QP: Technology & the Future of Medicine. Dr Kim Solez. 5/16/2022 97 minutes +/-

QP: Technology & the Future of Medicine. Dr Kim Solez.                     5/16/2022  97 minutes +/-

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No i cannot see you, yeah i cannot see  you now, yeah how are you i'm good thanks yeah we have our friend Darcel here whom I will  invite up um because Darcel always opens the room   with some of his music Yeah i wanted to play you know uh the  future and all the jazz promo but let's   play it at the intermission later so that  you know there will be more people coming in   so i want them to hear how you jump with the band  so yeah so yeah there's hell um hi there cell um   Darcel is a producer a film producer  he is also a composer and yeah   he's a musician and he's doing picture shows  and films so their self to say hi to our guest   Dr Kim Solez hi Cecile hi doctor and hi Sierra oh  I am sad to say that i'm just getting in from work   i haven't got in yet so i don't have access to  the music today so Cecile if you can cover for   me and play some of uh your music uh that would be  great and doctor i will i'd be happy to close the   room or upon your return i'll definitely assure  you of my compositions that's okay yeah yeah   fine yeah okay so um uh thank you so much  Darcel I hope i'm not disturbing you because   uh maybe it's still early evening so um  we have no choice today we have no choice   we have to play a portion of your jam with  all the jazz promo so without further ado i   would like to introduce the music of and the art  of Kim Solez with the future and all the jazz   you may be shaking your head and thinking oh my  goodness what would happen with machines in charge   but just think about it you wake up in the morning  and pollution is gone global warming is over human   conflict is completely prevented because whenever  human beings start to fight it's wound down   immediately and all the problems in the world that  humans could never correct are instantly fixed I really wanted to play the whole um um the whole  segment but you know it's too long so um anyway   yeah i will just reset the room later i will start  to introduce you may be in the way you want or not   in the way you want me whatever you think best you  know yeah yeah okay well i'm gonna read the just   machines later on but on a serious note um i would  like to read a wikipedia entry because you have a   very important contribution to science and  medicine which is quite historical and it's being   used importantly and maybe you could talk about  this in quantum photonics in the future but of   course today we're going to talk about technology  in the future medicine so let me do this   so Kim Solez is an American pathologist and a  co-founder of the Baniff classification so the   panic classification is a schema for nomenclature  and classification of kidney transplant pathology   established in 1991 by Kim Solez and roulette  Lorraine Rakuzen in Baniff Canada so maybe we   could he could talk about this later um if you  want more details maybe you should google it or   i will post it later you know when our discussion  is in progress so the Baniff classification   is the first standardized international  classification for renal allograft biopsies   kim is also the founder of the bani foundation  for allograf pathology so he obtained his MD   with aoa honors from the University of Rochester  school of medicine and dentistry and trained   in pathology at Johns Hopkins and Johns  Hopkins medical institutions in Baltimore   and he was mentioned in renal pathology by Robert  Heptinshall he joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins   and in 1987 became chairman of the department of  pathology of the University of Alberta in Edmonton   in 1991 Kim established the Manip classification  and with John Hopkins pathologist Lorraine   Rakisson the beneath classification updated in  regular intervals continues to set standards   worldwide for how biopsies from kidney and  other solid organ transplants are interpreted   as chair of the international society  of deprology commissioned on acute renal   failure from 1989 to 1997 so let's started  the sn disaster relief task force a worldwide   network of experts working closely with medicine  science frontiers i'm sorry my friend is about medical care for people in  the wake of natural disasters   in 1997 so let's work to end the mysterious  haitian glycol poisonings were the contaminated   production of cough syrup lead to  acute renal failure in 109 hydrogen   children so so less was included in the 60 minutes  coverage of the investigation in 2002 Solez   founded Leonard Cohen night in Edmonton local  artistic evening celebrating the work of Canadian   singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah  so i also like cohen and i also like rules   so in 2008 Kim co-organized the Leonard Cohan  international festival and in 2010 Solez completed   the singularity university executive course and  in 2011 pioneered a unique graduate level medical   course technology in the future of medicine  at the university of Alberta a very popular   and you know a very significant course which you  know always upgrades just like our guest always   upgrades himself so so let us let the university  of Alberta's involvement in the creation and   further development of a unique medical school in  Nepal devoted to the rural health pattern academy   of health sciences so les continues to work as a  pathologist at the university of Alberta as well   as a professor and the director of experimental  pathology um in this department and so um   yeah i would like to read another introduction  yeah i will just you know read it fast i'm   sorry it's long but you know kim you deserve that  introduction so now this is an introduction from   just machines so at age 75 life is just starting  for entrepreneur Kim. Dr Kim Solez, life is just   starting and the Edmonton based entrepreneur  pathologist and professor just observed his   75th birthday he is celebrating by writing a  memoir that documented his life's first three   quarters of a century and applying for a grant  can fuel his passion to solve six of the world's   key problems in decades to come chronologically um  i'm 75 years old but i have this little happy 18   year old bursting out inside of me every now and  then so les said the memoir will be tight will   serially surreal a term that the late great singer  songwriter Leonard Cohan described solas as during   their first meeting in 2005. so les founded  the separate events Leonard Cohen's night and   Leonard Cohen's international festival to honor  the artist the grant for which soles is applying   is through Siphar a Canadian-based global research  organization so less believes that the data from   artificial intelligence can be used to tackle six  critical issues facing society male aggression   nuclear war climate emergency systemic  racism covet 19 pandemic and colonialism   those issues can be solved through what so  less considers a combinator of humanity plus ai   one can imagine a future where it is possible  to measure changes in human behavior positive   changes in the world brought about by  something you wrote or a video you produce   that becomes the orientation