tv Sophie Co. Visionaries RT September 5, 2019 11:00pm-11:31pm EDT
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united states could potentially be smuggling weapons to militants in syria according to legal documents obtained by a bold gallery in the journal. meets the leaders on the 2nd day of the eastern economic form of love also with the iran nuclear deal on the agenda. he speaks exclusively with the malaysian foreign minister on the sidelines of the forum he expresses his country's concerns over the probe into the downing of flight m.h. 70. some people will. be making a concede should the investigation was to. do with. it but at some point
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those who accuse a particular country. for the latest on the stories you can head to our t.v. dot com coming up astronomer martin reeses goes through with. me how i'm so feet share not same 1st 6 years of enjoyed thoughtful and honest conversation with global leaders and their crunch issues but today the bigger picture what is a catalyst that makes us take what matters today and what really matters tomorrow welcome to. visionary. the 21st century an era of mind boggling breakthrough but among all the solutions are there are dangers
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lurking and they are known how can we grasp all that science has to offer and still stay safe while i've talked to a lower march in. astronomer royal then amoret is a professor of cosmology and astrophysics at the university of cambridge. martin rees a pleasure having me on our program so we had all of the questions you know. many of your colleagues are actually were knowing that technology may help human race advance and thrive and prosper but it can also. hinder many things and hurt humanity in many horrible ways so why is it because where evil or technology or we're just too dumb to be interested with it well there is a huge and growing gap between the way the world could be the way the world is we depend very much on technology indeed the population which is double.
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couldn't all be said without the technology that we do cheesed longer life expectancy much better health and cetera so all these things are due to technology and of course we have a connected world. the internet and technology is but of course what is many of us is that these technologies if you will powerful. for not only can they provide more benefit but they open up new dangers. worried also about the downsides to take an example we know already that cyber attacks. kind of terrorism which can be very dangerous and. biology biological advances they need to know 70 exciting health benefits but also ethically
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jupitus ways of changing the human genome and also of course potential dangers of creating transmissible of. the dangerous technologies of those which unlike nuclear energy require just fairly small facilities access to a computer the cyber attacks or access to all be the bar free to do biological. issues so that is why it's very very hard to regulate and even if we have agreed international regulations as already have been developed for genetics and similar technology is forcing those regulations globally it's going to be very hard . just as hard as enforcing the drug laws globally with the tax laws globally we have that much excessive doing either of those and that's why i do worry that we will have a bumpy ride through this century because we can't really avoid having just
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a few people somewhere in the world who will. buy in tension or by misadventure create some a vent which could cascade globally and be a very serious setback but also i feel like a lot of the problem. and mishandling of the new technological progress is probably due to the pace of the progress because like before it would take one big breakthrough in technology but it would take a whole generation yes digest and now this breakthrough as had been every day every 5 minutes so it's like we can't really catch up with them we don't whether that's indeed the worry that these changes are happening faster than we can accommodate them and regulate against them that is. there's been a huge surge of developments in both biotechnology.
