Schrödinger's Cat and...
What happens when one of the architects building the most powerful technology in human history opens his book, not with a triumph of science, but with the story of a baby girl who never walked, never talked, never fed herself, and died at the age of eleven, and asks with full scientific seriousness whether she was flourishing?
A note before we begin: This episode discusses the life and death of a profoundly disabled child, end-of-life reflections, and the ethics of emerging technology. Andrew handles all of it with care.
That baby girl's name was Angela. The man asking the question is Professor Andrew Briggs, Emeritus Professor of Nanomaterials at the University of Oxford, co-founder of Quantrolox, and author of Human Flourishing and The Penultimate Curiosity.
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He leads a global initiative connecting 85 million people across 165 countries on science and faith. He has spent four decades at the bleeding edge of quantum computing, and every one of those decades asking the question his peers tend to skip: not can we build it, but what is it actually for?
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In this episode, Dov sits down with Andrew to put the question almost nobody in Silicon Valley is willing to ask on the table.
We are racing toward a world where machines will outperform humans across entire categories we once thought made us irreplaceable, and Andrew himself admits that, with AI, the stable door is closing after the horse has bolted. His hope is that with quantum computing, we still have a small window to ask before the door slams again. What are you seeking to optimize? And where do those values come from?
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Then the conversation goes somewhere unexpected. Dov pushes Andrew on Palantir and the ethical Rubicon of selling powerful technology to people whose values you do not share. Andrew doesn't dodge it. He talks about the three dimensions of flourishing, the score function his Oxford lab obsesses over, and why the hardest place any of us can start is not the company, not the policy, but our own heart.
That baby girl's name was Angela. The man asking the question is Professor Andrew Briggs, Emeritus Professor of Nanomaterials at the University of Oxford, co-founder of Quantrolox, and author of Human Flourishing and The Penultimate Curiosity. He leads a global initiative connecting 85 million people across 165 countries on science and faith. He has spent four decades at the bleeding edge of quantum computing, and every one of those decades asking the question his peers tend to skip: not can we build it, but what is it actually for?
In this episode, Dov sits down with Andrew to put the question almost nobody in Silicon Valley is willing to ask on the table. We are racing toward a world where machines will outperform humans across entire categories of what we used to think made us irreplaceable, and Andrew himself admits that with AI, the stable door is shutting after the horse has bolted. His hope is that with quantum computing, we still have a small window to ask before the door slams again. What are you seeking to optimize? And where do those values come from?
Then the conversation goes somewhere unexpected. Dov pushes Andrew on Palantir and the ethical Rubicon of selling powerful technology to people whose values you do not share. Andrew doesn't dodge it. He talks about the three dimensions of flourishing, the score function his Oxford lab obsesses over, and why the hardest place any of us can start is not the company, not the policy, but our own heart.
And one piece of trivia for the curious: Schrödinger lived twelve doors down from Andrew, and the cat had a name… You'll have to listen to find out
Inside this conversation:
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The Angela question that should awaken something dormant in everyone who measures life by merit
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Why the most dangerous part of AI is not the algorithm, it is the score function the algorithm is optimizing for, and what that means for everything you use every day
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The Palantir question Andrew refused to dodge, and what he says about selling powerful tools to people whose values you do not share
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The three dimensions of human flourishing, material, relational, transcendent, and the one modern Western culture has most catastrophically neglected
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Why Andrew, a serious scientist, believes the resurrection of Jesus is the most solid ground for hope, and how he holds that alongside building the future
If you came here for techno-utopian hype, this is the wrong podcast. If you came because you have been quietly wondering what, exactly, we are progressing toward, and whether anyone at the top of the room is asking that question with you, then press play.
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Rate, review, and send this episode to the most thoughtful builder you know. That is how the algorithm finds the people who still ask why.
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