All language subtitles for Sean Blacknell . Wayne Walsh - (2016) The Future of Work and Death

Even if we can
change human beings,

in what direction
do we change them?

Do we want to change them
this way or that way?

This is an example
of the way in which

technological advance impinges
on sociological necessity.

♪

What we need to ask
ourselves is,

"Where does my individual
ability to control my life

or to influence
the political process

lie in relation to these
new forms of technology?"

♪

Government and politicians

don't understand
what's happening.

See, they don't even realized
this change is happening.

♪

It is very difficult,
not impossible,

to predict what
the precise effects will be,

and in--in many cases,
like with other technologies,

we have to socket and see.

Who would have
predicted the internet?

And I talk about this
matter as humanity 2.0

'cause in a sense, this is
kind of where we're heading,

to some kind of
new--new normal, as it were,

of what it is
to be a human being.

It's not a problem

that we should dismiss
or underestimate.

It's staggering
in its proportions.

Ignorance and disbelief
at the same time.

People don't believe that
change is happening this fast.

That's the problem.

♪

This is a stone

formed naturally
in the Earth's crust

over millions of years
through pressure and heat.

It was discovered in
the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.

Dated around 2.5
million years BC,

it is arguably one of the first
examples of technology.

Stone tools were first adapted
for the use of cutting,

scraping, or pounding
materials by Homo habilis,

one of our earliest ancestors.

Over one million years later,

mankind made one of
the most significant

of all technological
discoveries...

Fire.

The ability to control fire

was a turning point
for human evolution.

It kept us warm, allowed us
to see in the dark,

and allowed us to cook food,

which many scientists believe
was a huge contributor

to the ascent of mind.

♪

Each age, each empire,
has brought with it

the discovery and invention
of numerous technologies

each in their own way
redesigning human life...

♪

...leading us to now...

...modern-day society.

We're now more advanced,
connected, knowledgeable,

and resistant to disease
than ever before,

and it is all due
to our ability

to apply scientific knowledge
for practical purposes

in a bid to maximize
efficiency.

Just as the stone set us
on a path of transformation,

the technologies
of the future

may bring with them
a paradigm shift,

changing two major features
of the human experience.

Two things that have
defined our lives

for as long as
we can remember.

Two things that have always
been involuntary constants:

trading our time
for sustenance

and losing that time
through senescence.

♪

♪

(indistinct chattering)

♪

(telephone ringing)

♪

(Zapping)

♪

(laughing)

♪

The Industrial Revolution
effectively freed man

from being a beast of burden.

The computer revolution
will similarly free him

from dull, repetitive routine.

The computer
revolution is, however,

perhaps better compared
with the Copernican

or the Darwinian Revolution,

both of which greatly changed
man's idea of himself

and the world
in which he lives.

In the space of 60 years,
we have landed on the moon,

seen the rise of
computing power,

mobile phones,

the explosion
of the internet,

and we have sequenced
the human genome.

We took man to
the moon and back

with four kilobytes of memory.

The phone in your pocket
is at least 250,000 times

more powerful than that.

We are ever-increasingly
doing more with less.

One of the things
that has been born

out of this
technological revolution

is the ability
to replace human workers

with more efficient machines.

This is largely
due to the speed

at which we are advancing our
technological capabilities.

(applause)

Information technology grows
in an exponential manner.

It's not linear.

And our intuition is linear.

When we walked
through the savanna

a thousand years ago,
we made linear predictions

where that animal would be
and that worked fine.

It's hardwired in our brains,

but the pace of
exponential growth

is really what describes
information technologies,

and it's not just computation.

There's a big difference
between linear

and exponential growth.

If I take 30 steps linearly,

one, two, three, four,
five, I get to 30.

If I take 30 steps
exponentially,

two, four, eight, sixteen,
I get to a billion.

It makes a huge difference.

And that really describes
information technology.

When I was a student at MIT,

we all shared one computer,
it took up a whole building.

The computer in
your cell phone today

is a million times cheaper,
a million times smaller,

a thousand times
more powerful.

That's a billionfold increase
in capability per dollar

that we've actually
experienced

since I was a student,

and we're gonna do it again
in the next 25 years.

Currently,
on an almost daily basis,

new algorithms, programs,

and feats in
mechanical engineering

are getting closer and closer
to being a reliable

and more cost-effective
alternative to a human worker.

This process is
known as automation.

This is not just about,

you know, automation
where we expect it,

which is in factories

and among blue-collar
workers and so forth.

It is coming
quite aggressively

for people at much
higher skill levels,

and that will only
grow in the future

as we continue on
this exponential arc.

This business that, you know,
not having to work very hard

because machines are taking
care of things for you,

I mean, you see this
also in the 19th century

with the Industrial Revolution.

And, in fact, I think
one of the problems

with the Industrial Revolution,

and this is where Marxism
got so much traction,

was that machines
actually did render

a lot of people
unemployed, okay?

That already happened in
the 19th and 20th centuries.

