Kind: captions
Language: en
everybody welcome to impact Theory our
goal with this showing company is to
introduce you to the people and ideas
that will help you actually execute on
your dreams all right today's episode is
filmed a little bit differently than
normal it was filmed at the amazing
abundance 360 conference which is thrown
by Peter Diamandis
and it brings together some of the
world's foremost thinkers in technology
and we took advantage of that
opportunity in film today's guest there
and he is one of the world's leading
inventors Forbes magazine called him the
ultimate thinking machine and inc
magazine referred to him as the rightful
heir to Thomas Edison not at all
surprising given the laundry list of
ubiquitous technologies he's invented
here are but a few he's the principal
inventor of the first CCD the first
flatbed scanner the first text-to-speech
synthesizer the first music synthesizer
capable of recreating the grand piano
and other orchestral instruments and the
first commercially marketed large
vocabulary speech recognition device his
inventions have laid the foundation for
several of the industries that we
literally just take for granted today
for instance his work in the music
industry has been so fundamental to the
evolution of that industry that he's
received a Grammy Award for outstanding
achievements in music and technology
he holds 21 honorary doctorates and
honors from three US presidents
he's also the recipient of the National
Medal of Technology and he was inducted
into the National Inventors Hall of Fame
as a matter of course all of that
coupled with the fact that he has a
30-year track record of accurate
predictions about the future and what
technology will look like it is no
surprise that Google hired him as a
director of engineering he's written
five best-selling books including the
singularity is near and how to create a
mind and he's the co-founder and
Chancellor of singularity University
which he helped create to help sharpen
the next generation of great minds so
please help me in welcoming the man who
PBS named as one of the 16
revolutionaries who made America the
legendary futurist Ray Kurzweil ray
thank you so much for joining
and I wanted to jump right in the kind
of success that you've had is really
unparalleled from the accuracy of your
predictions but I think even more
enthralling from the fact you've been an
entrepreneur since you were in your
teens what is it that's allowed you to
be as successful as you are well it's a
question I don't actually get that often
so think about it like a lot of
entrepreneurs or creative people who
pursue endeavors in all kinds of fields
the idea kind of takes over and has an
imperative of its own and I just have to
pursue it so it's not like I choose the
project the project kind of recruits me
and I then become devoted to it whether
it's writing a book or planning a speech
or an invention or a company it just
becomes an imperative so there's a kind
of a devotion to it part of my
philosophy is failure is just success
deferred and I think actually if you
knew of all the obstacles you'd meet
you'd never start a project so it's
actually good not to think too much
about what you're doing but make sure
you have a passion for it that it's
something that would be beneficial to
the world one practice I use is I
imagine I'm giving a speech say four or
five years from now and I'm describing
how I succeeded in this project so what
would I have to be saying well if a
project would say it's a reading machine
for the blind it's gonna have to
actually access printed material so how
would it do that and I'm describing all
these things and I work backwards from
the speech and that kind of gives me my
Road forward you've talked about as AI
goes at some point we're gonna be asking
whether it has consciousness and then
how do you really test and there's no
really empirical test but you said one
thing that kind of comes close to the
way that you think is that it would have
to have a model of the way that it
thinks do you have a model of your own
way are there building block beliefs
like optimism
or things like that I think optimism is
a critical factor for success and it's
not an idle prediction about the future
it's a self-fulfilling prophecy if
you're really convinced that you're
going to succeed then that is your model
and obstacles come along and okay it's
just there's something in the road get
out of your car get the thing out of the
road and move move on and figure out how
you can succeed despite obstacles
because nothing worthwhile is going to
present itself without challenges do you
have any fundamental belief so I'll give
you an example so I believe that the
reason that I can figure something out
as humans are literally wired to adapt
that I mean you think about a horse it's
born it can run it can jump it can take
care of itself and so nature's made a
decision with that species to
pre-program whereas humans are
ultimately flexible essentially the
ultimate adaptation machine so if I know
that I'm wired to do that then I should
be able to overcome an obstacle simply
because that's the wiring of a human in
any animal with the neocortex which is
all mammals can adapt but their love
their conceptual level their ability to
operate at an abstract level differs
depending on really the size of their
neocortex
so primates which have more neocortex
really optimized the neocortex within
the brain without our big foreheads are
pretty adaptable and can solve problems
