>> hello, i am james barrett and i would like to thank everyone for inviting me here and i think

this is such a great story. we remember when books were only sold in bookstores. so to me a kind of captures the wild mysterious bookstores that i knew when i was a kid. [laughter] that such a rich experience and that is what this one is. and obviously it is such a great meeting place for people. so i want to thank people for inviting me today. i have written a book about artificial intelligence and my job and i've made a lot of friends that you might have seen on the national geographic channel on pbs and some are available also on netflix and i became interested in artificial intelligence and that is what i am here to talk to you about

tonight. artificial intelligence, what it is, and what i think as far as a lot of researchers and makers think that is being developed in the wrong way. and i really believe this conversation is the most important conversation of our time. and so let's begin with this. what is artificial intelligence? well, it is the development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally would wire human intelligence and visual perception and etc. it is the whole idea because by and large what we know much about, it is human intelligence and human intelligence is both a subject of study and the tool which we try to penetrate and it is the most inward looking of any of the sciences that

involves technology, neuroscience, medical statistics and a lot more on top of programming and computer science. it makes us ponder what it is we are looking for when we have human cognition in machine. so what do humans do and what are you? what is intelligence? and there's a lot of different intelligence in this research and we have the ability to achieve goals and a variety of novel environments and to learn, and there's a lot packed into that definition. it's as intelligence is goal oriented and so if it's not doing something, it's not just plain intelligence. it also should be mobile although that is a point of contention, whether or not it

needs a body. because if you cannot move around, there's no way of really testing it. to move around you need some sort of body and you must learn from experience and this is a really important one for us. those animals come with the ability, whatever we have, and we can learn new languages and etc. and nothing like the skill of human sense because of our intelligence. i have been a part of this for several decades and then i got bitten by the bug and i was working for the learning channel back when it was the learning channel. and as many assume about artificial intelligence, i interviewed the man who is my hero at the time. ray criswell is a pioneer of speech recognition technology and many other inventions that have been called the thomas edison of our time. he is the man that really coined

the term singularity and so he is now the chief engineer at google in charge of their projects about the brain and most people think that reverse engineering of the brain is the fastest way to create artificial general intelligence, which is human level intelligence. and that maybe something that you want to look into. it is quite fascinating and i won't go into it at much depth. i also got to interview another hero of mine back then, rodney brooks, who is the foremost proboscis of our time in the company he founded is called irobot. his general-purpose robot is called baxter and this includes being able to learn and do things in your home or in factories and he imagines them working on farms. right now, there are vacuuming

robots and they also make a lot of outfield robots as well and there is a debate going on right now that is a very important debate about whether or not battlefield robots should be autonomous or whether or not they should make the kill decision without the human input. and somehow joins with them and i will get to that later. ultimately, we will be taking to robots, they are small and they're going to help us go into a pure med that hasn't been asked orbit has a lot of rockfall saw the passages inside that we can't get through to comment that they will be executed eventually while we are there. the worst thing to do is to try to get a sense in what is the fastest way to the burial chamber and what is the overall layout look like. and honestly don't let the title of my book mislead you. but i really like robots and we

are talking about the time that is coming when we were share the time when machines are smarter than we are. books predict it will help us solve every medical problem facing us including general mortality. and after a while i interviewed arthur clarke. before he created and became a science fiction legend coming out a background in mathematics and physics and then he ran on to win every war for wards in science fiction. and he said intelligent machines will dominate us and to paraphrase what he said, it was something like this.

and he said that it is not because we're the fastest or most intelligent creature as humans, the only sure the world with greater smarter than ourselves, they will steer the future. that idea affected me and this was back in 1990. i started interviewing ai makers and robots as shortly after that. and to work out this idea as well. i decided to write a book. when i spoke with article authors on artificial intelligence and they agreed with the premises, most of the decisions will be made by machines and hundred years or so i began to ask follow-up questions. will that transition be firmly? will that be a handler or a takeover? will we change ourselves to become machines, which is criswell's the singularity, or

will we create sheens smarter than us and will they somehow replace a? what i learned is that if we proceed on the course that we are currently following, and i would like to explain why, we are creating intelligent machines that will develop their own drives, like resource acquisition and self protection. they will start off being our tool so the we can continue to exist at all. in my book is called "our final invention" the end of the human era. the book's thesis is developing a science for understanding smarter than human intelligence or is created or to be created. i spent writing the book running into a world of people who went always been driven to create machines. most scientists working at high levels have known that they wanted to create smart machines since they were teenagers and also children. and they burned without all their whole lives. also the people who are just as

determined to stop the recklessness and reckless development to advance ai. so i spent writing the book and it was the most intensely enjoyable part of my life. but it was also harrowing. because i went looking for fish and i found a whale. i found more bad news that i was really prepared to find. so how did we get from smartphones in our pockets to super intelligent machines that could threaten our? to let me ask you a question is a shorthand. do you think that scientists make a machinist mark is a human in a bouquet. so if not, then the problem is either too hard in an engineering sense, who thinks that intelligence is too hard and it could be a legitimate

problem, i mean, forever. perhaps over the next century. so the problem is either too hard or something that is magical or mysterious about the human brain that cannot be duplicated. who is on that side? and so less than 15% of those professionals that i spoke with believe that the problem is too hard. none think that if anything magical about the brain and engineering won't crack. being a ai specialists, they will think that. but i did a wider pool and combined them. but my conclusion is with them. there's nothing magical or unfathomable about the human brain and it will create human level intelligence and then beyond. so in that case if you are following that path, you might not have been aware.

but if you follow that, and it is just a matter of time, will it take 10 years or 100 years? if intelligence is a problem that can be solved, how long will it take them at their criswell has been very good at tracking technology progress. that is what he thinks we can mirror the nuances including the emotional nuances of the human brain as a machine. so according to some it is about 2045 that is the mean date. and the very outside they were specialists in nonspecialist is about 2200. and a nurse i intends was kind enough to do review this for the new yorker and he said about how long it will take. he said a century from now no one will care how long it took. what they will care about is what happened next. it is likely to machines the

machines will be smarter than us before the end of the century. and so in other words, will we be ready? will be have prepared ourselves? so even criswell, who is supremely optimistic, he believes in machine intelligence that will surpass our ability to understand it. but my question is how exactly will that happen. how will machines get smarter than? there is a simple theorem put out by good in 1965 and he is an unknown genius. he worked as a code breaker and what is coming up is what he said about this, and i will give you time to read it.