And it was only by
labor organizing itself

that it was able
to kind of deal

with the situation
intelligently

because there was no
automatic, you might say,

transition to something else.

It was just, you know,
"We don't need you anymore.

We have these more
efficient machines,

and so now
we don't--you know,

now you just have to find
work somewhere else."

Automation clearly has been
happening for a long time,

and it has,
you know, automated

a lot of very laborious work
that we don't want to do,

and that's gonna continue
to be the case in the future,

but I do think that this time
is genuinely different.

If we look at what's
happened historically,

what we've seen
is that automation

has primarily been
a mechanical phenomenon,

and the classic
example of that

is, of course, agriculture.

I'm a farmer.

Here's what mechanical
engineering has done

for all of us who
work on the farms

and for you, too.

It used to be,
in the United States

and in most
advanced countries,

that most people
worked on farms.

Now, almost no one
works on a farm.

It's less than two percent.

And, of course, as a result
of that, we're better off.

We have, you know,
more comfortable jobs,

food is cheaper,

we have a much more
advanced society.

The question is, "Can that
continue indefinitely?"

And what we're
seeing this time

is that things are
really quite different.

If this keeps up,

it won't be long before
machines will do everything.

Nobody will have work.

So as we move deeper
into the automated future,

we will see different
stages take form.

The first stage
that we're entering

is the stage where
automated robots are working

side by side with
people in factories.

Some of those jobs
are slowly going away,

but in the near future,
within two to three years,

you're going to see
a huge percentage

of those factory jobs
be replaced

with automated systems
and automated robots.

The next stage following
that is we could see

up to a third
of jobs in America

be replaced by 2025

by robots
or automated systems.

That's a huge
percentage of people

that could be unemployed

because of this
automated tsunami

that's coming, basically.

We have a colleague
here called Carl Frey

who has put together
a list of jobs

by their vulnerability

to getting replaced
by automation,

and the least vulnerable are
things like choreographers,

managers, social workers.

People who have people skills

and who have creativity.

♪

One area that I look
a lot at is fast food.

I mean, the fast food industry
is tremendously important

in American economy.

If you look at the years
since recovery

from the Great Recession,

the majority of jobs,
somewhere around 60 percent,

have been low-wage
service sector jobs.

A lot of those have been
in areas like fast food,

and yet, to me,
it seems almost inevitable

that, ultimately,
fast food is gonna automate.

There's a company right
here in San Francisco

called "Momentum Machines"
which is actually working on

a machine to automate
hamburger production,

and it can crank out

about 400 gourmet
hamburgers per hour,

and they ultimately expect
to sort of roll that out

not just in fast food
establishments,

perhaps in convenience stores

and maybe even
vending machines.

It could be
all over the place.

♪

I can see manufacturing now
becoming completely automated.

I can see, you know,
hundreds of millions

of workers being
put out of jobs,

That's almost certain
it's gonna happen.

So you have lots of companies
right now that are automating

their factories
and their warehouses.

Amazon is a great example.

They're using robots
to automate their systems.

The robots actually
grab the products

and bring the products
to the people

who put those products
into the box.

So there are still people

within the factories
at Amazon,

but in the near future,
those jobs may go away as well.

There is a company here
in Silicon Valley

called "Industrial Perception,"

and they built a robot
that can approach

a stack of boxes that are
son of stacked haphazardly

in some nonstandard way

and visually, by looking at
that stack of boxes,

figure out how
to move those boxes.

And they built a machine
that ultimately

will be able to move
perhaps one box every second,

and that compares with
about three seconds

for a human worker
who's very industrious.

Okay, and this machine,
you can imagine,

will work continuously.

It's never gonna get injured,

never file a workers'
compensation claim,

and, yet, it's moving
into an area

that, up until now, at least,
we would have said

is really something that
is exclusively the provid--

province of the human worker.

I mean, it's this ability
to look at something

and then based on
what you see,

manipulate your environment.

It's son of the confluence

of visual perception
and dexterity.

♪

We'll see self-driving
cars on the road

within 10 or 15 years.

Fifteen years from now,
we'll be debating

whether we should even allow
human beings to be on--

be on the road at all.

Tesla says that by next year,

that, you know, their cars
will be 90 percent automated.

Which means that
the jobs of taxi drivers,

truck drivers, goes away.

Suddenly, we don't need
to own cars anymore.

Humanity isn't ready for such
a basic change such as that.

♪

Call center jobs,
voice recognition

is pretty sophisticated
these days.

And you can imagine
replacing many kinds of,

you know,
helplines and things.

There's a company called
"lPsoft" that has created

an intelligent
software system,

an automated system,
called "Amelia."

She can not only understand
what you're saying to her,

she understands the context
of what you're saying,

and she can learn
from her mistakes.

This is a huge deal because
what we're going to see

is all of the customer
service agent jobs,

if she is successful,
if this software program,

this automated software
program is successful,

we could see all of
those jobs go away.

