Transcription
we will become a hybrid species we'll
still be human but will be enhanced by
AI we will no longer be limited by our
biology we'll be free to live life
Without Limits we're going to find
solutions to diseases and aging don't
you think that superhuman AI is a
marketing invention in 2024 I was
honored to be on times list of the 100
most influential people in AI I've been
working on AI ever since for 61 years
longer than anyone else alive and
predicted computers would reach human
level intelligence by 2029 and some say
it will happen even sooner let me start
by explaining how we're going to connect
our brains of the
cloud the host of the conversation is Dr
Matt keki a science popularizer and a
digital ambassador of the European Union
it's a great pleasure having you here in
New
York thank you
Ma for inviting me to participate in
this interview everyone talk about AI
today what did people say about AI 60
years ago did people believe that AI
would be able to change the world almost
no one had heard of AI or knew what it
was when I first started in the
field the term
artificial intelligence was coined by
Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy at a
conference at Dartmouth College in
1956 four years later when I was 12
years old I worked on a computer for the
first time programming statistical tests
for a
nonprofit to help them evaluate their
learning programs for
children I was lucky enough to have
access to one of 12 computers in all of
New York City I worked during the
overnight shift and noticed that when
the computer considered the data I
entered the lights on the front panel
would dim and glow almost like a
dance it looked like it was deep in
thought that's when I first became
interested in the connection between
computers and human
intelligence I've been working on AI
ever since for 61 years longer than
anyone else
alive when I was 16 I met with Dr Frank
rosenblad at Cornell
University who developed a famous neural
net called the
perceptron which was getting a lot of
attention it could recognize images so I
brought printed letters from the
alphabet and fed them into the computer
to see if it would recognize them but it
didn't work very well well at that time
there was very little confidence in the
power of neural
networks Marvin Minsky who became a
mentor for 50 years and invented the
neural net in the
1950s but had become pessimistic about
its
potential he wrote a book with his
partner seimo paper called
perceptrons that basically proved a
perceptron could not recognize
disconnected letters so for example it
couldn't recognize that a short line
with a separate dot on the top was the
letter I the book was influential and
killed all funding from neural net for
about 25
years now I know the percepton failed
because it was a single layer neural net
the key word there is
single today multiple layered nural Nets
are the backbone of machine
intelligence and are driving the recent
incredible breakthroughs in large
language models and so forth in AI
shortly before Minsky died in
2016 he told me that his opinion had
changed and he believed neural Nets were
the future of
AI skepticism about AI has continued all
the way up until the past few years when
large language models like Chachi BT and
Gemini caught everyone's attention I
have read thousands of your
predictions that have become true you
predicted several decades ago that a
computer worth a thousand of dollars
would be able to perform trillions of
operations per second you indicated that
payment would be possible with digital
card what kind of person you are when I
was a kid my parents taught me the power
of ideas can change the
world I used to write around my
neighborhood in a
go-kart that I made collecting
mechanisms from old broken bicycles and
cameras and other things that I
found because I believed I could solve
any problem if I figured out how to put
them back together in just the right way
I knew then when I was 5 years old that
I wanted to become an
inventor one essential lesson that I've
learned over my career as an inventor is
that timing is critical for everything
from inventions to Investments to
romance even the best invention will
fail if it's released at the wrong
time so in
1983 I began tracking the rate of
technological progress to help develop
and time my inventions and that's when I
discovered information technology was
advancing at an exponential rate before
anyone knew it was happening this trend
continues today and I've used it to make
all of my
predictions so take a look at this chart
that I created it shows the amount of
computing power you can buy for one
constant
dollar and it has a logarithmic scale so
on a logarithmic scale it shows a smooth
and steady line indicating consistent
exponential growth since the first
programmable computer was released in
1939 despite major world events like
World War II economic
depressions and regardless of the
hardware measured the exponential Trend
in computational power spans relays
vacuum tubes
transistors integrated
circuits and you can't see any
indication of where one type of Hardware
ends and another
begins this is because each new
information technology makes the next
Innovation
easier for example we use one chip to
design a better chip this is why you can
buy a smartphone that's twice as good as
a Smartphone two years
ago for half the
price in 1939 the first programmable
computer performed
0.007 calculations per second per
constant
dollar today the latest Nvidia B22 200
chip performs 500 billion calculations
per second per constant dollar that's a
75 quadrillion fold increase let me say
it again that's a 75 quadrillion fold
increase in the amount of comp ation you
get for the same amount of money in the
past 85 years did you believe several
decades ago that Humanity would reach
the point where is it today in 1999 I
wrote a book called the age of spiritual
machines and predicted computers would
reach human level intelligence by
2029 I was able to see it coming by
extrapolating the historical Trend shown
in my chart that we just looked at this
stirred up a lot of concern and
skepticism Stanford University organized
a conference of AI experts from around
the world several hundred of them to
discuss my
prediction and 80% of them thought it
would take a 100
years today consensus among AI experts
has fallen in line with my original
prediction and some say it will happen
even sooner so I've technically gone
from being an optimist to a pessimist
without changing my prediction at
all I'm confident we'll achieve human
