David Carvalhão

There is a mounting amount of evidence in several fields of research, spanning neurophysiology, human cognition and psychology, that strongly suggest there is no such thing as free will, and rather humans are extremely complex state machines that, were we to have enough information about our internal state, we would be able to accurately predict any behaviour given a set of inputs. The collection of huge amounts of data and the application of several data-science techniques, the most notable of which being Machine Learning, promises to unravel this internal state, allowing anyone in possession of a large enough dataset to manipulate almost perfectly any audience. The structure of our society, from law to religion, is firmly grounded in the concept that its members act and choose using their free will. If this concept goes away, huge societal and ethical challenges will immediately appear, some that will have to be addressed by politicians, others by researchers and technologists.

In this talk I take the audience in a journey into the mind of one of the most notorious terrorists of the 20th century, the Unabomber, as a starting point to introduce a cognitive model of human activity as a tool to understand the impacts of technology in societies.

Deconstructing many of the myths about investment in startups is no easy task. Everyone seems to be desperate to get the next round of investment, when getting invested at the wrong moment and in the wrong terms can kill your business.