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intelligence and machine name and these are the ones that are hard to deal with but of course. all technologies advanced. and it was only 50 years between the 1st transatlantic flight. in 919. on the moon in 96 you know that was 50 years but in the 50 years since then in terms of space size in aviation things haven't changed now as we head back to the moon. the jumbo jet 1st flew in $96.00 you know so it could be that way going to a sort of on that level off again so we come to shoot the sauce just evolving technology will continue to evolve it's breakneck speed. you once wrote a book with a very optimistic tile our last century. 16 years on do you feel like your predictions are coming true or maybe you see the reverse process
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is yes well i think i was among the highlights the issues that the empowerment of small groups of individuals. inside is going to lead to new tensions new threats to governance and a growing tension between 3 things we want namely liberty security and privacy and i think that protection has been borne out. confronted by these concerns in my opinion but although i think we will have a bumpy ride through the century it's observation likely that we. just think that but i think we do need to worry about the control that these technology is in its how to regulate them but also it's depressing that the gap between the way things could be and the way things actually is so wide and possibly getting
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wider and what exactly do you mean they like the way things could be the way things are you mean like humans could be more in tune with the technology and more responsible with it and we're not and that's why the what exactly do you mean i mean that we could have that provides a decent life for all the 7000000000 people in it and at the moment we have a couple of 1000000000 in abject poverty and some people immensely wealthy and the fact that the richest 2000 people in the world have the resources to double the income of the bottom 1000000000 in the world and this is not happening is an ethical indictment and that's just one example because no technological evolution turns out can change a factor. of human greed no that is right but i think also we're going to have a self interest in trying to level these inequalities because if you think about africa population is growing faster in africa. in the world
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it's going to double between now and 2050. un projections it may double again between 20152102 the extent that nigeria will have a population of 900000000 which is equal to europe and north america combined is that what happens. stuck in poverty that would obviously be a. recipe for mass disaffection mass migration and conflict because the point is that in africa unlike a century ago. they may not have sanitation but they do have mobile phones they know what they're missing they're in touch for the rest of the world and unless we can reduce the gaps between those in the poorest parts of the world. those like us who are fortunate then i think we will have massive and continuing
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disaffection and conflicts and powered by these new technologies that make for pessimistic so i think we have not any ethical imperative but the self-interest imperative to do what we can to reduce these inequalities and help the countries especially those of africa the middle east to develop i'll tell you one other reason why we have to do this and that is that we know that the countries of east asia which benefited by cheap manufacturing by having wage levels lower than india over north america that gave a big boost to. south korea and countries like that that now has been kicked away because now with robots. even rich countries can do the manufacturing so countries of africa and. be least have the opportunity to head catch up which the so-called asian tigers had in the past
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and that's another reason why i think we need to worry we need to have international policies which try to level things between the different continents a lot of the nearest scientists that i've spoken to and cognitive psychologists they raise alarm because they're saying the. good amount of the problems that we're facing here as a humanity is this unfiltered huge amount of the information that internet gives assn and it develops with such a pace that our brains aren't. actually sit to today just deducing it's true. will is to have the basement digest many into fact. this is a i mean i don't agree with those people who has actually affecting the brain very much but it is making is that they hard for people to. views of what is important and what is. this is
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a sort of cultural which we need to be concerned about so. you are saying that the possible next evolutionary step will be for humans to morph into machines hey. this is very very far future i know i have machines carry on instead of humans one stair intelligent enough. why don't you believe humans will carry on and i mean with carried on for a 21st century for the better or for worse i do i think you've misinterpreted me i think that we will continue. and i hope we can regulate these new technologies but i do think that by the end of a century there will be a few well the crazy adventurers who may be living away from the. of course they would be ill adapted. to that habitats and so they would be the people who would have the incentive. the opportunity because their way through the regulators to. themselves so i think if we imagine some species
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emerging which is different from. those crazy people and not from us i think we want to preserve the earth as a habitats that human beings and we have whether it's that we don't believe in many of the. scientists saying that actually it's inevitable as becoming half machines because now we see like organs that can be replaced by machines and gradually human brain a great big chip is working on this so here this is. where we don't know this will happen but i think it's important that we should realize that we are adapted to living on earth. and actually we don't want to change very much i think it's often interesting to see what rich people choose to do when they have the choice the 2 things the 1st is they want to have beings to look after the robots
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they want carers and what that and also they often want to live. in the country in nature their country estate and things like that and so what people aspire to is to be in touch with nature and in touch with other human beings. given the choice. may be that most people never have the choice we should try and ensure that she was being asked about the human beings. going to take a break right now when we're bad we'll continue talking to the lord. astronomer. and astrophysics at the university of cambridge.
