Michio Kaku | Quantum Supremacy | Talks at Google

foreign [Music] good afternoon everyone good to see us here back at a toxic session here in the office again um it's my pleasure today to introduce uh Dr mitchukaku and to hear his guest lecture here about his new book which is uh if you've read a lot of his books you know he's been working up to hopefully Quantum Computing and uh his new book Quantum Supremacy how quantum computers will change everything Dr Kaku clearly has figured out how to work in multiple universes because in addition to being a best-selling author he's also a professor a father and a academic author in the space of physics so with that I would like to welcome onto the stage for our guest lecture today Dr Michio Kaka [Applause] well after such a great introduction I can't wait to hear the speaker myself first of all let me say that I have the privilege of dealing with other great scientists and every time I meet a scientist I ask them the key question the most important question of all I asked them is their intelligent life on the Earth well I was watching the Kardashians on TV last night and I'm convinced there's no intelligent life on this planet nope not on this planet except in this room I think that in this room we have some of the most inquisitive energetic creative minds on the planet and also I signed copies of my latest book for you after you pick up a copy of my assigned book you can go to eBay and auction them all for money that's right you can actually make money on today's lecture let me also say that in two weeks I'm flying to Santa Barbara I'll be touring the quantum computer facility for Google at Santa Barbara for 60 minutes and it'll be filmed and then it'll show perhaps in Fall okay so watch for it we're going to talk about quantum computers these are by the way some of the books that I've written I uh my latest book uh Quantum Supremacy has just hit the New York Times bestseller list just today to hit the New York Times bestsellers and the previous books you can see here the Royal New York Times bestsellers for example the future of the mind I talk about the fact that in the future digital will gradually be phased out that digital will be replaced by quantum and by neural Transmissions that is directly we will communicate from the brain to the internet not anytime soon we're talking you know decades in the future but the future of the internet will be Quantum and it'll be neural and this means of course that we physicists can now probe the thinking brain with MRI scans we can now see blood flow in the brain as thoughts are created for example we can now show the certain old wives tales are correct it's an old wives tale that everybody knows that when a man talks to a pretty girl he starts to act stupid well on a brain scan we can actually see that effect okay it's been published what happens is when a man sees a pretty girl blood drains from the prefrontal cortex and he starts to act stupid actually you can see that now with brain scans anyway these are some of the books that I've talked about the God equation is what I do professionally for a living I work in something called String Theory which we think is the Theory of Everything the theory that eluded Einstein The Theory of Everything when I was eight years old something happened which changed my life entirely when I was eight years old all the newspapers ran a picture a picture of a scientist's desk and the caption said a great scientist could not finish this book so on the desk was a book and it said the greatest scientists of our era could not finish this book well I was fascinated what could be so hard that a great scientist could not finish why did he ask his mother why didn't he go to the library just look up the answer so over the years I've been going to the library and I found out that this man's name was Albert Einstein and that book was the unfinished Theory of Everything an equation no more than one inch long that would allow us to quote read the mind of God well we think today we have it it's called String Theory I'm the co-founder of one of the main branches of string theory string field Theory but it's too difficult to solve with the human mind we have the equation but the equations are so powerful we cannot solve them analytically so that's why I got interested in quantum computers because quantum computers may be powerful enough to solve The Theory of Everything to give us an understanding of why we had the big bang why we have the universe why are we here we may be able to answer that question with a quantum computer so let's now begin at the beginning in the year 1901 in the Mediterranean Ocean divers found a shipwreck a shipwreck that dated Back 2 000 years into the past and they found this thing on the left it was encrusted with coral they thought it was a piece of junk but then they looked closely by removing the coral and the debris they realized it was a machine a machine that shouldn't exist a machine that was 2 000 years more advanced than its time it was a computer on the bottom of the Mediterranean Ocean so scientists came to look at this thing X-rated and then reassemble this device and they realized oh my God 2 000 years ago the Ancients created a computer it is the most advanced piece of human Machinery in thousands of years it tracks the motion of the Earth the moon Mercury Venus Earth Mars predicts eclipses it gives you a handle on the universe itself who created this we don't know but we think it was supposed to be a coronation gift for Julius Caesar but a shipwreck took place and it wound up on the bottom of the Mediterranean Ocean so for the next 2 000 years we roamed in darkness creating analog computers Computing on sticks Computing on bees Computing on hand crank Mechanical Devices we were rediscovering what the Greeks had already worked out 2 000 years ago these are analog computers Computing on Gears levers and pulleys and then late in the 1800s England was Rising as a great Maritime power they needed to calculate interest rates they needed to calculate navigational charts they had