more than a century ago orville wright soared through the air for a 12-second flight that changed the world. 66 years later -- >> we have a liftoff. >> the astronauts of apollo 11 walked on the moon. today we carry around in our pockets devices with more computing power than that spacecraft. all of these were big ideas, ideas that at one point in time seemed impossible. in this special hour of gps we will focus on the next big ideas that will disrupt and probably improve our lives.

have you ever dreamt of a flying car? sebastian, the ceo of a company tells me it may be possible and sooner than we think. >> the sky is empty. the sky is so big. >> do you have what it takes to be the next steve jobs? the the -- we talk about what makes a genius. curiosity. absolutely random, absolutely playful curiosity connects ben franken, steve jobs, davinci. >> one out of nine people are hungry but the world wastes one-third of all of its food. we talk about ideas to solve

this global tragedy. >> it's about the utilization of every part of the planet. >> plus as artificial intelligence gets more advanced many people worry that robots and automation will displace their jobs. i'll sit down with two mit scholars who discuss using artificial intelligence to enhance human work. >> if we can bring minds and machines together we can cancel out each other's mistakes. the neurscientist talks to me about a threat many of us will face. the author of the book the film "still alice" is based on. >> there is research to show that there are lifestyle changes that we can make that help actually prevent the biological advancement of the disease. >> all of this coming up in this special hour of "gps." let's get started.

♪ roads, where we are going we don't need roads. >> from the delorean to the jettisons to harry potter, flyer cars have made appearances on big and small screens for decades, purely stuff of cinematic magic the reality of personal flying vehicles always seemed light years away. not if my next guest has anything to say about it. he specializes in robotics, artificial intelligence and education among many other things. he founded google's moon shot factory as well as a company

dedicated to bringing tech education online. he led google's self-driving car team and has been called the father of the self-driving car. now he has set his sights on the skies. he is a ceo of a company working towards revolutionizing transportation by making the dream of personal flying vehicles a reality. welcome, sebastian. why are you doing this? is there an origin story here? >> i have always wondered if we can make transportation safer. self-driving cars, a tragic story of a good friend of mine who died in a traffic accident. at some point it dawned on me if we stay on the ground we won't get rid of congestion and only have increasing times of wait times and traffic. why don't we just fly? the sky is so big and empty.

>> we thought this technology revolution would get us flying cars -- >> he is wrong. >> you have a video that you haven't shared with the public yet. it looks like a helicopter. it takes off vertically and transitions to a horizontal plane and lands vertically. you feel like you have achieved a test flight with this vehicle. how far along are you? >> we have been working with nasa for about six or seven years. and around 2013 we started flyic our first electric aircraft. the video shows we flew vertically and transitioned and then safety landed again. >> when i think about this i'm thinking there's going to be

chaos up there. you will have drones with humans in them and bump into each other and there will be traffic in the sky. it is dangerous because if somebody bumps into the other they wail crash and die. >> i agree there is an issue with -- all of us use them every day to and from work. there is more space in the sky and on the ground. i can tell you there is lots of stuff on the ground that does exist in the air. so the ground say you have two roads and they are right angle. and people drive this way and this way. we put in things like stop signs to make sure we don't -- in the air what you do is you let these guys go 100 feet higher. they can just fly at the direction they wish. by heading to the altitude you get so much more space that the deconflicting issue becomes much easier in the air than on the

ground. >> you use this for short trips. you are able to do it but again i'm thinking that means lots of people are grocery shopping at the same time. you look at a city like new york, a city like chicago, city like beijing and you still think that everyone can go grocery shopping in the sky. >> if i talk to my friends in new york i think there is a real pain point here. if you were to cross lincoln tunnel in the sky it would take two or three minutes. in new york in particular between 1900 where almost all transportation was horse based and 1930 it took 30 years to implement this vision. it just means it will take some time. we have to work out technology and revelations. but on the logical base i think we will transition from a society that is ground based to eventually be in the sky.

