Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast Could We Someday Live Forever? With Ray Kurzweil About this episode Would you want to live forever? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and author, inventor, and futurist Ray Kurzweil discuss immortality, longevity escape velocity, the singularity, and the future of technology. What will life be like in 10 years?
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But would you, would you live forever if you had the choice?
0:03 Speaker 01 I would like to live to tomorrow.
0:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Okay.
0:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And today, we're gonna tackle a subject that's on everybody's mind at some point in their life. And for some people, it's on their minds all the time. And it has to do with longevity, your health, longevity, and especially immortality. And what any of that has to do with technology and the pace that technology has been unfolding. Not only, you know, over the past century, but especially over the past decades. And there's one person who comes to mind as a world expert on this,
1:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? who's probably done more thinking on these topics than anyone else ever born. And it's none other than Ray Kurzweil. Ray, welcome to StarTalk. Great to be here. Great to see you again. Yes, thank you. This is, this is not our first rodeo together. I've interviewed you before. You, you, you've gotten into such fascinating research topics throughout your life. You're an author, you're an inventor, you're a futurist, and you have a, an uncannily accurate track record for making predictions. Even predictions like, we don't want to be true, but they are, and you know this. So that makes it kind of awkward having conversations with you about this.
1:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're also the co-founder of the Singularity Group. That's a topic we'll get into a little later. But that, some of that derives from, you had, you had a book back in 2005, The Singularity is Near. And you haven't stopped thinking about it since. And so, tell me, why do you think we'll one day live forever?
2:13 Speaker 01 Well, I can't go on your show and say, I've done it. I've lived forever.
2:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're actually a thousand years old, right?
2:22 Speaker 01 But...
2:24 Speaker 01 We're going to achieve something called longevity escape velocity. So, I mean, right now, when you go forward a year, you don't, you lose part of that year. We pick up technologies that will extend us, but not, not a full year. So we're actually losing time. Progress is exponential, keeps getting faster. And we'll get to a point where we'll make so much progress. And when you go forward a year, your longevity will go forward a year or even more. And if you're actually in touch with the technology, I believe we'll get there by 2029.
3:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On October 12th, 20, at 9:00 AM?
3:05 Speaker 01 No, December.
3:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's awfully specific, dude.
3:07 Speaker 01 December 31st.
3:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But just to be, just to clarify, so we're on the same page. So, uh, the year I was born, there's a certain life expectancy that the medical community would have for me, the year I was born. And the year I die, over tho, over those decades, medicines and technologies and understandings have improved so that I'm living longer than they previously had predicted for me.
3:36 Speaker 01 And the progress is exponential. So we'll get to a point where the progress is so fast that we'll keep up with time going by. So when a year goes by, your longevity will actually improve by a year or even more than a year, particularly if you're in touch with the technology.
3:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I love the phrase escape velocity. So at that point, everyone born at that point onward will basically live forever. This is what you're saying.
4:02 Speaker 01 Well, not necessarily. Let's say you're a 10-year-old and they calculate your longevity is many, many decades. You could die, you know, the next day. So longevity doesn't guarantee.
4:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, natural, dying a natural death, of course. We're not talking about, you know, drowning or falling off a ladder, right? So.
4:21 Speaker 01 Well, things are somewhat unpredictable. So even if you have a longevity that's, goes out, it's not a guarantee. As we go further out, we'll actually be able to, uh, register what our brains are doing. Because we're gonna actually merge with technology and that's gonna keep track of what we're thinking. And anything that's digital is backed up. So ultimately, we'll be able to recreate ourselves.
4:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The day we reach escape velocity, would we have done so purely by advances in medicines and human physiology?
4:56 Speaker 01 Well, there are different stages. When we get out to the 2040s, everything that we're thinking will be backed up. And that's not so amazing. I mean, this is backed up. If I lose, if I throw this into the river and it washes away, I can recreate it because it's all backed up. We haven't backed up our brains, but ultimately, we'll do that because we're gonna, that's the whole story, but we'll be able to back up what we're thinking and really recreate ourselves.
5:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But is that, that's not what you mean when you talk about adding a year per year, is it?
5:33 Speaker 01 That's a different story. That's actually understanding our organs and so on.
5:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, I get that. So I just want to.
5:39 Speaker 01 I'll give you an example. This just happened. I've had diabetes for 40 years. I've kept it controlled. I have this thing here, which actually measures my glucose. But now I'm gonna get another one.
5:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it's a patch on your, on your, under your elbow. Yes, okay.