at a certain level when we got that
additional neocortex we're already doing
a very good job of being primates so we
created higher levels of abstractness
and language and music and so solving a
problem how to create a beautiful piece
of music there's just a level of
abstraction that mammals without a
frontal cortex can't do it's not that
we're more adaptable it's just that we
are operating at a higher conceptual
level but do you have things that that
are beliefs or otherwise that you use to
to give structure to your approach to a
problem I'm gonna have certain
methodologies ultimately it's a belief
in
and my end goal and I think about that
carefully that the end goal is worth
doing it is feasible I have some rough
model of how to get there really through
this inverse process of imagining that
I'm explaining how I solved it and what
would I have to be saying and then a
belief that I can overcome obstacles and
one method I use is actually a sleep
method when I go to sleep at night I
sign myself a problem and it can be a
broad diversity of types of problems it
could be how to solve a certain
technical issue or a math problem or a
relationship problem or a business
strategy issue should I do this deal
should I hire this person how am I going
to articulate this idea in a book I'm
writing and I try not to solve it but I
try to imagine what form with a solution
take what are the options what do I know
about it and Freud said that in your
dreams your sensors that see ENS ORS are
relaxed so that's why you'll dream about
things that are culturally taboo but
they're also professional to move it's
like you can't solve a signal processing
problem with these formulas and
linguistics doesn't use these rules so
those kinds of inhibitions are relaxed
in your dreams and you'll think of
things that you wouldn't otherwise allow
yourself to think about during your
waking time something else that doesn't
work in your dreams is your rational
faculties so when the elephant walks
through the wall the most remarkable
thing about it is that you don't think
it's remarkable so you really can't
evaluate ideas rationally so the next
and if I wake up I'll find myself
dreaming very obliquely and strangely
about this problem the next step is in
the morning I try to get into a lucid
dream state which is really halfway
between dreaming and being awake so I'm
still in the dream I have access to the
dream ideas I have the dream emotion but
I'm also aware for example that I'm in a
bed so now I have really both the
creative dream ideas and my rational
faculties and I'll run through the dream
and try to interpret it and try to make
sense out of it
and invariably doesn't always work but
it works more times than not I'll have
some new insights it may be a whole new
idea about this issue I've gotten up
within and written the patent
application for an invention that's come
out this way so during the day I'm just
kind of carrying out my dream decisions
that's really interesting now did lucid
dreaming come easily to you or is that
something you had to practice it's
something to practice I described this
in in my book trance and there's a
chapter on sleep and then there I
described this this method it's really
interesting I've actually never heard
somebody talk about using lucid dreaming
to solve business problems I do
something sort of similar with
meditation we're all decide on a problem
before I start meditating and then click
in I think that's a purpose of dreams is
in fact to solve problems to make sense
of the experiences we've had to re sort
of calibrate our patterns in our
neocortex to accommodate new information
but you can utilize that creative
process consciously and dreams obviously
allow you to think about things you
otherwise wouldn't believe it's
interesting though when I so I've tried
loosened dreaming not well and what I
find is as soon as I engage in the dream
with any sort of awareness that it is a
dream it wakes me up
well lucid dreaming is not while you're
sleeping it's in the morning when you
are now kind of waking up and you're
halfway between the dream and being
awake so you're kind of aware that
you're in a bed but you're also still
have access to the dream so you don't do
the Lisa lucid dreaming throughout the
night you just let yourself dream and
it'll be influenced by what you seated
your subconscious with by signing
yourself this problem I want to go back
for a second so if my math is right you
launched your first company in the 60s
is that true
well my first company was matching high
school students to colleges by computer
that was in started inside 1867 I was a
sophomore at MIT I then
we ran some tens of thousands of
students through it and sold it to
Harcourt brace jovanovich a big
publishing company in New York and use
those proceeds to put myself through
college and help support my parents my
father was already ill with heart
disease major company was 1973 basically
create a reading machine for the blind
and that needed three different
technologies how many found optical
character recognition flatbed scanning
and Texas speech synthesis and put those
three together into a reading machine
that company today is nuance which is a
leader in language technologies so
that's even more amazing now and I think
about it so the reason I brought that up
is I wanted to know in a modern context
like starting a company ok yeah it's
cool especially for it to succeed and I
mean to have lasted roughly 50 years is
insanity what was the entrepreneurial