These things tend
to go to marginal cost,

and marginal cost is copying
software, which is nothing,

and running it on a computer

which will probably be
very cheap.

♪

Human doctors will be,
in some respect, pushed aside

because machines
can do a better job

of diagnosis than they can.

Now will they have the empathy
that current doctors do?

I don't know, but at least
they'll have the knowledge

that our doctors do,
they'll be more advanced,

so I can see this
option in healthcare.

The one that is likely to be
the biggest growth area,

from an economic standpoint,
is the android companions

to help elderly people,
okay, because there's--

you know, given the rise
in elderly people

over the next 20,
30 years, that it's--

and it's unlikely there are
gonna be enough people

going into
the nursing profession

to actually serve them,
especially if we're thinking

in terms of home-based care.

The robot surgeon, I think,
is something that will happen

in the not-too-distant future

because a lot of that is
to do with manual dexterity

and having the expertise
to recognize--

to understand what you're
manipulating as a surgeon.

Terrific amount of expertise
for a human to accumulate,

but I can imagine that
we would be able to build

something that is
a specialized robot surgeon

that can carry out
particular operations

such as a prostate operation.

That's one that people
are working on right now,

and I think
they're nearly there

of being able to produce

a reliable robot surgeon
that can do that.

You might not want to submit
yourself to this thing,

you might think, but in fact,
I think we'll be able to make

a very reliable robot surgeon
to do that sort of thing.

♪

I can see this
option in finance

because they're moving
to digital currencies.

And--and we're now
moving to crowdfunding

and crowdbanking
and all these other advances.

One of my favorites
is investment bankers.

Artificial intelligence
already does more

stock market trades
today than any human being.

Lots of decisions like
decisions about mortgages

and insurance, already
those things have been,

you know, largely
taken over by programs,

and I think that kind of trend
is only gonna continue.

♪

Every time there's
a technological change,

it will, unfortunately, put
a lot of people out of work.

It happened with
the cotton gin.

It's happened with every
single technological change.

So, sure, technology
destroys jobs,

but it creates new ones.

Moving from the age of work
that we're in now

into the abundant,
ubiquitous automation age,

that bridge that
we have to cross

is gonna be a very
interesting time period.

I think in the very beginning
of that time period,

you're going to see automation
star-t to replace jobs,

but those jobs will transfer
into other forms of work.

So, for example, instead
of working in a factory,

you will learn to code
and you will code the robots

that are working
in the factory.

When I was a young man
and I went for careers advice,

I don't know what they
would have made of me

asking for a job
as a webmaster.

It didn't exist, there
wasn't a web at that time.

And, right now, we have
over 200,000 vacancies

for people who can
analyze big data.

And we really do need people

and mechanisms
for analyzing it

and getting the most
information from that data,

and that problem is only
gonna increase in the future.

And I do think that there's
gonna be a lot of employment

moving in that direction.

♪

The history of our country
proves that new inventions

create thousands of jobs
for every one they displace.

So it wasn't long before your
grandfather had a better job

at more pay for less work.

We're always offered
this solution

of still more education,
still more training.

If people lose
their routine job,

then let's send them
back to school.

They'll pick up
some new skills,

they'll learn something new,
and then they'll be able

to move into some
more rewarding career.

That's not gonna operate
so well in the future

where the machines are coming

for those skilled
jobs as well.

The fact is that machines
are really good at

picking up skills
and doing all kinds

of extraordinarily
complex things,

so those jobs
aren't necessarily

gonna be there either.

And a second insight,
I think, is that historically,

it's always been the case that
the vast majority of people

have always done routine work.

So even if people can
make that transition,

if they can succeed
in going back to school

and learning something new,
in percentage terms,

those jobs don't constitute

that much of the total
employment out there.

I mean, most people are doing
these more routine things.

So, you know, we're up
against a real problem

that's probably gonna
require a political solution.

It's probably going to
require direct redistribution.

That's my take on it,

and that's a staggering
political challenge,

especially in
the United States.

This would be fine
if we had generations

to adapt to the change
so that the next generation

could develop
a different lifestyle,

different value system.

The problem is that
all of this is happening

within the same generation.

Within a period of 15 years,

we're gonna start wiping out
most of the jobs that we know.

That's really what worries me.

A term commonly used when
describing the trajectory

of technological progress
and where it's leading us

is the "technological
singularity."

The term is
borrowed from physics

to describe an event horizon
or a moment in space time

that you cannot see beyond.

We are currently
in the transistor era

of information technology.

In 1965, co-founder
of Intel, Gordon Moore,

made the observation
that the processing power

of computers doubles
every 18 months.

The prediction that
this trend will continue

is known as Moore's Law.

When Intel created

their first computer
processing unit in 1971,

it has 2,300 transistors

and had a processing speed
of 740 kilohertz.

Today, a typical CPU has
over a billion transistors

with an average speed
of two gigahertz.

However, many predict
that by 2020,

the miniaturization of
transistors and silicon chips

will reach its limit,

and Moore's Law will fizzle
out into a post-silicon era.