>> what's the cost? >> we haven't set a price yet. but if you work it out a flying car shouldn't cost more than a regular car. >> and are there any kind of implications here, crime, terrorism. this is a pretty powerful vehicle in some sense in that it can go anywhere. >> the way i look at this is almost anything you can buy can be used in a bad way. we are working very hard to making this a safe technology. we believe that the flight vehicle should and must be safer. >> you have another -- >> it's very small. the smallest vehicle we build. we fly over water. it enables people to take to the skies. >> it's like a sports car. >> it's like a sports car for

water. it really gets the experience of flight to anybody. now we get this infinite freedom to take to the skies. it is easier to learn how to fly than it is to learn a bicycle. >> why is that? >> because we use computers. all the hard stuff you don't want to care about as a human pilot and give you a joy stick. it is actually really fun. it's the funniest thing ever. it is every boy and girl's dream. >> pleasure to have you. next on "gps" what does playing the violin have to do with theoretical physics? we discuss the birth of innovation and what makes a genius. these birds once affected by oil

are heading back home. thanks to dawn, rescue workers only trust dawn, because it's tough on grease yet gentle. i am home, i am home, i am home allow you to take advantage of growth opportunities. with a level of protection in down markets.

so you can head into retirement with confidence. brighthouse financial established by metlife. can this much love be cleaned by a little bit of dawn ultra? oh yeah one bottle has the grease cleaning power of three bottles of this other liquid. a drop of dawn and grease is gone.

♪ thomas edison said genius is one percent inspiration and 99% perspiration. is that really the case? >> this is how you turn it on. >> hard work how steve jobs changed our world with the iphone. was it albert einstein's perspiration that figured out physi physics. what makes a genius? at the aspen institute i sat down with walter isakson to answer that question. pleasure to have you on.

>> this show is one of my favorites, too, every year. thanks for having me. >> you studied da vinci now. before that ben franklin, albert einstein, steve jobs. some people regard henry kissinger as highly innovative. if somebody says what makes somebody innovative at that historical level? >> especially with steve jobs, ben franklin and einstein you look around and they love to cross disciplines. they love the humanities and the sciences. leonardo da vinci is sort of the ultimate. somebody who wasn't just smart but had a playful curiosity about everything there was to know. just like steve jobs loved design and loved, you know, calligraphy but also loved electronics, i think innovation comes from crossing discipline.

>> there is a story that einstein tells that when he would get stuck on physics problem sometimes he would stop and play the violin and come back and people said that you are actually exercising different parts of the brain when you do that and that produces the literal -- >> when he was trying to get general relativity, living in berlin he played mozart on his violin and would say that reconnects me to the harmony of the universe. that ability to feel harmonies of music and nature's laws that is exemplar of what we are talking about. >> is there a difference between the kind of genius that albert einstein has and the inventiveness of ben franklin? a lot of people say i'm never going to be einstein. i wonder what made ben franklin

building the bifocals or looking at the lightning and say i wonder if there is a way to conduct that. >> einstein had mental processing power that we can never come close to. we cannot aspire to be einstein. ben franklin wasn't necessarily the smartest in terms of just pure mental processing power but they had a playful curiosity. franklin would just travel around. you would see a whirl wind and have to chase it along and come up with notion of gulf stream and northeastern storm. curiosity, just absolutely random, absolutely playful and passionate curiosity is something that connects ben franklin, steve jobs, leonardo da vinci. >> edison famously said genius

is 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration. is that true? >> i think you have to work hard. as i look at people it wasn't hard work that got ben franklin or steve jobs or leonardo da vinci. it was sort of a continuous curiosity about nature, a passion, a willingness to observe things. i think for some people over and over again that makes you a deep in one field type of genius. i'm taublging about genius that can cross different disciplines. that almost comes from having attention deficit disorder. >> what about failure? one of the most famous elements is that famous address where he talks about having to deal with extraordinary setbacks. he founds a company and gets

fired from it. he gets diagnosis of cancer. when you look at these characters do you think their ability to deal with failure is crucial? >> i think resilience is part of just being a driven optimistic personality. you want to talk about it with einstein. when he is doing general relativity in berlin you talk about a huge rise in anti-semitism. this ability to continue to bounce back. the willingness across disciplines -- it will start when they are born and take them through life. i think people accumulate wisdom as they move on.

