In this episode: Lauren Hawker Zafer is joined by serial entrepreneur, author, technologist, and futurist Byron Reese. Who Can Benefit From This Conversation? This conversation is for anyone who is interested in the impacts of technology, the human psyche and philosophy. It is a conversation that stems from Byron Reese’s thought provoking book: The Fourth Age. Lauren talks to Byron about this pivotal point in society and the technologies that are redefining what it means to be human. Byron explains what “how thinking” is and the impact that being a futurist has on how humans learned to see the future and shape it. Byron is a unique conversationalist and brings immediate value to the dialogue. It is definitely worth a listen! Who is Byron? Serial entrepreneur, technologist, and futurist – Byron Reese has enjoyed a wide range of success over 30 years, including two NASDAQ IPOs as well as the sale of the three companies he founded. Byron has spoken around world to both technical and non-technical audiences, and his keynotes and appearances include SXSW, TEDx Austin, Google, Nvidia, FedEx and Fortune 1000 companies (Dell Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, Oticon, Swisslog) and universities Rice (University of Texas, Queen’s University, TWU) and futurist conferences (TimeMachine, PICNIC Festival in Amsterdam, Wolfram Data Summit, and the IEEE Conference) among others. He is the former CEO of Gigaom (and is still its primary shareholder) and was the creator / host of the Voices in AI podcast. Byron’s previous book, The Fourth Age, was cited by the NYT as one of “Three Books to Consider When the Robots Take Over”. His newest book, “Stories, Dice & Rocks That Think: How Humans Learned to See the Future – And Shape It”, launched internationally from Ben Bella press in August. This new book provides a new look at the history & destiny of humanity, wherein dice teach us about probability, which allows us to accurately predict the future; storytelling allows us to envision the future; and rocks that think – a reference to a computer’s CPU – enable us to build the future. REDEFINING AI is powered by The Squirro Academy – learn.squirro.com. Try our free courses on AI, ML, NLP and Cognitive Search at the Squirro Academy and find out more about Squirro here.