5:57 Speaker 01 Gonna get another one, slightly bigger, but actually very small, that actually has insulin and can put it into my bloodstream. So it's basically an artificial pancreas. So if I suddenly eat a lot of sugar, it'll detect that and release more insulin. If I haven't eaten anything for a while, it won't release insulin. It'll be just like your pancreas.
6:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it's a pancreas patch. That's great.
6:25 Speaker 01 Yeah. But it's actually replacing your organs. Now, we can do that with all of your organs. And ultimately, we'll be able to do that. And these things are very reliable and much, much safer than your real organs. So when we get to the 2030s, we'll be actually supplementing our organs and redoing them.
6:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, but that's a different thing from the biomedical community saying, we have a cure for diabetes. So I don't, you don't need to replace your pancreas with a patch. Your pancreas works perfectly. Or any other failure of your organs. If we get into the genome and know what's, what the failure mode is, we don't have to, I guess.
7:09 Speaker 01 I mean, there's different ways of overcoming problems with your organs. I mean, one is to replace it, another is to fix it. Uh, fixing your organs is not perfect either. Uh, but we'll actually have a way of overcoming different issues that we have with our body. Cause our bodies are definitely not perfect. And actually, we can do a better job than your real pancreas with this artificial pancreas.
7:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
7:35 Speaker 01 Anyway, that's just an example of, of being able to basically overcome problems with your organs.
7:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, so we start swapping it out and we upload your brain. So now there's like a box on the table, all right, that's your brain.
7:49 Speaker 01 Well, uploading your brain is a little bit later. Uh, but yes, we'll be able to, I mean, what we're going to first do is connect parts of our brain where we do our thinking to the cloud. Uh, just the way this does. I mean, you can actually use this without being connected to the cloud.
8:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You mean the, your smartphone?
8:11 Speaker 01 My smartphone. But it's pretty useless because it doesn't know very much. So for this to really be effective, it has to connect to the cloud. But our brain is not connected to the cloud. So that's going to happen, uh, in the 2030s. Um, and.
8:32 Speaker 01 We will then be able to, I mean, this really amplifies our brain. But I have to have it, I put it down and I don't have it handy, I can't use it.
8:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, but Ray, I'm not giving you a scalpel to go into my brain and put electrodes. If I have just as good access to the cloud by holding a smartphone and touching it with my thumbs.
8:56 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, that is a point, but.
9:01 Speaker 01 But you don't have to actually go in with a scalpel. I mean, we'll, we'll send nanobots through the bloodstream.
9:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, I'd feel much better about that now.
9:14 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, if I were to describe how everybody has this phone and it actually amplifies our mind. Twenty years ago, people, in fact, which I did do, and people thought that was crazy. And now everybody has this.
9:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Everybody's got it.
9:28 Speaker 01 Speech and 500 people there and I said, who does not have their smartphone handy? And nobody raised their hand.
9:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
9:36 Speaker 01 Like, everybody has this. That wasn't true five years ago, definitely wasn't true 10 years ago. So people get used to things. It's much better to actually have it in your brain. You have it instantly, trying to reach your phone, typing on it is awkward. This will be much better.
9:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you'd be carrying Wi-Fi antennas inside your head somehow?
10:00 Speaker 01 Right. I mean, we'll make that more reliable than it is now.
10:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. So how about, so what happens if you're walking around and then you hit a, what do you call it? A dead zone, a dead zone. What happens, your brain shut off? What, how does that play out?
10:16 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, that's something we're gonna have to overcome. I mean, we're talking about the 2030s and 2040s, so.
10:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so tell me about these nanobots that you're describing. If, if, will we broadly think of that as sort of nanotechnology? What, what is the anatomy of a nanobot in the service of your visions?
10:36 Speaker 01 Well, it just goes into the, to your neocortex.
10:41 Speaker 01 And it can actually pick up what the neocortex, what each neocortex module is doing, and connect it to the cloud and get feedback from the cloud. And it basically, I mean, it's just like your phone. And it basically amplifies what you're doing in your brain.
11:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, but it's one thing to say that technology advances. And that's a very different thing to say that our understanding of our own brain has advanced. I mean, that's going to happen much more slowly.
11:12 Speaker 01 Yes, we can understand our brain, but it's very limited. And ultimately, we want to expand our brain. I mean, we have a large head so that we can actually think a lot, but it's limited. And even if you're superior in one field, like Einstein was brilliant in physics, and he actually was interested in playing the violin, but he was no Yasha Heifetz. Yasha Heifetz was master at the violin. He was interested in physics, but he was no Einstein.
11:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
11:49 Speaker 01 We have a limited capacity in our brains. So ultimately, we'd like to amplify that and actually multiply it by two, by 10, by 1,000, ultimately by a million.
12:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But it requires you know enough about what your brain is doing to know what it is that you need to amplify it. And right now, it's electrochemical synaptic signals, right? I mean, that we don't, it's hard for us to really make sense of. I don't see that progressing at the rate that your machines are. I guess that's my point. So if the machine is going to help us, we got to know enough about the brain so that your nanobot can insert in the right place to do.
12:28 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, I can show you this price performance of computation that just, it started 80 years ago, and every year we have more and more.
12:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, by the way, I was honored for you to have shared with me the manuscript of your next book for a book not coming out until 2023. And you had an audacious title for it, that the singularity is nearer? Is he? What? What did you title it?
12:56 Speaker 01 That's right. The singularity is near.
12:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, because there says near was the original. Now it's nearer. So you're just, you're, you're all in on this. But I remember you had a fascinating set of charts in there. Tell me about this first one, which to me was the most mind blowing of them all.
13:12 Speaker 01 Well, this shows the amount of computation you can get per dollar. And it increases every single year. And it looks like one person was in charge of this, but actually, this is just the progress that we've made in computation. With nobody being in charge of it. Started with the Zeus one in 1941. He was a German. He showed it to the Nazi government. They felt that computation was not important and did not support it. The second one was the Zeus two. The third one was Colossus, which was done by Alan Turing in England.
13:55 Speaker 01 And they got very much behind that, including the United States. And they cracked the German Enigma code and enabled Britain to win that war. Despite the fact that they were outnumbered. Gave us a launching pad for our D-Day invasion.
14:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Fascinating film based on that story too. Yes.
14:13 Speaker 01 So there's lots of different stories at all of these points. But we started out at point 000007 calculations per second per dollar. And the last one, we have 50,000 calculations per second per dollar. So it has grown exponentially and it keeps going. People used to call this Moore's Law, but I mean, there's 80 dots on this. Only 10 of them are intel. So it's really not Moore's Law. And people constantly come and say Moore's Law has ended. I mean, I remember right before the pandemic, people saying, oh, Moore's Law has ended.
14:57 Speaker 01 But that's not the case and I never believed that and it's continuing today. So this provides more and more computation for the same cost.
15:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But that doesn't mean we know our brain better. Why should it mean that? I mean, we are a moral enough civilization that we don't line people up and cut open their heads and do experiments on it, right? So a lot of what you're predicting is predicated on the machine-brain interface.
15:28 Speaker 01 No, I mean, it's really capturing what each neocortex is doing. We understand enough about that today, passing it on to the cloud, which will basically provide the same kind of things outside the brain. I mean, we're doing, for example, large language models, which is just in a computer, and you can actually talk to it, and it will actually talk back to you. And it's not just giving you samples of what humans have written. It's actually capturing understanding of language. So we understand a lot about what humans are doing.
16:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So maybe it's just additive to your brain rather than infused within your own synapses, right? If it's just an add-on, that works, perhaps.
16:19 Speaker 01 That is the idea. It's basically to add to it. I mean, our computers already understand a lot about what we're doing, but we don't have a very good interface, so this is one way of interfacing it.
16:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so, okay, so this involves sort of nanobots, and I want to chat a little bit more about that after the break. But also, you know, the 900-pound gorilla in the room here is the day that the computing power equals or exceeds anything humans can do, not just how well you play the game of chess or the game of Go, but it can outperform us in everything we had previously held as distinctly human.
17:06 Speaker 01 I mean, Turing created this test, the Turing Test, in 1950, and we haven't managed to pass it yet. But in 1999, when I wrote The Age of Spiritual Machines, I predicted that we would pass the Turing test by 2029, so in 30 years. And Stanford was so alarmed at this, they created a worldwide conference and people came from all over the world, AI experts. And we did the first poll. And people felt that, yes, we would pass the Turing test, which would mean that a computer could do everything that a human could do. But they said it would take 100 years.
17:47 Speaker 01 So the AI experts were saying 100 years, I was saying 30 years. There's been so much progress in AI recently. A year ago, they were saying 2042, I was still saying 2029. Three months ago, they were saying 2030, so basically they're agreeing with.
18:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you're quietly watching them, one by one, drop like flies, jumping into your boat. That's what you're watching here. That's hilarious.
18:20 Speaker 01 So that's gonna happen by the end of this decade. And AI experts now agree with me on this. And when we get to the 2030s, we will amplify our own brain by connecting to it. But the computer already understands everything that a human can do. And actually, it goes way beyond it. So I mean, to pass a Turing test, it would actually have to dumb itself down because if it showed its capability that goes way beyond what a human can do, people would know it's a machine.
18:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, so it's so good, it comes out the other side of the Turing test. Wow, it's not like it can't keep up with us, it's so far ahead of us, no human can do it.