to map the heavens so that ships can then navigate so Charles Babbage shown here created a modern analog computer but you needed somebody to program it so lady Lovelace a member of the aristocracy was curious about this machine being built that could track the stars that could calculate interest rates that could calculate Commerce and she was the world's first programmer she wrote a program to compute the Bernoulli numbers now his machine his final machine was never built he ran out of money he got involved with disputes so later many decades later we rebuilt the machine of Charles Babbage he's the father of the modern computer father of the analog computer this invention here he never finished and then we had World War II all of a sudden the Nazis were communicating with this far-flung Empire with a code called enigma the Allies captured one of these machines and they realized oh my God the Nazis were communicating with their war machine using a code that could not be broken so what happened was they gave the job to a mathematician Alan Turing shown here on the right was given the job to lead a group to crack the Nazi code and there's even a movie about it called the imitation game on the left this group of mathematicians were able to not only Crack the Code but they even begin the process of systematizing the laws of artificial intelligence and computation before then it was a question of amateurs just dabbling and coding dabbling in mathematics what Alan Turing did was he codified the laws of computation through what are called what are called digital computers his turing machine shown here in the right uses an infinitely long tape with zeros and ones zeros and ones binary with a processor shown in the middle which takes a zero and converts it to a one or another zero and these rules on the left are the rules of computation all of a sudden this became rigorous mathematics so Alan Turing is the father of artificial intelligence and the father of modern computation and these are the machines that he built that cracked the Nazi code historians believe that he shortened the length of World War II by two years World War II could have ended in 1947 without the work of Alan Turing he cracked the Nazi code and he created the turing machine but it's a sad story years later his work was classified and the people of England and the world did not know that he helped to win World War II in America we celebrated the people at Alamogordo that built the atomic bomb but in England Alan Turing was a complete unknown and then one day somebody burglarized his home the police came and they found out he was gay and they arrested him and they put him on trial and they gave him a choice one of the options was to be injected with sex hormones to basically feminize him he grew breasts he became very depressed as a consequence of these chemical treatments given to gay people who were gay and he committed suicide he drank some cyanide actually he ate an apple laced with cyanide took a bite out of it and we think that's how he died some historians say that that is the symbol of Apple computers the Apple Computers in some sense could be dedicated the symbol of Apple Computers could be dedicated to the memory of Alan Turing one of the greatest scientists of our time the father of artificial intelligence the father of modern computation who invented the turing machine which is the basis of the second era of computation the first era was analog computers Computing on sticks Computing on levers and pulleys and gears and turning the crank the second is based on electricity on vacuum tubes and then transistors to the point where now you can pack a billion transistors on a little chip but then the question is what's beyond that what is Beyond digital well take a look at this this is Moore's law which says that computer power doubles every 18 months it's held as you can see here since World War II and even but before that if you go to Mechanical computers analog computers Moore's law goes back over a hundred years into the era of sticks and levers and gears and pulleys but All Things Must Pass this too shall pass it turns out that transistors today the smallest ones can be about 20 or so atoms across approximately it's only a matter of time before transistors are five atoms across at that point all Hill breaks loose at that point Silicon Valley could become a Rust Belt a monument to obsolete Technologies that's why Silicon Valley is desperately working on the Next Generation Beyond silicon silicon technology will be exhausted when we hit about five atoms across at that point the Heisenberg uncertainty principle kicks in you don't know where the electron is anymore and it's short circuits heat generation leakage will kill Silicon Valley so Richard Feynman after World War II he was one of the people who helped to build the atomic bomb said we have to go Beyond digital computers Mother Nature does not use digital digital is alien to Mother Nature zeros and ones zeros and ones who uses zeros and ones zeros and ones humans but not another mother nature what Richard fireman said was nature is quantum mechanical nature believes that electron waves the uncertainty principle the Schrodinger equation look on the right that's how a physicist looks at a hydrogen atom we don't see hydrogen atom as zeros and ones zeros and ones we see them as waves electron waves a new way that mother nature uses to do computation when you walk outside and you see the trees the leaves you see vegetation everywhere do they use zeros and ones zeros and ones is that how Mother Nature creates the world around us no everything is quantum mechanical and so Richard fireman said in a long matter of time before we leave the digital era and enter the next era the quantum era when we compute on atoms now it's not easy to compute on atoms but that's the future that's the way Mother Nature does it and you have to have quantum computers to understand the quantum laws of life so let's do an elementary understanding of why quantum computers is so powerful let's say that this is an atom an atom spins