Existential Hope Podcast: Hannah Ritchie | Climate Tech & How AI Can Help Solve Big Problems
Foresight Institute RadioShow Notes
The way we talk about the future of the planet often feels like a choice between denial and doomism. But what if we looked at the data? Hannah Ritchie, Deputy Editor at Our World in Data, has dedicated her work to making complex global challenges—like climate change, energy, and sustainability—more understandable and actionable.
In this conversation with Beatrice Erkers, she shares insights from her book Not the End of the World, exploring what the data actually tells us about humanity’s progress, where technology—including AI—can help, and how we can build a future that is not just survivable, but sustainable and hopeful.
This interview is a guest lecture in our new online course about shaping positive futures with AI. The course is free, and available here: https://www.udemy.com/course/worldbuilding-hopeful-futures-with-ai/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Foresight Institute Radio
This recording with João Pedro de Magalhães is from Vision Weekend UK 2026, held in London in June 2026. View the recording along with the slides on our YouTube channel.
This recording with Marius Hobbhahn is from Vision Weekend UK 2026, held in London in June 2026. View the recording along with the slides on our YouTube channel. Marius Hobbhahn is CEO and founder of Apollo Research, a London-based AI safety company that works with OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, Microsoft, and Amazon to evaluate dangerous capabilities in frontier AI systems. Before founding Apollo, he completed a PhD in machine learning and worked on AI forecasting at EpochAI. Apollo's product, Watcher, provides real-time oversight and control for AI coding agents.
This recording with Greg Wayne is from Vision Weekend UK 2026, held in London in June 2026. View the recording along with the slides on our YouTube channel. Greg Wayne is Director of Research at Google DeepMind, where he leads Project Astra, Google's research prototype for a universal AI assistant. His research combines neuroscience with AI systems design, focusing on memory, contextual grounding, and how agents can reason over time.
This recording with Andrew Trask is from the Foresight Institute Secure AI seminar series, hosted in April 2026. Andrew Trask is the founder of OpenMined and creator of PySyft, one of the most widely used frameworks for privacy-preserving machine learning. He has spent the last decade building technical infrastructure that allows AI systems to train on sensitive data without exposing it.
This recording with Taylor Tondelli is from Vision Weekend Puerto Rico 2026, held in February 2026. In this talk, Taylor argues that intelligence alone, whether human or AI, is not what drives innovation. Raw capability needs the right conditions: incentives, institutional scaffolding, and the diversity of thought that lets new ideas find their footing. The talk examines what those conditions look like and where they tend to break down.