Human Augmentation with Adam Savage and Neil deGrasse Tyson

Exoskeleton suits, brain implants, tiny people, AI, and more! Adam Savage and Neil deGrasse Tyson investigate human augmentation from the main stage at NYCC 2017 with comic co-host Chuck Nice and NYU bioethics professor and philosopher Matthew Liao. Special thanks to Adam Savage and Tested. Check out Tested.com. http://www.tested.com Watch a SPECIAL FREE Exclusive Original video featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson and Adam Savage on StarTalk All-Access: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/neil-adam-odyssey/ NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/human-augmentation-with-adam-savage-and-neil-degrasse-tyson/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 0:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, New York Comic Con.

• 0:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. We're gonna...

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we're gonna actually record a live episode of StarTalk right now.

• 0:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we have three segments. And we'll pretend like we take a break, but we're not actually gonna break. We'll just go straight into the next segment. And you'll know how to play along with that. So, let's get this party started.

• 1:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, here we go.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Live at New York Comic Con.

• 1:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tonight's topic, we're talking about human augmentation.

• 1:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And before we begin, let me bring out my trusted co-host, professional comedian Chuck Nice. Chuck, come on out here, dude. Where is he? Chuck.

• 1:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, there you go.

• 1:42Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Neil. Hey, everybody, what's up, Comic Con?

• 1:48Chuck Nice?

  Nerds rule!

• 1:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we have Matthew Yao, a professor of bioethics.

• 1:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At New York University. Come on out!

• 2:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the whole point of this entire episode will be pivoting on the knowledge and expertise of the one, the only Mythbuster, Adam Savage. Adam!

• 2:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dude, have a seat.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Hey nerds!

• 2:30Speaker 02

  How's your con going?

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dude. Dude, so, whoa.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  They asked me to ask you to raise your mic a little.

• 2:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a Comic Con gasm right there that we heard in the 10th row. So, we're gonna be talking about sort of human augmentation. And I just wanna say, you, what, Matthew, what do we mean by human augmentation? In your field, cuz you, you think about this.

• 2:58Chuck Nice?

  Yes, in your field, not like in LA.

• 3:03Speaker 03

  So, to augment is to sort of add something, add some sort of capacity. So, human augmentation is where you're adding some sort of additional capacities to our organism. And there are different kinds, cars, telephone.

• 3:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we've been augmenting human bodies ever since we've had technology?

• 3:22Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, when I think of augmentation, there's a traditional sort of Comic Con sense of that where you might have an exoskeleton or some sort of mechanical extension of the body. That would be one branch.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, how about, if I'm chemically enhanced, is that also an augmentation that you think about?

• 3:41Speaker 03

  That's right, so there are drugs that you can take, there are people taking maybe, taking smart drugs.

• 3:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like the way you say it, there are drugs you can take, like this is a new discovery in the field, yeah?

• 3:53Speaker 03

  Wait a minute, really?

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:55Speaker 03

  So.

• 3:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, and then there's also any talk of the marriage of the technology with your human physiology.

• 4:05Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, these are three sort of major branches there, would you agree?

• 4:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right, that's right.

• 4:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Adam, you, you build stuff, you've been doing this your whole life. Yeah. So, you are, you are human augmenter prime.

• 4:19Speaker 04

  Sure, with a high school diploma, yeah.

• 4:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay. Diplomas mean nothing here. It is what-

• 4:27Speaker 04

  Clearly.

• 4:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let's just get straight out here. If we're gonna talk about augmentation, and we're gonna think about superheroes, we're kinda down to only two in that category.

• 4:45Speaker 04

  Arguably also my two favorite superheroes.

• 4:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Me too, I think. We're talking about Batman and Iron Man.

• 4:50Speaker 04

  Batman and Iron Man, those are my two favorite, cuz their secret power is their brains.

• 4:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're human.

• 4:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:57Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 4:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we got some people taking issue with this out.

• 5:01Chuck Nice?

  Well...

• 5:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't express that strong an opinion in front of this crowd. That's all I'm saying. But they clearly have augmentations to their bodies, in some way or another.

• 5:12Chuck Nice?

  I think it's more they have augmentations to their bank account.

• 5:21Speaker 04

  You're bringing up, there's a poster that shows all of the philanthropic giving that Bill Gates has undergone in the past like 20 years, you know? Thirty billion dollars. And that by conservative estimates, he's saved over six million lives. This is as of a few years ago. At the bottom, it says, "Suck it, Batman, this is how a billionaire saves people."

• 5:40Chuck Nice?

  There you go!

• 5:42Speaker 04

  Yes!

• 5:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But does he have a utility belt?

• 5:51Speaker 04

  If Bill wanted a utility belt, I'd make him one.

• 5:55Chuck Nice?

  If Bill wanted a utility belt, I'd be it for him.

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let me ask Adam, how do we define "super" in this regard?

• 6:09Speaker 04

  Well-

• 6:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is Batman a superhero? He can't fly, he can't, there's a lot of stuff he can do.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, where you- Where "super" gets into the realm of the fictional is in both of the Batman and Iron Man augmentations. Because Iron Man's exosuit, while in any small piece of it is somewhat possible or plausible that there are mechanical linkages you could build that would be self-perpetuating and give you all sorts of extra strength, the idea that it would work without flaw repeatedly-

• 6:40Speaker 04

  Is an absolute fantasy.