Another way of
describing the term

"technological singularity"

is a time when
artificial intelligence

surpasses human
intellectual capacity.

But does this mean
that a computer

can produce a new idea

or make an original
contribution to knowledge?

Artificial intelligence, Al,
is a longstanding project

which has to do
with basically trying

to use machines as a way
of trying to understand

the nature of intelligence

and, originally,
the idea was, in some sense,

to manufacture
within machines

something that could
simulate human intelligence.

But I think now,
as the years have gone on,

we now think in terms
of intelligence

in a much more abstract way,

so the ability to engage
in massive computations,

right, where you can
end up making

quite intelligent decisions
much more quickly

than a human being can.

So in this respect,
artificial intelligence

in a sense is a,
you might say,

as trying to go to the next
level of intelligence

beyond the human.

♪

A proper Al could substitute

for practically any human job
at some level of skill,

so it's--it would be

a completely
different situation.

You can imagine any kind of
job could, in theory,

be replaced by technology,
if you build human-level Al.

Now that, of course, may
or may not be a good thing.

You'd be able to,
for example, make robots

that could do
all kinds of jobs

that humans don't
necessarily want to do.

There are the so-called
three D's jobs

that are dirty,
dangerous, or dull,

which humans might
not want to do,

and yet, where you
might actually want

a human level of intelligence

to do the job well
or do the job properly.

These are things
which are achievable.

- Yeah.
- This isn't something...

I don't think
it's science fiction.

I think this is
entirely feasible

that we could
build a computer

which is vastly superhuman

which is conscious,
which has emotions,

which is, essentially,
a new species

of self-aware intelligence
and conscious in every way

and has got emotions
the same as you and I do.

I don't see any
fundamental limits

on what we can do,
and we already know enough

about basic science
to start doing that now.

So some people are
concerned about,

you know, possible
risks of building Al

and building something
that is very, very powerful

where there are
unintended consequences

of the thing that you've
built and where it might

do things that
you can't predict

that might be
extremely dangerous.

So a so-called
"existential risk,"

as some people call it.

We are going to hand off
to our machines

all the
multidimensional problems

that we are incapable
of coping with.

You and I can take
a problem with two or three

or four or even seven inputs.

But 300?

A thousand, a million inputs?

We're dead in the water.

The machines can
cope with that.

The advantage
that computers have

is that they communicate
at gigabit speeds.

They all network together.

We talk in slow motion.

So computers will achieve
this level of awareness

probably in the next
20, 30, 40 years.

It's not that if it's
good or that it's evil.

It's we're
probably good enough

to not program an evil Al.

It's that if it's
lethally indifferent.

If it has certain things

that it's tasked
with accomplishing

and humans are in the way.

So there's this concern
that once we reach that moment

where the computers
outperform us

in ways that are
quite meaningful,

that then they will somehow
be motivated to dispose of us

or take over us
or something of this kind.

I don't really believe that

because these kinds
of developments,

which probably are a little
farther off in the future

than some of their
enthusiasts think,

there will be time
for us to adapt,

to come to terms with it,
to organize social systems

that will enable us
to deal adequately

with these new forms
of intelligence.

So I don't thi--this is not
just gonna be something

that's gonna happen
as a miracle tomorrow

and then we'll be
taken by surprise.

But I do think
the key thing here is

that we need to treat
these futuristic things

as not as far away
as people say they are.

Just because they're
not likely to happen

in 15 years, let's say,

it doesn't mean they
won't happen in 50 years.

It's gonna be of kind of
historical dimensions,

and it's very hard
to predict, I think,

whether it's gonna take us
in a utopian direction

or in a dystopian direction

or more likely
something in between,

but just very different.

Very hard to predict.

You see, it's our job
to take raw materials,

adapt them to useful forms,

take natural forces,
harness them to do man's work.

The automated systems
of the future

are a natural process
of human innovation.

It all comes back to the idea
of doing more with less.

This process of innovation

is driven not by
necessity, but desire,

or to simply fill
a gap in the market.

Farm owners didn't
really need to replace

their workers with machines,
but they did so

because they could
foresee the benefits.

It's a natural
cycle of business.

Doing more with less
leads to greater prosperity.

♪

The hope is that
we can adapt to this

politically and socially.

In order to do that,

we have to begin
a conversation now.

Remember that
we're up against

an exponential
arc of progress.

Things are gonna keep
moving faster and faster,

so we need to star-t
talking about this now

and we need to sort of
get the word out there

so that people will realize

that this problem
is coming at us,

so that we can
begin to discuss

viable political
solutions to this

because, again,
I think it will require,

ultimately,
a political choice.

It's not something that
is gonna son itself out

by itself as a result
of the normal functioning

of the market economy.

It's something
that will require

some son of an intervention

and, you know,
pan of the problem is

that in the United States,

roughly half of the population
is very conservative

and they really don't
believe in this idea

of intervention
in the market.