the criterion on  which academic advancement is based so less said   that will be a world much better than today  we don't have those metrics yet however it   is a very nice position to be in to be the  person suggesting future standards so Solez   said he's always viewed the world differently  even from the day he was born yeah that day   it was on June 22 and that day he said that his  father his father a cardiologist said to celeste   that he was a calm smiling baby surrounded by  many others who were crying and whining oh my god   you were already a rebel when you were born so  so let's grew up in a house of science and art   both his parents played the piano and Celeste's  mother was classically trained at the Oberlin   Conservatory of Music the gravestone where his  parents rest labeled enjoy the music which soles   has done throughout his life so soles has combined  his love for science and art through his work as   an entrepreneur at numerous companies including  his current one just machines which explores the   effects of rapidly improving technology and ai  in the field of medicine plus as a professor   of pathology in university of Alberta where he is  continually and constantly surrounded by students   and graduate assistants that makes him feel young  the young people are also organized to continue   so let's work if anything were to happen to him  as Greg Washington says a person dies twice one   one in a once in a physical form and again in the  future the last time their name is spoken i want   to make sure that my friends live forever so the  students will make sure that he is long remembered   however there is no sign of his slowing  down anytime soon so let's also note that   his personality is naturally risk-taking and  virtually fearless he recently took the neo pi   personality test and the results was of the charts  for openness to experience and that he likes to be   in action he can also communicate with anyone  from brilliant academic academia focus to the   homeless young adults he sometimes meets in the  weekly poetry nights he helps organize for so less   is about living a life of openness and pursuit  of the new leading a life without precedent is   much easier than living a life with one because  you're always trying something new so yeah um   guys that is Dr Kim. kim so less for you  and yeah i've been waiting for him to come   in Quantum Photonics so i would like to give  the mic to our fantastic speaker Dr Kim soles   great thank you yeah well you know since that bio  was written we've gone from six challenges of uh   humanity the ones that you listed to 17 so  the remaining are ai alignment energy avatars   multiple instances of self water scarcity  asteroids nanotechnology xenotransplantation   biodiversity environment resource depletion and  solar winds yeah and the course that i teach is   unique that that surprised me i i thought  that there must be other courses like this   when i started it in uh 2011 so there is no other  course talking about the long-range future where   machines are smarter than individual humans   in uh seven years from now 2029 and uh smarter  than the whole aggregate human race um in 20 35 to 20 45 there there's no course like  that in a medical school or in an academic   center taught by a full-time academic  there are three courses like that taught by   professional keynote speakers but uh it it they're  quite different from the course that i teach   and they don't have to be academically credible  they just need to put on a good show whereas   i actually do need to be academically credible  maybe the most important attribute of the course   is that it introduces me to the best and the  brightest young people interested in the long-term   future about 66 of them every year 66 new people  and these young people play a very important role   in in my uh academic pursuits and and  particularly the futurist initiatives   and they have done so for a very long time  49 and a half years ago in january 1973   i was in my first year of training in pathology  at johns hopkins in baltimore in the united states   and i took five oberlin college  undergraduate students during that january   to teach them about medicine and life while  johns hopkins was teaching me about pathology   no pathology trainee had ever  done anything like that before   usually people consider their medical training to  be pretty all-consuming you can't do anything else   but somehow i i didn't feel that way and my boss  my mentor at the time robert hepton stall thought   this was fascinating and that i should continue  it and basically for the next 49 and a half years   i did indeed continue it i've i've always  surrounded myself with young people between   approximately the ages of 15 and 33 and during the  work day if i want to talk to somebody that's the   only option those those people so that that really  keeps me young and so let's get back to these 17   initiatives so the thing that interested me in  this were the activities of google deep mind   ai um you'd be aware that in 2016 there  was alphago that solved the game of go   but then in 2020 there was alpha fold  which did something much more important   uh maybe not as much fun but much more important  which is to solve protein folding protein   folding is something enormously complicated  that the human brain cannot understand you can't   really wrap your head around protein folding  but it was solved just about completely and   functionally completely by google deep mind  ai in uh 2020 and then recently they've also   solved the last steps of uh nuclear fusion so  they're they're doing really important things   how do they make the decision of what to do  next well that's a very interesting question for   me they decide that internally they are a part  of google but even other parts of the uh google   company are unable to influence their decision  of what they'll do next what big challenge of   the human race uh deep mind will take on next but  our research team includes um one of the members   of the the deep mine team in in london uk and  his father his father is an ai safety person who   um is the co-lead of our research team so he and  i lead this research team which is 18 people nine   faculty and nine young people and i don't want you  to assume that the faculty are more important than   than the young people because sometimes the  best ideas come from the young people so um   yeah so so that that's sort of the the world  that i i wanted to get you thinking about   today and and we'll probably touch on some  other subjects that we could talk about at   some other time but um one of the the other unique  things about my situation in the world i guess   is my friendship with rich sutton he is the best  known ai researcher in edmonton and he basically   wrote the book on reinforcement learning ai  now in january 2015 in puerto rico there was a   very important ai safety meeting and  not only ai professionals went to it but   journalists and like famous celebrity people  a very interesting mix of 97 people and 96   of them were arguing for slavery for enslaving ai  when a.i is smarter than we are keep it in a box   prevent it from interacting with the outside world  in every way and make sure it can't get loose   but of course