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after almost 2 decades of war and occupation american military involvement in afghanistan appears to be winding down a deal with the taliban will see majority of american troops still allowing a sizable contingent to remain just what exactly is washington political interest to be in afghanistan will america's longest ever. and we're back with lord martin rees martin many people who are actually working on
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artificial intelligence or self perfecting robots are telling me that it's just a matter of not even a century or 50 years we're talking about 10 years 15 years maximum 20 years when robots and machines will be doing most of our stuff and i'm thinking with the capable of doing it the question is do we want to do it we do very advanced things to protect. human race as a species but animals do that too but then what defines as humans are different things that we do like art that are we love where we know when we see the sun so you know. i'm just scared i'm thinking wake is that all when a day out with evolution are robots going to be. here. i think we've got to realize that. we do have distinctive human qualities and incidentally i think we
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can use. and off this intelligence provide a better life because a lot of people who have really mind numbing jobs working in warehouses or telephone cool centers and things like that and those jobs can be replaced by dignified well paid publicly funded jobs as people assistants to teachers in school custodians of public know some things like that which machines can do as well that'll be a plus so huge positive if the deployment of robots and technology is guided by human values you mentioned couple times crazy people going to colonize mars because of our mother and i think yeah we have just like we have. those who climb mountains and do other dangerous sports but they. i mean at the end of the day i'm thinking they may not even have
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a choice because we see that humanity exploding in numbers and efforts to contain the climate change dismissed by politicians. could come out to interrupt that is such a dangerous delusion it's very dangerous illusion to stick with an escape problem by tariff it's simple compare it's simple to do with climate change compared to making laws have a took a turn for me and so it's a dangerous delusion to think that we've got a plan it be for the risk of us people we've got to do the problems here and the population problem we can deal with in fact the population is going down in 2 thirds of the world's countries it's not going down in africa but. a ways in which we can. change their lifestyles so to does go down as they become more prosperous so the problems that confront us. and the thing we confront if you tried to live away from the us do you know this serbian director i mean. he's
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a very famous artist and i was actually speaking team because i also wonder how artists perceive the script of the future and he said to me that the generation of people who will 1st go to mars will be the generation that will create the new sets of values for humanity. that will. creates a new set of values. for themselves because they're going to be living in of a different environment. what any of us humans have lived in but it's not clear how much relevance stuff will have to us to stay here on but i mean having said that i think we should have these people because we have anyone who. goes to the limits of human capabilities extreme sports and the rest of it so we should these people and also we can learn from them just as we can learn from science
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fiction i mean i tell my students it's better to read straight science fiction than 2nd rate science because it's more exciting and to be wrong so i think we want to encourage the artists to explore these they will be ideas that will be relevant perhaps to future generations away from the us i think the human exploration of space of course is just an adventure because of. the practical need there's any people into space. ok so we can have robotic fabricators building huge structures in space or on the moon it's the only way is the sending people is as an adventure and for that reason i would not support any public funding being spent on space whether i was in russia europe or the united states it should be left to private enterprise people like elon musk space x.
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. who are rich and the left of them but i think we should cheer them on because they can take higher risks. that any western nation could impose on publicly funded civilians so they can do comprise high risk ventures and my prediction is that by the end of a century there will be a small community. sent by d.'s private event. himself as if he wants to. but not on impact and i think he's 47 years old now so of course he might make that so i think there will be a small community but what i don't think is that the mass emigration and i think is a dangerous delusion to talk about. even more foolish to think of it as desirable. i want to talk about climate change i mean it is so real i don't know what else should it take for everyone to realize it's here and we should be taking
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care of it not tomorrow or day after char but we should have done it 10 years ago 20. but not much is being done to be quite honest well what does it take for people to wake up especially the heads of state. when i think it is a problem because of course the the ways of dealing with it it's. expensive and it's very hard to get politicians to prioritize something which benefits people in the remote parts of the world 60 years from now. above dealing with media problems and there are 2 ways in which this will happen and i think it is gradually happening one way is of course it's public. concern rises so the voters. support a politician who advocates this in the past. it's not
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a way of getting the votes to say we're going to make sacrifices now. it's that changes then i think that will help and i think it is changing now because these campaigns by young people are important to give an example in my country the. program a school blue planet on a television fronted by david which showed the impact of plastics in the ocean of albatrosses retained. plastic for the young in the nest and all that it was an iconic image which in for millions of people rather like the polar bear on the melting ice floe and that led to even rather on in life british politician to propose legislation to. cut down on the use of usable plastics so that's an example where politicians will act if they think this public behind so public pressure public demonstrations the effect of charismatic figures isn't very
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important to the great. said it takes only a few determined people to change the world indeed nothing else ever has an example of that is going to need the climate change so that's one thing the other. win win . is supported by 20 countries including my country is to greatly enhance research and development into all kinds of teen energy and the reason for this is that at the moment of course it's more expensive than. the rates of research speed up the development of better clean energy and it will also bring down the cost so the country like india. well at the moment they don't have a proper electric grid. people depend on slow burning wood and. they are unhealthy and they want a grid and unless they can afford something better they will build power stations.