a spinning atom is like a magnet so it spins up in a magnetic field or it could spin down so in this way we have two ways of calculating a number an atom can spin up or an atom is going to spin down so that in some sense is the basis of our civilization today things can spin up or spin things and spin down but in reality atoms can spin in any orientation whatsoever now how many more orientations are there than up or down how many how much more complex is the direction of an atom if it can spin in any direction you realize that if you can compute in any direction you are infinitely infinitely more powerful than Computing up and down up and down not only that but your States when you rotate in any direction you calculate in these states simultaneously now that violates common sense everything you've learned about the world says that you cannot be two places at the same time your parents told you that you cannot be two places at the same time well we lied to you Mother Nature is everywhere at the same time let's take a look if a maze is dead is digitized a mouse on the upper left can make decisions to go left right left right to map out all possible paths through a maze that's time consuming how many paths are there there could be hundreds thousands of paths in a simple maze that a mouse has to navigate at each juncture the mouse has to say left or right left or right and how many pads are there potentially hundreds thousands of paths in a quantum computer the mouse surveys all paths simultaneously let me repeat that again the mouse surveys all paths simultaneously to pick out the correct path now you may say to yourself that's impossible that violates Common Sense common sense says ego one at a time one at a time you mean to tell me that I can split in half that I can be in many states at the same time and the answer is yeah that's what we're talking about you can be in multiple States at the same time and that is the power of quantum computers not only that but these atoms can talk to each other this is called entanglement and they can talk to each other faster than the speed of light of course the information traveling faster than the speed of light is not usable information but the usable information travels below the speed of light and that is another reason why these computers are more powerful than any digital computer now these things exist we're not talking science fiction and in fact at the end of the month I'm flying out to Santa Barbara for 60 minutes and we're going to film we're gonna film The quantum computer that your company is built in Santa Barbara this is just one of several different kinds of quantum computers why does it look like a chandelier cooling pipes these are not the quantum computer at all this is not really the quantum computer look at the very bottom that's where the quantity computer is the content computer computes on an object about the size of a quarter okay the whole assembly is like the size of a suitcase everything else is cooling pipes why because the slightest vibration somebody sneezes in another room somebody burps a car backfires and it could upset the calculation errors build up and this is one of the reasons why this technology is not yet ready for prime time but about two or three years ago two groups created Quantum Supremacy Quantum Supremacy is the point at which a quantum computer exceeds the power of a digital computer and that was reached by two groups one in China and the other one Google Quantum Supremacy has been attained for certain discrete calculations now an all-purpose quantum computer that you can program does not yet exist but that's the race there's a race now between the Chinese Google IBM there's a race between all the major players of Silicon Valley realizing that this is quote the next big thing and how did the Chinese do it the Chinese do it not with the electricity not with electrons but with light beams light beams are polarized light beams like when you take sunglasses sunglasses have striations on them let's say vertical striations so that the only light that enters your eye vibrates up and down light that vibrates to the side does not enter your sunglass and that's how sunglasses work well that can be used to make a transistor an optical transistor and with an optical transistor you can make a quantum computer this is the Chinese quantum computer it doesn't look like a chandelier that's what the American version looks like this is the Chinese version Look carefully what you see are mirrors a mirror and a piece of glass can be a beam splitter and what is a transistor a transistor is the way in some sense to control the beams of electrons here these are beams of light and so the leaders in this race there's a race in the leaders in the race or one the Chinese and then in America we have Google IBM Microsoft everybody Honeywell you name it everybody's jumping in the game what's at stake the world economy the world economy today depends upon digital computers they will eventually become obsolete when we can't say for sure but Moore's law will eventually flatten out it's beginning to flatten already you can see it at Christmas time Christmas presents are not twice as powerful as they were the previous Christmas now let me ask you a question would you upgrade at Christmas time would you upgrade knowing that your computers are just as powerful as they were the previous Christmas this could send shock waves to the world economy realizing that computer power is stagnating stagnating in the digital era so how will we communicate with a quantum computer the quantum computer will probably be in the cloud they probably have a need a lot of cooling system to bring it down near absolute zero but you will communicate using probably a digital access to a computer quantum computer in the cloud this interface could be in your wristwatch it could be in your earrings or it could be in your contact lens this is Internet contact lenses where you can access the internet by blinking and if the internet is in your contact lens communicating with a quantum computer in the