19:06 Speaker 01 Everything that computers have learned, like take Go, for example, it goes way past what a human can do. So Lee Sedol, who's the best human at Go in the world, said he's not gonna play Go anymore because machines are so much better than him, there's really no point in doing it.
19:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, I just, I just, it's hilarious that the Turing test can be turned upside down, where you say, "Don't be too smart, because then they'll know you're a computer."
19:36 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, that's, that's a major issue with passing a Turing test.
19:51 Speaker 02 I'm Jasmine Wilson, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
20:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Ray, in your, your book, The Singularity is Nearer, coming out in 2023, you're doubling down on so much of your earlier predictions. You're saying, "Yep, maybe it's happening even sooner than I predicted."
20:23 Speaker 01 No, it's happening on schedule, but it's actually less alarming. When I wrote this in 2005, things we just assumed today are reality. People didn't assume that then. So the whole thing was very surprising in 2005. Today, we assume that. And, I mean, people are greatly amplified by the machines that we carry around.
20:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, there was no smartphone in 2005. Right, yeah.
20:53 Speaker 01 Right. And nobody goes outside without it. I mean, if I actually leave and I notice I don't have my cellphone, it's like I've lost three quarters of my brain. I've got to go back and get it.
21:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? For some people, it's 90% of their brain if they've lost it. So Ray, what, what is it with humans that we can't think exponentially about the world? And, and even if we, when presented with our own awareness, our own awareness even gets it wrong. In the manuscript you were kind enough to share with me of your upcoming book, there are all these charts that it's almost, makes you embarrassed to be human, that people think this way. One of them was on how, how much of the world people think live in poverty? Tell, tell me about that one.
21:42 Speaker 01 Well, there was actually a poll, 23,000 people in 24 countries, and they were asked... Over the last twenty years, what has happened with poverty? And have more people become impoverished or less people? Seventy percent thought it had gotten worse. Eighty-eight percent thought it had gotten worse or stayed the same. In fact, it had fallen by fifty percent. And only one percent thought that was true. And people think that things are getting worse. And people are not having children because they think that the world is getting worse. Well, in fact, it's getting better. I mean, I measure all these different attributes of how we-
22:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You measure that? You must have had a hundred charts in this book. I mean, it was like, every next chart, it's like, damn, damn, what? It's every chart I went through. It was like, so it's almost embarrassing, I have to say.
22:42 Speaker 01 And things are getting better, but we tend to forget that. In fact, there's a common human attribute where we tend to remember positive things from the past. But we wouldn't want to go back even to nineteen hundred. Human life expectancy was forty-eight. It was thirty in eighteen hundred. And we had very few abilities to deal with disease and so on. So things are getting better, but we forget that. And all we see in the news is the bad news. The bad news is true, but there's good news that we don't attribute, because the good news happens like every day.
23:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The fact's hidden and plain in sight, that life is getting better for people. That bodes well for living forever, right? If we were in the middle of poverty and disaster and war, you're not going to want to live forever under those conditions. So both of these-
23:40 Speaker 01 Maybe not. I mean, that's a deeply philosophical issue.
23:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Sure, but they both, they feed into each other. The fact that things are getting better.
23:47 Speaker 01 If you're not alive, you can't prove anything. You can't enjoy the world. I mean, if you have any joy in your life, you want to continue to live.
23:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I get that, but I'm saying, but these two forces are resonant. The fact that everything is getting better statistically for more people than ever before, and we're developing the power to live forever. So, but that would have consequences, all right? Social, cultural, political consequences.
24:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, you know, the supply chain of food, the resources of Earth to sustain such a population. So to extol the value or virtue of living forever, but not see what challenges that would bring, that would be irresponsible.
24:33 Speaker 01 If you had a linear mindset.
24:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, dig me out of this one.
24:39 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, take renewable resources for energy. That's growing exponentially. And we'll actually be making more energy from things like solar within 10 years. And people don't realize that. I mean, you look at the graph, you can see where it's going.
25:03 Speaker 01 Same thing with food. I mean, we can actually produce food very inexpensively. You know, once we get some technologies that we're working on to work.
25:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But would you live forever if you had the choice?
25:16 Speaker 01 I would like to live to tomorrow.
25:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, okay.
25:23 Speaker 01 And.
25:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, that's a low bar. That's a low bar, but okay, we'll give it to you. Let's give it to Ray, all right?