It's gonna be
a tough transition,

and those that find
themselves out of jobs

because a robot has taken it

are gonna be
pretty pissed off.

The effect of automation
on jobs and livelihood

is going to be behind this
like the original Luddites.

It wasn't--it wasn't
that they were against

technological developments
in some ethereal sense.

It was that this was
taking their damn jobs.

I absolutely think there could
be a Neo-Luddite movement

against the future,
against technology

because they're gonna say,

"Well, hey,
you're taking our jobs,

you're taking
our livelihoods away.

You're taking
everything away from us."

But I think that's when
it's gonna be important

that leaders and government
step in and say,

"It may seem that way,

but life is going to get
better for everyone."

We're gonna have more time
to do things that we want,

more vacations,
more passions.

This is the modern world.

We can create the utopia
that we've always dreamt of.

Why are we saying,
"My job's not safe,"

or, "Automation's going
to steal my jobs"?

These are the--these
are the phrases

that keep getting
pushed out there.

They're negative phrases,

and instead, it seems
that we would look at this,

especially if someone has
been working in a factory

their whole life,

that they would look at
that system and say,

"Thank goodness that this is
starting to be automated."

I don't want anyone
to have to crawl

into a hole in the ground
and pull up coal.

No human being should
have to go do that.

If you make an awful
lot of computers

and a lot of robots,
and the computers can make

those robots
very sophisticated

and do lots of
sophisticated jobs,

you could eliminate most of
the high-value physical jobs

and also most of the
high-value intellectual jobs.

What you're left with,
then, are those jobs

where you have to be
a human being,

so I find it quite
paradoxical in some ways

that the more advanced
the technology becomes,

the more it forces us
to become humans.

So in some ways,
it's very good.

It forces us to explore
what is humanity about?

What are the
fundamentally important

things about being a human?

It's not being able to,
you know, flip a burger

or, you know, carve
something intricately.

A computer or a robot

could do that far better
than a human being.

One thing I've noticed, if
you talk to techno-optimists

about the future of work
and how it's gonna unfold,

very often they will
focus on this issue

of how will we all be
fulfilled in the future?

What will be
our purpose in life

when we don't want to work?

And, you know, you can
son of posit this

in terms of-there was
a guy named Maslow

who came up with
a hierarchy of human needs,

Maslow's pyramid.

And at the base
of that pyramid

are the foundational things
like food and shelter,

and at the top of
that pyramid, of course,

are all these intangible
things like, you know,

a sense of purpose
in your life

and fulfillment
and so forth.

What you'll find among the most
techno-optimistic people

is that they will
want to skip

right over the base
of that pyramid

and jump right to the top
and start talking about,

"Oh, gosh, how are
we gonna," you know,

"what's the meaning
of our life gonna be

when we don't have to work?"

But the reality is that
the base of that pyramid,

food, shelter,
all the things that we need

to have, you know,
a decent life,

that's the elephant
in the room.

That stuff costs real money.

That stuff is gonna involve

perhaps raising taxes
on a lot of the people

that are doing
really well right now,

and that's probably
part of the reason

that they prefer
not to talk about it.

So what do we do
with the 99 percent

of the population
on this planet

if they don't have jobs?

The suggestion is
and the goal is

to make this
an efficient system.

You put automation
in the hands of everyone.

In the near future,
we're going to see systems

where we can
3D print our clothing,

we can 3D print food.

If you automate
these self-replicating

industrial machines
to pull the raw materials

and distribute
those raw materials

to everyone who
has the capacity

to 3D print their own house

or 3D print
their own farm bot,

you have literally
solved the equation

of how do I automate my life

and how do I automate
my basic necessities?

If we had the political will

to take all these
new technologies

and the wealth
and abundance they create,

and distribute these
across our society

in the First World countries

and also across
the whole world,

then, of course, I mean,
the sky's the limit.

We can solve all
kinds of problems.

But we will have to have
the political will to do that,

and I don't see a whole lot
of evidence for it right now.

There really is enough
already for everybody,

certainly to have
an adequate life,

if not a life
of superabundant,

so, you know, I don't think
that the introduction

of more labor-saving devices

or more is really gonna
make any difference in that.

The reason there
are poor people

is 'cause there's rich people.

♪

You're simultaneously
making a lot of people

almost completely useless

while generating
a lot more wealth

and value than ever before.

So I worry about this.

I worry about the schism

between the super rich
and the poor.

The ultra rich,
if they're representative

of some of the people
we've seen in Silicon Valley,

I really, really worry

because I wonder if
they really have a soul.

I really--I wonder if
they really have an awareness

of how regular people feel

and if they share
the values of humanity.

It really bothers me
that you have this ultra rich

that is out of touch with
regular people, with humanity.

This is being filmed
right now in San Francisco,

which is by all accounts
one of the wealthiest cities

and most advanced
cities in the world,

and it's pretty much
ground zero

for this
technological revolution,

and, yet, as I came here,

I almost tripped over
homeless people

sleeping on the sidewalk.

