Cognitive enhancement, individual freedom, and neurotechnology in Europe David Orban — my full answers to the interview for Le Scienze MIND on the neurohacking of non-therapeutic prosthetics. The questions are by Teresa Giusti (Master in Science Communication, SISSA); a version was published in MIND. To what extent can cognitive enhancement be a free individual choice, […]
The Right to Non-Adoption Read More »
Humanoid robots are not the end of human purpose My contribution to the Formiche magazine feature on the age of humanoid robots. A version was published in the February 2026 issue. The headlines write themselves: humanoid robots will steal our jobs. Warehouses, factories, maintenance — first the repetitive tasks, then the rest. If machines do
From Work to Passion Read More »
The school of the future, beyond the factory-school My contribution to Il Sole 24 Ore’s feature on the macro-trends of the future. The questions were posed by Francesca Barbieri; below are my answers, in the complete version I wrote. Let’s project ourselves 160 years ahead… How might we imagine a typical day for a student
Learning Anywhere, with Anyone, at Any Age Read More »
Pope Leo XIV has written an encyclical about artificial intelligence. “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence” is a work of moral reasoning that places AI inside a tradition reaching back to 1891, when Leo XIII published Rerum Novarum, the first encyclical on economic justice. And as someone who
Where the Pope is right about AI, and where Rome risks a second Galileo Read More »
The rights of AIs as a path to flourishing in the 21st century — written version of the Bicocca talk, 22 May 2026.
Artificial Persons, Human Freedoms Read More »
In 2015, I finished writing a book about artificial intelligence that almost no one asked for. At the time, AI was still primarily a research story. Deep learning was advancing, but foundation models did not exist. There were no systems embedded in everyday workflows, no AI‑generated text saturating the internet, no sustained policy debates about
Ten Years Later: Releasing “Something New?” to the Commons Read More »
Value exchange has always rested on a simple principle: voluntary participation creates positive-sum outcomes. That was true in ancient barter and remains true in today’s digital networks. What has changed is our capacity to coordinate these win–win interactions. This is an edited transcript of my remarks at Token Talks & Tastes 2.0 for the panel
The Evolving Architecture of Value, Technology, and Human Purpose Read More »
For the past 30 years I have been building companies across multiple geographies. Creating plans, founding teams, joining opportunities, raising capital, investing: the full spectrum of entrepreneurial activity, unconstrained by a single location. Ten years ago Network Society Labs, a global network of blockchain consulting groups, operated offices in San Francisco, Buenos Aires, London, Malta,
Location, Location, Location: Physical, Digital, Global Read More »
I am joining Al Liwan Group, headquartered in Abu Dhabi, as Head of Innovation, to advance our mission by embedding advanced technologies into every layer of the organisation and empowering people to operate at the frontier of what modern finance can achieve. Across the arc of recorded history, the systems that track value and enable exchange
The Capital Of Capital Read More »
The following is an edited transcript of my keynote presentation at The Futurists X Summit held in Dubai in September 2025. Humanity can flourish in the age of AI and robots: I believe that through them we will gain new degrees of freedom, and it will enable us to decide and design our future. My
Human Flourishing in the Age of AI and Robots Read More »