and i will give you 22nd street at. [laughter] and i will give you 20 seconds to read it. and so i like goode's formula. but we have already created machines that are better than us , like navigation and theorem improving and a lot of other things. there's a lot of better research and at that point we will be able to improve the capabilities very quickly and rhino software exists that it deserves experiments and make suggestions and hypotheses for further

experimentation. software that judges the quality of software. so software systems improves itself and it is within reach there are good attempt of you doing it right now if we of the theory of evolution and algorithms, there's a lot that we can do to improve the. end this is another thing. that is general intelligence that is 10 or 20 years away. and when that is self improving, it will be able to rapidly improve the intelligence and then we will share the planet with smarter than human machines. so that takes us back to the question of how we get along with them and what makes us assume that they will be friendly? select switch your when we talk

about watson. watson is an infant version is hard super technology that we are talking about. and i recommend a book called smart machines and it's not it's worth it though, but it lays out what cognitive computing really is. machines like this have those that are massively parallel like our brains and that means that they process a lot of instructions concurrently as we do and not one at a time. it helps us as it has to delete pages of definitions of commonsense knowledge. using this, watson beat the two remaining jeopardy champion and this was not a trivial challenge. this was harder than chess. and so it involves words and meanings and puns and knowledge

of everything from sports to movies to sign within an amazing collection of powers, recognition, decision-making, hypothesis generation and search. hypothesis generation is very important. we pick out faces in the crowd and we generate hypotheses and we statistically weigh them all the time. the question is, how long will this talk on and on. you could hypothesize 10 minutes for 40 minute and i will show you. what is watson doing today? well, he is being trained to take the federal article licensing exam. he is also performing a full diagnosis and he will be doing legal research and it won't be a consulting physician situation right away but it will be a physicians aid and they want to

license it so they can avoid certain kinds of liability. so how good of the cognitive functions -- and this is is an argument that i bring up those who say that ai hasn't been anywhere, that the dreams are big and the achievements are few. well, we know that the cognitive functions are pretty good one is are taking our jobs and competing in the job market. here's a short list of jobs where humans are being replaced by machines right now by ai and automation and automated in telogen. sportswriters, tell agents come of painkillers from a manufacturing jobs of all kinds, postal workers, clerical workers and the pharmacist. all of these are being computerized in the jobs the jobs are going away, soon to be replaced are medical diagnostic individuals, and they raise

driving and we will all be happier. this includes astronauts, pilot, software developers and the recent abuse at 45% is a conservative estimate as to how close is human intelligence in a machine to being attained? is so close to reaching this human level intelligence is number one for a lot of companies and governments. why would a lot of companies and governments pour billions of dollars into creating virtual brain's? and the answer is because an artificial brain at the price of a computer do the most lucrative product in the history of the world. an artificial brain at the price of a computer will be the most lucrative product in the history of the world. so it you imagine things with

brains working 24/7 on things like cancer research, weapons development climate modulation. imagine that product being offered by many companies among several companies to drive the price down. who would've thought that technology and one of want to be first to create that technology this is a short list of the people who pour billions of dollars into it. companies like google and other agents that the department of defense and the nsa and darpa. the european union does give a billion euros to a project called an engineer brain like that of google. very interesting things just happened which gave the people who are thinking about the risk a little bit of affirmation. it was just up by google for $400 million. the founders of deep mind,

including the individual writing about the risk for a long time before he became a millionaire, said that a condition of the sale will be that google sets up a board for ethics and safety governing their technology. this is a giant milestone or they are wanting that this is risky. they are also setting a high bar for future purchases so that once these guidelines get out, once those guidelines get out in the industry needs guidelines and all those who are thinking about these issues were just got smacked and pleased. so that is a great acknowledgment and these are issues that can hold up a 400 and 1 dollar sale. and if google doesn't support this board, if they don't

appointed, there are shareholders that have a lawsuit. and they will have to prove themselves in the court of public opinion as to whether or not they want to take this seriously. was the one thing that these groups have in common is that they know that the way that this works, ai will dominate the 21st century and this is its century. as we rely on machines for many things. most of the trades are carried out on wall street by those that rely on automated systems like water structure and our banking system that relies on this as well. so how do we jump to danger's?

well, because of this man. he is a major who is creating a science for how artificial intelligence will be behaving. his work is really important and to analyze this intelligence we are using the rational situation for economics. the rational theory includes humans or machines which worked to maximize these choices which makes them predictable. so when economists pose this, they quickly learn that we are not rational all the time. so you can't really base and economic system on the logical behavior of people. this is a we can probably anticipate smart machines will be logical and therefore in an economic sense. they also used self-aware and

self improving systems that develop drives cell production efficiency and creativity. how works is like this. self improve machines will perceive the goals that they have created whether that is to play chess stocks. exceed they will need resources or hardware or whatever is most expedient and they won't be satisfied with just trying to fill their goals, they will also seek to avoid failure like being turned off or unplug in other words they will protect themselves. they will be at ocean and they won't squander resources on a dual use their super resources to find great ways to achieve their goals and since improving this will be one winning route, they will grow their own intelligence.

and it doesn't imply the number ones with super intelligent and this includes using all available resources to achieve that goal. including virtually everything on the planet. and with super intelligence we have to look at better ideas than in pursuit of its goals they would logically seek to manipulate matter on a subatomic level that will solve the problems of nanotechnology and that is why was put like this. it doesn't love you or hate you but can be used for something else.