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or, one might say, a myth.

• 6:48Speaker 04

  That's no longer my job.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  But I mean, there's a reason NASA has never used cables to assist astronauts in their grip or their ability to move the suit. Because they engineers at NASA, as brilliant as they are, understand that extra moving parts is extra things that can go wrong.

• 7:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're saying there are a million ways Iron Man's suit would fail, and the movies don't show any of them?

• 7:13Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 7:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 7:14Speaker 04

  Batman 2. I mean, I have actually tried to build a device that shot a cable into a wall that you could hang off of. And then I talked to the government, an agency that tried to build one of these for the government. And they failed in exactly the same way I did.

• 7:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I'm old enough to remember Batman in first run on television. And when he had that little device, you know, the gun that shoots the...

• 7:33Speaker 04

  The grappling gun.

• 7:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I said, "How does that dart stay in the wall? That's like, not happening."

• 7:38Speaker 04

  Actually, what I used...

• 7:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not happening. No. And, wait, see, you got me started on this. Then, then they throw the thing up and then climb up the wall. And I said, "They're not climbing up a wall, they're just walking along a flat thing." And he tipped the camera. Because the guy sticking a head out of the window is that, that, all the angles are wrong. And I knew this. Sorry, sorry.

• 8:04Speaker 04

  I feel you, brother.

• 8:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You feel my pain.

• 8:06Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 8:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so here's my point. You have these, uh, in the modern Batman, he's got, it's really kind of an exoskeleton. Not an exoskeleton, uh, a, a, a body armor, I guess, is what you'd call it.

• 8:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's segmented body armor.

• 8:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so is this, so, so if, between the two of them, who do you think would win?

• 8:26Speaker 04

  Oh, Batman.

• 8:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no.

• 8:31Speaker 04

  Understand.

• 8:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. No. Quick vote. Mike? I think Iron Man will win. Iron Man.

• 8:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait. Tony Stark for life, baby.

• 8:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you're outnumbered, so you're wrong.

• 8:51Speaker 04

  Thank you, one person, I appreciate it. My thinking is, is that Iron Man would be like, "I'm gonna punch..."

• 9:00Speaker 04

  And then he can't move, and Batman's like, "Dunk."

• 9:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, the reason why I like Iron Man better is because he builds his own stuff.

• 9:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whereas Batman has, he's got like, other people who do it for him.

• 9:18Chuck Nice?

  Well, Wayne Industries.

• 9:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wayne Industries.

• 9:20Chuck Nice?

  That's who builds all his stuff.

• 9:22Speaker 04

  Uh, technically, it's Wayne Enterprises.

• 9:24Chuck Nice?

  Uh, true.

• 9:30Speaker 04

  You are correct, sir.

• 9:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, are there any real-life examples of exoskeletons used in the world?

• 9:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the military's been creating these exoskeletons for soldiers. I think, Adam, you probably know about them. Thank you. And, um, they're prosthetic limbs for people who are disabled.

• 9:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how, are they working the way, like Luke's hand worked in Star Wars? I mean, you know, where you look at the thing, I mean, how, are we there yet? Let me ask that question.

• 10:01Speaker 03

  Not yet, not yet.

• 10:03Speaker 04

  Can I bring this back, though? Like, is there, there must be an attachment that someone who's, has no arm below the elbow, has asked a prosthetist to make, and the prosthetist has said, "No. I'm not gonna make, uh, I'm not gonna graft a 45 caliber pistol onto the end of your prosthetic." Or a buzzsaw, or a fist. Yes! That's good, yeah. But that, that's what we're talking about. That's, that's an ethical problem that the constructor has with the goal of the person who needs the device.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  That's right, that's right. So, um, I mean, right now, they're just doing it mainly for treatment, for people who are injured, right? Uh, so that they can move about. But, uh, eventually, you can think, you know, you can sort of add more things to it. You can add weapons, you can add swords.

• 10:49Speaker 04

  I would totally do that.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  Laser pistols.

• 10:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You wanna be like a Swiss Army knife human?

• 10:55Speaker 04

  My, my son, my, one of my sons once asked me when he was about 40 years old.

• 10:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was it thing one or thing two?

• 10:59Speaker 04

  Thing one.

• 11:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 11:01Speaker 04

  He said, "Daddy, the penis is a very special part of your body." And I said, "Yes, you're right." And he said, because all children are jailhouse lawyers, he said, "Is it more special than a foot?"

• 11:15Speaker 04

  You should have said, "Son, just wait 12 years."

• 11:19Speaker 04

  Here was my metric. I thought, "Well, let's see. If I lost my foot, I could make an extremely usable functional replica of it." Yes, the penis is far more important than the foot.

• 11:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so this is from the point of view of...

• 11:36Speaker 04

  Of repeal and replace.

• 11:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A remodel maker, yes, yes, okay.

• 11:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So...