25:30 Speaker 01 And I think tomorrow I'm gonna wanna live to the next day. And people wanna continue to live. People sometimes talk, oh, I wanna live another 20 years, 40 years, whatever. But they definitely wanna live to tomorrow. And in 40 years from now, they wanna live to tomorrow. I mean, I had an aunt, 98, she died recently. But I talked to her a couple of months before she died. She was a very vibrant woman. She's a psychologist. She actually talked to patients at 98. And I was actually talking to her about longevity escape philosophy. I'm explaining that. And she said, well, do we have it now?
26:15 Speaker 01 And I said, well, I think we'll have it by 2029. And she said, could you work on that to make it a little faster?
26:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's okay.
26:27 Speaker 01 Because people want to continue to live.
26:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? She wants to see tomorrow.
26:30 Speaker 01 And, you know, people get some pleasure from life and they want to continue to live and they also want to continue to create, you know, further technologies for tomorrow.
26:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This reminds me of the Frank Sinatra quote, it's been attributed to him at least, is that "Live every day like it's your last," because one day that'll be true. That is your last day.
26:53 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, people have assumed that and certainly that's been true. So we're actually going to be able to overcome that. But people want to continue unless they're under unbearable pain, either physically, emotionally, or spiritually, and then they don't want to go on.
27:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right.
27:14 Speaker 01 But otherwise, people do want to go on.
27:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And those are exceptions, clearly, and important exceptions, right? But they're exceptions. Correct.
27:20 Speaker 01 Well, we're also working on alleviating those, these kinds of problems.
27:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm. So, before we go to break, let me just ask, there's a next generation that doesn't see a good world that we're leaving for them. They see the vagaries of climate change, they see regressive thinking on the social-cultural front.
27:48 Speaker 01 Right, but they're really not aware of what's happening. And I've, I mean, I've had many debates with particularly younger people that have this view. They're not aware of how close we are, for example, to replacing everything with renewable energy, and many other of the graphs that I show, but just not aware of it. And I think things are getting worse when they're actually getting better.
28:13 Speaker 01 And, you know, we could go through all these graphs, but it definitely shows that things are getting better and people are unaware of it.
28:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so they're missed, they're, they've been diluted by the forces of media, by whatever else, is not looking at those same graphs because it sells news stories.
28:34 Speaker 01 And these, I mean, progress in this is not news. It's like every day we're making progress and it's kind of the same story. But if you go over over a certain amount of time, you see they were making rapid progress.
28:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right. So one of them, the you might have the number on the tip of your tongue. It was the percent by which poverty drops in the world each day. I thought that was a great number. Was it like point oh oh one percent or something?
29:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, something like that.
29:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's like, and it's almost an ignorable amount until you take a step back and look at the sum over the years and over the decades.
29:11 Speaker 01 Exactly. So that's not news. In fact, news is all negative. That's what gets attention. And a lot of the news is true. I mean, I'm not saying there's no bad bad news in the world. Uh, but that's all we're exposed to.
29:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what of our problems today might not be tractable by this sort of eternal Moore's law? That's unfolding in front of us.
29:38 Speaker 01 Uh. I'm not aware of something that we can't, that we're not making progress on.
29:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How about transportation? You know, we we uh planes today are going the same speed they went fifty years ago. You know, we're not getting to Tokyo faster than we did in the jet.
29:54 Speaker 01 I mean, for one, we don't really need to travel that much.
29:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because technology creates a Zoom call.
30:00 Speaker 01 And Zoom calls won't just be a picture. We'll be able to actually embrace each other. I mean, I actually have five patents where you can use technology today where you can actually be with somebody. And and embrace them and be feel like you're with them in three dimensional space.
30:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ray, I'm not having a computer hug me. I don't know what you're cooking up your sleeve there. But no, I'm not getting warm and cozy with arms sticking out of my laptop. All right. So what are you? What are you cooking up here?
30:28 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, it's something where you can actually be with somebody in a three dimensional space, even if you're apart.
30:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, but you can't physically touch them.
30:35 Speaker 01 But but but there's many different ways of doing it.
30:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's like a holographic thing, I guess. Right?
30:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, I mean, holograms are 3D.
30:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, okay, okay. I, I, there was a, I think I saw a sci-fi movie where you saw the person who you needed it to be, but that person was played by another person who had approximately the same body shape and body type. But while you were, so you, that person got paid to play this role, but you, interacting with that person, saw and felt and communicated with the person who you intended it to be. I thought that was an interesting sort of...
31:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, I did actually see that movie. Uh, so that's, I mean, one approach. But I mean, there's many different ways in which we'll bring 3D to, to virtual reality and to Zoom calls.
31:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you made a very important point in, in your book, this singularity is nearer. Something that I only mildly appreciated, but after reading it, uh, I'm, I was all in, in the, in the Ray camp. It's that people have the urge to think of progress, not only linearly, of course, but also progress in only one sector. Oh, the chips are getting faster by this amount each time, and that's what really matters, let's track the chips. But you make a very convincing case that it's a much broader phenomenon than that.