so it will not share our values by default, but we will create machines with immense power in this includes valuing human life and property. as it turns out that this is extremely hard. i'm in some parts of the world they are having a hard time defining humans doing clued women and children. so we declare that we want to be safe, if happiness is our goal, a powerful machine would stimulate our brain pleasure center. you can argue about what constitutes right and wrong and

never reach an agreement. but how can we program that into a machine? in addition it is contextual. slaveholding, crucifixion, it is different from that of the super intelligent. so you have to build on and it changes over time. and behaviors concept and these are the concepts that will keep us alive when we share a planet with human machines and it gets worse. so before we can figure how to make friendly machines, the darpa and the nsa tried to figure out what will happen if

they perform assassinations. so we have to think about what this is and what it really is. they are smart machines within five or six years the gold standard will be autonomous and it kills humans. they said by 203030% our forces should be robots. by 2030. and this is not just battlefield robots with humanlike machines. but jones and things that carry equipment. it will be robots and a lot of them will be autonomous killing robots. and so it is really just around

the corner. and this time it actually is. and the agi level intelligence of humans as a steppingstone to super intelligent and it's not only uncontrollable but those that are part of it. and so this illustrates how advanced technologies and innovation always runs far ahead of stewardship. so if you look at nuclear fusion, the science of nuclear reactors, it was dreamed about in the 1920s and 30s as a way to split the adam and get free energy. it cost $20 billion in today's economy to do that. there's a promising application

and then we spent the next 50 years with a gun pointed at his own head with a nuclear arms race. because there was no plan for maintenance. and that was a problem. and that is not a winning species adaptation. it will fail with the most sensitive and dangerous technology and that is ai. and is there a solution? certainly not a foolproof one. so in the 1970s researchers worked on us that a meeting in california and they came out with some basic guidelines that might contaminate the environment.

and they are modified and improved. this will prevent bad accidents from happening as far as we know. and it will help us to benefit. the ai needs to have more guidelines. we also need to monitor research and that cost a lot of money. but i'm not certain that this will exist without some kind of terrible accident. i am a little bit hopeful that people will see this and really get it. before we suffer an accident. and so i am glad that you have tuned in to this conversation and i am happy to answer any questions. [applause]

>> you equate this and do you think there is a difference between the two women. >> i think there is a difference between the two. for a computer to be self aware, it doesn't need to be having consciousness the way we understand it. and we have to have a model of itself and it has to know are pretty deep level to be self-aware. software for a computer. and all the other cognitive points.

>> what have you factored in with the possibility that someone equally as smart as the developers and programmers who are smart but fallible, that they are going to come up with the technology to thwart artificial intelligence. if you turn your computer on within 10 minutes without antivirus software is going to be affected and have you thought about that. >> that's an interesting thought. there will always be summer tourism and really strong dollar. one of the things i worry about is the nexus of nowhere and ai. it was a pretty good example. as we will see more ai programmers doing this. and i will worry about that relationship when it comes to the energy grid.

and it's like we have to think about this is a guerrilla campaign, but i do think it is possible. >> you are looking for two types of safeguard, is that right? >> the ai community is getting the sense. they want safeguards, and we want safeguards. it seems like the cat is out of the bag. >> once you get to super intelligence, it will be

ungovernable. so there is a group that i would like everyone to look at some point called the intelligence research institute in california and they're coming up with ways to try to program that and that means creating a and creating it in a way that is creating it safely from the get-go and they are trying to learn lessons from industrial process is and now you can take this and you would think that it is not even intelligence. and there's normal accidents and it's about complexity and industrial development and we are taking a lesson from that. how to start from the ground up.

there are $400,000 and darpa has a black budget of $50 billion. so who's going to win that race? and we are very happy to work with that and especially somehow that the conversation feel that it protects them.

>> you know, there is this bias that we impute this in our computers relayed to us and i saw a robot ones at mit kismet and i don't know he saw video of kismet. so when you are with the good guys get big. and they are able to look at the program and figure out what all its reactions were and this is part of afghanistan problem.

if you are smarter, would you spend more time and this is an emotional part of this machine. >> i found it fascinating on a number of levels. and if you feel that down even deeper and there are a lot of the questions raised. and i wondered if i was reading it whether you had the opportunity to either reese urged or interview about this, about what is the nature of consciousness and cannot ultimately be reduced. >> i know that he has the chapter that i'm turning to now.

and the people that think that real consciousness is part of this. and we have read about these vibrations and i'm fascinated by that sending out letters to the competition of those neuroscientists saying what you make of this and waiting to hear because i think it's very exciting and interest in and who's to say that he is not right. and we can skip over this with

the consciousness and probably get to a really strong level of human intelligence and then we have even less situations that are more slippery than include a moral sense into it. and then we spent the time holding ourselves ransom for many years. >> i'm just curious how quickly will they focus on the key obligation as opposed to artificial intelligence. >> when you talk to rick was well, he's not my hero anymore, but you can't help but admire this woman and i wish he were

not painting such a rosy picture. then it will be said. and so we are sure that there are psychopaths among us are that were not so sure that there are psychopaths among the computers yet. and the people that will get augmented will probably be older spurs. they are not dumb, but they are not pessimists either. >> so i was wondering if you think during this research done

on. >> this is the reaction we get from humanlike. >> yes, but we notice what is wrong with the more than what is right. >> i get that way with some people. [laughter] >> they seem very lifelike. and i think that we will experience that. but i hope we get to that point and i think that it is what we should do worried about. and of course we are going to put it up in robot bodies in user for battlefields and other things. so i think we will experience a and i think if we make it that far we may start to prefer. and we might jump right over it. >> yes?

>> is very simplistic and that i shared with you earlier that is when a lot of big things were being created with very simple programs and we were not programmers but we are actually working on the printing press and we used to sit back and pick up the other stuff coming off of the printer to look at it and read it. and we could pick out who wrote what there was a book called the tomorrow makers and then he says

and there are a lot of algorithms and there is possibly the sensibility of a personality of the program and encoding reforming the intelligence. >> yes. >> better than a lot of the people thinking about the rest, this is what shocked me when i was speaking with him, they accepted that there were a lot of human machines that would come along and replace us. so their goal is they would stick to that and still in those machines something of rsn and our nature to carry on. and so they have sort of accepted that this is the kind of personality embedded in the code and what is an immense part of the fascinating things is

that they are asking about this and what it is and if we can't survive in at some point it will be hard to tell who is winning and losing. so they are skipping past that the goes out and explored the galaxy so that somehow our essence will be preserved. >> i'm not sure how relevant it was to some of your interviews, but do you think that religion will be preserved through the machine at any point? you think that they will ever find it relevant? >> i don't think so. but there is a woman whose work is really fascinating. and she is a computer theologian and she was the first one at mit and she was writing about that sort of issue.