• 11:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But neurologically, in principle, what is to prevent us the future? We're just not there yet to just rebuild our neurophysiology, rather than just our muscles or our skeletons.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, so there's this thing called the deep brain stimulation. So it's something where you sort of insert a thin electrode to your brain.

• 12:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Deep brain stimulation?

• 12:16Speaker 03

  Deep brain stimulation. And you connect it to a battery pack and you can control it. And actually, about 100,000 people in the world today already use it.

• 12:24Speaker 04

  What are they doing with it?

• 12:25Speaker 03

  It's for people with Parkinson's disease, depression, epilepsy, and so on. So when they turn it up, they'll sort of stop them from having epileptic seizures.

• 12:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the funding for that would be driven, in the future surely, by the sex industry. So is there a pleasure center where you press the button and it'll do the same thing to your brain?

• 12:46Speaker 03

  Well, so there are sex robots.

• 12:48Speaker 04

  Deep brain Viagra?

• 12:52Speaker 04

  There's a whole swath of the population that would never leave their house again.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  But DARPA, actually, the US...

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Defense Project Research Agency.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  They're also really interested in this technology because a lot of soldiers come back from war with post-traumatic stress disorder. So they're using the deep brain stimulation to try to cure or to ameliorate the effects of depression.

• 13:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is just the beginning of what could come?

• 13:18Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 13:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so in the limit, what do you see it in 50 years, 100 years?

• 13:22Speaker 03

  Well, eventually, so right now... Now, the system, it's called an open-loop system. So you control it. You sort of control the amount of electricity going to your brain. But DARPA wants, in five years, a closed-loop system. And what that means is that it's gonna automatically monitor your brainwaves and sort of send signals. So, say if you're fighting a war and you get really scared, it'll sort of send electricity to calm you down. And so eventually, we could create super-soldiers. Now, with that, here's a...

• 13:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa. Wow.

• 13:55Speaker 04

  And that's never gonna go wrong.

• 13:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, what could happen there?

• 14:02Speaker 04

  But is anybody asking? I'm curious, is like, obviously with technology, we're like, driverless cars, bring them on!

• 14:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm all for that, but go on.

• 14:11Speaker 04

  So am I, except that we should...

• 14:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I don't have an "except." You're not all for it if your... The rest of the sentence has the word "except" in it. Do we understand? Language construction, sentence construction here?

• 14:22Speaker 04

  I am all for it.

• 14:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 14:25Speaker 04

  However...

• 14:28Speaker 04

  Within humans' adoption of technology, there are questions that come. And so, are you... Is your department sort of working on like, "Hey, everybody, when you get to this point, you guys should consult us"?

• 14:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. So take self-driving cars, for example. There's a big issue about... So say the car's, you know, about to hit five people.

• 14:48Speaker 04

  The trolley problem.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's the trolley problem.

• 14:50Speaker 04

  It's so not a problem!

• 14:51Speaker 03

  And it can veer off and kill you. So how many people would actually buy a car that'll kill you? Yeah? All right.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  Having a rough con?

• 15:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's tough. Costume didn't make it this year, yeah.

• 15:06Speaker 04

  My wig fell off.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  All these AI researchers and programmers, they have to decide, like, whether to save five people or save you, right? And so that's gotta be programmed in.

• 15:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, but wait, wait. So, but there's way more than that. Before we even get there, I'm thinking. Let me just ask. If you could fix, let's say, congenital problems or some other sort of physical problem, either from birth or from war or from accident, and, okay, I get that, are you obligated to do that for everyone? I mean, so the reason why I ask is... That guy. There are people... No, this is a serious point. There are people who...

• 15:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are who they are because of whatever that disability was.

• 15:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 15:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Expressing some point of insight, creativity, some sort of compassion. And they've made a life built on everything that they were or were not relative to everybody else.

• 16:10Chuck Nice?

  Like people, like deaf people who refuse a cochlear implant.

• 16:13Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 16:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, because they already know how to speak.

• 16:15Chuck Nice?

  Someone's here who did that?

• 16:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, that's a deaf culture is its own thing. It's a thing.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so who are you to say?

• 16:23Chuck Nice?

  And it's no less of a thing than anybody else's.

• 16:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So my, so, so my question back to you.

• 16:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is what is a future where there could be one culture that puts social pressure

• 16:35Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  on you to conform when there are people figuring out their lives with whatever deck of cards they were dealt?

• 16:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, so that's a really great question.

• 16:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I think, so I, I wrote a book on human rights and I think that.

• 16:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I tell the title of the book, it's a great book, great title.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  It's called The Right to Be Loved.

• 16:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Right to Be Loved, oh, that's great. Oh. That almost makes up for you wearing a suit tonight.

• 17:05Speaker 03

  Right.

• 17:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  So I think that for the disabled individuals, we, they have rights just like we do, you know, just like we do, and we have to make sure that, I think our job is to make sure that if they want to, to augment their capacities, if they want to, but if they don't, if they don't want to have cochlear implants, then that's their choice. But in terms of creating new individuals, I think there we can sort of say, maybe we have an ethical obligation not to create individuals who lack certain, what I call fundamental capacities. So these are things like being able to see, being able to hear, being able to walk about, right? So deliberately, deliberately creating a child who can't walk, that seems like,

• 17:52Speaker 03

  so as an ethicist, I think there's something wrong with doing that.

