#064 - Four Empires. One Witness. With Dex Hunter-Torricke

This week on GAEA Talks, Graeme Scott sits down with Dex Hunter-Torricke - former speechwriter to the UN Secretary-General, fifteen-year Big Tech veteran who worked for Eric Schmidt, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, former Head of Global Communications at Google DeepMind, Cambridge Visiting Research Fellow, and founder of The Center for Tomorrow.Dex began his career as a speechwriter in the Executive Office of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon before spending fifteen years at the heart of the tech industry. He served as Google's first executive speechwriter for Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, managed communications for Zuckerberg at Facebook and Musk at SpaceX, and led global communications for Google DeepMind. A graduate of University College London and the University of Oxford, he is now a Cambridge Visiting Research Fellow. In 2026 he launched The Center for Tomorrow, a nonprofit focused on the systemic risks of advanced AI that does not accept Big Tech funding.In this episode, Dex delivers one of the most powerful and deeply human conversations GAEA Talks has ever recorded. Drawing on a childhood shaped by a refugee father and an immigrant mother, he challenges the idea that AI is a technology problem and reframes it as a civilisational choice about who we want to become. He argues that the world's institutions are failing, that most leaders have no vision beyond an incrementally updated past, and that the gap between winners and losers in the AI transition is becoming an abyss. But he refuses to accept hopelessness - making the case that these technologies could liberate all of us if we choose to harness them deliberately. This is essential listening for anyone who believes the future is not a tidal wave but a choice.What you'll take away from this conversation:- Why Dex says the future is not a tidal wave or an asteroid - and why framing it that way is a failure of leadership and imagination- The civilisational choice - why AI will either amplify existing dysfunctions and injustices or allow us to build something profoundly hopeful- Why seven out of ten Americans and over half the UK population live paycheck to paycheck despite decades of technological transformation- The techno-colonialism warning - what happens when Washington and Beijing control AGI, quantum and fusion and say no to the rest of the world- Why the UK has had no real economic growth for fifteen years despite access to the same technologies as every other advanced economy- The digital divide is really a societal divide - and in the age of AI it is becoming an abyss- Why Dex left Big Tech after fifteen years to launch The Center for Tomorrow and why it refuses Big Tech funding- The liberation argument - what if AI could free people from settling and let them become who they were meant to be- Why every leader and organisation must now become an expert on a changing society, regardless of their field- The convenience debt - why society is accruing massive technical and societal debt that will soon come due- Why most political leaders have no vision at all and their version of the future is just something from the past slightly updated- How democratised, privacy-first, edge-based AI could return control to individuals and break the dependency on a handful of centralised providers- The Star Trek test - why any leader should be required to declare what kind of world they would build if given the chance- Why Dex got a room full of bankers to applaud the idea that AI should liberate people from jobs that never gave them meaning