Origin Story

By: Podmasters
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  • Summary

  • What are the real stories behind the most misunderstood and abused ideas in politics? From Conspiracy Theory to Woke to Centrism and beyond, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey dig into the astonishing secret histories of concepts you thought you knew. Want to support us in making future seasons? There are now two ways you can help out: Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod . Get early episodes, live zooms and more from just £5 per month. Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/origin-story/id1624704966 . Want everything in one place with easy payment? Subscribe to our premium feed on Apple Podcasts for ad-free shows early and more. From Podmasters, the makers of Oh God, What Now? and The Bunker.
    Podmasters / Ian Dunt & Dorian Lynskey 2022
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Politics & Government Social Sciences World
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Episodes
  • Artificial Intelligence – Part One – Deus ex machina

    Artificial Intelligence – Part One – Deus ex machina
    Nov 6 2024
    This week we begin the story of Artificial Intelligence. Since the launch of Chat-GPT in late 2022, we have been more excited, and anxious, about AI than ever before. It’s become a daily obsession. But the key question we are grappling with is the same as ever: can machines really ever develop human-style intelligence or merely imitate it? And what is human intelligence anyway? In part two we’ll be exploring the possible ramifications of AI, from the utopian to the dystopian and all points in between. But first, we explain how humanity’s long, ambivalent fascination with artificial life has brought us here. We start with premonitions of AI, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, and Ada Lovelace, the original AI sceptic, to Alan Turing and his famous test. Artificial Intelligence itself — the term and the field of study — began in 1956, at a summer school at Dartmouth University. While most computer scientists were working on ways for machines to partner with human intelligence — the personal computer, the internet — AI researchers dreamt of replacing it. For decades, AI development was a cycle of boom and bust. Extravagant claims attracted funding, talent and media attention, then their failure to materialise caused all three to collapse. AI became tarnished by its broken promises. But in the 21st century, the availability of vast troves of data and powerful new processors finally solved such stubborn challenges as image recognition and automatic translation, leading to the current AI gold rush. Along the way, we meet gamechanging scientists like Marvin Minsky and Geoffrey Hinton as well as landmark machines like ELIZA, the first chatbot, Shakey the robot and AlexNet, deep learning’s great leap forward. Why does the prospect of machine intelligence enthral and unnerve us? Why has AI proved so much more difficult than its pioneers imagined? How have fictional AIs like HAL and Skynet shaped the mythology of AI? And are Large Language Models like Chat-GPT just glorified autocomplete or a historic turning point in our relationship with machines? Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon. Reading List Books Susie Alegre - Human Rights, Robot Wrongs: Being human in the age of AI (2024) Nick Bostrom – Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014) Daniel Crevier – AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence (1993) Pedro Domingos - The Master Algorithm: How the quest for the ultimate learning machine will remake the world (2015) Max Fisher - The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World (2022) Walter Isaacson – The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (2014) Dorian Lynskey – Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World (2024) John Markoff - Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots (2015) David G. Stork (ed.) – HAL’s Legacy: 2001’s Computer as Dream and Reality (1997) Mustafa Suleyman with Michael Bhaskar – The Coming Wave: AI, Power and Our Future (2023) Michael Woolridge – The Road to Conscious Machines: The Story of AI (2021) Articles Alan Turing – ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’, Mind (1950) Brad Darrach – ‘Meet Shaky, the First Electronic Person’, Life (1970) Jeremy Bernstein – ‘A.I.’, New Yorker (1981) Raffi Khatchadourian – ‘The Doomsday Invention’, New Yorker (2015) For the full reading list join our Patreon. Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 8 mins
  • The Suffragettes – Part Two – By any means necessary

    The Suffragettes – Part Two – By any means necessary
    Oct 30 2024
    This week we finish the story of the suffragettes. We pick up the narrative in 1912, when parliament’s failure to deliver women’s suffrage triggered a new phase of violent escalation. No suffragette was more extreme than Emily Wilding Davison, whose death at the hooves of the King’s horse turned a liability into a martyr. Meanwhile, the whole country was convulsed by arson and bomb plots and the Pankhursts’ autocratic leadership was alienating some of their closest allies, including members of their own family. It took the First World War to stop the “reign of terror” and ultimately give women the vote. Was violence morally justified when peaceful solutions failed? Did it hasten suffrage or threaten to derail it? What might have happened if the war had not intervened? What do the strange and divergent afterlives of the suffragettes tell us about the movement? And what can modern activists like Just Stop Oil learn from the suffragettes? Behind the sanitised, sentimentalised version of the story lies a thorny tale of the validity and efficacy of violence in a just cause, taking Edwardian Britain to the edge of chaos. Origin Story will be live at the Tabernacle in London on the 7th of November for a special post-US election show. Tickets here. Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon. Reading List Diane Atkinson – Rise Up Women!: The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes (2018) Helen Lewis – Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights (2020) Joyce Marlow (editor) – Suffragettes: The Fight for Votes for Women (2015) Glenda Norquay (editor) – Voices and Votes: A Literary Anthology of the Women’s Suffrage Campaign (1995) Christabel Pankhurst – Pressing Problems of the Coming Age (1924) Christabel Pankhurst – Unshackled: The Story of How We Won the Vote (1959) Sylvia Pankhurst – The Suffragette: The History of the Women’s Militant Suffrage Movement 1905-10 (1911) Sylvia Pankhurst – The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals (1931) Mary R. Richardson – Laugh a Defiance (1953) Fern Riddell – ‘Sanitising the Suffragettes’ (2018) Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 18 mins
  • The Suffragettes – Part one – Deeds not words

    The Suffragettes – Part one – Deeds not words
    Oct 23 2024
    This week we begin the tumultuous story of the suffragettes. In 1903, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union. Sick of waiting in vain for women’s suffrage, they decided to secure it by hook or by crook. By 1906, the so-called suffragettes were the most exciting, audacious activists in the land, with their banners of purple, white and green. They then took on the might of the British state with ingenious protests and hunger strikes before agreeing to an uneasy two-year ceasefire while parliament wrestled over whether to give women the vote. We conclude part one at the end of 1911, with political failure and the dawn of a new phase of militancy. Who were the Pankhursts and their inner circle? How did they interact with Millicent Fawcett’s moderate suffragists? Why were Liberal politicians so determined to deny women the vote? And could it all have worked out very differently? It’s a fiery story of courage, conflict and missed chances, as British women found their political voice for the first time. Origin Story will be live at the Tabernacle in London on the 7th of November for a special post-US election show. Tickets here. Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon. Reading List Diane Atkinson – Rise Up Women!: The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes (2018) Helen Lewis – Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights (2020) Joyce Marlow (editor) – Suffragettes: The Fight for Votes for Women (2015) Glenda Norquay (editor) – Voices and Votes: A Literary Anthology of the Women’s Suffrage Campaign (1995) Christabel Pankhurst – Pressing Problems of the Coming Age (1924) Christabel Pankhurst – Unshackled: The Story of How We Won the Vote (1959) Sylvia Pankhurst – The Suffragette: The History of the Women’s Militant Suffrage Movement 1905-10 (1911) Sylvia Pankhurst – The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals (1931) Mary R. Richardson – Laugh a Defiance (1953) Fern Riddell – ‘Sanitising the Suffragettes’ (2018) Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 8 mins

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