• 17:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Wait, wait, wait, you're creating a child that can't walk, you're kind of a dick. Right.

• 18:03Chuck Nice?

  But what if you made them, let them be born with wheels?

• 18:09Speaker 04

  Look, all this-

• 18:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, did you say with wheels?

• 18:11Speaker 04

  With wheels.

• 18:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, it turns out, I think, biophysiologically, it's hard to have wheels. No, if you think that through-

• 18:22Speaker 04

  No, no, no, but-

• 18:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Biologically,

• 18:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  you would need something in your body that, that-

• 18:27Speaker 04

  An axle.

• 18:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An axle. You need an axle.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  But this presupposes that they're like, that we could somehow lessen the suffering by engineering a being, and the fact is, is just as you were saying about handicap people, it's true for everyone. We are all a product of both all the good and bad things that have happened to us, and we all suffer. No one escapes from that. Right, so...

• 18:58Speaker 04

  Okay, a couple people have escaped from that.

• 19:02Speaker 04

  That strikes me as an interesting question when you talk about, "Oh, so now that we can engineer kids, that all kids have 2020 vision and great hearing and excellent physiology", that somehow is based on this precept that like somehow they'll suffer less, which is really a folly.

• 19:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, but, but, continue that.

• 19:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's the, alright, let's make sure we don't create a kid who can't walk, whether or not it has wheels.

• 19:29Speaker 04

  I'll accept tracks.

• 19:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Suppose now, suppose now, we figure out how to give an arm sort of bionic strength, to borrow the term, and would you start having people amputate their arms so they can get one of these, and then would that, would we be creating, one by one, some race of superhumans because we technologically can?

• 19:50Speaker 04

  I, I always loved the Bionic Woman episode, where she's in a race car, and the car, the wheel falls off and she has to put it back on, and she reaches up to the lug nut and goes...

• 20:01Speaker 04

  I would love my arm to be able to do that.

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Would you, would you amputate your current arm to have that property?

• 20:09Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 20:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think so. Whoa. Let's ask the ethicist. Is there any ethics involved in this?

• 20:16Speaker 03

  So, I don't think we have to make that choice. So with the exoskeleton...

• 20:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a cop-out.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  It is a cop-out. But I think people are gonna be able to design things where we can, we can jump in just like we jump into cars, rather than having to amputate our arms. Like, that would be sort of...

• 20:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see. Actually, I agree with you on that. Because in the same way, we're not operating on your brain to insert the elements of a smartphone. The smartphone is at the end of your fingertips, and it serves almost the same function. It's just a little slower. You have to tap your fingers, instead of having to go straight into your cerebellum, your frontal lobe.

• 20:53Speaker 04

  There is a, there is a theory out there about spider webs being an extension of the spider's central nervous system. And if that's true, then absolutely, my phone is an extension of my central nervous system.

• 21:05Speaker 03

  It's true, I mean...

• 21:05Chuck Nice?

  The withdrawal that I feel when it's not around me lets me know you're right, so...

• 21:09Speaker 04

  And if I wanna feel better for a day, I don't look at it.

• 21:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta close out this segment of StarTalk Live at New York Comic-Con!

• 21:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Live at Comic-Con New York!

• 21:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mythbuster Adam Savage with a book coming out next year. What's it called?

• 21:43Speaker 04

  Don't Give Guns to Robots.

• 21:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good title. I love that title, that book. Matthew, you had a book a couple of years ago. We discussed it in the first segment.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  The Right to Be Loved.

• 21:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Right to Be Loved. That's beautiful.

• 21:54Speaker 04

  It's also a Carla Mae Jepson song.

• 21:56Speaker 03

  Oh, right.

• 21:57Speaker 04

  No, I don't think so.

• 21:59Chuck Nice?

  And please don't forget my book that's out on shelves right now. It's called Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.

• 22:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you're lying, Mike!

• 22:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let's, let's see what genetic engineering does. But before I do that, Matthew, you co-authored a paper, and apparently it was controversial, about human augmentation and climate change?

• 22:26Speaker 03

  Right.

• 22:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, how, what was that?

• 22:31Speaker 03

  So, climate change is one of our, you know, one of the biggest problems that we face today. And a lot of people are talking about very drastic solutions. Something called, for example, something called geoengineering.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love it.

• 22:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give me more of it.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  This is sort of just one example, spraying sulfate aerosols into the ozone layer in order to increase the reflectivity of the planet.

• 22:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Clouds.

• 22:55Speaker 03

  Right?

• 22:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. And lower the amount of infrared radiation and sunlight coming down to the...

• 22:59Speaker 03

  That's right, that's right. But geoengineering seems really risky. We only have one planet, so if you destroy the ozone layer, you end up destroying the whole planet. So, I had this, uh, so in this context, I propose something called human engineering, which is this biomedical modification of human beings in order to allow us to mitigate or adapt to the effects of climate change.

• 23:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, just... Wait, wait, wait, that's like saying, how do you fix acid rain? Just give everyone an acid rain-proof umbrella. What, what, why is that a solution?