it's getting smarter all the time it  will learn how to outwit us the idea of keeping it   enslaved as you think about it is not very  appealing and the only person at that meeting   arguing for treating sentient ai as an equal was  rich sutton from our institution the university of   alberta and i still think that that idea is worth  considering many of you listening don't listen to   the news but those of you who still do listen  to the news know that every day the news would   convince you that humans are not very good at  managing the planet their stewardship of the earth   needs something to be desired and so if we had  another entity that knew what humans want and need   but were a bit more reasonable than humans seem to  be they would probably do a better job at managing   the planet so i'm sure many of you don't agree  with that but anyway that that is my view that and   that's sutton's view that we should treat sentient  ai as an equal included in our circle of empathy   provided with a childhood and and other  experiences so it can really get to know humans   and know precisely what we want and need and then  we can it can probably do better providing it   then human leadership of the earth can yeah  so in any thoughts about that i don't want   this to just be a monologue you know i think so  are any of you so outraged by what i have said   thus far that you want to react or  should i keep on going i can keep on yeah so um hi i had a question if i may it yes  certainly discussion my name is dale nice to   meet you thanks for speaking with us and thanks  for allowing me on stage my question is i don't   i want to make sure i understood correctly is the  concept of developing sentient ai then having a   familiarity period where the sentient ai becomes  aware and learns uh human psyche and human needs   and then at some point the humans not only  treat the sentient ai as an equal but turnover   in some measure either partial or complete um  ability for that sentient ai to make decisions   on behalf of the human being yes okay  but it should be a sort of gradual   transition and with proof provided that this uh  non-human entity can also do a pretty good job   at you know some segment you know  we we can allow it a little bit of   leadership in in one area see how it does and  i think it will rapidly learn from that and um   the other thing this would do of course is an  important concept you when you look at these 17   things one thing you can ask is well do they all  need ai couldn't humans solve this one completely   and so this would be the same it is possible that  in some things about stewardship of the earth   that we would discover that if humans only try to  try a little harder they could actually run things   perfectly well you know it doesn't need to  be a complete seating of everything to the   ai but i think that in fact as ai has a much  better appreciation of the nuances of things   as it gets smarter and smarter it it it would  probably be better at keeping things on track   than human leadership would in the long run but  but it would be a sort of gentle transition making   sure that there weren't problems with it wanting  to do things that humans really wouldn't want   or like my answer wouldn't follow questions and  i'll stop speaking so my other question would be   in terms of accountability and talk about a  gradual accession into the role of decision making   my question would be what would build in the  accountability to take back that role if for   some reason the humans decided that they would  prefer to make the decisions as opposed to the ai   or even if there's a transition period thanks for  letting me speak i'm done thank you sure sure no i   i think that that would be built in i i'm i'm not  sure exactly how it would be designed i don't know   if we we could really predict that at this time  but it's just like any other friendship there   shouldn't be absolutes you know i mean that's no  friendship if if if one person has all the power   and the other person has nothing to say about  it so i mean that that isn't how how i see it   going but on the other hand if you look at your  phone and look at the records of the phone calls   that you made a lot of them are to automated  attendance look at the length of those calls   and remember what you accomplished and see if you  think that if you'd reached a human being that you   could have done as well you would realize that  you've already ceded a part of your life to uh   ai and and and you regularly deal with little  bits of ai and it actually works pretty well   many of us remember when when it would it  was a nightmare when you reached an automated   attendant it was like the end of the world but  gradually over the years they got better and   better so that's sort of a microcosm kind  of of what i'm talking about in the larger   sphere in the long run so the evidence is right  there on your phone yeah what about that eh so for those of you looking at the powerpoint you'll  you'll notice that some of the graphics are pretty   good so the these graphics of course weren't done  by me they were done by the young people working   with me um many of them were done by the co-author  of of this slide set her name is ishita mogi and   she is uh a very talented artist as as well  as a um thinker in this area and and so on and   i think for any of you thinking that young  people can't be trusted to do anything important   i i think you when when you meet the young people  working with with me you would gradually change   that opinion and you know i've spent a lot  of time over the last 49 and a half years   talking to young people i don't believe i wasted  a single moment i i think it's it's it's tapped   me into a rich intellectual resource that many  people really don't recognize exists at all you   know if you just hang out with people your  own age you would never know how rewarding   it can be to talk to young people about things  yeah so that's my story and i'm sticking to it   um so then if if you think of um ai alignment just  as you say um a part of the solution it's just   um having ai get to know humans better to have  the experience of working cooperatively with   uh humans and and figuring out how um to uh nuance  things you know when when when you're thinking of   of uh for instance let us say that we want to  optimize human happiness right so human happiness   could be depicted by videos of happy humans  right but that's not really what we want just   videos of happy humans we want truly happy humans  so we could communicate that that you know it's   not just depictions of things we're after but the  thing itself right after actual human happiness   not just pictures of it or videos of it or audio  of it yeah but the thing itself and and many other   things where you you could imagine the ai getting  the wrong idea about what what the objective was   gradually there would be a kind of modeling  of that that the the confusion about that   a year ago similar to a confusion about  something slightly different now and so on   and you know this very smart ai would figure  things out pretty quickly yeah and so ai gains   a better and better dynamic understanding the  watch needs an aspirations of human beings   and the possibility of human ai