scene like back then did people even use
the word entrepreneur was there seed
capital the word entrepreneurship with
entrepreneur was not used and it was not
a thing it was not celebrated like it is
today people always talk about the trans
from this year to the next but if you
look at the broad trend over the decades
it's just grown exponentially the total
amount of venture capital for high tech
in the United States in 1974 when I
started this reading machine business
was 10 million dollars that's a small
deal today so it just wasn't on the
radar I basically funded it through
angel capital but then when we got
established and had a product we did get
an investment from fidelity and Xerox
and those Erickson 1979 bought the
company basically to provide a bridge
back from the world of information on
paper to an intelligent computer form
that became the scanners for for Xerox
so knowing that you've built something
that's gone on to be just incredibly
successful what advice do you have for
entrepreneurs that are starting today
when like you said 10 million dollars is
a small deal access to the Internet I
mean there's so so much of the barrier
attend tree is just gone right well
there's a real emphasis on having the
right idea and also the right team
companies that succeed really have the
right people behind it I mean if you
look at Google Larry Page and Sergey
Brin had a great idea of reversing the
links on the internet to provide a
search engine but they also put a very
high priority on the quality of people
they brought in and that continues to be
the case and and then the team dynamics
are very important you very often have a
great idea and a great team but
something happens to the team there's a
schism and they're kind of at war with
each other or there's a problem
personality and those kinds of issues
kill more companies and anything else
but the opportunities now to fund it in
many creative ways like initial coin
offerings and a substantial organization
of the angel capital and just the amount
of money and in all different forms is
breathtaking so if you have a good idea
learn to articulate it you have to have
a passion for it people start a company
and say well I really want to start a
company and the idea second day that's
really not the right approach you have
to have a passion for what you're doing
and other than passion how should people
evaluate their ideas I think other
people mentors are very important so
find people who've done maybe not your
idea of exactly but have followed
creative ideas to successful conclusion
and get their input and you know just
like writing a book you write it and
then you rewrite it based on feedback
from other people it's the same thing
with an entrepreneurial idea write a
business plan get feedback on it you can
go through a lot of iterations may turn
out very different when you're actually
going out to the marketplace and what do
you think about people that are like
paranoid to share their idea they think
that they've got something and they
don't want to talk to people about it
generally speaking that's a mistake do
know some companies that are operating
in stealth fashion for that reason
sometimes it's justified but generally
it's going to be the quality of your
execution and your passion and your
commitment that's important you have to
break some eggs to make an omelet and
you want to recruit people and financing
and mentors and
all kinds of resources to succeed you're
gonna have to share your idea generally
far and wide it's not a bad idea to
share it publicly and get some
excitement going about the idea most
companies have succeeded if operated
that way the thing that really first
drew me to you was you were one of the
first people I heard talking about
potentially living forever and what that
might look like and obviously the
singularity in the notion that maybe our
consciousness could outlive our bodies
but even when I first sorted researching
you you were really optimizing your
health and trying to make sure that just
hey that the physical body lasted as
long as it possibly could one what is
the escape velocity longevity escape
velocity exactly where is that on a
timeline for the average person so my
co-author Jerry Grossman who is my
co-author for Fantastic Voyage and
transcend talk about three bridges to
radical life extension and I would add a
fourth bridge one is where we are now
although it's it's actually beginning to
blend in to the second bridge but the
first bridge it's kind of what you can
do based on our current knowledge and
knowledge of yourself to get to bridge
two so I take a lot of supplements some
of them medications like metformin which
actually prevents cancer by killing
cancer stem cells and as a caloric
restriction mimetics meaning it provides
the same biochemical changes it's eating
less but I take a lot of pills about a
hundred a day and people say hey you
really think taking these supplements
and pills is going to enable you to live
hundreds of years no the goal is to get
to bridge to bridge to is already
started it's going to be quite mature in
a decade that's biotechnology basically
having the means of understanding and
reprogramming the outdated software of
life and that's not a metaphor I mean we
literally have strings of data in our
genome that control our lives and we're
learning how it works and it's outdated
it was not any interest of the yeren
species when that evolved for us to live
much past 20 you
life expectancy was 19 a thousand years
ago so we're learning how to reprogram