• 23:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, let me give you an example.

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No!

• 23:35Speaker 03

  No.

• 23:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There is no... Alright, alright, I'll give you a chance, go.

• 23:41Speaker 03

  Okay. So, large people tend to use more energy than smaller people. Right? And they wear out shoes, you know, uh, quicker. They take, it takes more energy to transport them from A to B. So, the idea is other things be...

• 23:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't want to hear the end of that idea.

• 24:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This car is steering towards five people. Large people use more resources and energy than small people. So, what I propose is that the small people eat the large people. Right. There, there's no... It's a problem taking care of itself. So, Chuck, that sentence can only end badly.

• 24:24Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 24:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 24:25Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 24:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, you propose, yes, Matthew, go ahead.

• 24:28Speaker 03

  Yes, so, we should try to have smaller people.

• 24:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait a minute, man. I just realized, I could have been a doctor.

• 25:00Speaker 03

  So, there's a movie coming out, it's called Downsizing, with Matt Damon, Kristen Wiig, and Christopher Wolf. It's exactly on this topic. So they've taken up this idea, so, climate change, and they are, they want to downsize, so they want to create small people in order to make more efficient use. The movie's coming out in December.

• 25:19Speaker 04

  But these are really small people. They're like 10 inches tall.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  So I'm not talking about that small. I don't think that, you know, it'd be good to...

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not, not, no, no. This would be too small.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. But, maybe that, yeah.

• 25:33Speaker 04

  The question is, if you're flying with one, do you have to pay a full extra fare?

• 25:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They fit in your lap.

• 25:39Speaker 02

  Why don't like a whole group of friends camp out in first class?

• 25:47Speaker 02

  I can see a lot of sequels.

• 25:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Matthew, you're completely creeping me out here. So, so, so, it's just odd that, you know, rather than reduce your carbon footprint, let's just make small people. That's just, I don't, I don't, I don't know how, I, how... You, you live with yourself?

• 26:10Speaker 03

  I do.

• 26:12Speaker 04

  But you're also, so when you, when you take that stance, you're taking it, not take that stance, when you examine that question, you're examining...

• 26:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be, just to be fair to Matthew, he's an academic, so, when you're in academia, you explore extremes of theses and see what comes out of it. That's all. So, I don't want to, you know, I'm having fun with you here, but it's your job to see where that goes, so that you will know whether anything should go that way or not.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 26:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because if you don't know what that is...

• 26:39Chuck Nice?

  I think we figured that part out.

• 26:43Speaker 04

  It's fascinating that we're talking about this at Comic-Con with this crowd, because this is a crowd of people that I don't think have all felt normal most of their lives. This is, this is the misfits. Yes.

• 26:57Speaker 04

  And the innate problem we have in our minds that I have when I hear that is I love the variety and variability of the human experience.

• 27:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Alright, so Matthew, both of you are familiar with the gene editing that's been going on lately?

• 27:17Speaker 04

  With CRISPR.

• 27:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  CRISPR, yeah. So the future of CRISPR, we ought to be able to go in and genetically augment the body, putting him out of business, because this boy makes stuff in his garage, and you go into the body and augment it that way. So my hope for that is the following, okay? Wheels.

• 27:40Speaker 04

  I've started the thing.

• 27:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, here's why I don't think wheels are an option, because in all experimentations of nature, the tree of life has not come up with wheels, okay? So, but in principle, we should have access to any feature that exists in any other living thing.

• 28:05Speaker 04

  Right.

• 28:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In principle. So, for example, if you have a wounded warrior back from missing a limb, you find some gene in the newt that regenerates a limb, you graft that or whatever, I'm just making this up, but how far-fetched is that when you know there are other vertebrates in this world that can regrow a limb?

• 28:25Speaker 04

  That's awesome.

• 28:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, I'd like to think that we would have access to all of the benefits of four billion years of nature's experiment on its own. Is that a fair hope that I can put in the hands of a CRISPR expert?

• 28:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right. So there's sort of embryonic stem cell research, for example, for regeneration, so they can become any kind of cell in your body. And then CRISPR for gene editing, so they're already using this to edit out, say, HIV, to make an embryo more HIV resistant, for example, so.

• 29:06Speaker 04

  And to be clear, we're talking in a fair, I mean, I know politics run the gamut, but we're talking in a fairly similar, I think, political spectrum in this crowded Comic-Con. But what about if someone can edit genes out? I mean, as soon as somebody said they thought they'd isolated a gene for homosexuality, people were calling them, saying, "How do I make sure my child does not, my unborn child does not have this?"

• 29:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So, there's a whole ethical frontier. Designer babies.

• 29:30Speaker 03

  Designer babies.

• 29:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, desire babies. So, what's going on in your, because you're also affiliated with the philosophy department.

• 29:38Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 29:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At NYU. So, that means you're just a deep thinker about all of this. So, what is, where does that go in the future?