cooperation and  the benefits of that to to the world um so um   you may wonder um why i've given you this this  sort of pitch for my company in a slide set that   just happened to be what i have i i have a pitch  to give this coming tuesday but when you look   at this uh slide six well what happens if i don't  get the money there for the graduate student and   the administrator well that brings us to another  discussion we could have some other time of a post   scarcity world because the candidate for those  two positions are quite happy at least at the   moment working without pay and and very  honored to sort of be a part of this work   so really this large enterprise you know  involving these 17 human challenges and 18 19   people isn't really costing us anything so that's  sort of what a post scarcity world would be like   right i mean in an ideal circumstance that's what  we're heading toward where the price of valuable   things comes down to approximately zero and when  you wake up in the morning rather than thinking of   all the things you watch you can never have and  all the things you want to do you can never do   the opposite would would be true that anything  you want you can probably have in anything   you want to do you can either do or you can  simulate it in in virtual reality better than   real and this virtual reality can be shared with  friends and so people in the future then divide   i suppose by people a small segment still  doing creative work and like creating the   uh virtual reality and the the the  other people spend entire days just   playing playing around in virtual reality  augmented reality 360 video you know   all the various variations on that  so i've i've listed in slide six the um people in our current faculty  we we are certainly not opposed to   to expanding that and then the next slide slide  seven has actual pictures of them um and uh   they they are a very diverse group there's one  indigenous member two people of color their fields   of of endeavor including music regenerative  architecture medicine ai human cooperation the   arts classics diversity equity and inclusion  we have one of the most highly ranked academics of of color working in the diversity  equity and inclusion area working with us   and we have worked together on the seafarer grant  and on the future of life world build competition   and you may wonder about the future of  life world build competition when do we   find out if we're one of the top 20 groups  there are 144 people competing and tomorrow   may 15 2022 it will be announced which are the  top 20 groups and then the whole world can vote on   and comment on those top 20 and that's how by june  15th they will make the the decision of who gets   first prize second prize and so on and the prize  is a bit more nuanced than usual so if you have a   very very ordinary submission but one component of  it really shines they can give money just to that   component so we for instance we have a sculpture  we we have an original song by mallory chipman   yeah so we have a lot of things beyond our our  text and and we're very hopeful to be amongst   the top 20 tomorrow when it's announced of  course i don't know what's going to happen   um yeah and then we we talked at the beginning  about the banff classification which i i have run for 31 years the next Banff transplant  pathology meeting is this coming september   september 19th to the 23rd and on the 24th  we we're we're having a kind of unique thing   that brings together the arts other parts of  my life with with transplant pathology and   so it's um how uh poetry pigs and a.i can  save humanity by and by how's that for title   that's referring of course to pig to human  transplants which is that just started in the   last year and a very exciting enterprise but  also has lots of ethical questions associated   with it yeah so so this slide seven deals with  the faculty and then slide eight it deals with   the students and you notice we have a  few extra characters in there with the   students we have Sheldon from big bang theory and  iron man and the royal couple and yeah the Beatles whole bunch of other but we we also show you  there that the candidates for these funded   uh positions as administrator and graduate  students and if you look into their details they   they're highly qualified people yeah so then if  you think back to what we're doing in general   maybe what i told you about deep mind and perhaps  being able to influence the the decision of what   deep mind does next for the human race is not that  interesting to you but it's a model for the more   general situation where an important entity has no  mechanism for outside influence on decisions and   a way that you can still influence that and we've  already done that you may know that the government   of finland wanted to make their country the  leader in ai and so they developed a government   ai program which anyone in the world could take so  i noticed some problems with this and so ishiita   and i did a video on it and three days later  that page we complained about disappeared from   the government of finland ai course similarly with  yuval noah harari the most famous tech writer now   he and i have had lots of interaction it started  with the fact that in his presentations he would   always say i'm just a historian i just point out  the dangers i don't have to provide solutions   and irritated the heck out of the audience then  he'd go on and talk about all sorts of solutions   i said stop doing that your preamble is terrible  and everything afterward it is wonderful   so anyway he did stop doing that we've had lots  of other interaction um yeah so so i would say   both of those are entities where there's no  formal vehicle for influencing decision making   all decision making is made internally but we  have succeeded in influencing them them a lot   and also if you get back to deep mind i think we  may end up participating directly in the larger   effort to address the challenges selected by deep  mind they've reached the point i think they they   agree that the time is ripe to address some of  the messy human problems that ai can do that now   and of course we we have an advantage with  our championing of the creativity of young   people no one else says that i it's hard to say  why i think a lot of people just hold this firm   belief number one that they should hang out  with people their own age and number two that   young people are idiots who haven't been on  earth long enough to know anything useful   and i tell you the opposite is exactly  the case yeah but at the end of the day   humility true humility is also part of the plan  because what i've learned my whole life in these   situations one person can influence big things  in the world but your influence may never be   formally acknowledged and you may never know how  much of the decision was due to your efforts so   that will be true here i think or it may sometime  be true that we are a part of big things changing   within deep mind and elsewhere maybe in deep  minds competitors but we'll never be sure exactly   how much of a role we we we played  yeah so we just have to be comfortable   with that so i there's  there's lots more that i could   talk about maybe i should pause and see  