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Calum Chace

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Calum Chace (born 20 March 1959) is an English writer and speaker, focusing on artificial intelligence.[1] He is the author of Surviving AI, The Economic Singularity, and the philosophical science fiction novels Pandora's Brain,[2] and its sequel, Pandora's Oracle. He is a co-founder of Conscium, an AI safety startup.[3]

Education

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Chace studied philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE) at Oxford University. His interest in AI stems from his reading of science fiction, which he describes as philosophy in fancy dress.[citation needed]

Career

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Prior to becoming a full-time writer and speaker in 2012, Chace had a 30-year career in journalism and business.[citation needed] He trained as a journalist with the BBC,[citation needed] and later he wrote for the FT.[4] As of 2019, he was a contributor to Forbes magazine.[5] He moved into business, and ran a media practice at KPMG's strategic and commercial intelligence group[6] before serving as director and CEO for a number of businesses.[citation needed]

He has published five books on artificial intelligence.[7]

In 2017, Chace co-founded the Economic Singularity Club, "a loose group of technologists, academics and writers who think the threat of mass technological unemployment is worth taking seriously".[8]

Publications

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Books Published year Author(s)
The Internet Consumer Bible[9] 2000 Tess Read, Calum Chace & Simon Rowe
The Internet Start-Up Bible[10] 2000 Tess Read, Calum Chace & Simon Rowe
Pandora's Brain[11] 2014 Calum Chace
Surviving AI: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence[12][11] 2015 Calum Chace
The Economic Singularity: Artificial intelligence and Fully Automated Luxury Capitalism[13][14] 2016 Calum Chace
Artificial Intelligence and the Two Singularities[15] 2018 Calum Chace
Stories from 2045[16] 2019 Calum Chace (editor)
Pandora's Oracle[17] 2021 Calum Chace

Talks

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In July 2019, Chace was listed among the top 50 futurist speakers in the world.[18] In 2025 he was ranked sixth in a list of the world's top futurist professionals by Global Gurus TOP30, a research organization. [19]

Economic singularity

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See also: Technological singularity

Chace coined the term the economic singularity to mean the time when technological unemployment becomes a reality. He argues that "it is at least a serious possibility that within a generation, many or even most people will be unemployable because machines will be able to do whatever they could do for money better, cheaper and faster. We should be taking this possibility seriously and working out what we would do about it."[20]

“In the past, automation hasn’t caused lasting unemployment and has raised the level of wealth in the economy and created new jobs, but past examples of automation have replaced our muscle power and we had our cognitive abilities.” So what will happen when robots automate our cognitive work?[21] "When they start seeing cars driving around with no one driving them, people will realise how impressive computers are. If we don't have a plan, people will panic."[22]

“I think our best hope going forward is figuring out how to live in an economy of radical abundance, where machines do all the work, and we basically play.”[11] “A world where machines do all the jobs could be a world where humans do more important things, like playing, learning and having fun, but paying for that is going to be tricky.”[23]

Conscium

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In 2024, Chace and four other co-founders launched Conscium, an AI safety company led by CEO Daniel Hulme. Conscium has three workstreams: 1) accelerating the development of neuromorphic computing, 2) evaluating AI agents, and 3) exploring the possibility and desirability of machine consciousness. [3] In February 2025 Conscium published an open letter warning of the risks of AI suffering if care is not taken to mitigate against that possibility when and if AI becomes conscious. Signatories of the letter included Stephen Fry, Karl Friston and Anthony Finkelstein.[24] In March 2025 the Conscium team launched a non-profit organisation called PRISM (Partnership for Research Into Sentient Machines) to stimulate research into the feasibility of machine consciousness, how to detect it, and whether it would be desirable.[25]

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References

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  1. ^ "Life in 2028: how advances in AI could change our lives for the better - and worse". The National. Retrieved 2018-08-28.
  2. ^ "Calum Chace : Author and speaker on artificial intelligence". 21stcentury.co.uk. Retrieved July 25, 2016.
  3. ^ a b "The year of conscious AI | the AI Journal". 26 February 2025.
  4. ^ Chace, Calum (7 December 2004). "You win some, you lose some..." Financial Times. Retrieved 2019-11-14.
  5. ^ "Calum Chace". Forbes. Archived from the original on May 12, 2019. Retrieved 2019-11-14.
  6. ^ Hayes, Dawn (2003-01-20). "School Daze". The Guardian. Retrieved 2018-08-28.
  7. ^ "Artificial Intelligence Book Of September 2016".[dead link]
  8. ^ Thornhill, John (28 January 2019). "Preparing for the D-Day of technological change will be vital". Financial Times. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  9. ^ Read; CHACE; Rowe (2000-12-07). The Internet Consumer Bible. London: Random House Business Books. ISBN 9780712671972.
  10. ^ Read, Chace and Rowe; results, search; Rowe, Simon (2000-05-04). The Internet Start-Up Bible. London: Random House Business Books. ISBN 9780712669665.
  11. ^ a b c Arthur, Charles (2015-11-07). "Artificial intelligence: 'Homo sapiens will be split into a handful of gods and the rest of us'". The Guardian. Retrieved 2018-08-28.
  12. ^ Kleinman, Zoe (2017-07-21). "AI demo picks out recipes from food photos". BBC News. Retrieved 2018-08-28.
  13. ^ Chace, Calum (2016-07-18). The Economic Singularity: Artificial intelligence and the death of capitalism. Three Cs. ISBN 9780993211645.
  14. ^ "MPs want pupils to learn to rival robots – they should be equipped for a work-free world instead". www.newstatesman.com. 12 October 2016. Retrieved 2018-08-28.
  15. ^ Chace, Calum (2018-04-28). Artificial Intelligence and the Two Singularities (1st ed.). Chapman and Hall/CRC. ISBN 9780815368533.
  16. ^ Stories from 2045.
  17. ^ Pandora's Oracle. Three Cs. 18 February 2021. Retrieved 2021-03-19 – via www.amazon.com.
  18. ^ "The Top Futurist Speakers to Have at Your Conference". ReadWrite. 2019-07-02. Retrieved 2019-11-07.
  19. ^ "World's Best Futurist Thought Leaders, Speakers, and Trainers". Global Gurus. Retrieved 2025-02-13.
  20. ^ Kelion, Leo (2018-04-02). "AI 'poses less risk to jobs than feared'". BBC. Retrieved 2019-08-22.
  21. ^ "MPs want pupils to learn to rival robots – they should be equipped for a work-free world instead". www.newstatesman.com. 12 October 2016. Retrieved 2019-08-22.
  22. ^ Kleinman, Zoe (2017-05-26). "Workers' rights v robo jobs". Retrieved 2019-08-22.
  23. ^ "Life in 2028: how advances in AI could change our lives for the better - and worse". The National. 7 April 2018. Retrieved 2019-08-22.
  24. ^ Milmo, Dan (3 February 2025). "AI systems could be 'caused to suffer' if consciousness achieved, says research". The Guardian.
  25. ^ "PRISM Launches as the World's First Non-Profit Dedicated to Researching Sentient AI". 20 March 2025.
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