That is the reality
of today's economy

and today's society.

In a very real sense,

we already live in
the economy of abundance,

and yet we have not
solved this problem.

I think the future
for the four billion

poor people in the world
is actually a very good one.

We've seen the amount of food
in the world, for example,

has more than doubled
in the last 25 years.

That's likely to continue.

Worldwide, we're seeing
massive economic growth.

That really means that people
in poor countries today

will be much better off
in the future,

so there will still be
some poor people,

relatively speaking,

but compared to
today's poor people,

they'll be actually
quite well-off.

I think this is
an amplifier for inequality.

It's gonna make what we see
now much more amplified.

The number of people
that are doing

really well in the economy

I think is likely
to continue to shrink.

Those people
that are doing well

will do extraordinarily well,
but for more and more people,

they're simply gonna
find themselves

in a position where they
don't have a lot to offer.

They don't have
a marketable skill.

They don't have a viable way
to really earn an income

or, in particular,
middle-class income.

We should value the fact

that we can spend
more time doing human work

and the robots will get on,
increase the economy.

They'll be still taking
all the resources

and convening them
into material goods

at very low cost,
so the economy will expand,

we'll be better off,

and we can concentrate
on what matters.

There's nothing
to worry about in there.

A constant stream
of savings dollars

must flow into big
and small business each year.

These dollars help
to buy the land,

the buildings,
the tools and equipment,

and create new
job opportunities

for our expanding population.

♪

We need consumers out there.

We need people
who can actually buy

the things that are
produced by the economy.

If you look at the way
our economy works,

ultimately, it's driven
by end consumption,

and by that, I mean people
and to a limited extent,

governments, who buy things
because they want them

or they need them.

You know, businesses
in our economy,

they also buy
things, of course,

but they do that in order
to produce something else,

and one business may sell
to another business,

but at the end of that,
at the end of that chain,

there has to stand a consumer
or perhaps a government

who buys that
product or service

just because they want it
or they need it.

So this is not the case

that things can just
keep going like this

and get more and more
unequal over time

and everything
will still be fine.

I think that it
won't be fine.

It will actually have
an impact on our economy

and on our economic growth.

We need intelligent planning
because, you know,

being unemployed is not
a positive thing in itself.

There has to be some
kind of transition point

to some other form
of life after that.

And, again, at the moment,

I really don't see enough
attention being paid to this,

so we need to take this
future prospect seriously now.

♪

If we manage to adapt
to this expected wave

of technological unemployment
both politically and socially,

it's likely
to facilitate a time

when work takes on
a different meaning

and a new role in our lives.

♪

Ideas of how we should
approach our relationship

with work have changed
throughout history.

In ancient Greece,
Aristotle said,

"A working paid job absorbs
and degrades the mind."

I.E., if a person would
not willingly adopt

their job for free,

the argument can be made
that they have become

absorbed and degraded by it,

working purely out of
financial obligation.

In 1844, Karl Marx
famously described

the workers of society as
"alienated from their work

and wholly saturated by it."

He felt that most
work didn't allow

an individual's
character to grow.

He encouraged people
to find fulfillment

and freedom in their work.

During World War Two,
the ethos towards work

was that it was
a patriotic duty

in order to support
the war effort.

To best understand our
current relationship with work

and perhaps by extension
modern life itself,

we can look to the writings
of a man called Guy Debord.

Debord was a French Marxist
theorist and in 1967,

he published a powerful
and influential critique

on Western society entitled

The Society of the Spectacle.

He describes our workers
are ruled by commodities

and that production

is an inescapable
duty of the masses,

such is the economic system

that to work is to survive.

"The capitalist economy,"
he says,

"requires the vast majority
to take part as wage workers

in the unending
pursuit of its ends.

A requirement to which,
as everyone knows,

one must either
submit or die."

The assumption has
crept into our rhetoric

and our understanding
that we live in

a leisure society
to some extent.

We have flexible working time.

You hear the term a lot
"relative poverty"

it's, again,
it's absolute poverty,

and all these kinds of ideas
suggest that, in fact,

we should feel pretty
pleased with ourselves.

We should both feel
quite leisured

and we should feel less
in bondage to work

than perhaps somebody
in the 19th century

who was kind of shackled
to a machine in a factory.

But, in fact,
we're very unhappy.

It's irrelevant
how much you work

in actual terms anymore.

The way in which
the spectacle operates

is to make of leisure
itself an adjunct to work.

In other words, the idea
of networking and working

are in some sense
locked into an unholy

and reciprocal relationship
with each other.

You know, the fact
that you're not working

is only because
you've been working,

and the fact that
you're working

is only so that
you cannot work.

In other words,
so engrafted is that rubric

in the way that
we approach life

that--that we can
never be rid of it.

Debord also observed
that as technology advances,

production becomes
more efficient.

Accordingly, the workers'
tasks invariably become

more trivial and menial.

It would seem that as human
labor becomes irrelevant,

the harder it is
to find fulfilling work.