if there are other questions at this point well i comment uh so if uh i forgive me  because i came in late so i hope that   that you didn't say anything before i  got here that that kind of addresses this   but uh march that uh well you know we have ai uh  um uh help us solve the problem uh the problems   uh for instance with regard to  uh averting catastrophic climate   change i don't think you use those exact  words but that really is the big issue um it's it's not that we haven't uh known and  understood the problem it's not that we uh don't   know how to make much more progress than we're  making uh i believe that i have worked out uh   a great deal of how to solve the  entire uh problem me too sooner than   than uh many people the issue is is not lack of  any of these things the issue is that there are   power structures that uh do not have the priority  of averting climate change and their priorities uh   involve instead uh persisting with the things that  have driven climate change and uh you know you can   even step back and take the meta problem of okay  how do we solve this problem set of of uh solving   uh climate and working around these people um and  there are more barriers to that than i i think but   just uh hear me out so our future life world build  the the thing that i'll get the answer tomorrow   whether we're in the top 20 of 144 or not  so the scenario that i have described there   talks about the planetary sunshield at sun  earth lagrange point one where you know the   gravitational pull of the earth and the sun is  the same so a lot of things accumulate there you   can go there there's already a lot of stuff there  that you can make things out of you could make a   sun shield that would change the temperature  of the earth to whatever you wanted it could   be dynamic it wouldn't have to be a fixed thing  we could do that now i mean we know how there   have been you know discussion groups about every  nuanced point of that would take some resources   and we're spending those resources on other  things but yeah yeah actually i i can tell you a   little something about that um uh reviewing teller  wooden hyde 1996 uh one of the options that they   considered specifically for the earth sun l1 uh  sun shade uh was totally out of reach at the time   uh but changes in uh uh nano fabrication and  launch costs and uh low energy orbital insertion   um uh put that actually within reach  in potentially a short period of time   so that that's what i've said so we were asked  to you know predict the future between 2022   and 2045 and in that scenario that sunshield is is  you know fully completed during that period and it   starts to have an effect even before it's finished  you know it is like you have to wait till the end   so yeah i mean and and and the strange thing  about that i mean you'd like the people who are   you know polluting and all the the things  to make global warming worse you'd like   them all to stop it right but even if they  don't you could fix things with this um   sunshade so so that and there's no part of that  that's that's not possible today so yeah i would   say the the biggest challenge though is um the  international consensus that would be required   and there there may be ways of routing around  that fault uh as well um although it would be less powerful an implementation if you had to go that  route um uh this it's kind of like we're in the   situation because of the dysfunctionality the  designed dysfunctionality of international process   and uh really if you want to focus ai on  solving a game theoretic problem uh i think   that that is probably where you could make larger  contributions sooner the time frame by the way for   what i was suggesting could be as little as four  years to completion if there were two things um   the the the consensus to do so uh but also the  um sufficient uh high resolution high fidelity   validated climate modeling including ecological  feedbacks uh to fully understand what we're doing   that is an open and unresolved issues even  people who specialize in in the field of climate   uh modeling have have recognized that i've been  saying that and just a couple of weeks ago i heard   somebody who does that for a living and heads up  a major project uh say pretty much the same thing   but i mean it it isn't that that's the only one  of those 17 problems that's that's important   though i mean so but i i i find it one of the most  interesting ones which is which is the reason that   i ended up writing about it now now if you think  about building the sun shade the other thing that   that's kind of cool um if you like listen to  elon musk's latest hour plus long video he's   talking about how his most important product is  not the car but the humanoid robot and indeed   we would like robots to be making the sunshield  probably because when you look at at sun earth   lagrange one it doesn't look like be very much  fun for humans to be spending long times there   now i may be wrong about that and i have written  something about how to make life interesting there   but it it it would be cool if we could make  really rapid progress with humanoid robots so   that they could be making at least a substantial  part of that uh sun shield and it wouldn't cost   a huge huge amount you know and so on so that  that's another side of it who will the workers be   will the workers be human um yeah so that that's  another part of this sunshield thing but it's shit   so so if i could kind of uh take a very short  tangent i had not looked so much at uh uh   institute resource utilization at uh lagrange  point one um just because i had not been able   to find uh much data about what's there have you  been able to find that data no but i think that   it's sort of like these fantasies about asteroids  you know if we could just mine one of them we we'd   all be rich right so that that's that's the idea  a lot of stuff naturally accumulates there so   the the assumption is that you could make these  sun shields out of many different things and yeah   i mean it i i think that's probably right  but there are we're not exactly sure   how much of what types of things we we would  have but i think we would ultimately have   enough to easily make the sunshade yeah  so actually i mean it it works out that   lunar isru is is likely feasible and i i still  have uh some more analysis to do regarding the   energetic costs associated with that but they  are less than the energetic costs associated with   deployment from earth and um the the thrust of  what i was saying uh um with reference to teller   wooden height 1996 was that uh uh even launch from  earth is uh uh probably within yeah in the show   the other funny thing when you listen to elon  musk talk about his aspirations so he has ships   going to mars every two years what do you do in  the off year he never answers that i think this   is the obvious thing right in that off year where  it's just stupid to try to go to mars this year   because it'll be so much easier next year let's be  building the sun shade you know so yeah it's it's   an obvious uh solution to what to do in those  off years um yeah so other questions comments um I did have a quick question on the deploy this is  dale on the deployable sunshade is it a permanent   