cloud who will buy these things well college students studying for final examinations will be among the first to buy Internet contact lenses they will blink and all the answers to my exam will be right there in their contact lens who also buy them these contact lenses will also identify people's identity just by looking at them you'll know who they are what language they speak it'll translate these languages for example let's say you're on a date okay and your date says that he's rich single powerful and available but your contact lens says no he's a loser child support payments this guy stay away from this guy's poison okay very important that you know who you're talking to instantly let's say you're looking for a job and you're at a cocktail party and there's some very important people at that cocktail party but you don't know who they are in the future you will know exactly who to suck up to at any cocktail party very useful and these things actually already exist one contact lens gives your golf score for example eventually you'll download the entire internet on your contact lenses or your wristwatch or earrings or whatever now what else can you do with this as I said before the greatest consumer of quantum technology is Mother Nature you go outside you see photosynthesis you see leaves trees agriculture you see the the variations of life on the Earth all of it as a benefit from the quantum theory nowhere do you say zeros and ones zeros and ones zeros and ones photosynthesis is a Quantum process taking light photons from the Sun combining it with carbon dioxide and creating oxygen and sugars this is why you can breathe this is why humans can exist we are benefits of a Quantum process that is beyond the capabilities of our most advanced chemistry in other words we have to follow Mother Nature and who else is interested in this d-wave technology in Canada is already marketing quantum computers they're kind of primitive they can only do minimization and maximization programs but they're being sold commercially the Aerospace industry is interested because the Aerospace industry wants to create supersonic transports remember that we used to have a supersonic transport called the Concord it was a failure why they had 1960s technology to analyze airflow now 1960s technology is a dinosaur era as a consequence the Concord created a sonic boom a sonic boom so great that it would shatter the windows in your house so who wanted a supersonic transport overhead nobody the United States outlawed them so it was a financial failure now we have super computers we can model airflow over the wings to reduce the sonic boom so supersonic transports now are hot business they are the next chapter in aviation in the future you'll have breakfast in New York you'll have afternoon tea in Tokyo and you'll have dinner in New York again so we're talking about a new era a new era in space travel even just last month Elon musk's Moon rocket blew up on National Television but but it is the future we're talking about a reusable rocket that can go to the Moon Mars and Beyond this is an interplanetary rocket it's called the Starship the original name for this rocket the biggest rocket in existence the original name for it was the bfr B for big R for rocket and you can imagine what the f stands for it's not been renamed the starship and Mercedes Benz is interested in this technology to streamline their cars to increase fuel economy so a lot of companies are jumping into the game these quantum computers already exist they're sold commercially they're not that powerful but they will do maximization and minimization and the solar industry is interested we've been talking about the solar era for decades ever since you were a child we were talking about the solar age it never came why people forget that Moore's Law does not apply for batteries batteries are the weak link when the sun doesn't shine the Winds Don't Blow you lose your shirt look at this in France acres and Acres of solar cells the problem is the battery so supercomputers can now do chemistry in the memory of a quantum computer think about that chemistry without chemicals we're talking about a new era in science where we can model molecules we can't do that with ordinary computers an ordinary computer is powerless to model the intricacies of a chemical of a molecule but that's what we're talking about here quantum computers can model Quantum processes including to create a super battery and this is the fertilizer industry about 100 years ago um the Germans were able to create artificial fertilizer by taking nitrogen out of the air and creating factories huge factories to create fertilizer this was the first Green Revolution this is the reason why you're here today 50 percent of the atoms of your body are made possible by artificial fertilizer let me repeat that again 50 percent of every molecule in your body has been made possible because of the Green Revolution but this revolution is nearing its end they are polluting they're inefficient they use up one percent of the entire Electric Supply of the planet Earth let me repeat that again one percent of the entire electrical output of the planet Earth goes into making fertilizer we need a new way to do this let's follow mother nature mother nature creates fertilizers for free we have to have huge plans gigantic plants absorbing one percent of the total electric output of the planet Earth to create fertilizer but the nature does it for free at room temperature in other words we need a quantum computer that can duplicate this process now on the left is the enzyme that makes it possible we've sequenced it look at that thing that thing on the left makes life on Earth possible by creating fertilizer can we use that manipulate that using a digital computer no digital computers only work on zeros and ones zeros and ones zeros and one look at that thing there's no way that digital digitally model that thing except a quantum computer can That's The Power of quantum computers and now let's talk about cancer Parkinson's let's talk about Alzheimer's disease