the TV industry and the future conflict between Big Tech, Big Media and Big Retail to control the digital living room.

In this special edition of the Futurists, media expert Peter Csathy debates with Rob about copyright and generative AI. It’s a preview of their upcoming live debate at the Streaming Media summit in New York. Peter and Rob discuss the major issues in copyright, the most contentious lawsuits, and the most relevant precedents. If you are interested in the future of gen AI for storytelling and entertainment, this episode is essential. Topics include: copyright lawsuits brought by the New York Times, Getty Images and artists; how recent rulings on fair use may affect these cases; the evolving definition of “copying” in the digital domain; why some precedents will matter more than others; why Big Tech is in hot water; and how copyright is a tax on future innovation.

Michael Margolis, founder and CEO of Storied, is an expert in constructing intentional narratives about the future. The stories Michael tells are not about people but, rather, about products and technology. He has developed a unique approach to navigating digital transformation and change management. This inspiring and provocative episode covers a broad range of topics including the fundamental human need for narrative structure in industry, politics, technology, mass media, machine intelligence, and more. Michael reveals the hidden dynamics of narrative structure that frame our understanding of the world and our shared perception of reality.

Journalist and media pundit Jeff Jarvis returns to The Futurists to discuss the strategies deployed by newspapers and magazines to prevent technology firms from dominating journalism. It’s an uphill battle. Jeff describes the growing rift between independent journalists and big publications controlled by private equity; the role of government and new legislation; and the future of journalism in a media market shaped by artificial intelligence.

In this week’s show we interview Neal Baer, M.D. an award-winning showrunner, television writer/producer, physician, author and a public health advocate and expert. Apart from ER, also worked on Designated Survivor, snd Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. Today he is the Co-Director of the M.S. in Media, Medicine, and Health Program, at Harvard Medical School. We discuss his new book The Promise and Perils of CRISPR and get into where the tech is at and where it will take us, and the ways we might navigate ethical mindfields. We get sci-fi too – Join us!

PJ Manney is the author of the bestselling and Philip K. Dick Award nominated Phoenix Horizon trilogy, (R)EVOLUTION, (ID)ENTITY, and (CON)SCIENCE. She is on the board of directors of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, is the futurist, media consultant and writer/producer for the Human Energy Project, runs The New Mythos Project and is the former chairperson of Humanity Plus (H+). She worked in motion picture PR at Walt Disney/Touchstone Pictures and wrote as Patricia Manney for the critically acclaimed hit TV shows Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess. She will get you thinking about the course of Silicon Valley technology bereft of ethical foundations.

Who owns your streaming TV service?  A computer maker, a retailer, or a search engine?  This week on The Futurists we learn about the never-ending cyclone of disruption that has been tormenting the media industry for years. Our guest is Jeffrey Cole of the Center for the Digital Future, a longtime advisor to the major motion picture studios.  https://www.digitalcenter.org/jeffrey-cole-director/

What happens when society is subject to accelerated change? Now we know: uncertainty and widespread panic. March 2023 was the month when the old systems began to collapse and entirely new systems were launched. In one month we experienced a viral run on banks, the launch of AI superpowers, and the exposure of systematic deceit at a major news publisher. In this special edition of The Futurists, co-hosts Brett King and Robert Tercek review current events through the lens of the future. Who profits from uncertainty and confusion? How do the merchants of doubt leverage social and traditional media to undermine faith in conventional norms and governance?  Can the trustworthiness of machine learning systems be certified? By whom?  Discussion topics include: democracy versus autocracy in a time of rapid change; the business of social inequality; the failure of Silicon Valley Bank; lies and manipulation at Fox News; the false dichotomy of political parties;  the inaccuracy of ChatGPT; the advent of robotic corporations in the clouds; why it’s more profitable to break consensus than to build it; and the greater chaos is yet to come.