deployment or is it um you know you roll it  back and forth i'm not that familiar it is   permanent but it is tunable you know titratable  whatever you want to say it wouldn't be fixed   where you could change it if it turns out that  the cooling of the earth was more than you needed   then you you could ramp it up a little bit i and  and if the actual physical size of the thing was   too small too big or something you know  i mean both of those it would be sort of   so it's a permanent structure but a very uh  you know dynamic one that you can change yeah   so uh one thing that i'd like to mention  is that uh and and i'm kind of urging you   to include this caveat when you discuss it that  the sun shade is not a solution to climate it is   uh to mitigate present effects and to reduce the  risk that we go tip into uh runaway climate change   where we are not the largest driver of  radiative forcing but that this is to make sure   that in the time that it takes to remove  excess carbon dioxide from our atmosphere we   don't fall into those uh catastrophic scenarios  because uh you know the the ocean acidification   uh all by itself is a catastrophe of unappreciated  proportion a huge and unappreciated proportion and   uh we would be hearing it much more if we weren't  hearing about all of the other problems that we've   uh caused uh in our home right uh so um it's  important that we don't create the impression   that we can have this one easy solution and have  life as usual and we don't need to make it right   i think we need to keep the pressure on  the people polluting and and and so on   but i think part of selling this is also selling  the idea that this is sort of like being on the   side of you know ukraine and the current war it's  it's where everybody should be they should all be   uh supporting this and in their personal and you  know professional lives acting in a way that would   uh promote uh sort of multi-compartmental  solutions to climate change yeah so other comments or questions yeah i feel appearage to say something which  may not be that popular but i do believe it is   true true which is that i think this is focusing  on the wrong problem so Ellie mentioned a little   bit that the political will was really where  we get stuck and i would agree with that i   would say that this approach is sort of like  well yes we can solve world hunger as well   this is a distribution problem and not actually a  resource problem and in a similar way i think the   behavioral changes i mean if we wanted to take it  to its simplest form the easiest way to solve this   problem would be to just turn everything off just  hit the off switch just turn it all off and i mean   although that's also technically feasible it's  not politically feasible so yeah i would really   like to see work in that area though i think um  using ai for game theoretic scenarios and for   um better understanding of group dynamics and  behavioral you know modification and things or uh   even just for group consensus making at scale  i think that would be a really cool application   no well that that's sort of what i'm uh known for  in other words we've been generating consensus in   the uh transplant pathology world of uh medicine  for 31 years and using expert led consensus you   know which is something different yeah so i'm  i'm obviously interested in that no i i think   that that part of the fun of this is thinking  which of the 17 things and and maybe a lot   of them will end up being ones where the  threat of applying ai was so embarrassing   to the people who had just been digging in their  heels and not doing the things that they could   have been doing as humans to fix the problem  that some of those things would get solved with   just the thread of ai without any ai solution  ever playing a role where the humans just said   why we've been so stupid all these years let's  just make this happen yeah so that would also   be fine you know i'm i'm not requiring that  all the 17 areas require the actual application   of ai i think it may be useful in a number of  ways in most of them as you say but also just   kind of opening up things that people realize this  is a really important problem and there's nothing   about it as i say in many of my slides that humans  cannot understand this is not protein folding this   is not nuclear fusion some of these things are  so darn simple and it's just we seem to lack the   human will to take the proper action so i'm just  fine if in some areas the threat of applying ai   embarrasses people to doing what they should have  been doing all along that's just fine you know so other questions so think think for a moment though about the post   scarcity world does that just seem like a fantasy  to you because honestly what i have is kind of a   microcosm for that right i have all these  initiatives all these excellent people uh and   and you know it's it's not costing us  anything at the moment and the people are so   eager and working so so hard so that's sort of  like what a post scarcity world would be like   i'm not saying that that's really what i have i'm  not saying that they would be happy forever if i   never find any money to put into this well  we know that there's some money the the   um the uh conference september 24th has funding  and yeah i i think we we will obviously find funding and it's it's good i mean why did i apply  to this future of life uh institute world build   thing i think doing a number of things like  that sort of keep a dynamism going you know   it it gives the world the impression that you're  doing things that you're still thinking about   things you know and and and we need that uh  and and um so not everything you do needs to be   financially profitable but it's good some  things are yeah so that's my thought about it so other questions yeah yeah we would like  to welcome anton here from our community   came from the longevity community in europe he  is here on stage with us to also support you   so for now i just have a question  because you know you created discourse   technology in the future of medicine course since  2011 and up to now it's a popular course and   yeah it has helped people a lot and  it's given new perspectives about   how to use technology and the medici in medicine  so um how has your course evolved since 2011   up to now well can you comment it's it's a  very interesting question so for some people   it's just another course and even some high  performing students it's it's kind of funny   i mean some of these high performing students have  clearly the best paper the best final presentation   and we put that presentation on youtube where  you know i have over 1500 videos and and so on   and a while later these high-performing students  come back and say would you please take the video   down because you know my professional life  is is evolving so quickly that i can do much   better stuff now and i'm really embarrassed of  this juvenalia out there but for other students   they get hooked on the course and when the  course ends they want to keep doing something   with us and so that's where the future and  all that jazz came from is something to do   in the summer between the two terms uh and  um so we travel the world and and mix poetry   and music with important