32:00 Speaker 01 Right, that's a very good point. I mean, this graph that we talked about of the price performance of computation, it's not everything comes from that. That's just one example of how technology advances over time. Everything progresses that way. And you could point to different types of technology and how they progress every year.
32:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, and the people inventing the faster chips are not thinking that one day, movie makers are going to fully exploit the power of computing to tell stories in movies. I'm sure that was not on anybody's thought in the 1960s, when they were working hard on the IBM 360 or whatever else was coming online at the time. Would you agree with that?
32:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, before 1900, we didn't have movies at all.
32:49 Speaker 01 That's, that's not a lot of...
32:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, it's not, no, no.
33:10 Speaker 01 Bueno, en realidad entré en el futurismo debido a mi interés en ser inventor. Así que no era solo futurismo pensar en cómo será el futuro, sino realmente en mi propia invención. Porque ciertas invenciones no tienen sentido en ciertos periodos de tiempo. Así que usé el futurismo para decir cuándo deberíamos hacer ciertas cosas.
33:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Excelente. Además, admiro el hecho de que aplaste fechas cuando crees que sucederán. Y eso es boldo. Eso es algo, como dicen, tienes "gones" en las publicaciones.
33:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Porque no hay nada más vergonzoso que una predicción equivocada que la gente hace, incluso si no llega en un período de tiempo, ¿verdad? Es solo ciertas cosas que nunca fueron verdaderas, que la gente o imaginó o deseaba que fuera verdadera. Pero entonces, vamos a entrar en esta cosa de la IA. Mi visión personal aquí es que los computadores y las máquinas, pensemos de ellos como una fuerza operando en la civilización. No fue el final del mundo cuando teníamos máquinas que reemplazaran a los ojos o a la vez el trabajo humano en una granja, ¿verdad? Quiero decir, solo teníamos tractores. Ahora eso lo hace.
34:25 Speaker 01 Correcto. Quiero decir, teníamos 80% en 1800, el 80% del trabajo trabajaba en producir comida. Así que básicamente, si estabas trabajando, estabas produciendo comida. Al menos el 80%. Hoy es 2%.
34:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Estamos produciendo más comida en menos tierra con menos gente que nunca antes.
34:46 Speaker 01 Sí, el 80% es el 2%.
34:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Sí, de hecho, puedes pasar toda tu vida, si crees que creciste en una ciudad, y nunca siquiera conoces a un agricultor, ¿verdad? Y creo que de nuestros padres fundadores, ¿cuántos de ellos fueron agricultores? Era como medio o algo así. Hay una fracción interesante.
35:01 Speaker 01 No, todos ellos.
35:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Todos agricultores.
35:02 Speaker 01 Quiero decir, esta fue la revolución de los agricultores. The American Revolution was a revolution of farmers.
35:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hmm, hmm, hmm. And so, so, all right.
35:13 Speaker 01 And yet people found other jobs.
35:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So we, we survive an era where our physical labor and that of our, our pack animals is replaced by machines. And it wasn't the end of civilization. And yes, people found other jobs, other industries rose up in spite of whatever fears they might have had at the time.
35:34 Speaker 01 I mean, if our oppression future is to 1900, I would say that all of your jobs are going away. And people go, oh, my God, how are we going to make money? And I'd say, well, you're going to become an IT engineer and do quantum physics. And no one would have any idea what I'm even talking about.
35:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But they wouldn't even, no, no, but beyond that, they wouldn't even allow you to say, instead of being a, instead of being a blacksmith for horses, you'll fix engines on cars. They probably could not imagine an industry that rose up surrounding cars.
36:12 Speaker 01 They couldn't imagine any of the jobs that came. But we actually have a lot higher fraction of people working today than we did before. It's actually been increasing. And the amount of money you've made in constant dollars has greatly advanced. That's another graph I have here.
36:32 Speaker 01 It has gone up substantially.
36:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Here's a graph you'd have them put together. How many 20 something millionaire YouTubers there are?
36:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? For your entire income is what they do on YouTube, which was a platform that didn't even exist 15 years ago, whenever it came into.
36:52 Speaker 01 So that's just a good example of the kinds of new jobs that we have. And as, as intelligence increases, we're going to be doing more and more intelligent things. Uh, we're going to become much smarter in the future. Uh, we would not want to go back to, you know, primitive past of today.
37:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The idiot days of 2022. Wait, wait, but, but Ray, if AI starts taking all the jobs, not just the old jobs, but any new job that people can come up with, AI is going to do it. Doesn't that, we have to now think geopolitically about the impact of this?