something that happens in 1922 effects what is going to happen in what you are going to do in 1923. when i write i try to start with the chronology and then step back and say patterns, themes. all great innovators see patterns and themes. they cross disciplines. that swirl of air and curl of hair, they have a certain type of pattern. i think when you look at a narrative what's important it you are trying to talk about innovation is say what patterns are emerging. >> is that an innate skill that people have? pattern recognition is the hardest thing. we have so much noise that finding that signal is very hard. >> i don't know. one of the cool things about it is we were talking about artificial intelligence, machine learning. that is a thing that machines have the most problems with. if you can train yourself as a human to be good at pattern

recognition then maybe you would outrun artificial intelligence machines gunning for your job. up next, waste not, want not. why one world renowned chef is turning garbage into gourmet cuisine. ut, ugh. oh well, all hope is lost! oh thanks! clearly my whitening toothpaste is not cutting it. time for whitestrips. crest glamorous white whitestrips are the only ada-accepted whitening strips proven to be safe and effective. they work below the enamel surface to whiten 25x better than a leading whitening toothpaste. hey, nice smile! thanks! i crushed the tissue test! yeah you did! crest. healthy, beautiful smiles for life.

♪ would you every throw out a third of the pizza you ordered or a third of the hamburger you grilled up? third of the ice cream cone? probably never. about one third of all food produced in the world each year for humans is thrown out, more than 1.4 billion tons according to the u.n.. americans are the worst offenders. what to do? my next guest has ideas.

dan barber is chef and owner of one of the obama's first date nights was at blue hill. and it has been called the best restaurant in america and one of the best in the world by those who rank these things. dan, pleasure to have you on. >> thank you. why are we throwing out so much food? >> the american food culture or lack thereof allows us to eat what i call high on the hog which is to say middle of the animal, the cuts that we have become not just accustomed to but that we expect. twice a day seven days a week. that's an american invention. unfortunately, we are exporting that to the rest of the world. >> you say it is actually bad from the point of view of gourmet cuisine because we are missing out on taste. you say all great cuisine begins with rejects. >> i don't think our style of

cooking the six ounce piece of protein with smattering of vegetables and grains on the side is very delicious in the end. when you look at great cuisines you are looking at off cuts and imagination and creating these delicious you think of -- when you braise it in white wine and vegetables you create one of the great iconic french dishes in that culture and cuisine. it these are all dishes that came out of a culture of being unable to waste food because there wasn't enough produced. america unfortunately has a tradition where there is abundance and the food culture that has arisen has suffered because of it. >> you have a solution and you

call it waste-ed as in waste education. we turned blue hill into a traunt restaurant devoted to food waste. we created a menu on dishes 100% headed to trash. we had dishes like dumpster dive salad and we had a dish we called dog food. that was a little to ignite interest. a lot of it was to look at what we can utilize that we otherwise don't covet. part of the responsibility of a chef and a restaurant one could say is to spark that kind of interest. the food waste issue too much concentrates on things we reject at the supermarket. you look at diets and the american diet and things like you mentioned the pizzas and the hamburgers. 90 million acres of corn and soy

rotations take up a big percentage of the grains that are produced in this country. 90 million acres of corn and soy. we don't eat the corn and soy. we feed the corn and soy to chickens and feed them to cows. >> i have to ask you when you had these fancy diners coming to your restaurants and you give them, serve them essentially garbage on fancy plates, how did they react? >> there were lines out the door. i think part of it is the provocation and part of it is the idea of a restaurant as places of escape and increasingly we ought to be thinking of them as places of connection and connection to big ideas and connection to big issues where the culture needs to shift. >> do you think to that point do you think this is doable? do you think realistically,

there is a tendency to wonder is this ever going to change? we have always been a very rich country. do you think we can get somewhere on this? >> promising is that we tend to move quickly with new ideas with sort of dizzying speed. we think of sushi and greek yogurt and kale and all of these items that were inconceivable to be popular five or ten years ago. with american food culture the change is rapid. it doesn't happen in other cultures. we don't have that here. what is needed for the future i think is to set the stage for how do we think of a pattern of eating that reflects and supports the landscape whmpt we do that we truly support a landscape we are going to be soaking up a ton of waste and putting it into our diet in ways that are pleasurable. to me the message of food waste

is not wagging the finger but instead pleasure principle taking foods and transforming them into things that are delicious. that is what chefs doing and have a role to play in solving this problem. >> pleasure to have you on. >> thank you. up next, computers may help us fly a car but will they also take all of our jobs? will we be a society on permanent vacation? that's what many scaremongers may warn you. my next guests say be skeptical. these birds once affected by oil

are heading back home. thanks to dawn, rescue workers only trust dawn, because it's tough on grease yet gentle. i am home, i am home, i am home

but he hasoke up wwork to do.in. so he took aleve. if he'd taken tylenol, he'd be stopping for more pills right now. only aleve has the strength to stop tough pain for up to 12 hours with just one pill. aleve. all day strong.