• 29:47Speaker 03

  So, we have to make an ethical decision about where to draw the line. So, for the, we need to make a, we need to make a decision, thank you, make a decision about how to sort of do designer babies. And what I think is that, so I, earlier I mentioned this thing about fundamental capacities. And so, I think we can draw a line, one line can be drawn there, where we have to make sure that whatever child we create has to have all the fundamental capacities.

• 30:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see. So, that's the basic, the basic model still has to be intact.

• 30:19Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. When you get the car, it should have all four wheels and two axles, maybe.

• 30:23Chuck Nice?

  Now, suppose I just, suppose I like the basic model of the car, but I just want a leather interior.

• 30:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 30:29Chuck Nice?

  You know what I mean? Like, so, I would like a child who has a certain type of hair or a certain kind, like, basically, you know, like, you have a bunch of black parents with little white, blue-eyed babies, or, or, you know, Madonna.

• 30:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yes, so. Yeah, so, race, for example, doesn't affect our fundamental capacity.

• 30:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You speak for yourself!

• 31:00Speaker 03

  I don't know about your life! Go ahead, I'm sorry. Yeah. So, by that, I mean, sort of, like, things like being able to move around, being able to think, being able to hear, et cetera, et cetera. And so, that's why it's wrong to try to, you know, to edit out genes.

• 31:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, again, I'm not ever talking about... I want to talk about enhancement.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 31:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rather than subtraction of whatever might have been there.

• 31:33Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if I could go in and edit a gene, if we find such a gene.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That gives you high propensity to great piano playing.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I like the piano, and I invested in one in the household, and it's in the nursery now. So, should I be prevented from doing that?

• 31:50Speaker 03

  I don't think so. I think you should be allowed to do that.

• 31:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what's interesting is, so Richard Dawkins, when he posed that question.

• 31:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He said, "It's probably more humane to do that than make, than force a kid to take piano lessons for ten years."

• 32:03Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 32:06Chuck Nice?

  See, but the way I feel about that is, you should be able to do that, I agree with you. But it should only be within what's in your particular gene line. So, for instance, if there is a propensity for playing the piano somewhere in your gene line, it's in there somewhere. It just wasn't passed to you.

• 32:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the movie.

• 32:24Speaker 04

  It's like a switch you turn on.

• 32:25Chuck Nice?

  It's a switch you turn on.

• 32:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the movie "Gattaca," where they say, "We're not creating, we're not creating some other you. We're making the best of all genetic pools between you and your mate." And that's what we're putting in. But you know what they, in one of them, a person played the piano and it was really beautiful. And when they, when we're done, they had six fingers on each hand.

• 32:48Chuck Nice?

  Oh yeah, that's right.

• 32:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Genetically coded.

• 32:50Chuck Nice?

  Because she had that gene, and they activated it so she could play songs that nobody else could play.

• 32:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 32:55Chuck Nice?

  With six fingers.

• 32:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Six fingers on each hand.

• 32:56Chuck Nice?

  Oh my god, I want six fingers so bad right now.

• 33:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you have to learn to count in base 12. Yes, are you prepared for that?

• 33:04Speaker 04

  But doesn't, we started this discussion about genetic by talking about enhancements to a basic model, but this presupposes.

• 33:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, just, I just gotta go there for a second.

• 33:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, our timekeeping is base 12.

• 33:16Chuck Nice?

  You're correct.

• 33:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We get to 12, and then we start over again.

• 33:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because base 10, you get to 10 and start over again. So, base 12 is not all, Babylonians had a little bit of that in them. They were, base 60 and base 12 divides easily into 60.

• 33:29Chuck Nice?

  You'd only do that, no, who bring up Babylonians and math at the same time.

• 33:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what are you saying?

• 33:37Speaker 04

  I was saying, when we talk about enhancing a basic model, this presupposes that humans, as a species, could potentially decide upon what a basic model is. And I think that sounds possibly like folly. I can imagine every iteration of weird, bizarre, messed up ideas about what constitutes a basic model of human.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  Did he say you?

• 34:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wheels.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Wheels.

• 34:03Speaker 04

  Wheels, yeah.

• 34:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wheels.

• 34:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, we gotta bring this segment to a close.

• 34:09Speaker 04

  Clearly.

• 34:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening to StarTalk Comic-Con Live.

• 34:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're live back at New York Comic-Con, StarTalk.

• 34:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Adam Savage, a Mythbuster, singular.

• 34:44Speaker 04

  Former, former.

• 34:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Former Mythbuster, singular.

• 34:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, it's a mouthful.

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and we have Matthew Yao. Did I pronounce that correctly? Yes, a professor of bioethics, New York University, co-appointed at the Department of Philosophy, deep thinker in all matters. And I love the title of your book, Why We Should Be Loved. Did I get that right? The right to be loved. The right to be loved.

• 35:05Speaker 04

  You have the right to remember a title.

• 35:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, I know, you got it. And Chuck, we love you always. Let's take a look at what we might want to do if we augment ourselves for survival purposes, rather than just to have fun. Maybe, and don't talk about little people again, okay? Don't even go there.

• 35:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if you wanna go, if we're gonna go to, if we're gonna, if we, if we find out that space requires a certain kind of physiology.

• 35:41Speaker 04

  Bioluminescence. I've been thinking about that the whole time. But wait, if I could augment humans for survival, I would allow our stomachs to digest cellulose.