and they will testament another part of the sacred text. will computers developed religion and asked her to wonder? >> that's a good question. >> we came across the descriptions of people who lacked emotion and there are certain individuals and these are the drives and these are the intelligence to do things and evening to you can duplicate the

drive as well as intelligence? >> that's a great question. i think that based upon what he has written, he's such a positive guy and he has some of the scariest prognostications that i know. and i think that he sees that they will be goal driven because one of the definitions is really about achieving the goals in a variety of environments. >> and he says that what we might have, we have basically that we need to satisfy and it's kind of a higher level. i guess his answer would be that those machines would be driven by goal for film and not emotion. >> by goal driven you mean

competitive? >> in chapter five and six there are prognostications about the future and they will be competing for the same resources and ultimately with us and they will be looking for not just present threats and self protection but future threads so what is assessing the dangers of what could be a threat in 50 years or a thousand years. >> it's like a huge super mover advantage like chess and that is why people say why can't you just unplug the machine. well, we could, but here's what i'm thinking and talking about on behalf of the nsa time happy to do anytime.

google won't unplug it because ibm won't unplug it and they say, gosh, i hope this turns out right. because they're such a great product at the and. >> there is concern raised by some scientists and i have decided to take a chance. >> yes, on all of our behalf. >> yes, that is the nature of technology. and if they got good news that china is on the brink of it, they felt like there was a brink of things. and we have to sometimes think

about getting their sooner than what we think. so i think some people want to get home and we should probably wrap up. but thank you so much for coming. thank you for buying the book and think you were taking part in this conversation. [applause] >> thank you, james barrat, that was fascinating. we are so happy that you came tonight. we do have copies of his book, "our final invention", if you would like to take it home and get it signed tonight. once again, thank you for coming tonight and hopefully we will have a lot more conversations about this in the next 15 years. sumac thank you for having me. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]tand, r

the mind". [applause] >> this is such a great introduction. sometimes, all of these introductions can backfire. recently new york magazine voted me as one of the 100 smartest people in new york city.

and i thought, what an honor. but in all fairness i have to admit that madonna also made that same list. let me talk about yogi berra. he once said prediction is awfully hard to do, especially if it's about the future. well, i am a physicist and so let me quote from that other great philosopher. woody allen once said that paternity is an awful long time

especially towards the end. and you may think what is a business know about the mind. what does he know about daily life? well, we are the ones who invented the transistor and we helped to assemble the first computer and the internet and we wrote the worldwide web. so along the way we reinvented television. we invented x-ray machines and we created and we physicists love to make predictions. we helped assemble the internet, one physicist predicted that that internet will become a form of high culture and high art and high society.

and then 50% of the internet will be [bleep] and many may say to yourself how does physics deal with chemistry or the other scientist? well, let me tell you a little story. during world war ii once the nocturnes captured a bunch of american scientists and they call them spies and said that they were about to be executed by firing squads, there was a geologist and a physicist and chemist is about to be shot and they lined them up and then just as they were about to do this,

the geologists say, earthquake, earthquake. and they were lined up in a firing squad and then suddenly the physicist said that in the chaos they snuck away and now the chemical camdessus says fire, fire. [laughter] and sometimes it just doesn't pay. so anyway, today i want to talk about the future of the mind. ever since i was a child i have been fascinated by two things and first i have been fascinated by outer space and the origin of the universe and that is what i

do for a living and i have also been fascinated by what lurks on your shoulders, which is the most complex object in the known universe and if we were to create a computer that can stimulate the brain, the computer will be the size of a city block and energy would require a nuclear power plant to fire it up in a river to cool it down. but your brain operate on 20 watts of power. so when someone calls you a dim bulb, that is a compliment. [laughter] and you don't need a nuclear power plant to energize your brain, just a hand to her is fine. so how is it possible? well, my latest book is now

number one on "the new york times" bestseller list. and so i am not the only one fascinated by the mind because the book is now the number one hardcover book in the united states. my previous book is also a bestseller of the future and they tell me this is the first time in world history that the word is a country "the new york times" best dollar less. and i did it twice. and i even go 500 years into the future where we have starships and teleportation and maybe even time travel and answer the question what happens if you go into a time machine and go back in time to meet a teenage mother and she falls in love with you.

so if you are a teenage mother who falls in love with you before you're born, you are in big trouble if that happens. and so the origin of the universe and what is seen on his shoulders. last year the politicians got wind of the excitement and we have learned more in the last five to 10 years about the mind than in all of human history combined. president barack obama last year got wind of this and announced the brain initiative just like the human genome project and change the course of medicine and obama announced this

initiative with the europeans. ..

recording memories, uploading memories, photographic imagery. believe it and not, we can do all of the above. and you will see that in today's slide show. when i was a kid i used to read people's minds. i would try real hard to move objects with the mind. i finally came to the conclusion that maybe there are to tell paths that walk the surface of the earth, but i was not one of them. and then in science fiction is, of course, it is full of tell paths. these are things that we cannot do and a lot. things we can only dream of we now do. and even recorded memories and uploading that note, hollywood is always ahead of us. this is the movie the matrix

where even reality the reality itself as a memory couple loaded into the mind. so let me ask you a question. just before you go to sleep have you ever had that we've sensation that maybe, maybe life is an allusion, maybe it is just a memory uploaded into your mind like the matrix and u.s. the only one it's real. and since some sense someone is testing you to see whether you are smart enough to figure out the you are the only real one. ever had that weird feeling? raise your hand if you ever had that feeling. while. you're crazy. [laughter] you think your the only one in the universe? give me a break. you see, i am the only one in the universe. [laughter] i'm sitting in my bed right now.

this is just a memory uploaded in the mind. i'm just all by myself. well, hollywood, of course, as always ahead of us. when it comes up loading memories no one can do it better than the former governor of california. [laughter] the former governor of california has the memory of being married to a sharon stone uploaded in his mind. look what happened a.m. this is still recall. and in total recall arnold schwarzenegger's the good guy for 99 percent of the movie. you identify with them. he's a hero. and the last minutes of the film you find out he's actually the bad guy with good guy memories uploaded. it's the only movie and no where he is both a hero and villain simultaneously. and then we have iron man comics and the movies, exoskeletons.