♪ the industrial revolution ushered in the first machine age which brought the world the steam engine, radios cars and much more. we are now in a second machine age in which artificial intelligence are reshaping our world. the fear across america and the

world is that this new era will mean massive job losses. but the authors of a new book say it is up to employers to use technology to enhance human work, not necessarily replace it. they direct the initiative on the digital economy. the new book is called machine platform crowd, harnessing our digital future. welcome. let me start with you. you don't contest at all that if you think that computers are automating work and basically taking away some jobs you ain't seen nothing yet. >> absolutely. that is a line we use a lot mainly because we are seeing a second surge in computer's capability. the first surge got really lousy at anything that required subtlety, nuance, pattern matching.

judgment intuition, things like that. what we see now in this era of artificial intelligence and machine learning is that computers are getting really good at those abilities which until recently we thought were the domain of human beings alone. >> we all know computers have been able to beat human chess masters. we know they have been able to beat jeopardy champions and that is harder because it is a more complicated way of thinking. why is it so important that the computer has been able to beat the world's go champion, the chinese game that many people regard as being almost impossible? >> go has been completely different and computers have been laughbly bad at it until a couple years ago. one reason is that there are so many possible go moves that you can't simulate your way to victory. there are more possible go moves than atoms in the universe. in the old world of computting

that if you can't explain how to do something you can't embed it into software. >> that is the new age of artificial intelligence where the machine is teaching itself. >> this is probably most important thing to understand about current wave of artificial intelligence and really machine learning. instead of us giving instructions of what the machine can do we give the machine examples. this is success and this is failure. this is yes and no. this is a picture of a dog and a cat. cancer, not cancer. >> go victory, not go victory. >> you give enough examples then they can learn. >> give me a sense of some of the kinds of jobs that you see as being transformed if not replaced? >> transformed is exactly the right word. the problem we face is not a world without work but world with rapidly changing work. work doing routine tasks. now a lot of pattern matching jobs. some of them quite high paid

like pathologist or radiologist will be increasingly effected as parts of those jobs can be done by machines. >> i think of lawyers and research. >> financial advising. there are hundreds of thousands of hours done by machines. i think the best way to think about it is at the task level than job level. we see that parts of different jobs are being effected but there are still other parts that may become more important especially those involving interacting with other humans and setting the agenda. a good old fashioned manager is a job easy to make fun of with gilbert cartoons. when you look at what middle managers actually do they motivate, they persuade, they negotiate, they coordinate.

they are kind of transmission bells of information and ideas in an organization. i have not yet seen the digital middle manager that can bring a team together and lead them in the correct direction. we don't think that is coming tomorrow. >> we have the great problem that we have all focussed on which is what do you do about the guy without the college degree, the person in rural pennsylvania and ohio used to work on the steel plant or maybe a truck driver 55 years old and let's say self-driving trucks come along, what's their future in this world? >> let's be real clear. this we think is the biggest challenge for the society in the coming decade. the technology is advancing faster. we need to be much more aggressive about changing the conversation to working to identify the new jobs. we need to reinvent education more fundamentally. we need to boost

entrepreneurship not because everyone will become a entrepreneur but because those are the people who are tasked with inventing new jobs. >> how do companies best integrate this artificial intelligence in a way that supplements human jobs rather than replacing them? >> it's one of the big pieces of homework for companies going forward because if they get balance between minds and machines wrong they will get outcompeted by somebody who gets it right. one of my main take aways is that we are way too fauond of a confident of human judgment. the computers demonstrated they are really good at it. i think in many cases we need to flip the balance around and let the computers take the lead and have the humans double checking intervening when the computers do something done. the good news is that computers make very different kinds of mistakes than people do. if we can bring minds and machines together they can cancel out each other's mistakes

instead of doubling down on them. >> thank you both. >> been a pleasure. >> up next, alzheimer's disease may not be curable but is it possibly preventable? the neuro scientist whose book "still alice" was turned into a major motion picture joins me to talk about it. you're sending about half a gallon of gasoline up in the air. that amounts, over the course of the week, to about 10 pounds of carbon dioxide. growth is good, but when it starts impacting our quality of air and quality of life, that's a problem. so forward-thinking cities like sacramento are investing in streets that are smarter and greener. the solution was right under our feet. asphalt. or to be more precise, intelligent asphalt. by embedding sensors into the pavement, as well as installing cameras on traffic lights, we will be able to analyze the flow of traffic.

