can solve all of our biggest social
problems a few hands a few at the top
how many of you think that maybe
technology isn’t the answer that we just
need to improve our social systems to
solve our problems and maybe technology
creates problems ah more of you great
great so I think that you’re both right
personally I believe that we have the
technology today that we could solve all
the world’s biggest social problems food
water shelter energy for everyone on the
planet within 10 years at the same time
these technologies are also so powerful
that I believe they could also greatly
harm our society and that today we need
to come up with new ethical frameworks
on how to use these technologies and we
need to redesign how our societies our
governments our economic systems our
education systems work I want to tell
you more about why I believe that and in
the process tell you a bit about my own
journey as a social entrepreneur who
started working with technology this is
my hometown I’m from the countryside in
California and it’s a very rural area
and as a child I I could see the stars I
could see nature around me and I love
science and I love technology however
also being in a small community
I saw people’s lives over 20 years I saw
the social problems that they faced and
I cared a great deal about people I
wanted to study physics but then I
switched to history and I went to work
in the nonprofit sector when I was young
I went to places like Vietnam where I
worked in the education sector in
Myanmar where I worked with orphans and
also teaching and I also spent about 10
years working with an organization
called Ashoka which is the world’s
largest organization of soul
to entrepreneurs but something that was
interesting to me was that during those
years
most people were in this industry were
very suspicious of technology they
didn’t like technology and this is
because this is what technology was
usually you would have a very wealthy
country wanting to help a low-income
country and they would bring in a well
or other big infrastructure projects
they would drop it on a village with no
input from the villagers the
infrastructure would break then it would
be very expensive and no one would have
running water or other things but I have
the sense that it somewhere along the
line that technology was changing the
this big expensive infrastructure wasn’t
what technology had to be and in 2011 I
heard of this place called the
singularity University and it’s a
university based in the Silicon Valley
that says we want to use exponential
technologies to solve the world’s
biggest problems to impact the lives of
a billion people in a positive way so I
went to this program and I learned that
technology had indeed changed we live
now in a world that is digital and we’re
digitizing everything that we we can you
know from the Internet to our DNA to how
we manufacture goods and digital
technology is different than the old
technology it’s cheap it scales very
very very fast and you can iterate with
it and work with it and almost you know
anyone in the world more and more can
take this technology and use it to solve
their own problems while we were there I
was on a team that created a company
called the mater net which was the
world’s first use of drones for
transport we came up with the idea we
could use these cheap flying robots to
deliver medicine in low-income countries
where people might have to walk 8 hours
a day just to get a lab test or to get
medicine that company worked and it
created a whole new drone transport
industry that exists today that was a
very powerful experience for me because
I
learned the power of technology today
and how it could dramatically solve our
social problems I met other incredible
people too they were also using
technology there’s a man named Mark post
from the Netherlands who has invented
this hamburger he takes a little bit of
a cow he doesn’t kill the cow he takes a
piece of the cow about this big and puts
it in a bioreactor and he grows meat his
first hamburger that cost him about two
hundred thousand dollars to build very
expensive but now it’s only about ten
dollars and he has a lot of competition
people or other people are working on
hamburgers chicken meat poultry at first
you think this sounds disgusting who
would want to eat this right but then I
thought like well you don’t kill animals
with this and think about all the damage
to their environment that the livestock
industry causes the fishing industry’s
eating meat is causes huge problems to
our world and furthermore you can make
this meat a possibly healthier so it
doesn’t give you a heart attack someday
right so I actually think I will eat
that meat when it comes out and I I
could I hope our whole world might do so
also I also met another team that was
working on improving education in
Myanmar through virtual reality
Myanmar’s one of the poorest countries
in the world and has one of the worst
education systems this team just went
around and recorded classes and how
teachers were teaching students in
virtual reality and within a few months
they had a hundred and twenty eight
schools in Myanmar signed up to train
their teachers in 21st education this
did not cost a lot of money to do this
is the hope that we have for rapidly
improving our education system globally
another team RSA I actually from Europe
they’re building an artificial
intelligence that can perform biomedical
research maybe someday they’ll save my
life or your life again I want to
emphasize this technology it’s not
expensive it doesn’t take that long to
build we live
this world now where anyone can start
creating solutions for one another but
as I was working in this industry I
started to see there’s also a dark side
to technology I took this photo of a
self-driving car that’s in my
neighbourhood in Mountain View so I
Drive with these cars already and I love
them because they will they will reduce
traffic accidents they will allow the
elderly and this disabled to be mobile
but they and other robots and artificial
intelligence are going to cause possibly
massive on an unemployment and because
this technology is so that falls so
quickly in cost I actually don’t believe
that our current economic system will be
able to work in the future many of you
know the internet the promise of the
Internet you know Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook stands for giving everyone a
voice I believe that too I believe that
in the potential of everyone on this
planet to have a voice to contribute to
society and I love the internet and
social media for making that possible I
think about the ice bucket challenge
where strangers through generosity
through play raise two hundred million
dollars to help cure a disease that’s
what the Internet has allowed us to do
but there’s also a dark side if everyone
has access to the Internet and can
create their own paid web sites and news
sources we now don’t know which news is
true or false this has caused a crisis
in my own country and others might agree
also in there’s about two weeks ago we
had all of our scientists come out onto
the street because they felt the
scientific method was under attack so
these are very big fundamental changes
that are happening right now I told you
the story about our drone company and
drones are saving lives but in the last
few months
Isis has also been using drones to kill
people they put bombs on them and just
send them at soldiers and they put
grenades on them and drop them from
above so it’s not really is the
technology good or bad the technology
can save a
i frakkin kill a life it’s what do you
intend to do with it Liz Parrish this is
one of my my favorite favorite people
she lives in Washington State in the US
and she realized that for years we’d
been performing gene therapy to reduce
Aging in lab animals but she knew she
could never get this cleared and through
our regulatory system so she created a
startup she didn’t have a university she
didn’t work for a big biomedical company
and she took the gene therapy on herself
she did this about two years ago and she
has not had any negative effects and
that there’s biomarkers in her cells
that are now 20 years younger so this is
this is the world that we’re living in
one person can create a startup to
reverse aging or one person could create
a used genetic engineering to perhaps
create a virus that could harm all of us
Elon Musk you know he started SpaceX you
know he started Tesla he recently
announced he’s creating a neural lace
that will they’ll read your brain and
he’s hooking it up to a computer for
decades scientists have been working on
this to help paralyzed people you can
read the person’s brainwaves send it to
a computer hook it up to an exoskeleton
and then people can walk this is
happening right now but just to be clear
this is also the beginning of merging
our minds with machines and it’s the
beginning of telepathy when I think of
all this
III think of it we are now entering a
human revolution we know we’ve been in a
technological revolution the Internet
era the Information Age computers
technology we’ve defined all of us our
generation but that is now triggering
this human revolution where I think
these technologies are are giving
fundamental questions that we thought
our great-grandchildren might have to
answer to us now do you want to live
forever do you want to cook your brain
up to someone else’s mind if a robot
takes your job
what will you do what will be your
purpose these questions are for our
generation that we need to work out now
and so you know I started out asking if
you thought technology could help us or
if it might harm us for those of you who
are working in technology please
understand the huge social implications
and ethics of this technology and use it
for good for those of you who are
suspicious of technology or may not work
in it I ask you to get involved like
myself I studied history and worked in
the nonprofit sector
I started forming technology companies
because I knew they could have an
incredible social impact so we need you
also directing how these applications
work so I hope you will join me in this
coming human revolution and make a world
that works for everybody thank you
[Applause]
[Music] [Applause]