• 35:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's the end of hunger.

• 35:53Speaker 04

  Right.

• 35:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  End of hunger.

• 35:54Speaker 04

  Boom.

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Cellulose has calorie content, just like any other carbohydrate does, except we have no enzymes to dissolve it. And, but it could have alternative consequences, okay?

• 36:07Speaker 04

  Like pieces of grass in our poop? Like my dog?

• 36:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That wouldn't be the worst of the problem coming out of your butt.

• 36:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because as you start digesting cellulose, the byproducts, the anaerobic byproducts are high in methane, for example. And so, any room with this many people in it is an ignition risk.

• 36:28Speaker 04

  Or, or a vital source of rocket fuel.

• 36:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay. Depends how you look at it. So, but I agree. If you create an enzyme for the stomach that'll digest cellulose. Matthew, any ideas about how we might take ourselves into the future? So that we can survive on a tiny planet with gazillion people?

• 36:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, so be more heat resistant, be able to absorb water better, water retention, oxygen, for example.

• 36:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you think we can, again, it's in the animal kingdom, it's in the tree of life, do you think we can ever create photosynthesizing skin?

• 37:05Speaker 03

  That'd be a useful property to have.

• 37:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, you could eat less. I don't think it's enough surface area to drive the 2 million calories a day that you need.

• 37:15Speaker 03

  Unless you're smaller.

• 37:22Speaker 04

  Touche, sir. Touche.

• 37:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He plays both sides of the fence.

• 37:30Speaker 04

  You know this is Neil's show, right?

• 37:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just to be clear, 2,000 food calories, is a capital C, that's 1,000 physics calories. And so, 2,000 food calories is 2 million calories.

• 37:45Speaker 04

  What?

• 37:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 37:45Speaker 04

  Really?

• 37:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, you didn't know that?

• 37:47Speaker 04

  No. Is that like the fudging that they do where the chocolate milk says secretly, "5 servings"?

• 37:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's a different thing going on. Yeah, so 1 calorie to raise 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius, that's, um, okay, so...

• 38:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, one, food calories, a thousand of those.

• 38:11Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 38:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 38:12Chuck Nice?

  So, as a measurement of heat, is that what you're saying, Lee?

• 38:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's just, I, I, it slipped out, I'm sorry. But, we can go back to food calories, we went. So, so that would be one thing you might put in the, in the physiology.

• 38:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 38:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, anything else? Wings, ooh, okay, but, if you read my tweet...

• 38:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, wheels, yeah.

• 38:38Chuck Nice?

  They see me rolling.

• 38:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Would you, I got a good one for you, all three of them.

• 38:42Chuck Nice?

  Good.

• 38:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you could have wings, at the expense of having hands with an opposable thumb, would you?

• 38:51Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 38:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 38:52Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 38:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. Yeah, very cool.

• 38:54Chuck Nice?

  You ever see a bird try to turn a doorknob?

• 38:58Chuck Nice?

  It is not pretty.

• 39:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, she said get rid of doorknobs. Okay, yeah, just get rid of doorknobs.

• 39:08Chuck Nice?

  That's her.

• 39:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Yeah, um, so, yeah, just because there's no example of life on Earth, where they have four limbs plus a set of wings. You gotta give something up to get your wings, as was accurately done in the Dragon and Game of Thrones. Yes. Yeah, yeah, you saw it moving along.

• 39:31Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty, yeah.

• 39:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, oh, you didn't notice it? You didn't read my tweet? I have a whole set of tweets on this, where were you?

• 39:37Chuck Nice?

  You presuppose that I can read, Neil.

• 39:41Speaker 04

  This is, Neil, you are the physical embodiment of the word "actually."

• 39:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, not so, no, I, I'm, I'm, I think I...

• 39:50Speaker 04

  I mean that in the highest...

• 39:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you don't.

• 39:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not even.

• 40:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, uh, tell us, in the future, what is the laboratory of the future for the superhero of the future? If you're gonna go beyond Batman, Superman today, can you dream this up? Is it all biology rather than physical toys?

• 40:21Speaker 04

  I don't, I think it's gonna have to be both biology and physical toys, because we keep on enhancing our ability to use technology. And if there's one thing that's consistent about humans is we don't think about it before we do it.

• 40:33Speaker 04

  I mean, that's just, it's in our nature. "Oh, new thing, let's try it out and see how wrong it can go." "Oh, wow, that wrong, okay, let's keep on going."

• 40:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless it killed you, then you get the Darwin Award, yes? Okay.

• 40:47Speaker 04

  Or at best, the Ig Nobel Prize.

• 40:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Ig Nobel Prize, right. So Matthew, what is the future laboratory? Is it all biology, CRISPR, gene editing, do you think?

• 40:55Speaker 03

  I think it's gonna have to be mixed, right? Sort of a bit of biology, a lot of computing, AI, artificial intelligence, and the hybrid.

• 41:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In this crowd, you don't have to say AI is artificial intelligence. You realize this, okay.

• 41:08Speaker 04

  Are you afraid of AI?