level AI by
2029 because of three converging trends
that are happening now first as I've
said the price performance of
computation per Conant dollar is growing
exponentially second AI researchers are
constantly developing new algorithms
that enable
AI to learn and reason more
efficiently and third the available of
massive data sets to train neural Nets
is skyrocketing you say that Humanity
will create AGI by
2029 don't you think that super human AI
is a marketing invention when I talk to
one of the creators of open AI a poll vo
zaremba he pointed out that humanity is
developing together with AI today we are
the reference point of assessing whether
something is or not AI the problem is
that if we develop together with AI
something that we would consider superum
AI today will not be able to be
considered such in a few years
it's true that humans and AI are
developing together as we blend our
capabilities and knowledge into
one however we will not fully merge with
AI until the nanotechnology in the
2030s so for now ai's superhuman
capabilities are extremely apparent in
many ways take large language models as
an
example you can ask them any question
in any subject and they will immediately
provide a well- written thoughtful and
clear answer and if you ask it again
it'll give you a different answer but
it's also true what human can do that
with any
question Alpha fold is another
compelling example one of the biggest
scientific challenges that existed until
recently was the protein folding problem
proteins are the building blocks of life
and their shape determines their
function if we can understand how they
fold into their unique shapes we can
create medicines to reprogram our
biology away from disease and that's
happening for 50 years scientists were
unable to find the shapes of most
proteins then in
2022 deep mind's Alpha fold 2 AI model
found the shapes of 200 million proteins
nearly all known proteins not just in
humans but in all of nature
nature these were released publicly for
free which marked a profound step
forward in medicine because it unlocked
information that scientists
need to synthetically produce proteins
with the desired function like
simulating our immune system to fight
cancer or
Alzheimer's and just a few months ago
Deep Mind announced Alpha
Proto which can create new proteins that
can manipulate the interaction of
molecules AI breakthroughs like this are
not limited to medicine and
language they're happening in all
Industries they're transforming energy
manufacturing farming basically
everything we care
about once AI learns all skill sets it
will blend them together like humans an
early example is Google's deep Minds gat
a single generalist neural network that
can perform over 600 different tasks
including text chatting controlling
robot arm playing video games and so
on it's far from perfect but it lays the
groundwork for building a unified
brain-like system that doesn't have to
farm out different tasks and separate
neural networks Are You Afraid Of Death
I think most people fear death as I do
it's an
incredibly lonely concept and it's
tragic when a loved ones
die even 20 30 40 years after they have
died we still want them back death is
not something to
celebrate but we've lived in a world
where people just accept it you hear it
all the time oh life's short you have to
make the most of it some people say they
don't want to live past a 100
but I'd like to see them say that when
they are 100 we've convinced ourselves
that death is a good thing and Gives
Life Meaning but when we get a
life-threatening illness we become
desperate to find a cure when faced with
a choice people will choose to live it's
only those who are in
unbearable physical mental or spiritual
pain that choose death we are the
species that trans
biology we have not done that our life
expectancy would still be 20 which it
was a thousand years ago so overcoming
the limitations of biology is not a new
story it's for why I want to live
indefinitely it again comes down to
living one day at a time I want to live
to see tomorrow because I want to see my
loved ones and I want to continue
working on my creative projects
I don't see a time when I would not feel
that way I ask because you spend a lot
of time pointing out that the humanity
will one day achieve immortality you
pointed out that our brain will go to
the cloud they will be able to leave
there forever I wonder if we can then
talk about immortality shouldn't we ask
a different question for example can
such a state be called
life as
AI merges with
medicine we're going to find solutions
to diseases and
aging at the beginning of the co
pandemic madna used a range of AI tools
to help design and optimize mRNA
sequences and discovered the sequence of
its successful vaccine in just two
days they also used AI to speed up the
manufacturing
and testing process which Sav many
lives bio simulations like these aren't
going to be limited to viruses like
covid with the exponential growth of
computation will'll soon have the
ability to rapidly test billions of
possible molecular sequences to find
cures ultimately for all
diseases by around
2032 people who are diligent with their
health are going to reach
what we call Longevity escape
velocity this is when scientific
breakthroughs will add more time to our
remaining life expectancy than is going
by right now as you live through a year
you get back about four months of life
from scientific progress so you're only
losing about eight months of your life
expectancy for each year that you live
but as I've said medicine is advancing
exponentially so by around
2032 we'll be getting back a whole year
of Life As We live through a year and
after that we'll get back more than a
year back for each year that we live so
we'll be going backwards in time as far
as our health is
concerned as we emerge with AI in this
way we will become a hybrid species
we'll still be human but we'll be in
enhanced by AI do you consider people
who have Cocker implants or pacemakers
or prosthetic limbs to be less alive of
course not these are early examples of
merging with
machines our machines are going to
continue to shrink in size and gain in
power to the point where they are
invisible and inside our bodies as we
emerge with technology we will no longer
be limited by our biology will'll be
free to live life Without Limits people
will have own cerebral cortex and an
artificial cerebral cortex thanks to
this artificial cortex will they be able
to search for information just like we
do today using Google well let me start
by