that data runs across our network and we use it to optimize the timing of lights, so that traffic flows easier and travel times are shorter. who knew asphalt could help save the environment? [ mouse clicks, keyboard clacking ] [ mouse clicking ] [ keyboard clacking ]

[ mouse clicking ] [ keyboard clacking ] ♪ good questions lead to good answers. our advisors can help you find both. talk to one today and see why we're bullish on the future. yours. yep, and my teeth are yellow. i wemean i knew they weren'te. perfect, but, ugh. oh well, all hope is lost! oh thanks! clearly my whitening toothpaste is not cutting it. time for whitestrips. crest glamorous white whitestrips are the only ada-accepted whitening strips proven to be safe and effective. they work below the enamel surface to whiten 25x better than a leading whitening toothpaste. hey, nice smile! thanks! i crushed the tissue test! yeah you did! crest. healthy, beautiful smiles for life.

♪ so far you have heard a lot about people's ability to think, to create to make decisions. what if those abilities begin to way wane? for many of us they will. deaths from alzheimer's have increased by 123%. one in three seniors dies with

alzheimer's or another form of dimentia according to the alzheimer's association. the numbers are astonishing. it is a disease for which there is no cure. my next guest says it does not have to be our brain's destiny. we can and should do certain things to help stave it off whatever our age. a harvard trained neuro scientist and novelist, the author of "still alice" upon which the film is based. pleasure to have you on. >> thank you. >> just so that a layman can understand, what is alzheimer's? >> what happens with alzheimer's, we think the disease begins with a build up of protein called an lloyd beta. this protein is normally released into the space between neurones where they connect and communicate. normally it is cleared away. for some reasons it can build up over time. when this happens it sticks to

itself and forms plaques. you may have heard of the plaques. that trigger then once it builds up to a tipping point will cause a bunch of molecular events that lead to the death of the neurones. >> this tipping point is sort of more important thane others sometimes? >> you can have the disease can be ongoing in your brain without you knowing for 10 to 20 years. before the tipping point you don't have symptoms of alzheimer's. once it hits the tipping point i liken the accumulation of amyloid plaques of like a lit match. it sets fire to a forest. >> given that it is dormant, what are the kinds of things one can do to make sure that you either stave off or emillier ate alzheimer's? >> a lot of research shows there are lifestyle changes that we can make that help actually

prevent the biological advancement of the disease. one of those more alarming areas of research have to do with sleep. so in deep sleep our cells in our brain clear away metabolic waste that accumulates in those synapses while we are being awake. one of the thij things it cleay is amyloid beta. what happens if you don't get a good night of sleep? the cells didn't get a chance to clear everything away so you start with amyloid buildup. over time that can lead you to that tipping point. heart disease, heart health. we know through lots of studies that high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, diabetes and smoking increase the risk of getting alzheimer's.

autopsy studies show as much as 80% of people with cardiovascular disease also had alzheimer's. we have seen in models that aerobic exercise clears away amyloid beta. studies show that mediterranean diet leads >> what about the idea that i should be learning ancient greek when i'm 75 and that that triggers, you know, keeping the brain active in some way helps? >> yeah, ancient greek would be quite an accomplish president. yeah, this idea of learning new things. i think the general public has the sense of like, well, if i do crossword puzzles then i won't get alzheimer's. they are on the right track but not really because crossword puzzles are mostly retrieving information you've already got stored and what you really want to do is learn new things, and this is -- the reason for this is every time you learn something new, you are building and strengthening new neural