that we have now applications at the
edge of clinical practice we can for
example fix a broken heart from a heart
attack we can grow organs with your DNA
and all that's coming soon it's working
already and she fixing a broken heart is
working in humans that'll be a flood
over the next ten years and I think in
ten years we'll reach
longevity escape velocity which is
adding more time that is going by not
just the infant life expectancy but to
your remaining life expectancy this so
the sense of time will run in rather
than run out now it's not a guaranteed
life expectancy is a calculated numbers
to how long you would live if there were
no further scientific progress which of
course is not the case but you could
have a computed life expectancy of
thirty years fifty years it could still
be run over by the proverbial bus
tomorrow we're working on that too with
self-driving cars but we'll get we'll
get there I think for the least the
diligent public in about a decade I
think you know I'm personally there I
think I'm not running out of time with
the advances going as quickly as they
already are I'm adding at least as much
time it's going by and again life
expectancy is a calculation that
contemplates no further scientific
progress but that's not the case so if
you take into consideration expected
progress I already expect to live
indefinitely because I'm gonna get to a
point where we will have information
knowledge to get to the next point so
it's a bridge to a bridge to bridge the
third bridge is medical nano robots that
can go basically go and do micro surgery
and fix every kind of disease the fourth
bridge is being able to actually back
ourselves up your phone it already has
sort of infinite life because you if you
throw it out the window and it smashes
on the ground three stories down you can
recreate it because it's all in the
cloud and you recreate its knowledge its
skills its personality we can't do that
yet people will think with our brains
people will think of pretty remarkable
people
we went through the day and night in
2018 without backing up their mind file
will alternatively be able to do that
and the reason we'll be able to do that
is part of our thinking will be
non-biological that part is going to
grow exponentially so it will ultimately
predominate it all become so smart that
it can not only back itself up but it
will completely understand the
biological part and be able to back that
up too so we'll be able to back
ourselves up going back to what you were
saying about being able to fix a broken
heart one of the things I find utterly
fascinating about your story and I think
is illuminates what I love about your
mindset is I know that you had a heart
condition and had it addressed and you
were being interviewed about it and you
said so matter-of-factly I'm really glad
that it was something so simple because
I didn't want to have to invent a way to
fix you know something more complicated
and I loved that it there it wasn't like
oh I would have died from that thing it
was just I would have had to invent a
way what makes you think like that this
comes from my family the power of human
idea is to solve problems or when I was
I think about eight my grandfather went
back to Europe his first return visit
after fleeing Hitler in 1938 and he was
given the opportunity to handle with his
own hands original documents by Leonardo
da Vinci and he described it in
reverential terms these were sacred
documents but they were not written by
God they were written by a guy who had
brilliant ideas that actually were not
feasible in his lifetime but it went on
to transform the world and this was
personalized you Rea can find ideas that
can solve problems either that you
encounter that the world encounters and
you have a responsibility to do that it
was personalized my mother's mother's
mother started the first goal in Europe
they're provided higher education for
girls went through 14th grade if you
were lucky enough to get an education at
all in mid 19th century Europe as a girl
they went through ninth grade it was
controversial she went around Europe
lecturing on the importance of educating
girls and how to do it the school was
very influential on the education of
women her daughter my grandmother became
exemplar
became the first woman in Europe to get
a PhD in chemistry took over the school
between the two women they ran for 70
years and then pled Hitler so I got this
philosophy of the power of human ideas
and the importance of education and
developing your ideas from my family and
it has worked so far I mean so far if
I've encountered problems it could be
business problems relational problems
problems with an invention I've found a
solution so I have to just have this
confidence it's not guaranteed but so
far so good I would say so far so very
good yeah if you had to cobble together
a few traits that you think make people
successful is sort of a general rule
maybe the things you've tried to pass on
to your kids like what are those few
just like absolutely critical traits
well try to find goals and objectives
that are meaningful to yourself and to
the world not in my father's case he had
heard a brilliance for music so it was
creating music my mother was a very
talented artist in my case it was having
ideas about technology but also writing
but have some passion for what you want
to accomplish at any point in time and
then optimism not a trivial optimism but
a confidence that you can overcome the
challenges that will invariably occur