of course we now have been able to sequence the DNA of plants animals and what can we do with it well not much first of all this is how we make the new next wonder drug look at this thing thousands of Petri dishes sown here you put the you put the germ in each one and then you put a chemical in each petri dish hundreds thousands of them and then what do you do you cross your fingers you're crossing fingers and hope and pray that one of them works and kills a germ now think about it this is stupid there's no Rhyme or Reason to this you just take all sorts of chemicals and then you apply them to germs and cross your fingers and hope that one of them kills the germs this is how we make Wonder drugs that's why they cost a billion dollars it costs about a billion dollars to Market one wonder drug this is how we do it in the future we'll do it in the memory of a quantum computer the memory of a quantum computer will now do chemistry now some people say well this put chemists out of work well chemists who do not use quantum computers will be out of a job chemists who do use quantum computers will Thrive and they'll have jobs that is the future of quantum computers to be used as a tool for chemists biologists and look at Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease is incurable and it means that people in their 80s about 50 percent of them have dementia I repeat about 50 percent of those people in their 80s have some form of dementia and Alzheimer's why because of this that's the protein that gums up the brain now we realize using MRI and other other chemical techniques we now realize that this thing gums up the brain causing Alzheimer's but there are two types of this protein one bends to the right one bends to the left it turns out the one that bends to the right kills you that's why we have problems with Alzheimer's disease that's why your parents may have dementia but the one that bends to the left does not you can have gum all over your brain amyloid proteins in in your brain and be clear-minded why is that it means there's not a one-to-one correspondence between the protein and Alzheimer's disease why because only one variety causes it with quantum computers in the future we may be able to separate the left and the right curing Alzheimer's disease the disease of the century and what else can we do with this thing we can also use it to give unlimited power with Fusion Mother Nature does not use oil and coals for energy Mother Nature does not use uranium for energy in fact the only place in the Galaxy that we know of where where uranium is used for power is on the planet Earth what does Mother Nature use fusion power and we're going to create Fusion on the Earth just last a few months ago in California we hit break even with a fusion plant why has it taken so long to create a fusion reactor because of the instability of the plasma the hydrogen gas with supercomputers with quantum computers we should be able to stabilize the gas to create an operating Fusion plant to power the world to save us from global warming and what else can we do with this thing this is the largest atom semester on the planet Earth outside Geneva this is the Large Hadron Collider on the right is what we do with it what do we do with it we smash atoms hoping to recreate the birth of the universe and how do we model this with quantum computers one of the first things we've done now is they put a quantum computer to analyze the right hand side when two protons are smashed together in order to create a theory of the universe in other words the Big Bang we think shown here will eventually be decoded by a quantum computer and hopefully it'll answer the question why are we here as I said before I work in string theory this is the reason why I got interested in this string theory is so powerful but so complicated that the human mind is incapable of solving it we think maybe a quantum computer can solve this problem and the aging process why do we have to die well there's a second law of Thermodynamics which says that in a closed system everything eventually gets old falls apart rusts corrodes and dies in other words it's a law of physics that you have to die but there's a loophole there's a loophole in the laws of physics notice that I said that the second law of Thermodynamics says that in a closed system All Things Must eventually fall apart the key word is closed in an open system where you have energy from the outside technology from the outside you can in principle stop the aging process we don't have to die for example in a car where does aging take place in a car think about it for a moment where does aging take place in your car the engine why is that that's where you have oxidation that's where you have combustion that's where you have moving Parts the engine well what is the engine of a cell mitochondria you now know where aging takes place in your body you now know why you will eventually die and then the question is can we go around the second law of Thermodynamics with a quantum computer by being able to correct the mistakes because of wear and tear that's how we repair cars why can't we repair humans the way we repair cars well maybe we can and let's say a few things about cancer now by the time you have a tumor you go to the doctor and the doctor says it could be too late by the time you have a tumor you have over a billion cancer cells growing in your body a billion cancer cells growing in your body in the future we will do it with a blood test already this year for the first time in world history For the First Time The FDI made it commercially available a blood test that attacks 50 different types of cancers let me repeat that again up today up to up to now there was no way to tell whether you had cancer or not until you found a tumor or some obvious symptoms and by then sometimes it was too late now we have a blood test a simple blood test that can pick up 50 different kinds of cancers in the future this will be hooked up to a quantum computer to detect hundreds maybe thousands of different types of cancers growing in your body