37:34 Speaker 01 Right, so there's two ways of looking at this. There's humans and there's AIs. The AIs are gonna go way past what humans can do. And so what are humans gonna be able to do? But that's really not the way I look at it. We create technology to advance ourselves. I mean, the technology is not some alien invasion from Mars. I mean, we created to overcome limitations that we have. Our own problems with our organs, we have problems with everything. And we come up with technology that moves us past it. And we bring this into ourselves. So that's why I'm talking about advancing our own brains and capabilities
38:19 Speaker 01 with technology in the future. So we're gonna bring the AI into ourselves and we're gonna become smarter. And we're gonna be able to do our jobs because it's gonna be us and AI together.
38:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not AI as a separate disembodied force that as every movie has decided, that the AI will judge that we are a scourge.
38:40 Speaker 01 And again, AI is not coming from Mars. I mean, we're creating it to overcome problems that we have.
38:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, but this fear of it achieving consciousness.
38:51 Speaker 01 And we're already using it. I mean, AI undermines everything we do. I mean, every single.
38:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I love it. I love AI. Don't get me wrong here, but I'm saying, what happens if, you know, the fear factor, I guess, is a singularity of its own perhaps, is if AI, quote, achieves consciousness, it makes decisions all by itself.
39:11 Speaker 01 Well, let's get back to consciousness in a moment. But, I mean, this has been an issue ever since the Luddite occurred in the early, in the 1800s. They saw machines are being built and more machines are being built. And every week they're announcing some new machines. And employment's gonna be, won't exist. But in fact, employment went up, not down. And continues today to go up and not down. That's because we use the technology to make ourselves more capable.
39:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So interesting, I remember reading, I read a lot of history. I enjoy looking at how people used to think about their own time. One of them was, at the rate, machines are replacing human work. One day, we will only need a three-day work week. And what enchanted me by that is it's the assumption that the work people were doing in that day was the only work that would ever be done. And so if you have machines doing it now, there's less work, total work to do in the world, without anyone thinking, that maybe you're freed up to think of other things, invent new projects, new ideas, new challenges.
40:28 Speaker 01 Well, that's exactly the case, and particularly when we increase our own intelligence, we're going to think of all kinds of things we can't even imagine today.
40:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, when you say intelligence, could you be more specific about that? Because, in fact, before we even get there, could you remind us what the parts of the brain are doing for us? And because we hear joke about the reptilian brain, or the, you know, and what part of the brain makes us us, rather than some other apes? Could you just spend a moment telling us about that?
41:08 Speaker 01 Well, there are parts of the brain that control our breathing and so on, that are not that important.
41:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, unless you want to breathe.
41:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You mean, they're not important for intelligence?
41:21 Speaker 01 The cerebellum is where we do our ability to put different things together. So you have lots of different constraints, and our cerebellum can solve some of those problems.
41:35 Speaker 01 We've greatly amplified that with our machines, which can actually go beyond what a normal human brain can do. And ultimately, we'll connect our cerebellum to the cloud, which basically will just expand it beyond what our brain can do. I mean, the reason we have such a large head is to accommodate a certain amount of cerebellum. Now, there's actually one other thing that we need. Because there are other animals that have a brain that are as big as us, or even larger. Like an elephant or whale actually have a larger brain. They don't have a thumb. I mean, this thing is actually very.
42:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, they have opposable thumb. They have thumb bones, right? Because they're mammals, but, right.
42:19 Speaker 01 They don't have an opposable thumb. So I can think and look at a tree and go, wow, I could take that branch and strip off the leaves and create a tool. They can't do that. They might imagine it, but they can't, they don't have an opposable thumb to create that. So our whole technology is enabled by our opposable thumb.
42:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, but then, oh, so are you suggesting, that's an important point. AI, we think of it as a computer-based thing, phenomenon. But can, can AI create a sculpture? You know, I do that with my hands. Does AI do that? You have to create a robot that jumps out of the machine to do that, right?
43:04 Speaker 01 Well, since we have ability to create technology, we can create robots and the robots have an opposable thumb.
43:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Okay, so getting back to that point. Isn't there a day where there is nothing left for humans to do? And then there's a world where AI does everything better than we can. And so how do we, is that the end of, is that the end of the economy?
43:32 Speaker 01 That would be the end of us if we can't expand who we are. And if we can actually put AI into ourselves, which we've already done with things like cellphones and so on. But if we can actually amplify our ability to think, then we become the AI and we can compete with ourselves because we are the AI. And that's why we created AI, is to expand our ability to think.
43:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Um, could you, you said this the last time we were in conversation. And I've never forgotten it and I've repeated it 100 times. So I want people to hear it from you firsthand. Your rebuttal to the comment, you know, the first AI, only rich people are gonna have it, and then they're gonna take over the world, and there'll be more of the have-nots versus the haves, and this is gonna create an imbalanced world.
44:24 Speaker 01 Right, so if you go back 20 years, you had to be actually pretty wealthy to have one of these new cell phones that came out, because they were very expensive and only wealthy people could afford them, and they didn't do very much. So, now, they do fantastic amount, and they're very inexpensive, so you can only afford these technologies at a point where they don't really work very well. You know, once they get to be perfected, everybody can afford them, and literally everybody has these.
45:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, there's 6 billion, 6 billion, I looked, it's 6 billion in the world, out of 8 billion people, that's crazy, it's a crazy number.
45:08 Speaker 01 I checked out, I checked on this like nine months ago, it's 4 billion, but so now it's 6 billion out of 8 billion people, I mean, I walked down and I see homeless people take out their cellphone and use it.
45:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Their smartphone, their smartphone, yeah.
45:25 Speaker 01 So, you can only afford these things if you, at a point where they don't work. Once they're really perfected, everybody can afford them, and so that's gonna be true of all of these technologies, you don't have to be wealthy, I mean, wealthy only allows you access to a point where it doesn't really affect anything.
45:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But that, that presumes that we continue to advance exponentially over that time.
45:49 Speaker 01 Yes, but that is the reality.
45:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And do you never see that ending?
45:55 Speaker 01 Uh, no, I mean, uh, it's gonna keep going.
46:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And what are you basing that on? Part of it sounds like wishful thinking. I mean, I'm with you, but I'm just being devil's advocate here. Who is to say it should go on forever? Roman Empire, they surely thought they were a forever thing. Hitler was ready to be the third dynasty. He was ready to last at least as long as the Greeks and the Romans, and his dynasty lasted 10 years. So where's your... Is it just the "I'm queuing off of the past and projecting into the future"? Or do you have actually knowledge of what will happen in the future that will empower it?
46:37 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, if you look at the price performance of computation, it's gone on.
46:42 Speaker 01 There's actually some periods prior to this, before we had computation, that continues this graph into the past.
46:52 Speaker 01 And it's continued. And people are saying, "Well, I'm not sure it's going to continue. Moore's Law has ended." Every five years, people say, "Moore's Law has ended." Moore's Law is not a good name for this graph, because only 10 of the many points have to do it.
47:09 Speaker 01 It's continued. And we plan things that go beyond our current limitations, because we need to go overcome them.
47:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, all right. So, but I've read papers that said the... There's a... You can't make the circuits any smaller, because you run into quantum effects of adjacent...
47:31 Speaker 01 That's not true. I mean, if you look at nanotechnology, for example, there's an analysis. If you created the ultimate computer, and it describes exactly how that would work
47:46 Speaker 01 in a 1-liter size, it would be billions of times greater than today's computers. In fact, it would be greater than all the computation of all humans put together.
48:02 Speaker 01 So we can go way beyond what's where we are. It will reach a limit. I mean, you're right, there is a limit. But the limit's far beyond where we are today. And we can actually create a small computer that would be greater than all human beings together. And we can prove that as a reality.
48:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I hate to insult you by bringing this up, but just to take us out. We have to solicit your comment on whether we're all living in a simulation. Sorry to take you there, but you're dancing in the pond where people talk about this. So take us out with what you think is going on with us.
48:48 Speaker 01 I mean, if you look at how physics works, it works by formula. And the world is kind of a computer. And so anything that happens in it is kind of a simulation of reality. The idea of us working in the simulation is some high school students in some other world creates something.
49:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Basement aliens, basement juvenile aliens programming us, yes.
49:22 Speaker 01 And they create something that simulates our world, and we're living in that world. But it's still reality, whether that happens or not. And you'd want to actually encourage those high school students not to shut down their simulation. So the way to do that is to be interesting. And I think having a singularity would be very interesting, so they'd want to watch that.
49:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Very good. Good answer. Good answer. Okay. So we want to keep our simulator overlords entertained?
50:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, Ray, I think that's all the time we have. First, a delight to chat with you again. Good to see you're still at it and that and you've got this this new book coming out in 2023. Yeah. I look forward to that, the final print version of it. I feel privileged to have seen an early manuscript of it. I will brag to others that I've seen an early manuscript of it and as the singularity is nearer, which is clearly the case, based on all the evidence you bring to bear on that. So, thank you, Ray. Yeah, great to talk to you. All right, all right. You have been watching and possibly listening to StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.
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