but uncomfortable  subjects like uh ai safety and and uh you   know regenerative medicine and and uh so  on and it works really well you you can   by entertaining people in an evening of poetry  and and music and improvisation get them learning   more about those subjects than they would have  in a lecture that they would never have had the   patience to sit through so yeah so that's the  future and all that jazz but we have many other   aspects of the course one is international  peer review if you look carefully at the course   you'll see that in the beginning we just had one  quantum biology lecture and uh now we have four   that happened well the international peer reviewer  person said that letter that that lecture is   much too compact i mean it's got incredible  amount of stuff and potential stuff in it   you need more time devoted to that  so we did that yeah and and um so that's also a very important part of the course  that since there is no other course like this   really it's it's easy to get people even famous  people to you know critique the teaching sessions   in their area of interest and and we've made a  lot of important changes but if you think about   just something very simple a course about the  future cannot be static right it has to morph   and change every single term and you'll find  that it does we're always doing new stuff and and   and often the people teaching and the people  being taught are of a similar age and i'm very   proud of that you may say well how is that  possible but think about it you have like 33   year olds starting billion dollar companies why  couldn't they teach they obviously can so there   there there are young people who really have a  lot to impart to the world and it's it's amazing   um how a lot of things that older  humans seem to be sort of stuck on they   cannot get beyond a certain point when you insert  young people into the same areas you can really   move things along and and uh yeah so  we we we've done that in multiple areas   and and and i'm very proud of that so i spent most  of my time and have done so for 11 years answering   questions about the future but trying to give  people all points of view so we've always had tech   skeptics how did we define that in the beginning  well let's take people with no smartphone   i don't have one and don't want what there aren't  very many people like that now but there were were   when we started and yeah so so i think when i meet  somebody who's really critical of what we're doing   in the course that's a big day for me because i  say come on in join us you know join the join the   the the little intellectual ferment that's exactly  what we need is people with views like yours   and and uh yeah so we've done that from  the outset so what i tell the students   is that we talk about enough different future  scenarios that i guarantee that one of them   will be the real future i just don't know  which one you know and i i might just i i   myself feel like that so like there there is uh  survival value in the long run taking the course   you might say there's no short-term benefit i'm  i'm not sure that's true but you might say that   but long-term when the big changes in the future  happen people who've taken this course are   forewarned they've already you know thought about  the things that now are are happening so they are   uniquely sort of like a ruggedized laptop i don't  know if you know that but like there used to be a   time when people were very proud of laptops that  could work under water in the sea and you know   falling off high buildings and they'd still  work after they crashed to the street below   and that sort of thing well we're trying to  make a human resiliency sort of like that   ruggedized laptop where no matter what happens  in the future you'll be able to cope with it   because you've already thought about these things  and how they would be dealt with yeah so that's what we're doing but we're we also  like the tuesday night poetry was also   uh related to the course my poetry was all  always about you know technology everybody   else was talking about love and loss and and  self image you know their relationship with the   universe and i was talking about technical things  but it but it worked fine it's not that much uh   poetry in the areas that i i was reciting poetry  and so it sort of worked to break up the evening   and you may wonder about me in that tuesday  night poetry so it's sort of at-risk youth um   people who are at risk the moment they  leave the house if they have a house   you know a lot a lot of like people at the  intersection of uh you know gender and and and   you know lots of other problems that young people  can have uh and um yeah so in the poetry sessions   uh about one-fifth of the poems would reference uh  sexual assault and a fifth would reference suicide   and i'm sitting there as the only academic the  only only physician and don't i feel vulnerable   no i didn't why not it turns  out the poetry leaders in town   took suicide prevention courses so they they  in a sense in a practical sense knew more about   suicide prevention than i did and similarly  there were standard resources that we could   reference for people about you know  sexual assault and and and so on so it it   did not feel uncomfortable to be and i was kind of  providing the uh the infrastructure i provided the   lighting the video the video editing there would  be homeless people basically living on the streets   who would have a poetry video and they would  go to the library to you know connect with   me about the editing of their video that was  some of the coolest interactions that i had   so i should exercise i think this story you can  learn something from it's very happy ending but it   it it's it really has a surprise ending so  i i went to this hour and a half poverty   simulation exercise that the united way had i  found it really interesting and i was very proud   that the bad things that that could happen like  losing your home and all this kind of thing didn't   didn't happen to me and i learned a lot i learned  that you know government offices are often closed   at noon and so you get there for some crucial  interaction and and and the offices close for the   noon hour and and stuff like that probably a lot  of you know impoverished people know about this   and so i go back to the hospital i'm all  excited about everything i've learned from this   poverty simulation exercise i start talking  to people around me about it and they're   all rolling their eyes and i realize what they  think is as follows when i became a physician   i was the last time i ever thought about poverty  because i knew i'd never be impoverished now and   i believe any moment spent thinking about pop  poverty is completely ridiculous and i i just   what a waste yeah anyway so that's what happened  with my poverty simulation exercise but i   personally learned a lot from it now you  may wonder were there any dangers in my   uh you know participating in the these  tuesday night sessions with at-risk youth   yeah i would say there was one i i learned  that when people ask for a ride home and where   it would just be you and that person that's bad  news i didn't do that so i i i wasn't providing   rides home for people