and where will we hook it up to your toilet ladies and gentlemen this could be the cure for cancer your toilet will pick up enzymes proteins cells from your body from your bodily fluids send into a quantum computer that will detect cancer and tell you that you have cancer maybe 10 years before a tumor forms ladies and gentlemen this means that the word tumor may disappear from the human language you know we don't say bloodletting anymore we don't say leeches anymore that's an old technology that is shown to be obsolete George Washington the father of our country how did he die he was bled to death bled to death we killed our president because of incorrect knowledge in the future your toilet will be your first line of defense every time you use it it'll be picked up by a quantum computer and tell you oh you have cancer do something you have 10 years to do something and who else is interested in this technology the CIA anything this powerful even though we don't have it commercially available yet anything this powerful can break any known code how do you break a code well let's say I have a number that is a hundred digits long and I factorize it I factorize it into two separate numbers how long did it take for you to factorize an integer a hundred digits long it may take you a few centuries a few centuries to do that that's how we protect the crown jewels of our secrets our nuclear codes banking transactions the crown jewels how do we protect them by factorizing long numbers it takes centuries for a digital computer to perform this factorization process unless of course you know the code in which you can break right in a quantum computer can conceivably break into any known digital code so who's interested in this the CIA I was in Russia a few years ago speaking at a conference in Moscow and yeah the Russians are there to they too realize the power of what a quantum computer can do and let me now end on a few notes first of all how does it work it works because of the fact that you can be two places at the same time that is the power of quantum computers let's say I take an electron beam and shoot it through two slits on the right hand side is the interference pattern because the electron beam will interfere with the other other electrons to create a pattern on the far right okay you got that now let's shoot one electron one electron through the double slit what's on the other side you think that it's just going to be one dot one electron creates one dot right no what you find is that each time you shoot the electron through the slit an interference pattern shows up where it impacts on the screen so in other words the electron interferes with itself now how can that be how can you interfere with yourself because in some sense there is a parallel world that you are interfering with in other words you are two places at the same time this is the famous Schrodinger cat a cat can be both dead and alive simultaneously and this is the reason why quantum computers are so powerful they compute in all possible realities simultaneously at the same time and then the next question that everyone asked me is is Elvis Presley still alive in a parallel universe and the answer is well probably yes there probably is a parallel universe where he's building out hits still because the universe splits in half constantly splitting in half now I'm going to wind up I was asked the Nobel Laureate to explain this in simple terms Steve Weinberg said the following imagine your living room where radio waves from many countries fill your room Radio Moscow Havana whatever right all these radio stations in your living room at the same time but your radio only picks up one since one frequency why it vibrates in unison only with one frequency and that's why you hear only one station not an infinite number of stations one station you got that the the wave vibrates in unison with your radio now replace the radio with electrons all of a sudden your living room is full of different types of atoms the atoms of dinosaurs the atoms of aliens from outer space the atoms of pirates all in your living room okay but you have decohered from them you cannot shake hands with Elvis Presley because he's vibrating at a different frequency than you this is the Multiverse idea the idea that reality is full of different parallel universes but you only vibrate with one coherently with one universe and that explains the power of quantum computers they compute unparalleled universes where do you find them well the first mention of a parallel universe was in Alice in Wonderland written by Charles Dodson uh a British mathematician who wrote Under a pen name Lewis Carroll Einstein talked about parallel universes in 1935 introducing wormholes and now Hollywood has discovered parallel universes the Oscars this year were dominated all the wars went to a movie talking about parallel universes well I'm running out of time so I'd like to introduce some questions so let me end the one final note and that is when I was a child my my role model was Albert Einstein and 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 a chauffeur came up to him and the chauffeur said professor I'm really a part-time actor I've heard your speech so many times I've memorized it so why don't we switch places I will put on a mustache I will put on a wig I will be the great Einstein and you can put on my jacket and be my chauffeur well I say I love the joke so they switch places this went along famously until one day a mathematician in the back asked a very difficult question and Einstein thought oh the game is up but then the chauffeur said that question is so Elementary that even My Chauffeur here can answer it for you okay thank you very much I think we have time for a few questions thank you Dr Cocker we have uh I'll kick off a question or two here first we have microphones on both sides of the room feel free to hop up to there we're on a short timeline but we'll get to some audience questions here soon thank you very much it's a inspiring view of the future uh and so to kind of kick off some of our questions