• 41:13Speaker 03

  They're distributed widely, so I am scared of AI. I think that at some point, they already beat the world's best Go player last year, and they're gonna get way smarter, and at some point...

• 41:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, it beat the world's best Go player with an ingenious strategy that had never been previously imagined by humans. Right, so it wasn't just doing what humans do, but better than other humans.

• 41:36Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 41:36Chuck Nice?

  Get ready for your robot overlord.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  So that's gonna be...

• 41:41Speaker 04

  I'm gonna be sweeping the robot's floor.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. So that's gonna be one of the biggest issues that we're gonna have to face is there are gonna be these really super intelligent beings that are not human, and how are we gonna survive in that context?

• 41:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So does that put him out of business making stuff? Because everything he makes is controlled by the human that wears the suit.

• 42:00Speaker 04

  Oh, I'll still be making stuff, it'll just be for our robot overlords.

• 42:07Speaker 04

  I'll have those bearings done by Tuesday, M17545.

• 42:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it'd be funner if the AI said, "Call me Freddy."

• 42:18Speaker 04

  "Call me Freddy, little man."

• 42:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, are you afraid of AI?

• 42:22Chuck Nice?

  Um, you know, I'm afraid of so many things.

• 42:28Chuck Nice?

  I actually think that, um, that I'm not afraid now. I'm afraid of the person who will actually free AI. Because I think that we will never give AI the ability to make the kind of decisions that we won't let it, because we're in control. At some point, though, there will be a singularity, and either someone will come along and cause that, or the machine itself will go, "Hey, you know what? You ain't the boss of me."

• 43:00Chuck Nice?

  That's what I'm afraid of. Yeah. Well, see, this America.

• 43:08Chuck Nice?

  I can like kick it in the... I can unplug the machine, I'm thinking. Okay, but as an AI, I kinda anticipated that.

• 43:21Chuck Nice?

  I bought all the AA batteries.

• 43:27Speaker 04

  You're screwed, human.

• 43:29Chuck Nice?

  Uh, give me a final reflection on this evening. What do you have?

• 43:32Speaker 04

  Uh, I think of AI, in one sense, I'm really scared of it. In another sense, it might be, look, we are already a colony in which 99% of the cells in our body are not human in origin. We are a biome, we are a colony. And it may be that the goal of biology is to create ever larger sentience. It might be that our planet, that Gaia, really is an overall intelligence, and the singularity is simply humans' extension of their consciousness to the size of a planet.

• 44:05Chuck Nice?

  An AI planet. AI plant, Matthew. But you gotta remember, he's working for the overlords.

• 44:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, he just admitted that earlier, and then... Uh, Matthew, what do you have?

• 44:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, so one of the issues is gonna be whether we are gonna survive into the future, right? That's the identity question. But another issue is gonna be whether humans will survive. So we might survive as, sort of in cyborgs or other forms, but the humanness might not survive. So we might have to make a choice between us surviving and humans surviving in the future.

• 44:39Chuck Nice?

  Whoa.

• 44:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn. I don't even know if I understood what you just said. But it sounded really deep. Do we survive, or do the humans survive?

• 44:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, he is smaller.

• 44:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, any reflections?

• 45:01Chuck Nice?

  Um, I'm just really looking forward to tiny people.

• 45:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My job is done.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Me too.

• 45:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, when I look over the last- And wheels. And wheels. But when I look over the last several centuries, since the Industrial Revolution, and you see machines replace human physiology and animals for mechanical work, and we adapted to that pretty well. Um, a few people lost their job, others gained jobs. Societies grew, economies grew, productivity grew. Um, the IT revolution saw the exchange of human intellectual, um, computational powers with that of a computer, uh, as well as mechanical abilities with robotics.

• 45:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, we seem to survive that pretty well. Uh, robots make our cars, it makes almost everything that we care about. And no longer is it, "Well, this is handmade." You say, "I don't want that, it probably has flaws." You know, we're in an age where a machine-made thing mostly is better than a handmade thing. In most cases, that wasn't how it was way back when I grew up. But that's the world that we've, we've created for ourselves. And so, when we think of what machines can do, your lifeblood-

• 46:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That next transition, I think, is what cyber can do, what genetics can do. That is, I think, the next evolution of this, "What can it do for me lately?" And I'm fearless of AI for the following reason. I don't see people making humanoid robots. That's not what we have done. If you look at old shows from the 50s and 60s, and they had robots, and then they'd have the robot to drive the car. No, the car is the robot now. You don't make a robot to drive your car. So, our usage of not only the machines, but the AI that's a part of it,

• 47:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  is very specifically tasked for exactly what we need, when we need it, and why we need it. And so, as we go into the future, I see our lives being transformed. But not because AI has become our overlord, but because we actually, yes, I know those risks that we face as well. But I see a future where AI serves us the way machines and computers have served us to this day, and perhaps, we carry forward into the future the wisdom necessary to do right by AI, lest AI get really pissed off.

• 47:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And decide that Earth is better off without us all. That is a cosmic perspective. You've been watching StarTalk at Comic-Con New York City. Adam Savage, Matthew Lau, Chuck Nice. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been a production of StarTalk.