we can now do this in a laboratory. in fact, the pentagon realize that there are thousands of wounded warriors who are not connecting directly to mechanical arms and exoskeletons bypassing the spinal cord totally. we cannot do this and laboratory. and then why not live on life through an avatar, a surrogate. surrogates have perfect bodies. they are superhuman in strength. they are perfect, gorgeous. one out live on life through a surrogate or in avatar. this could be the future of the space program. aerospace is dangerous. ever seen the movie with sandra bullock? space is dangerous. so why not send a robot in the aerospace gutted by you and you

are in your hearts of many living room. you mentally control robot master not. nasa is looking into this possibility. and then i used to dream about telekinesis, moving objects with the mind. this is the movie carry where a telekinetic is bullied all her life. finally she can't take it anymore, so at the senior prom she destroys the entire high-school. what is a lesson here? the lesson here is never take a telekinetic to the senior prom. and then superman, the iconic figure of the comic book. hollywood is right there again. every kid knows this superman's father died when krypton blew up. but the latest movie has a twist you see, in the latest movie superman's father is reduced to

a computer program. his connect town, his mind, his pathways of the brain are encoded in a computer program, and because back to life as russell crowe. [laughter] russell crowe is a hologram, a hologram that has all the memories, personality quirks, all of the expressions of superman's father costs. is this possible? this could be the end product of president barack obama's brain initiative. we will have a disk called brain two. zero. a brain two. zero that lives on even after we die. and then the question is, can the mind exist without the body? 200, 300 years ago people thought that the spirit, the soul was different from flesh and blood. then we have modern science which tells us, no, no, no.

you see, the brain is what we're like hardware. the brain is computer well aware, and the mind the software . the mind is software running on where. you see. if we can put the mind on a desk, the connect on, this billion dollar project of president barack obama that in some sense the mind can be separate from the body just as the ancients once thought. but let's talk about science. that was hollywood. now let's talk about science. because the physics weekend now appear right into the thinking process of the mind. with mri scans we can actually see potts ricochet across the mind like a ping-pong ball. we can actually see mental illness in action. this is a brain scan. on the left is the brain when you tell the truth.

the right areas berbers and blood flow which is easy to measure of the mri scan. when you tell the truth and nothing happens. when you tell a lie first you have to know the truth. then you have to create dalai. then you have to calculate the consistency of the line with all the other lies you been telling all these years. that's a lot of brainpower. your brain lights up like a christmas tree. and now if you take a look at the brain and we get it from the point of view of evolution. our brain is like a museum. look at the back. the back part of the brain is the most ancient part of the brain called the reptilian brain. when you're in a car accident and you get whiplash sometimes lose your sense of balance. this is the most ancient part of

the brain, the reptilian brain. in the middle is the monkey brain, the brain of emotions, the brain of social hierarchy, hunting in a packed, forming coalitions, understanding the intentions of the people. that's the center. the front of the brain is the thinking brain, that is the brain of humans. now that we have brain scans weekend test old wives' tales to see whether these old wives' tales about the mind of turnout. for example, many people, many parents when they look at their teenage children are thoroughly convinced that teenagers are brain damaged. yes. teen-agers are brain damaged. you can actually see it on brain scans. it's amazing. a freak -- prefrontal lobe is not fully formed and teenagers. so the next time you argue with a teenager's you know, his brain

damaged. another old wives' tale is that when a man talks to a pretty girl. now is true, you look at a brain scan of a man talking go pretty girl and blood drains from the prefrontal cortex. wind at retarded, stupid, it's absolutely true. you can see that with brains scans. so old wives' tales can now be tested against science. and then if you were to cut the brain horizontal you have to hemispheres. on the left and right. different parts of the mind are connected in different parts of the body. if you electrify this part of the brain it does not heard of all. the brain has no pain centers. the brain can not feel pain. here it is part of the brain with the lecture done your opposite hand moves.

you hit this with electricity and this part of your hand moves. now, it turns out that in epileptics we have to cut the connection between the left and right hemispheres. and then something bizarre, something mysterious begins to happen. when you cut the connection between the left and right hemisphere gradually to personalities began to emerge, to different minds in the same brain began to emerge. we see this. all of a sudden you want to do one thing with their hand and then your other and goes like this. in one documented case one half of the brain was an atheist. the other half of the brain was a believer. in the future i'm sure there were going to find a brain, one-half as republican. [laughter] and the other half is democrat.

can you imagine going to the polling booth and you have to hit the switch. of a sudden there's a of struggle between the left and the right over pulling down the switch. yes. this could actually happen because we now have a brain scans, not just superstitions, about the mind. now, and the old days back in the 1950's he had to put on this awkward helmet. he looked like a refugee from star trek. all these electrodes. we don't do that anymore because we have computers. computers allow us to decipher all of this mishmash of radio that comes out of the mind. in fact, and the future these brands cans will be sexy. on the upper left children can now play video games mentally. they put on a headband. the headband picks up radio from the mind and they control and avatar inside a video game.

on the right is what is happening in japan. in japan you put a headband on your head at a party and it as two years on a. when you talk to someone his interest the years go like this. when you talk to a debt, our real loser, then your years go like that. and so with this said said you can know ahead of time for going to go mullen nine. and i think i'm going to give these to my students in college. i will see all my students. and if there's an a here. another ray. so we can do this now. this has gotten the attention of apple computers and microsoft. they're looking into this. on the lower left. maybe one day you will simply control the laptop by thinking.

the headset will pick up radio from the brain, computers will decipher the signal and move the cursor. you can already type, we can already type by the power of the mind because computers can now deciphered with your thinking about. and one day it could be sexy. all of a sudden fashion models, people that are at the forefront of high fashion will start to wear these things well. it will be fashionable to control computers as well. in fact, and the future wonder when you walk into a room you may mentally turn on lights, mentally set the thermostat, mentally turn on the tv the mentally call for the car and mentally drive the car just by thinking about it. this is my colleague, stephen hawking, the great cosmologist. he has now lost control of the spenders. he can only blank.

that's all he can do. but "we did was put a chair in his glass. next time you see steven on television look at his right frame. there's a chip in his class. that chip picks up radio from his brain, converts it to signals and operates a laptop computer. so this is how steven now communicates with the world. but not just a laptop. why not an exoskeleton. this is what is being done at brown university, duke university. it put a chip ride on top of the brain. it doesn't hurt because the brain doesn't have any pain sensors. then this chip is connected to a laptop which then controls a wheelchair. this gentleman here had a stroke. he is a vegetable. he cannot scratch his nose.