we're all kind of on this plane of existence together uh with limited resources and time probably on Earth for our practitioners and for folks in the quantum Computing race um what would be your guidance on you know Focus do we try to focus in on the things that we know we have the largest impact in the short term by having not a general quantum computer but more of a specific thing think like a GPU or TPU like a very specific uh type of device or should we go all in and go for the generalized quantum computer first well I think we have to take a view a long-term view of this thing that if you put a crash program on one specific thing maybe you're putting your money on the wrong horse okay it's a horse race each horse is pushing a different mode of physics the Chinese are using optical methods we're using computer electron methods but even then they're different ways in which you can use electrons and it's not clear which are the different horses will win it's not clear at all because they're all Quantum processes how many Quantum processes are there and even a number of them if you think about it so I think what you got to do is you got to hedge your bets you you got to realize that you got to put your your money over a set of different kinds of Technologies because it's not clear which one technology Will Survive each of these Technologies is based on a Quantum principle but each of them has a potential defect you saw the optical computer the optical computer does not have to work at their absolute zero which is great but it's on gangly you saw how huge and how how difficult it is to put all these mirrors in exactly the right alignment so each of these methods has a plus and a minus and it's still too early to determine which one will eventually win out okay got it so not placing any bets yet yeah awesome and then for the next generation of folks that are coming up and I I have children I know you have children as well we we live in a world right now where there's a great plane a spectrum of depth in science we have everything from something that might go out as a tweet today from someone has an opinion all the way to academic peer-reviewed papers and you certainly have been able to build a career across the gamut there what advice do you have for some of our googlers working with Social platforms and online knowledge systems you know how how do we go and elicit the next generation of Dr kakus to to arrive well when we are in college we specialize in a certain area me for me was quantum physics for example but then if you want to communicate with your mother or you want to communicate with your girlfriend boyfriend or whatever you just get these blank stares we have to understand the language of people we have to be able to communicate with them because their lives are going to be dependent upon it and that's how a democracy Works a democracy Works only if the people that are voting can make rational decisions and just remember that our future will be dependent upon voting a democracy and politicians and politicians of course would love to get their handle to pass all sorts of stupid regulations on things that are totally irrelevant but of course make them look good and get them reelected so I think that for example on the question of chat Bots and things like that I think it should be self-regulated rather than having politicians come in which means that we have to talk to people in the language of people so what I try to do is instead of rattling up names days places which go right over people's head I try to talk about Concepts and principles and then you you see that these principles are Universal and they can be applied for many different purposes for example when I talk to biologists I talk about Evolution one principle that explains so many different kinds of animals right and when I talk about you know uh physics I talk about you know relativity motion talk about rocket ships clocks things that people understand so we have to learn the language of people because they're the ones who determine our future because they're going to vote they're going to vote to make sure that their interests are preserved but if they don't know what their interests are then we're in trouble great yeah I think we can definitely get behind inclusive science and and bringing everyone to the future together and then last for me before we go to our audience here and my team we have a tradition of giving our speakers a magic wand here at Google so I'm handing you the Google magic wand what would you prioritize for us to focus on it can be in the quantum realm can be in the llm world what do you what would you do if you could waive the Google magic wand and get us all working in a common Direction well I like to look at history looking at Technologies which dominate history first was the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s then came the electric Revolution so we had dynamos and electricity and so on and television radio then we had the computer Revolution and now we're entering the artificial intelligent realm so we have to educate people on artificial intelligence because that's going to dominate our life it's going to dominate the market the stock market it's going to dominate culture and already people are kind of like sometimes freaking out and some sometimes over exaggerating some of these things so we have to learn to speak to people's concerns and the concerns right now are as we're entering the age of artificial intelligence artificial intelligence will affect jobs education it'll affect everything and we have to be able to communicate that to the public so the public is not freaked out and that's why I think it's important that we understand first of all that we're entering the age of artificial intelligence but we have to be able to then tell people that this could be useful it could create jobs it could make life easier life more productive life more efficient these are the benefits of artificial intelligence okay thank you very timely I think most of the folks in this room are working on an AI related