getting along with people because you
can't do these things by yourself and so
you have to be a good salesperson in the
best meaning of that term - and you can
sell something if you really believe in
it yourself and have a passion for it my
first major company was building a
reading machine for the blind so it was
possible to get other people to be
passionate about that goal and it was
meaningful and a belief in the power of
ideas and that you can find ideas I will
solve any problem that comes along
they're very powerful traits
you've been referred to as the rightful
heir to Thomas Edison I think that's
incredibly
I also think I don't know if anybody's
ever called you this or not but they
should
you're like the the real accurate
Nostradamus something like 86 percent of
your predictions have been accurate
which is crazy so would you say that
given you have that kind of track record
is the world getting better or worse
well there's no question it's getting
better and we attract any measure of
human wellbeing literacy almost
everybody was illiterate a century ago
certainly two centuries ago almost
everybody is literate today and I have
these charts that just show the trend on
all these different measures poverty in
Asia's gone down 95 percent over the
last 25 years and measure after measure
of education health wealth renewable
energy all these things are moving in
the right direction we have an
evolutionary tendency to emphasize bad
news I was actually important for
survival we were walking through the
jungle millennium ago you really needed
to pay attention to potential bad news
like a rustling and the leaves that
might be a predator that was really
important the fact that your crops were
1% better than last year there wasn't
quite as critical to be aware of and we
have a natural empathy so we hear about
something horrible that happened halfway
around the world to a small group of
people our hearts go out to them people
have the wrong algorithm for assessing
whether the world is getting better or
worse it's how often do they hear good
news for it says bad news and that's not
the right measure the world is getting
better by every measure but it happens
day by day and so it's not very exciting
news that well compared to last week
literacy fell by you know 0.3% and so we
tend not to focus on that or information
about what's wrong with the world
including violence is getting
exponentially better so I say this is
the most peaceful time in human history
and people look at me like I'm nuts
didn't you pay attention to the news and
you hear about that event yesterday and
last week that's because we're hearing
about events and that's a good thing
it's painful to hear about bad news
actually focus us to solve them so
looking at some of the predictions that
you made which for me as a hardcore
techno optimist they're very exciting
and the whole notion of the singularity
and for people that don't know the
singularity it's I'm basically you
describe it in fact I mean it's I would
be stealing your words so what is the
singularity and why shouldn't people be
tense
well singularity is a complex endpoint
one of my theses is the exponential
growth of information technology and I
have all these graphs are different
forms of information technology like the
price performance of computing and
they're very perfect Exponential's it's
a straight line or even another
exponential on a logarithmic graph and
this has been going on since the late
19th century and I have our whole
mathematical explanation about why that
happens we've already passed the point
where I have enough hardware to emulate
the human brain that a little boards
that actually have over a hundred times
the computation needed to functionally
emulate the human brain already the
software is a more challenging issue but
I make the case that we're moving
exponentially on that also and we're
getting some of our insights by
exponentially more information about the
human brains I make the case that we
will achieve human levels of performance
in every area that humans can now
perform by 2029 and once a computer
achieves human levels of performance in
an area very quickly soars past in I
mean if we saw that computers could play
an average game of go early last year
and then within months sort past the
best human and then within days of that
a computer soared past that alphago zero
and then I described how we're going to
merge with this technology in the 2030s
medical nanobots will connect our
neocortex to the cloud basically it's a
synthetic neocortex and make ourselves
smarter it'll be like what we did two
million years ago when we got these big
foreheads that was additional neocortex
we put it at the top of the hierarchy
the neocortex is a hierarchical
structure and that additional neocortex
Sugata with these big foreheads that was
the enabling factor for us to invent
language and art music and science and
technology we're gonna do it again by
connecting our neocortex to the cloud
only that time it it won't be a one-shot
deal we couldn't keep expanding our
skulls or birth would have become
impossible but when we connected
wirelessly to the cloud the clouds peer
information technology it's not limited
by a fixed enclosure it's going to keep
growing exponentially you do the math
and these trajectories are quite
predictable and have been I mean I've
been making forward-looking predictions
since the early 80s and it's continued
to pan out we will multiply our
intelligence a billion fold by 2045