he cannot talk. he cannot do anything with blank plank is the only thing we can do. and brown they put a chip and is running, connected it to a computer. he can now surf the web, reading now, right e-mail, play video games, do crossword puzzles to operate his wheelchair, operate household appliances, anything they you can do on a computer he can also do, and he is totally paralyzed. and we have now connected also at brown university this paralyzed woman to a mechanical arm. she also is totally paralyzed. she can only blank. now, when the connector to a mechanical arm she could pick up coca-cola for the first time in years and in scratcher knows. astor, how you feel. she blinked and plant and she

spelled out the words, i want robot's legs next. well, that is coming. the pentagon got wind of this, and they realize, no, my god, think of a blended warriors. no arms, no legs. what is our country doing for veterans? well, what they are doing is creating mechanical arms. mechanical arms are so sensitive that you can pick up an egg without breaking it. you can fist pump. you can high five. you can handshake. that is how delicate these arms are, built at johns hopkins university. not only that, but complete exoskeletons our next. we are calling to bypass the spinal cord for these people. think of the people who are injured because of car accidents, strokes, football accidents on the football field, hundreds of them, thousands of people who are partially or

fully paralyzed. we're going to make sure that they walk again by bypassing the spinal cord. now, at duke university there is one scientist from brazil. he is creating this exoskeleton for somebody who is totally paralyzed so that he can start the world cup soccer games in brazil. so the next time you watch the international soccer cup game in brazil they will be initiated by somebody who is a vegetable, totally paralyzed with an exoskeleton. and in japan they are looking at surrogate's, avatars' like the movie avatar. in the movie you are in a pond and you control mentally another being. this is now japan where we have our robot connected to a man with electrodes, and he controls the robot.

this could be the future of police work, firemen, emergency, people put their lives on the line for dangerous jobs. one not have a robot do it? and it could also be the future of education. surrogates will one day be in the classroom. this is a surrogate. it shows a picture of somebody who is sitting in bed. the teacher looks at the surrogate and sees the face of the people who is sick in bed. the people, in turn, sees an image of the teacher while astuteness sick. remember when we were young, we used to play hockey. those were the good old days. they are gone. isn't the future wonderful? you will never be able to play hockey again because the teacher always knows every single day, there is the surrogate right there in that chair.

and the brain is connected to the guys, so why not use the eyes as a direct way to input information into the brain. this is the future of the internet. the future of the internet is to be in your contact lens. you blink and you go on line. and you are the first people to buy internet contact lenses? college students taking final examinations. [laughter] my students will blank can see all of the answers to my exam right there in front of them. and the second person to buy and to have contact lenses? president barack obama sorry doesn't have to have these stand teleprompter is giving his speech whenever it gives a speech. who is the third person to get intimate contact lenses? vice-president joe biden so he never says anything to fear again.

[laughter] and valentine's day, think of all of the romeo's who were time tied that can't say roses are red, violets are blue. think of all the romance in can't get up palm off the ground for their loved one. in the future all the time tied romeo's love beautiful words emanating from there now is right out of a poetry book because it is right out of a poetry book. nasa is interested in this because astronauts in outer space have to see the blueprint. there is no blueprint. they will see the blueprint right there in nearbys. these glasses, these contact lenses, by the way, will also recognize people's faces. when you bump into somebody will always know who they are. how many times have you been at a conference like this and bump into somebody and say, i know this person, i know this.

jim, john, jake. to is this person. in the future your contact lens will say it's jim stupid. [laughter] you want to see his complete biography next to his name? every time there's a meeting here at rainy day bucks. that's a you're looking for a job. you're at a cocktail party and you know there are some very important people at that cut to a party, but you don't know who they are. in the future you well know exactly due to suck up to any cocktail party. has been and lives will connect there contact lenses together. how many times as the husband or wife, shopping and bought the wrong thing. go back and returned at apple. the apple is run. in the future you will see what your husband or wife is seeing in say, no, don't buy that apple, by this instead. and so surrogates so surrogates will repair damaged reactor's like

fukushima, put out fires, explore outer space and you will be in a hot tub mentally controlling these gadgets. so computerized prosthetics will enhance the human body. and next is unloading memories. this was once considered science fiction but now we do it. last year at wake forest university in north carolina and los angeles they changed a mouse to drinkwater from a bottle and then they recorded the memory in the hippocampus, the hippocampus is the red thing in the middle of the brain. they recorded that memo we. later the mouse forgot but then they reasserted the tape recorder back into the hippocampus and bing go, the mouse remembered. this is the first time in world

history, just last year, we recorded a memory and played it back, a bloated that memory into a mouse. very soon we will record memories of a monkey perhaps eating a banana, record it and shoot it back in and the monkey will remember everything that it forgot. next, alzheimer's patients. we are going to create a brain pacemaker for alzheimer's patients, that is the short-term goal. we are going to create a button, you push the button and the memory of who you are, to your children are, where you live, will be inserted back into your mind and who knows? even beyond that maybe you will push a button and insert the memory of a vacation that you never had. or you are a college student, think of all the courses you

flunked in college. maybe you will be able to upload some of that information and workers who get laid off because of technology, maybe they will upgrade their skills not by going to a community college but by simply uploading the memory. so the hippocampus is the gateway to memory. the hippocampus was damaged, you cannot form long-term memories. there is a side case. his hippocampus was damaged in surgery. hello, how are you comment and he would forget that he met you. and start all over again, hello, how are you, and he would do this for decades. for decades he would repeat the same memory over and over again.

late in life he saw himself in the mirror and he was shocked to see an old man, he said that can't be me, i am a young man, and then he would forget the memory of seeing himself as an old man and go back to saying hello, how are you? two hollywood movies were created about him. one is 51st date with drew barrymore and the other is groundhog day with bill murray and then the question is can you photograph of fog? normally you would say what is more of femoral, fleeting than a thought? at berkeley where i got my ph.d. you could do it. the brain scan converts the image of your mind into $30,000.