connections, new synapses, and the more you learn the more backup cognitive reserve you've got. there was a great study, a nun study, where these nuns were followed for two decades, older age, 75 and older, and when they died their brains were donated for autopsy. one of the shocking things that came out of the study is that some of the brains, which upon autopsy looks like clear alzheimer's pathology. it had plaques and tangles and brain shrinkage from neuron to cell death, the scientists looking at this said clearly these nuns had alzheimer's and when you go back to the data and look at how they lived, they weren't diagnosed with alzheimer's. they had no cognitive memory problems. >> no symptoms. >> why? >> and we think it's because they had a high level -- these particular nuns had a high level of cognitive reserve. >> what does that mean? >> they were highly educated, had a high degree of literacy. they were always learning new things, and so we think that they had -- they just had han abundance and a redundancy of

neural connections which spared them from noticing that -- that a lot of their neurons were compromised by disease. >> do you think that we'll get to a place where alzheimer's is cured? is it a kind of disease that one could imagine just a drug? >> yes, absolutely, hand this is one of the things i'm really excited about, and i'm advising a team of folks working on creating an prize for alzheimer's, we don't have to feel guilty about alzheimer's. we have examples in the past. we have treatments and survivors for cancer, for hiv. we treat heart disease 30 years before the person will ever get a heart attack, and maybe we prevent that forever. there's no reason why we couldn't have a blood test that shows are you at risk for alzheimer's, get it at your annual physical, check on your brain health as much as your heart health. yeah, i think we'll get there and i think we have to. otherwise we'll have a crisis like no other in the near

future. >> when we come back, i'll give you my take on all these big ideas and what this innovation could mean for the future. darl'' can this much love be cleaned by a little bit of dawn ultra? oh yeah one bottle has the grease cleaning power of three bottles of this other liquid. a drop of dawn and grease is gone. allow you to take advantage of growth opportunities. with a level of protection in down markets. so you can head into retirement with confidence. brighthouse financial established by metlife. when it comes to travel, i sweat the details. late checkout... ...down-alternative pillows... ...and of course, price. tripadvisor helps you book a... ...hotel without breaking a sweat. because we now instantly... ...search over 200 booking sites ...to find you the lowest price... ...on the hotel you want. don't sweat your booking.

tripadvisor. the latest reviews. the lowest prices.

for the last quarter century, we've had a simple view of innovation, worshipful. innovation was celebrated because it represented human genius and inventiveness. its technological feats were dazzling, its economic effects positive and social consequences were liberating, and we were awestruck by the wealth amassed by the wizards of the innovation era. i believe we are now entering a new age, one in which innovation will be given far greater

scrutiny. we will ask whether these new technologies really do increase productivity, and if they do, how come it doesn't show up in the economic statistics? perhaps more importantly we will ask if they genuinely create new industries and opportunities, not just for a few highly skilled people but for many, and if they do why is it that so many people in the most advanced societies in the world are struggling to find good jobs with good pay? we will ask how genuinely open and competitive this new innovation economy is and how it is that a handful of companies now dominate the entire digital economy. this digital space is one in which there are massive advantages to being the first mover, the first company to establish a standard or market or channel of distribution. there appear to be natural monopolies that form so once you've established a position you can slowly but surely put others out of business. there is a winner take all

dynamic. no point being the second best search engine or best online marketplace, everyone will go to the first, and if all that is true, why has the government not tried harder to create a genuine level playing field? or distributed more of the gains from these winnings to society at large? we will ask whether the social consequences of these new technologies are really so liberating, whether work and family life, friends and human bonds are all enhanced by the smartphones to which we are now all addicted. has the pervasive and ever expanding logs of privacy been worth it? the new skepticism will often go overboard just as did the adulation of the past, but perhaps we can come to a sensible middle ground where we can admire innovation for all it achieves and yet ask serious questions about its effects in every realm. innovation, after all, comes from the latin root, and it

means new to introduce something new. is new always better though? that's the question we might find ourselves debating in the years ahead. i'm fareed zakaria. thanks for watching. i'll see you next week. >> hey, i'm brian stelter. merry christmas eve to you and your family. it's time for "reliable sources," our weekly look at the story behind the story, of how the media really works and how the news gets made. today is a special edition, a chance to critically examine president trump's relationship with the press at the one-year mark. our alternative facts the new normal? are partisan extremes here to stay? and what's the significance of all the leaks to news outlets this year? and later, it's the one end of the year list that you don't want to end up on. politifact's top editor is here to share the lie of the year. i want to take you back in time. so much has happened