explaining how we're going to connect
our brains to the cloud nanotechnology
is an eer in field that's manipulating
materials measured in
nanometers one nanometer is one
billionth of a meter for perspective the
head of a pin is about a million
nanometers
wide scientists are in the early days of
figuring out how to build Nano robots
the size of cells that will function
like today's robots sensing data
processing information taking action
communicating with each other all on a
molecular
level this idea might sound futuristic
but my research shows a steady
Trend leading to a nanotechnology
revolution in the next 15 years the
amount of computation that once took up
an entire floor of a building now fits
on a smartphone in your pocket and soon
what now fits in your pocket will fit
inside a blood cell and will be far more
powerful
in the 2030s and
2040s Nanobots will swim in our
bloodstream uh they'll perform medical
tasks with Precision deliver drugs
straight to the
source drill through clogged
arteries ultimately they will go into
our brains
non-invasively through our
capillaries provide wireless
communication between our
neocortex which is the top layer of our
brains and additional digital neurons
hosted in the cloud think of it like
having your phone but in your brain if
you ask a question your brain will be
able to go out to the cloud similar to
the way you do on your phone now only
will be instant there won't be any input
or output issues and you won't realize
it has been done the answer just will
appear in your brain like it is part of
you some people say they don't want
Nanobots in their body but lots of
people didn't want to use early cell
phones either yet today they take them
everywhere and never leave home without
them once we connect our brains to the
cloud our intelligence won't be limited
by the small size of our skulls and
ultimately it will expand a millionfold
have you ever wonder whether AI will be
able to feel pain the lines between
between Ai and biology are going to
blur uh as we merge together so it will
be difficult to determine whether our
pain is felt biologically or
digitally this is similar to the
question of
Consciousness will AI be conscious
there's no definitive scientific tested
to confirm or deny
Consciousness it's a philosophical
question
we assume that each of us is conscious
if we seem conscious but that shared
human assumption breaks down as we start
to move away from
Humanity some people share the idea that
animals are conscious but not everybody
does this and that's where the whole
issue of animal rights comes from our
insects
conscious there's really no way to prove
it in the future AI will act as though
it is conscious and therefore we will
treat it as though it
is you currently work at Google we don't
know much about your work dur in a
public sphere can you tell us at the
last one important project you are
working on at Google I've been with
Google for over 12 years I was first
involved with natural language
processing if you've over if you've ever
used Gmail you'll know that your phone
will give you three auto reply options
to choose from when responding to a
message that was created by my group
it's part of a larger Trend to make
technology more intuitive and accessible
and it's an early example of breaking
down barriers between computers and
humans a more recent example is using
large language models to write code
based on our natural language Des
descriptions in the past we've had to
invest hundreds of hours learning how to
code to create new
programs the same is true in the Arts my
father was a
composer and when he wanted to hear his
compositions he had to hire an entire
Orchestra to play them which was very
expensive and timec consuming if he were
alive today he'd simply play them with a
software program in seconds at no cost
old barriers like this have made it
difficult to bring creative ideas to
fruition but with AI composers will be
able to hum a tune and then work with
the digital Beethoven to orchestrate it
into a symphony in 2011 you were rank
fer in the time weekly ranking of the
most influential people in the world why
do you think that is actually in 2024 I
was honored to be
on times list of the 100 most
influential people in
AI they broke the list down into a
handful of categories and I was number
one in the thinkers
category there was a feature article in
the
magazine that said they chose me because
of my accurate predictions over the past
few
decades including my 1999 prediction
that AI would reach human level
intelligence by
2029 I've been thinking and writing
about the future of technology for
decades and I've created a framework
called The Law of accelerating
returns to understand the exponential
nature of Information
Technology this has spawned a worldwide
movement of movies plays songs books
about the merging of human and machine
I'm often asked what my advice is for
the next
generation and my answer is somewhat
old-fashioned my advice is to pursue
your passions and despite push back from
Skeptics you need to be most concerned
with what turns you on what drives you
forward and what excites you because
you'll have more ability to do that with
the support of AI as we merge with AI ey
our C
creativity and Innovation will grow
we'll be able to create things that
weren't possible before you are the
author of the book about the singularity
what is the singularity and how will it
change our lives The Singularity is a
point when humans fully merge with
artificial intelligence by connecting
our brains to the
cloud and expanding our intelligence a
millionfold
I believe it will happen by
2045 we borrow the term Singularity from
physics because it represents a
transformation so profound and
Rapid that it's difficult to comprehend
with our current biological
Minds it's like asking a mouse what it's
like to be
human the mouse doesn't understand the
question let alone have an answer once
we connect our brains to the cloud we'll
be freed from biological
limitations will'll choose and change
our physical
appearance will customize natural and
virtual environments shaped with human
and AI friends will tap into creativity
and skills that are unimaginable
today like visualizing shapes in 11
Dimensions or speaking every language
which AI can already do we'll have the
capability to recreate ourselves and our
world the pace of technological change
will be so rapid and its impact so deep
that human life will be changed forever
it was great honor thank you for your
time thank you Ma it's been a pleasure
talking with you