The sci-fi to startup pipeline
from Pretrained Hosted by Pierce Freeman & Richard Diehl Martinez
Pierce and Richard are joined by Bella Cooper-Brown, Oxford material scientist turned science fiction author. They cover why defense tech companies name themselves after Lord of the Rings, Asimov's three laws of robotics, why engineers don't read enough fiction, the intersection of material science and AI research, how speculative fiction shapes the tech we build, and the ethics of AI companions and relationships. 📚 Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley (1818) 📚 Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (1992) 📚 I, Robot by Isaac Asimov (1950) 📚 Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (2021)
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Chapters
- 0:00 038
- 0:20 Intro
- 1:43 Literature and Interdisciplinary Thinking
- 5:58 Sci-Fi's Prophetic Influence on Tech
- 18:13 Say What Origin Story
- 26:22 iRobot and Asimov's Three Laws
- 32:47 Grok and AI-Generated Images
- 51:02 Dystopia vs Utopia in Fiction
- 1:09:27 AI Therapists and Digital Relationships
- 1:27:51 Outro
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