Artificial Intelligence is often misunderstood. And much like blockchain, those who fiercely stand by the technology believe it will change the world for the better. Others fear the negative repercussions it could bring it and would rather see it disappear. We’re joined by Ben Goertzel. Ben’s interest in AI and robotics date back to his childhood and he has made these his life-long passion and work. He is the CEO of SingularityNET, a company building a marketplace for AIs which leverages blockchain. He is also Chief Scientist at Hanson Robotics who has brought us the now famous Sophia robot. When he’s not building blockchains and robots, he leads the OpenCog open-source AI framework and is Chair of Humanity +, an organization which focuses on technology and ethics. Topics covered in this episode: Ben’s background as a mathematician and his lifelong passion for AI and robotics What is AI, AGI and machine learning, and how these technologies differ What is the killer application for AI The problem of data and power centralization as it relates to AI AI safety and with what we should be most concerned when it comes to AI dominance Hanson Robotics and the Sophia robot How blockchains and AI are relevant to each other The role of AI in blockchain governance and the potential for AI systems to compete amongst each other What is SingularityNET and what the company is building Episode links: Ben Goertzel's Website SingularityNET website SingularityNET whitepaper Ben Goertzel portraied in Silicon Valley Ben Goertzel's Website Creating Internet Intelligence Accelerando Thank you to our sponsors for their support: Simplify your hiring process & access the best blockchain talent . Get a $1,000 credit on your first hire at toptal.com/epicenter. Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains. Learn more at cosmos.network/epicenter. This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/275

When the Lightning Network (LN) was conceived in 2015, it was quickly embraced by the Bitcoin community as the way to dramatically scale Bitcoin’s capacity. There was an expectation of LN being available quickly. Instead, development proceed more slowly in the background with different teams contributing to a standard specification. That spec is now almost ready and last year interest and early activity on the LN increased dramatically. We were joined by Christian Decker, a core engineer at Blockstream, where he works on their LN client. We discussed the history and progression of the LN and what remains on the road to scaling Bitcoin. Topics covered in this episode: How Christian ended up writing the world’s first PhD on Bitcoin The vision of the Lightning Network How the Lightning Network evolved in the last 4 years Approaching the 1.0 specification The current state of the network Why centralization concerns around hubs are often misguided eltoo and the future of lightning network The case against other chains being better layer 1 networks than Bitcoin Episode links: Lightning Network Whitepaper Christian Decker - Scaling Bitcoin with Duplex Micropayment Channels Joseph Poon & Tadge Dryja - Scalability and the Lightning Network Blockstream - Lightning Network A Simplified Update Mechanism for Lightning and Off-Chain Contracts Lightning Network Specifications on Github Thank you to our sponsors for their support: Simplify your hiring process & access the best blockchain talent . Get a $1,000 credit on your first hire at toptal.com/epicenter. Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter. This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/273