but yeah aside from that  that was the only risk that i i could see and if   you think about okay well you know physicians are  sort of like you know elite members of our society   shouldn't they have like a pride in that  and not hang out with regular people   well no i think the answer is exactly the  opposite when you're the only physician in   the room the only academic in the  room there's so much you can learn   so now think of the singer bono from you  too and what i'm about to tell you i i think   is very very surprising but it gives you an  idea of how things really are in the world   so bono obviously doesn't know me he's a  famous person i am not was really inspired   by his saying that what he'd love to do is take  part in meetings where people would look in the   meeting at the meeting and say how did those  people ever end up in the same room together   i thought wow that's so inspiring so on my  websites there is a lot of repetition of that   statement that bono had made but you know time  went on and you know i thought well i wonder   why bono's own statements about that are still  online they're completely gone why is that   because the people handling his you know career  realized this is risky to indicate to all these   flaky people out there that if they look like  somebody who would never meet with bono that   he'd really like to meet with them well at the  end of the day that really didn't work for him   but anyway it has sort of worked for me and you  you can find hundreds of you know instances where   i am the only person like me in the room i'm the  only person even remotely that you'd consider   old you know a whole bunch of things sometimes  you know i'm the only white person sometimes   i'm the only male person yeah and i've learned  a tremendous amount from situations like that   um it's not for everyone and so you're probably  shuddering oh my god i would never do that   i'm just saying that you're missing  something by just hanging out with people   just like you that's a little bit  limiting so other questions comments yeah i see someone who raised  his hand but but i could not   bring him up the stage i don't know  if he's on the stage now it's sagar   so if you cannot come up maybe you should  go out of the room and come back again   so yeah i also want to ask you a question can you  just comment among the exponential technologies at   least this year in the coming years that you look  at now um aside from artificial intelligence uh   trying to leverage on that um how will  they affect uh you know the future of   of medicine yeah like for instance yeah  just please choose anything that you feel   like you want to discuss we would like to  hear yeah yeah well of course if you take   if you look at our course carefully you'll realize  most unique about thing about it is the quantum   biology part and a lot of people who  talk about the future don't talk about   that and so i'm i'm very proud of that and  that will be a very important part of medicine   just to kind of summarize one thing we've already  talked about protein folding if you calculate by   classical physics how long it would take a single  protein to fold would take until the heat depth   at the end of the universe for a single protein  to fold so obviously that's not how it happens   so there must be quantum algorithms at work in  protein folding as there are in the sense of smell   and sight you can detect a single photon you can  detect a single molecule of things that have odor   and that's impossible by classical physics and and  so there are many things about not only disease   states but also the normal functioning of the  human body that is only explainable by quantum   and so so i i actually have to correct you on  that uh while i certainly don't exclude uh the   possibility that they're uh um you know quantum  entanglement type things potentially involved   um the the solution to the uh protein folding  problem or at least an important part of it is uh   kinetic landscapes and funnels um there was  a paper in the mid 90s jose nelson onochook   in science that that wasn't the the actual paper  resolving it because it's it's a commentary but   uh um like george rose at uh i believe hopkins  at the time was one of the people working on it   and um uh basically uh you you eliminate like  you know vast vast subsets of the combinatorial   uh space and um this is how it's done in you know  by biology and in fact biology includes a whole   bunch of cl multiple classes of proteins called  chaperones or heat shock proteins or foldases   that preferentially nucleate certain structures  over others uh to basically bias things in   one direction or another so the problem is  different than described that's right yeah   so it it it seemed at one time it was simple that  it couldn't be explained any other way beside   quantum now that isn't the case  oh i'm i'm i'm well well aware   you weren't right about quantum quantum physics uh  processes involved in biology though there's this   sense of taste and smell of date for instance  are yeah yeah i wasn't arguing against that i   was just talking about the specific uh protein  fold-line problem yeah yeah well no i i don't uh   disagree with you i i i but there there  there are um so if if you so so that's one   technology um then there's a whole you know  crypto currency uh and and you know decentralized   processes that that also has a role to play i  i think particularly when we want uh verified   history for things um there there will be ways  to better guarantee that we know what the exact   history of something is that than the situation  today or history sort of written by the winners   right and then you never know what the other side  thought yeah so i mean these are all just just   sort of potential improvements in the future  but it's it's it's cool to think that we'll   have a better idea of what really happened um in  the future than we do today yeah so between now   and then what needs to happen for this to like  what what needs to what do you need to invent your voice is quite faint sorry i was holding  the phone away from my face uh if so between   now and the future what needs to happen for this  to ex to exist like what do you need to invent well the the um focus of um you know decentralized  processes and and uh you know the cryptocurrency   world is just currently somewhere else rather  than uh verifying stories but you you i think   it doesn't take really inventing something new it  takes a different focus of people who have that   expertise of you know the computerized  ledger on multiple computers that that   you know cannot really be easily altered  and the way in which you could use that to   um sort of guarantee what the  actual history of something is   um it it doesn't require something new  to be invented like a lot of the things   we're talking about today it just requires a  different focus of the things we already have okay what would be standing  in the way of adoption of   for for uh any any of the the future  visions that you've presented today i don't well i think   um like if you look at even the size audience  we we have here today there'll be f some people who are so rewarded by t

2022-06-30 23:17

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