project this year anyways so that's really good thanks for the great leverage of that magic wand first I'll go here to one of our guest questions hello good afternoon doctor thank you so much for this presentation that was really uh eliminating to see that kind of poetry of Technology a lot of the things you describe sounds really fantastic and I really wish them to happen that way to really make our lives better with minimal impact however I have to admit I'm a little bit concerned sometimes about technology we tend to see all the good it could do and we don't necessarily stop to look at all the externalities and the potential negative impact for example a lot of us technology like was uh sensors in the bathroom detecting our health that's great but we're going to use semiconductor that are going to have a lot of environmental impact so my question to you is why all while all those things sounds great do we necessarily have to try to maximize as much as we can technology or would it be sometime better wiser to take maybe like a pose and to wonder it's not because we can do something as much as we can maybe should we do it or maybe should we take a broader picture a more middle way to really benefit the greater good for most people including all the aspect and cloning environmental environmental impacts well I think we definitely have to look at the downside of Technology because if we don't then the politicians come up and and monkey around and really make a miss out of things and that means self-regulation when technology has become too too advanced and so I think for example take a look at the movie industry uh at the after the end of every movie there's a little sign that says this movie was fake all the actors are fake all the dialogue is fake and you're a chump if you believe it's real okay so every movie has a disclaimer okay so it's self-policing the industry does not want governments to police which movies are good bad they have a self-policing mechanism same thing with freedom of speech what about freedom of speech well you cannot yield fire in a crowded theater there are limits to free speech even okay and so I think that the industry has to mature to the point where yeah you're competing against the next guy it's a ray face against time and you realize that if you fumble then the next guy will grab your lunch for you yeah there's that too but you have to look at the bigger picture too and that is that unless you begin the process of self-regulation then the the industry gets it gets looked upon adversely by the politicians and then his political football God knows where it's going to go and uh or look at the comics code of the 1950s I still remember the time when uh people were saying comic books should be banned this is after World War II because we're talking about violence well the comic industry created the comics code there's a little symbol on the comic books saying that yes it's been approved by the comics code and that prevented the government from censoring and regulating the comic book industry so I think the computer industry is no different that it's at a certain point it's better to be self-regulating than have politicians do it because right now people people are a little bit afraid they're afraid about what the impact will be on their jobs their children's education stuff like that and so I think we have to you know put that to rest by having the industry self-regulate itself and already some of the the leaders of these companies are meeting with the president pretty soon which I think is a good sign a good sign so it means that yes the industry is looking at the ethical moral Dimension as well thank you great thank you Dr Kaku I I know we have a lot of questions we'd like to ask you but you have a very tight uh schedule today one more question one more yeah okay hi I'd also like to thank you for coming out and speaking to us in person here um I have a question that is simple but probably doesn't have a simple explanation uh you mentioned that we kind of already have a theory of everything equation but it's just too complicated to solve right now what about it makes it too complicated to solve with our classical digital computers is it like a p versus NP type thing or what what about the complexity of it needs quantum computers well the simplest problem with putting this Theory of Everything on a computer is that The Theory of Everything Is Not based on numbers it's based on super numbers Clifford algebra's you can Google it and you realize that um you know you know that super numbers uh cannot be easily programmed in a computer program a computer uses ordinary digital numbers one plus one is two things like that we use super numbers uh Clifford algebras and as a consequence they cannot be put on a computer very well so a computer would go Bonkers try to solve string theory and that's what we want to do we want to calculate our universe why why are we here why do we have stars galaxies why it could have been something else I mean for example in some universes protons are not stable if protons are not stable and everything collapses into a Mist a mist of electrons and neutrinos but here we are with stable protons it's very difficult to get a stable proton we've tried very hard so far nobody has been able to show that a Theory of Everything gives you a stable proton in other words reality itself should dissolve in most scenarios and so we want to be able to calculate with string theory to show that our universe is stable so it doesn't collapse and to prove that the proton is stable but nobody can do that in fact if any of you ever figure out why protons are stable tell me first and we'll split the Nobel Prize you and me okay I have to go knowingly or not I think you just put down the gauntlet here in a room full of smart Engineers so uh thank you for that thank you for joining us today um and congratulations on your book's success already we're looking forward to having you back here soon okay thank you Dr Kaku okay [Music]

2023-06-11 12:56

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