that is an m r i machine, very awkward, can't brain scan yourself every day but on the right is the world's smallest am are i machine, only this big. uses supercomputers to compensate for a weak magnetic fields and according to the laws of physics, how small can you make 8 huge mri machine? the answer is according to the laws of physics you can make m r i machines this big. yourself alone will have more computer power than a university hospital tuesday. your medicine cabinet will have more medical knowledge and a university hospital today. here is how we do it, take the brain, put it in the mri stand and the computer spits out 3,000.com each represents electrical activity of the

brain. software program analyzes these dots and these are some of the first pictures of a thought. on the left is steve martin. next to it is the image of steve martin as seen through your brain. it is not perfect because it is only 30,000 dots. up picture may have a million pixels but the fact that we can do this at all is amazing. this is a picture of an elephant, a person and an airplane and the computer image generated by a computer. then you put this in the mri machine and have him go to sleep and when he sleeps he dreams and the computer program just keeps on going. the first crude pictures of a dream came out last year. in the future you may wake up,

push a button and see the dream you had the previous night and in germany they did something amazing. according to old wives' tale, some of us have lucid dreaming abilities. we are conscious when we dream. we can actually change the course of a dream. we know we are dreaming while we are dreaming. this is called lucid dreaming. how many people in this audience had ever experienced any dream even once where you knew you were dreaming? it turns out this old wives' tale is true. in germany last year they brain scan date lucid dream and he controlled the direction of his dream and we followed its with an m r i scan. is absolutely true. maybe one day leonardo

dicaprio's movie inception is not so far-fetched after all. and then the big one, mental illness. this is why president barack obama and european union want to dump $1 billion to find out how the brain is miss wired. it turns out the leading figures, actors, actresses suffered from bipolar disorder. on the upper left is margot kidder who became famous as lois lane. several years ago, homeless, stark naked, hiding behind garbage cans and it was revealed she suffers bipolar disorder as many actresses and famous actors suffer. we can brain scan these people and we cannot cure them but we

understand how mental illness forms to a degree. schizophrenics hear voices. if you want to see a schizophrenic just go down town. will see people talk to themselves. that is classic schizophrenia. when you brain scans these people you find something very interesting. the left part of your brain generates voices. you talk to yourself. we all talk to ourselves all the time but the fun part of your brain, is aware of it and these people when they have voice is racing through their minds, the left part of their brain lights up but the front part of the brain is unaware of it. in other words they are talking to themselves without their permission or their knowledge so if you one day heard a voice inside your brain outside your

conscious control you think you are going crazy. that is what we have here. we can seen that in these people and we cannot even go into history, joan of arc was perhaps one of the most legendary figures in all of ancient history, a teenager who changes the course of a war, changes the course of european history because she says she talked to god. it turns out there are legions in your brain, some of them, 10%, 20% become hyperreligious, you see ghosts, demons everywhere and we think perhaps the profits of old got hit in the head and begin to see ghosts, demons everywhere. everything joan of arc, induce this artificially, you could put

on a helmet, radio duplicating this effect and you feel you are in the presence of god. this is called a dog helmet where you put on the helmet and feel you are in the presence of god. scientists being scientists decided to put a nun and atheist inside the helmet to see if you could change their beliefs. they chose richard dawkins for the atheist. richard dawkins, the atheist biologist put on the helmet and a nun put on the helmet and asked does this change your religious beliefs? richard dawkins says no, still an atheist. asked the none does this change your belief? the fact you can induce religious feelings and she said no. god created us with a telephone. telephone in our brains so that

we could communicate with god. so the scientists were unable to change anyone's religious beliefs. some days you can't win. and the question is, what about supergenius? what about people who are off scale? have fantastic photographic memories? artistic and mathematical abilities? turns out there was a boy with a bullet going through left temporal lobe, a man who dove into a swimming pool, hit the left side of his head, and both of them became supermathematical geniuses. this is often documented, acquired savant behavior. after a today's talk to not pick up a hammer. do not hit yourself on the left temporal lobe.

thinking you will become a genius afterwards. some of these people have photographic memories that we have analyzed. take a helicopter ride over manhattan and draw the entire stock of the manhattan harbor, new york harbor from memory, he did it for hong kong, london and new york city. when you go to jfk airport and land at the american airlines terminal you will see this huge mural. every detail perfect drawn from memory by this man who had one helicopter ride over manhattan. how do you do this? if you can do it we can do it. we are not that different from these people so how is it? we are not sure but one theory is when you have a memory, we

used to think the memory decayed with time, it gets old, it wears out and disappears. we don't think that any more. we now believe that forgetting is a very complicated biochemical process. in these people their brain records but the forgetting mechanism is broken. they have forgotten how to forget. therefore they remember everything. you can ask them what were you doing in 1954 at 4:00 in the afternoon on may 2nd and they will tell you what they were doing at that time. amazing. and then we have the question of astrovision, true genius, isaac newton, the greatest scientist who ever lived. einstein said that and he was a

very strange person. he couldn't have smallpox, he couldn't cit chat with you. he would be horrible added dinner conversation. you would not want to invite isaac newton for dinner and if you want to see someone with as burgers syndrome just watch the big bang theory on cbs television. these people estranged. they don't make eye contact, as they have conversations when it comes to women just like on the big bang theory but the greatest nobel prize winners suffered from asberger's syndrome and two geniuses of modern times, albert einstein. did you know we have einstein's brain? when einstein died in 1955 the doctor who did the autopsy kidnapped the brain without anyone's permission, took the

brain home and put it in a cooler for 30 years and sitting in his living room underneath some books for 30 years. one day he went across country and put einstein's brain in a mayonnaise jar, over decades, this is a piece of history. and he took it home and didn't know what to do with it. now at princeton university, in my book i have a chapter analyzing the greatest brain of modern times, but what about sigmund freud? believe it or not, we can now read analyze sigmund freudian psychology from a modern point of view. segment freud many people think was a crackpot, crazy, superego, id, unconscious mind, how do you measure those things? now we can with brain scans.

you can see that there is the pleasure center, a center of the brain. there is a libido. a part of the brain that governs pleasure like sigmund freud said. if you take a mouse and hook electrodes to the nucleus, the pleasure center, and telegraph key, the mouse will hit the telegraph key twice a second until starved to death. dogs, cats and even up to adulthood. they hooked a dolphin up to the pleasure center, when a dolphin swam forward it would hit an electrode that stimulated its pleasure center. the dolphin was hit the electrode twice a second and tilt the dolphin realize i am buying. i will die. i am starving to death. then the dolphins stopped, got

some food and came back. dolphins are not stupid after all. then the question is consciousness. so many people have written about this thing called consciousness. 20,000 papers have been written about consciousness. never in history of science have so many written so much to produce so little. i have a new theory of consciousness i put in the book. i don't have time to get into it but i believe animals have consciousness, our consciousness is different from animals but even dogs, cats, i think, are conscious. how many people have a cat at home? when you come home the cat comes up to you and purrs and goes up to your leg and you say that is a nice catch, how affectionate, wrong. if you were to scan the brain of a cat the cat will be thinking

