Ada Palmer is a professor of European history at the University of Chicago. Her four-volume science fiction series, Terra Ignota, was inspired by 18th-century philosophers such as Voltaire and Diderot. "I wanted to write a story that Voltaire might have written if Voltaire had been able to read the last 70 years' worth of science fiction and have all of those tools at his disposal," Palmer says in Episode 495 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Palmer says that Voltaire could actually be considered the first science fiction writer, thanks to a piece he wrote in 1752. "Voltaire has a short story called'Micromégas,' in which an alien from Saturn and an alien from a star near Sirius come to Earth, and they are enormous, and they explore the Earth and have trouble finding life-forms because to them a whale is the size of a flea," she says.

Kai-Fu Lee is a Taiwanese computer scientist based in Beijing. After earning his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon, he worked at Apple and Microsoft before becoming president of Google China, a position he held from 2005 to 2009. Chen Qiufan is a renowned Chinese science fiction writer and the author of the novel The Waste Tide. Listen to the audio version--read by Lee himself--in the Next Big Idea App. As AI and other technologies disrupt the world, we all must familiarize ourselves with the opportunities they pose and the challenges they may create.

The Three Laws of Robotics are iconic in the science fiction world, and have become a symbol within the AI and robotics community of how difficult it is to properly design a system that is foolproof. To fully comprehend the importance of these three laws, we must first learn about the brilliant mind who conceived of these laws the late science fiction author Isaac Asimov. We must then understand how to adapt these laws and have them evolve to protect humanity. Isaac Asimov was born in Russia on January 2, 1920, and immigrated to the United States at age three. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Columbia University in 1939.

Cass R. Sunstein is one of America's foremost legal scholars; he is also a big fan of science fiction authors such as Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. Sunstein thinks that science fiction can be a useful tool to inoculate people against status quo bias--our tendency to resist anything new and unfamiliar. "If you love science fiction, you find it fun, and maybe a good little chill goes down your spine, when you think of things that hadn't been dreamt of until 1990 or 2005, and those things excite you, as well as maybe scaring you," Sunstein says in Episode 468 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Sunstein's new book Averting Catastrophe lays out an approach for evaluating unpredictable threats such as asteroids, AI, climate change, and pandemics. One of the book's more science fictional ideas is that people might not need to worry so much about the well-being of future generations, an idea that Sunstein attributes to Nobel prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling.

"Artificial Gods," a collection of stories about artificial intelligence, has been published by New Star Press. It includes 14 tales by 12 Chinese science fiction writers, including some Galaxy Award winners such as "Where the Wind Starts" by Zhang Ran, "Gate of the Machines" by Jiang Bo and "Previous Dusk" by Luo Longxiang. All the stories are about the relationship between humans and AI and worries about a future with AI. In the stories, AI can be a powerful destroyer or an innocent creature. Artificial intelligence is a popular theme for science fiction.

Since the dawn of the age of computers, human beings have wondered what will happen when the machines eventually learn how to "think" like humans do. The consensus among science fiction writers is "nothing good." Whether they rise and destroy humanity outright, or insert our consciousness into a giant simulation of the late 1990's to turn us into biomechanical batteries, depends on the creative imaginations and special effects budget of whoever's telling the story. But rare is the writer or director who tells a story about how human beings built thinking machines -- and everything turned out just great. Until recently, however, these were mostly the concerns of those who worked in fiction -- since the technology available wasn't up to causing an apocalypse.

Even dogs have dreams, but not you, you are just a machine. Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?" This famous quote from the film "I, Robot", inspired by Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer's collection of short stories, poses questions that current technology can already answer. Computer programs that have machine learning capabilities can compose sonatas, songs, and classical pieces, and can even draw pictures at a level on a par with high art.

Many historians believe that science fiction is as old as civilization itself. Believe it or not, even in the ancient times such work that resembles science fiction did exist. These are considered precursors of science fiction because they exhibit the fantastical elements although they lack the characteristics that really make up of science and technology. The fantasy aspects that are likened to modern science fiction include mechanical birds (which are equivalent to aircraft), the idea of time travel, human-like machines, the concept and quest for eternal life, as well as others. Because these were written in a time where technology and its advancements were still in their infancy, many of these aspects had not been made possible yet.

Science fiction is full of grand visions of humanity launching colony ship fleets to settle alien worlds. It is, but sci-fi author James Patrick Kelly wants to know who would be paying for all those ambitious colonization missions. "It's a truism that the field doesn't acknowledge that very few, if any, science fiction writers have any idea of economics," Kelly says in Episode 264 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. In Kelly's new novel Mother Go, opposition to a colony ship steadily mounts as the launch date approaches because a vocal'Earth First' faction doesn't want to see so much technology and talent depart the planet forever. Kelly thinks that's an all-too-plausible scenario.

At the recent Forbes CIO Summit in Half Moon Bay, California, I had the opportunity to share the stage with about a dozen leading technology leaders from a variety of different companies. Included among them were CEOs, CIOs, and venture capitalists. After the event concluded, I reached out to a number of contacts of mine who were in the audience to gauge what they found most interesting, and the person who was mentioned more than any other was Kyle Nel, who is the Executive Director of Lowe's Innovation Labs at Lowe's Home Improvement. You might think to yourself, "'Innovation Labs' sounds interesting, but Lowe's? How innovative can that be?" Very innovative, as it turns out.