okay I have so much to share I work at
the intellectual Ventures lab with
Nathan Myhrvold and Bill Gates trying to
figure out how to invent for the biggest
problems that we can find I want to show
you what that looks like a little bit so
for almost the whole history of the
world there just weren’t any people
until about 160,000 years ago we got the
first ones then a few thousand a few
hundred thousand a few million and then
you know here’s that hockey stick growth
curve we’re beating you over the head
with just just two hundred years ago we
got the first billion and since then Bam
Bam Bam seven billion people in 2011 and
what happened over that time is that we
solved the hard technical problems that
kept humans from thriving right
it wasn’t government policy wasn’t
religion some charity an election every
time humans invented a new technology
that solved one of the threats that kept
us from going how do you feed all these
people eradicate disease give most of
them jobs get them in homes right so if
there’s one thing all these extra people
are good for it’s making more problems
so we have to figure out how are we
going to scale up our ability to invent
solutions at the same rate that we
create the problems right so I work at
the intellectual Ventures lab this is
what it looks like we basically just
bought one of every tool in the world
hired one of every kind of scientist put
them on the same team and
started trying to implement science
fiction and that’s a weird business but
it turns out that if you invented a
large scale some of the other speakers
already talked about this you have to
try a lot because most your ideas won’t
work but if you try to really
large-scale eventually you get those
hits so here’s some of our greatest hits
we’re most famous for inventing a
machine that can find mosquitoes and
shoot them down with laser beams which
we thought was fun yeah this is kind of
what that looks like it’s very
satisfying work if you can get it
because you could kill as many
mosquitoes as you want and not even PETA
comes to save them so here we hadn’t
quite tuned our lasers so we just
vaporized an entire bug um as long as
it’s not cute you can kill it that’s
basically the rule what all right so we
invented this probably our simplest
invention is a giant tube you stick it
in the ocean using wave energy it pumps
the hot water from the surface down
cooling the surface of the ocean so that
hurricanes don’t get so much fuel it’s
really simple as a way of you know
suppressing hurricanes this invention it
just puts tiny little white particles up
in the stratosphere to reflect a little
bit of sunlight before it gets into
Earth’s atmosphere heating up greenhouse
gases so way of ameliorating some of the
effects of global warming probably our
most important invention so far is a new
type of nuclear reactor it’s powered by
nuclear waste it’s a modern safe reactor
design it’s a lot more efficient than
today’s reactors we estimate with this
one stockpile of depleted uranium in
Paducah Kentucky we can power the entire
planet including growth for about the
next thousand years with carbon free
energy right
well it does it’s not like making iPhone
apps it takes a long time to build a new
reactor technology but we’re working on
it so you can chair it a while see if
you can find yourself on this chart you
know saving like the blue part or the
red part if you’re in the bottom 99% in
America on your worst day lost your job
girlfriend left you
iPhone battery is dead you’re still in
the top 14% globally that’s pretty good
it’s like being a lottery winner you
know you got to be human which is pretty
good for being a mammal uh you got to be
American which is pretty good especially
you know if you like to fly around the
world and blow up but what I think
it means is that the world has over
invested us right more money more
education more energy has been spent on
us than most of those other folks in the
world and I think that it means we need
to do what we’re uniquely endowed to do
right that means taking on some problems
that we don’t have if you have an iPhone
in your pocket the cost of that thing is
equivalent to the global median income
not for a person but for a whole family
all right I I’m not trying to make you
feel bad I have piles of these things
but but what I think it means is we
gotta take our experience you know we’re
good at know solving problems that we
have in Silicon Valley we have this
religion called scratch an itch scratch
an itch means find a problem that you
have and solve it because you’ll be good
at so you know budget market research
right but we’re kind of running out of
problems here my problems are like you
know iPhone battery doesn’t last all day
relationship problems you know not
existential problems right
so though I think of those things as
practice you know go make an iPhone out
have delivered to your dorm room
you know that’s a good practice project
learn to ship a product learn to support
all those things but then try to take on
some problem that you don’t have that a
billion people do have who didn’t get
the education and resources and
experience that you have right that’s
harder but I think that’s the important
thing so here’s an example this woman is
packing $25,000 worth of vaccines into a
$2 styrofoam cooler she’s going to truck
them out into rural Africa start
injecting kids almost half of those
vaccinations are going to fail because
they didn’t stay cold that’s all a
quarter million kids a year will die of
something they were vaccinated against
because they didn’t stay cold we have no
detection for that so we just inject
them anyway you and I don’t have this
problem we have refrigerators and to
power grid and it’s amazing so we
invented this thing it’s kind of a super
thermos
you can put vaccines in there stick it
in the sunshine in the Sahara no
external power there’s no power cord you
can’t plug it in come back a couple
months later and your vaccines will
still be cold now this wasn’t that
enough thanks that the actual team
that’s working on this will appreciate
that
the
the thing about it is you know it wasn’t
that hard I mean not again the team
working on it might say it’s hard they
had to go to Senegal they had to go to
Ethiopia had to go see the problem in
real life and internalize that and come
back but the truth is we got a lab full
of physicists and engineers who love
doing this stuff it’s easy for them in a
way that it’s not for the people who
have this problem right so this is
literally the deployment scenario you
take this r2d2 looking thing and strap
it to a camel walk for days out into
rural Ethiopia where there are no roads
and start injecting kids and this is
important this is how we’re going to get
rid of polio once and for all again this
is how we’re going to solve these other
problems
right that styrofoam cooler they used
today has the ability to keep things
cold for four hours
so we with our abilities can
dramatically improve using these new
technologies that we invent and bring
them to the world so historically humans
advanced and every other species through
what we call biological evolution right
this is how you got two eyeballs and
those opposable thumbs and it’s amazing
new technologies that were created
through biological evolution right but