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which is not going to be good for climate change and increase side emissions but it is the cost of clean energy. so something else and the storage came down. the indians directly to the technology just like in the case of. directed to mobile phones and never had landlines what do you make of the argument that the the counter size hat site has like the politicians and they're like well humanity has survived so many climate changes in 8000 years why are we so afraid of this land the only reason we're still aware is because of the. information access what do you tell the truth because the one thing that's complete john ambiguous is the measurements of the carbon dioxide concentration. in the atmosphere that's been
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made since the last 60 years and it's gone up by nearly 50 percent and we have records showing it's never been that high for the last 800000 years so the speed of the changes is unprecedented so it's not true that this is just the fluctuation there are of course structure ations and that makes it hard to discern the trend because there are. 2 ations on the timescale of a decade which is why you sometimes get a leveling off and then the rise but i think there's no doubt that something is happening now which hasn't happened in the last 1000000 years and lastly a lot of people in your field are getting more and more excited about the prospect that there's another earth like planet somewhere out there in space. do you think there could be another planet with water or carbon all of that a 2nd set of humans maybe forming already have a vault somewhere the exciting thing we've learnt in the last 10 or 20 years due to . discovery 1st made in switzerland by someone who's now one of my colleagues in
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cambridge. as a pioneer of this we now know that most of the stars in the sky. by retinues of planets just as a sun is orbited by the earth and. and we certainly know that many of those planets are going to be rather like the earth's temperature and sides. of the life what we don't know is how life actually began we understand when in evolution how over 4000000000. evolved into the biosphere around us know which we are a part but. surprised to realize we don't understand what made the 1st life what made the transition from complex chemistry to the 1st entity which metabolize and reproduce we don't understand how that happened so we don't yet know. was it
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a rare fluke that only happened or would it have happened in all these other places all through the galaxy we don't. i think in 10 or 20 years we will know the odds of that question in 2 ways 1st i think we may understand how life began. and so we know whether it was a rare fluke or not but secondly we would have observations from the next generation of telescopes it particularly a john telescope be built by european astronomers in chile coolie extremely large telescope. but this will have a 39 meter. mirror and this will be able to analyze the light from some of these of us like planets orbiting other stars to the extent to be able to tell if there's any kind of light vegetation or. what is your intuition tell you is there another human race somewhere where i don't think jewishness have any value in this i think we just got to the to say we don't know it's an exciting
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question we've got to try and find out it's a biological question the astronomers know that there are lots of the. now to be a big advance in the last 10 or 20 years. we'll have more observations and have to better understand. and of course this is talking about any kind of life the 2nd question is of course that if there is. water the challenge is it develops into something intelligent or technological and of course a separate projects and look for any evidence for something that's artificial out there you know artificial radio transmission or some artifacts and there again i think it's worth a try because we sell fascinating we found something but it's even harder to set the betting olds on that. thank you so much for this wonderful insight help we had a chance to do this again i hope so thank you very much of a do you think you. are
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