The truth of the matter is
that most people already,

in Britain,
are doing useless jobs

and have been for
generations, actually.

Most jobs in management
are completely useless.

They basically consist
in the rearrangement

of information into
different patterns

that are meant to take on
the semblance of meaning

in the bureaucratic context.

So most work is, in fact,
a waste of time already,

and I think people
understand that intuitively.

When I go into companies,
I often ask the question,

"Why are you employing people?

You could get monkeys

or you could get robots
to do this job."

The people are not
allowed to think.

They are processing.

They're just like a machine.

They're being so hemmed down,

they operate with an algorithm
and they just do it.

We all have the need to find
meaning in our lives,

and it is our professions
that define us.

To work is
to provide a service

either to yourself
or for others,

but most of us would like
our work to be purposeful

and contributory
to society in some way.

It is an uncomfortable truth

that with our present
model of economics

not everyone is able
to monetize their passions.

If any of this were
to come to fruition,

if we learned to make
automation work for us,

the question remains,
"What do we do with our days?"

There's a good and a bad.

The good is that the cost
of everything drops.

We can solve some of
the basic problems of humanity

like disease,
hunger, lodging.

We can look after all the
basic needs of human beings.

The dark side is that
automation takes jobs away,

and the question is,
"What do we do for a living?"

Some of us will
seek enlightenment

and rise and will keep
learning and growing,

but the majority of people
don't care about those things.

Majority of people just want
to do, you know, grunt work.

They want to socialize with
people as they do at work.

Sennett wrote in his book,
The Corrosion of Character,

that in late capitalism,

one of the great
kind of supports

for human interaction
and for human meaning

is the longevity
of social relations

and the interactions
in working environments

and that if that's taken away,

if what's required is to be
continually responsive

and changing in
a precarious world,

then people no longer
find the fulfillment

or the substance in
what they're doing.

There is an underlying desire
for people to do things,

you know, you spoke
about the idea

that people want to be
engaged creatively.

They want to be
engaged, you know,

go back to basic
Marxist ideas of praxis

and right back to John Locke.

They want to be engaged
in what Locke thought of

as primary acquisition,

mixing their labor,
either their creative thinking

or their physical labor even,

with the world
in order to transform it.

They want to do that,
and that's a very basic

human instinct to do that.

And the idea of
a leisured class, as it were,

a class who is not involved
in a praxis with the world,

but is simply involved
in a passive way

as a recipient of things is
actually repugnant to people.

They would sooner work for
the man in a meaningless job

and construct
a false ideology

of involvement and engagement

than they would
actually sit on their ass.

We can't get away
from the fact that--

that people work
because they have to.

That's, you know, the primary
motivation for most people,

that if you don't work,

you're gonna be living
on the street, okay?

Once we--if we ever
move into a future

where that's not the case

and people don't have
to worry about that,

then we can begin to take on

these more
philosophical questions

of-of, you know, but we're
not at that point yet.

We can't pretend that
we are living in an age

where that necessity
for an income doesn't exist.

Douglas Rushkoff
stated in 2009,

"We all want paychecks
or at least money.

We want food,
shelter, clothing,

and all the things
that money buys us.

But do we all
really want jobs?"

According to the UN Food
and Agriculture Organization,

there is enough food produced

to provide everyone
in the world

with 2,720 kilocalories
per person per day.

♪

At this stage,
it's difficult to think of

other possible ways of life.

The need to earn a living
has been a pan

of every cultural
narrative in history.

It's a precondition
of human life.

The challenge facing
the future of work

is politically unclear.

It is likely to require

not only a
redistribution of wealth,

but a redistribution
of the workload.

But will working less
mean living more?

♪

And is our fear of
becoming irrelevant

greater than
our fear of death?

♪

The process of physical aging
is known as senescence,

and none of us
are spared from it.

It remains to this day
an evolutionary enigma.

Our cells are programmed to wane

and our entire bodies
are fated to become frail.

It was seen that the laws
of nature would prefer it

if we dwindle and die.

♪

Negligible senescence, however,

is the lack
of symptoms of aging.

Negligibly senescent organisms
include certain species

of sturgeon, giant tortoise,

flatworm, clam, and tardigrade.

One species of jellyfish
called turritopsis dohrnii

has even been observed
to be biologically immortal.

It has the capability
to reverse its biotic cycle

and revert back
to the polyp stage

at any point in its development.

There is only one thing
wrong with dying,

and that's doing it
when you don't want to.

Doing it when you do
want to is not a problem.

Now if you put that bargain
to anybody,

"Look, this is the deal:

You will die, but only
when you want to."

Who would not take that bargain?

In 2014, a team
of scientists at Harvard

were able to effectively
reverse the age

of an older mouse by treating it

with the blood
of a younger mouse

through a process
called parabiosis.

For the first time in history

it is deemed
scientifically possible

to gain control
over the aging process.

♪

Ultimately, when people
get the hang of the idea

that aging is a medical problem

and that everybody's got it,

then it's not going to be
the way it is today.