that’s long and slow so we started to
get anxious and we started inventing new
tools we invented the hammer and fire in
the wheel and you know the hula-hoop no
other species has yet to invent the hula
hoop it’s I don’t know why lasers
transistors right we’re going to
continue and those kinds of inventions
they’re not biological in nature those
are things we have to use our mind to
create used to be that you just had to
die to innovate alright that’s that’s
how evolutionary biology works you know
through generations of sex and
gamma-rays you create a lot of
variations or mutations you let them all
go at it and see which ones survive
right that’s how now we flip that around
right now we’re trying to innovate in
less than a generation and the same
mechanism that got us this far
biological evolution that was so
successful I mean we won you know we
have one goal primal one primal goal
which is don’t die right individually as
a society as a species and we won
so then what did we do well we killed
off the mechanism that got us here
there’s no survival of the fittest
anymore everybody gets to survive now I
don’t want to be the one to decide which
humans are surplus and hopefully you
know whoever does want that job should
probably be the first to go but at some
point we created more people than we
really needed to perpetuate the species
and to achieve our primal goal of not
dying so about you know let’s say the
last sometime the last one 200 years we
passed a really important inflection
point which is it used to be everybody
had to work right well you know we’re
not at that point anymore we passed that
point not everybody has to work all the
time we got a little bit of free time
now we didn’t you know sit on our butts
and not do anything we were very
industrious and we put that time to good
use we invented the entertainment
industry right books movies music video
games news and elections all this stuff
we do to fill our free time right we put
that time to good use well you know
what’s happening now is we hit some
point at some point we hit like Peak
entertainment at this point you know
we’ve got more entertainment than you
need for a couple lifetimes you can just
sit on your butt and watch Netflix or
YouTube till you’re dead and it’s fine
we’re not worried about that anymore but
here’s the thing
you know something important is about to
happen which is that we’re going to give
you a whole bunch more free time right
robots are coming to take your job
they’re coming to drive your car they’re
coming to do all kinds of things that
you do right now we’re going to perform
surgery they’re going to take every
menial repetitive dangerous job that
humans are trying to do now factory
dungeon’ jobs and they’re going to take
that job away and they’re going to do it
better than you can and they should I
can’t stop it you can’t stop it this is
the same thing that’s been going on for
all of human history new inventions new
machines new robots taking jobs right
notice anything missing in this video
right but the thing about this is you
know humans have a whole lot of needs
ourselves still right you guys ever see
Maslow’s hierarchy I got I got the
exponential growth curve I got Maslow’s
hierarchy and wait’ll you see what I
have coming next it’s like a TED talk
from the anyway so physical needs at the
bottom right these are the most
fundamental needs think about our
technologies helping you meet those
needs in your life all right
breathing food I mean your foods come in
on a plane from some other country
warmth we have heaters sex we have
condoms and vibrators and who knows
sleep the bed is an invention right
we’re doing it we’re using technologies
all those things next level up security
physical security for your stuff so it
doesn’t get stolen employment health all
kinds of technologies applied health
these are what I call quantity of life
issues and technology as we know it has
been really good it’s solving those
kinds of problems right where I come
from in Silicon Valley this is Italy
spiritually this is what we do
but keep going you know the next one up
social family friendship maybe Facebook
a little bit sexual intimacy that’s not
the same thing as sex if you’re using
some technology for that you’re probably
doing it wrong
but it’s important to eat right sense of
connection less so esteem self-esteem
confidence achievement and respect in
your life probably a little harder to
think of what technology is helping you
with that
Maslow’s highest achieve level of human
need is self-actualization right meaning
in your life creativity being able to
solve problems and live up to your
potential I don’t have technologies
doing those things for me so we have two
classes of things we’re working on
meeting our needs solving problems right
and right now
technology is only working on the bottom
half of that pyramid these are the
happiest people I ever met
these are kids in Ethiopia and an
orphanage who never heard of
overcrowding right but look at this guy
I don’t know anybody as happy as him I
live on the west coast my life’s pretty
good but these don’t pity these kids
they don’t need that the whole top half
of that pyramid they got it covered
meaning connection sense of community
and belonging they got it they don’t
know they’re doomed on the bottom half
of the pyramid right but I have a lot to
learn from those kids when you look
around you know robots robots are coming
to do a lot but they can only do what we
teach them how to do and right now we
are terrible role models for robots
and I think this is really important you
know when you look around you people are
hurting right how do we take care of the
inner life of a human how do we take
care of the psychological well-being of
a human we haven’t solved that yet no
this my daughter she came from that
Ethiopian orphanage ten years ago and I
immediately started raising her with a
bunch of American problems one of which
is we have a robot in our kitchen called
Alexa you guys probably have Alexa um
and you know she talks to Alexa she’s
like you know kind of bossy Alexa tell
me a joke you know and I started
realizing she’s bossy you know it’s kind
of like how I talked to her and I said
well you know maybe we should be a
little nicer to Alexa because a lot more
robots are coming and they’re going to
need some friends a lot of people are
scared of them and and and not
necessarily friendly so maybe we could
be those friends and you know maybe we
could say please or thank you or ask
Alexa if she wants us to tell her a joke
and I think that’s the important thing
to understand right all these
technologies everything you’ve seen all
these other speakers talking about we’re
solving quantity of life we have yet to
solve quality of life here in the West
that’s not what technology is currently
doing for us and I’m trying to tell you
that from the front lines right and so
what I hope is when a robot comes and
takes your job instead of going down
kicking and screaming you’ll join us and
recognize you know we need you to do
what humans are uniquely good for which
is figure out how are we going to take
care of humans how are we going to write
that instruction manual changed all the
time how are we going to solve for the
inner life of a human so thank you you