there's such a profound transformation
such a singular transformation that we
borrow this metaphor from physics and
call it the singularity because we can
no longer predict what that would look
like right although in you know you
can't see what's going on easily in a
black in a singularity in physics
because the event horizon around it
keeps all the information in because
gravity is so great however we can we
can use our intellect to actually
describe what it would be like to fall
into a physics black hole and similarly
we can use our intellect to talk about
what life will be like past this
historical singularity what do you say -
because when I do that like intuitively
I have to admit I fall into the the
first trap of what won't we all then
just be the same like intelligence will
will become such this race it's like the
machine playing go against itself right
but it will become more different right
now we're very much the same we all
actually have a very similar
architecture of about 300 million
neocortical modules organizing a
hierarchy that some of us have organized
them better than others for particular
tasks so somebody might be a master of
playing chess and someone else like my
father was a master at trading music we
actually don't have enough capacity to
do more than one thing
at a master level we'll be able to
pursue things very deeply as we expand
the capacity of our neocortex and it'll
give us the opportunity to actually be
more different not more the same so one
thing that Brian Johnson said that I'd
never heard before that I thought was
really interesting is this concept that
humans operate from a position of
familiar and AI what makes AI so
interesting is it can operate from a
completely surprising angle and you
talked about it as as beginning to feel
like alien intelligence what is it about
AI that excites you and does it have to
do with that ability to think so
radically differently well intelligence
inherently thinks in a radical way and
comes up with surprising new approaches
it's only a surprising different
approach that's going to solve a problem
that had before was intractable then was
her service head of deep mind the Google
subsidiary uses term alien intelligence
to describe alpha0 how it played chess
and go in sort of shocking ways of maybe
sacrificing a queen and a bishop which
was unheard of but it turned out to be a
brilliant move and or making a move and
go placing a piece in a corner of the
board which really made no sense from a
conventional rule-of-thumb approach but
turned out to be a brilliant move but
that's true of intelligence in general
is shocking and surprising but
ultimately it's capable of solving
previously unsolved problems all right
before I ask my last question where can
these guys find you online well I have a
website Kurzweil AI dotnet we have about
10 million readers is a free daily
newsletter which is very influential but
you can sign up for on the home page so
if Kurzweil AI net perfect and then my
final question is what is the impact
that you want to have on the world
my massively transformative purpose
which goes back more than 50 years
actually to 1962 when I was 14 and I met
with Marvin Minsky who became my mentor
for 55 years and
Frank Rosenblatt has really started the
connection at school is to develop
artificial intelligence to amplify our
own intelligence and to enable us to
solve problems that we couldn't
otherwise so it's only intelligence it
enables us to make progress if it
weren't for our innate intelligence we'd
still be writing on cave walls like we
wouldn't be doing that and we've made
tremendous progress I mean if you read
what life was like even 200 years ago
read thomas hobbes describes life is
short brutish disaster-prone poverty
filled disease filled extremely harsh
let alone a thousand years ago people 10
or Mansa sighs the past but we've made
life immeasurably better because of
applying our intelligence to solving one
problem after another and if we had more
intelligence we could do more of that
and that's that's been my passion Holy's
for the last 50 years so thank you so
much very very appreciate it all right
guys this is somebody who's been making
predictions for a very long time been
doing incredible things for a long time
so when you dive into his world there's
going to be an immeasurable amount of
stuff to see there and the one thing
that I hope came across in this
interview and that you will see without
question as you research more into him
is there is a beautiful optimism to what
he's trying to pull off like he said it
can't be some sort of overly simplistic
try like everything is going to be okay
it's really about being driven to figure
out and solve the problems of yourselves
my favorite story about him is that when
faced with a heart condition he looked
at it and said well if it had been
something more complicated I would have
just had to invent a solution for that
and when you approach the world like
that and have the optimism the fortitude
and the persistence to pursue the things
that you're passionate about in order to
turn them into something that is
actually usable you get what I think is
the ultimate way forward and when people
look at him and try to classify ray it
really is as the man who is ushering in
the future and I don't think that we
could be in any more capable hands guys
if you haven't already be sure to
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be legendary
take care
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