019 WTFuture - AUDIO Edition - Sun Storms, Future of Freedom, and Silicon Frontiers

This week you are in for a ride through space, bizarre weather, and cool tech with the likes of us! We kick things off by unraveling the mystery behind strangely tropical, Hawaiian-like July weather, linking it to intense solar activity, hyperactive sunspots, and massive coronal holes that might even be triggering earthquakes along the Pacific Ring of Fire. From there, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Viking 1 Mars landing, diving deep into the spicy, decades-long scientific drama over whether its infamous labeled release experiment actually discovered alien microbes half a century ago. We use the AI’s to animate the "panspermia" theory that humanity's primordial ancestors might have been blasted off the Red Planet on meteorites and hitched a ride to Earth.

And then it’s back to Earth, where we look at how "monster" AI models—like China's 2.8-trillion-parameter Kimi K3 and smartphone-sized powerhouses like Caltech's Bonsai 27B—are completely shattering the large data centers via phone sized AI’s. Bobby explores how immortal billionaire AI avatars will soon run corporations, or if future silicon-based lifeforms will simply view humanity as a "carbon infestation”, as in the first Star Trek movie. Sun explores the Future of Freedom, humans and AI’s in terms of property rights. Toss in a scandalous, legendary anecdote about John McAfee and a creativity conference in Hollywood and you have a must-listen episode that will leave you with some new insights into what’s now with the future and some great links to explore. Enjoy.