this human is mine. i own this human. i am going to put my hormones on this human's leg so other cats cannot come on my territory. in fact i trained this human, this human feeds me twice a day, good human, good human. that is what is going on in the cat's consciousness. why are cats loners? why did they come and per next to you and disappear by themselves? because they are defended -- descended from the wild cat? a solitary hunter. they do not hunt in packs at all. they are used to being alone. they want to be alone. how many people in this room have a dog? even more. when you come home the dog jumps at you and slobbers all over you. why? because the dog thinks that you

are a dog. you are the alpha dog. they are the underdog because dogs are pack animals. they happened in groups. there is a pecking order. to eat first? the alpha male. who eats last? the delta mail. that is why dogs are called man's best friend. they think you are a dog. why did dogs like to be with people? because they are pack animals. they like to hunt in groups. i think however is that the cuban state of consciousness is the thermostat. one unit of feedback. that is what i call one unit of consciousness. even thermostats' i believe are conscious. the unit of consciousness is a thermostat, a flower has ten units. it registers water, sunlight,

gravity, moisture, carbon dioxide. of flour may have ten units of consciousness and in the back of your brain is the reptilian brain, it understands space. it knows where it is located. that is level i consciousness, space. didn't do stand its location in space. level ii consciousness, monkey consciousness, the monkey brain located at the center of your brain, this is the brain of the motion, social hierarchy, the brain of pecking order and then level iii, what makes us different? we see the future. animals do not. animals have no conception of tomorrow. they don't plan for tomorrow. when it gets cold they hibernate because it is instinctive.

when it gets cold we pack our bags, winterize our home, fret about all sorts of things, we see the future. we daydream. we plan. strategizing. animals don't. animals have no conception of time, no conception of tomorrow. if this theory is correct, i have to explain everything about the mind including things as the femoral as humor. you may say to yourself humor is so spirituals that you will never be able to explain it in a theory of consciousness. i don't think so. why is a joke funny? a joke is funny because you hear something and you complete the ending. your brain is a prediction machine. it constantly predicts the

ending. you have no choice. when you hear a joke your brain completes the ending and when you hear the actual ending it is different and you laugh and that is why things are funny. for example, teddy roosevelt was one of the gaza mongers of the white house, loved gossip and is famous for saying, quote, if you have nothing good to say about other people then please come and sit next to me. w. c. fields was asked a question about young people. educating young people and are you in favor of clubs for young people and w.c. fields said and i in favor of clubs for young people? yes but only if kindness fails. the bible says -- the bible says do unto others as you would have them do unto you excepted do it

first. why are these called funny? when you hear the expression your mother taught you, that if you don't have anything nice to say about somebody, then don't say anything at all. you complete the thought. you have no choice. your brain is a prediction machine but then when the punch line is then comes sit next to me it is funny because you didn't expect that. i say even humor can be understood in my theory of consciousness. we are running out of time so i will skip the discussion of robots other than to say robots are level i. robot of like alligators, not much more intelligent than alligators. slowly we're beginning to create emotional robot but robots are still pretty stupid. the most defense robot is built in japan. it can run, walk like a little

boy. the world's most events robot can even dance. he dances much better than me. i have done a number of tv specials, he dances better than me every time. i interviewed for bbc, the creator of the world's most of fans robot and asked the inventor how smart, how smart is the world's most advanced robot? he said on camera, my creation is as smart as a cockroach, a retarded cockroach. lobotomize, stupid, retarded cockroach. we have a long way to go before robots become smarter than us. let me wind up by saying president barack obama has his brain initiative to create green 2.zero, a copy of the brain. to understand why it is ms.

wyatt, why do we have mental illness but if you can understand the wiring of the brain, then perhaps we will have a form of immortality. the question is when you died do you live forever? to paraphrase bill clinton it all depends on how you define the word you. are you what wear and software? if so, then when you die you die. or are you information? if so then information can double 18 months. this is more's law. this is the rate at which computers are growing in sophistication. when you get a birthday card in the mail, you open it up and it seems happy birthday to you. there is a ship in that birthday card. that shipped according to this chart has more computer power

than all the allied forces of 1945. hitler, churchill, roosevelt, to get that chip. we throw it away in the garbage. if hitler had that chip in 1940 we might all be speaking german here today rather than english. in 1969 we put two men on the moon. ever see those old grainy nasa tapes of mission control? according to this chart, they were 64 k processors. dinosaurs. yourself phone today has more computer power than all of nasa in 1969. you are not going to put me on one of those rocket ships and send me into outer space. it is criminal. we were shooting humans into

outer space with the power of one cellphone. the internet as a consequence will become a brain that. we will send a demotion, memories through the internet. can you imagine teenagers on facebook sending the emotions, experience of her first date, senior prom on the internet? the movies could have total immersion entertainment. not just a flat screen but total internal, total emotional content. perhaps in the far future, the next century, if we have a disk with your memories or thoughts on it perhaps we can send it into outer space. we can send it on not laser beam at the speed of light. this may be the way to explore

the galaxy, to send into outer space on a laser beam to explore the universe. let me close on a note and take some questions from the audience and sign your books. just remember after i signed your book you can go to ebay and make money and auction them off. let me end on one last note. i have a role model as a child. i idolized albert einstein. my favorite einstein story is this. when einstein was an old man he was tired of giving the same talk over and over again so one day the chauffeur said professor, i am really a part-time actor. i heard your speech so many times i memorized it. why don't we switch places, i will put on a mustache and a wig

and be the great einstein and you can be my chauffeur? on sign loved the joke so they switched places, this went along famously until one day a mathematician in the back asked a very difficult question. einstein thought the game is up but the chauffeur said that question is so elementary that even my chauffeur can answer it for you. thank you very much. i will take questions from the audience and then i will be happy to sign the book. you have been a great audience. [applause] >> thank you. sometimes for q&a you can make the questions as hard as you

want. please line up in order of the fashion and i will sign as many books as i can and have pictures taken as well. people are going to line up and we have microphones in the audience so here is your chance to talk about that. come gone up. >> i was wondering how far reaching you think the effect of fukushima are going to be on japan and the hawaiian islands and the rest of the pacific. >> the question is fukushima. how long will we experience the agony of three simultaneous meltdowns in northern japan? we have the answer. 40 years. according to the utility tokyo electric it will take about 40 years to begin to process dismantling the reactor.