He thinks it's possible
that people will extend--

be able to extend their lifespan
by considerable amounts.

I think he's on record as saying

the first 1,000-year-old person
is already alive.

It's highly likely, in my view,

that people born today
or born 10 years ago

will actually be able to live

as long as they like,
so to speak,

without any risk of death
from the ill health of old age.

The way to apply comprehensive
maintenance to aging

is a divide
and conquer approach.

It is not a magic bullet.

It is not some single thing
that we can do,

let alone a single thing
that we could do just once.

Aging is
the lifelong accumulation

of damage to the body,

and that damage occurs
as an intrinsic,

unavoidable side effect

of the way the body
normally works.

Even though there
are many, many,

many different types
of damage at the molecular level

and the cellular level,
they can all be classified

into a very manageable
number of categories,

just seven major categories.

So now the bottom line,
what do we do about it?

How do we actually implement
the maintenance approach?

There are four
fundamental paradigms,

they all begin with

They are called
replacement, removal,

repair, and reinforcement.

We've got particular ways
to do all these things.

Sometimes replacement,
sometimes simply elimination

of the superfluous material,
the garbage that's accumulated.

Sometimes repair
of the material.

Occasionally, in a couple
of cases, reinforcement--

that means making
the cell robust

so that the damage,
which would normally have caused

the pathology
no longer does that.

I wanna talk about one thing
that we're doing in our lab,

which involved the number one
cause of death

in the western world,
cardiovascular disease

causes hear-t attacks
and strokes.

It all begins with these things
called foam cells,

which are originally
white blood cells.

They become poisoned
by toxins in the bloodstream.

The main toxin that's
responsible is known--

it's called 7-ketocholesterol,
that's this thing,

and we found some bacteria
that could eat it.

We then found out
how they eat it,

we found out the enzymes
that they use to break it down,

and we found out
how to modify those enzymes

so that they can go
into human cells,

go to the right place
in the cell that they're needed,

which is called the lysosome,

and actually do their job there,
and it actually works.

Cells are protected
from this toxic substance--

that's what these graphs
are showing.

So this is pretty good news.

The damage that accumulates
that eventually causes

the diseases
and disabilities of old age

is initially harmless.

The body is set up to tolerate
a certain amount of it.

That's critical,
because while we damage it

at that sub-pathological level,

it means that
it's not participating

in metabolism, so to speak.

It's not actually interacting
with the way the body works.

So medicines
that target that damage

are much, much less likely

to have unacceptable
side effects

than medicines that try
to manipulate the body

so as to stop the damage
from being created

in the first place.

It's unlikely, in fact,
by working on longevity per se,

that we will crack it.

It's going to be--
it seems to me more probable

that we will crack longevity
simply by getting rid of,

sequentially,
the prime causes of death.

I hear people talk about
living hundreds of years.

Inside, I'm like, yeah, right,

I mean, because
if you study the brain,

the dead end is the brain.

We all star-t developing

Alzheimer's pathology
at 40 years old.

It's not a matter of whether
you get Alzheimer's,

it's when.

It's when, and genetically,

we all have some predisposition

to when we're gonna
get this disease.

It's pan of the program.

Let's fix that part
of the program

so we can live
past 90 years old

with an intact, working brain

to continue
the evolution of our mind.

That is number one in my book,
because here's a fact:

Life span's almost 80
right now on average.

By 85, half of people
will have Alzheimer's.

Do the math.

Seventy-four million
Baby Boomers

headed toward risk age.

Eighty-five, 50 percent
have Alzheimer's,

current life span's 80.

They're gonna be 85 pretty soon.

Half our population at 85's
gonna have this disease.

And then keep going
up to 90 and 100,

and it gets even worse.

This is enemy number one.

It's interesting,
just this week

it was discovered
that an Egyptian mummy

had died of cancer,
so even way back in those times,

cancer was around.

What seems to have happened is,
as we have lived longer,

the number of diseases
that pop up to kill us

star-ts to increase,
and the reality is

I think this is a son
of whack-a-mole situation

as we beat cancer to death
and it disappears,

something else will pop up.

Cancer is a specific disease,

and every cancer
is a specific gene involved

together with lifestyle.

Alzheimer's, specific disease,
specific genetics.

I can go on and on--
diabetes, hear-t disease.

These are diseases,
and as you get older,

your susceptibility
to these diseases increases,

and your genetics will determine

whether you get them
and when you get them

given your lifespan.

That's not aging,

that's just living long enough
to be susceptible,

so we may very well eradicate,
in our fantasy world,

all the cancers and strokes
and hear-t disease

and diabetes and Alzheimer's
we get right now

by 80 or 90 years old,
and then what's gonna happen?

You live out to 110,
and guess what's gonna happen,

new, other genetic variants

suddenly rear
their ugly heads and say,

"Now we're gonna affect
whether you live to 110

without Alzheimer's
and hear-t disease

and cancer and diabetes."

And it'll go on
and go on and go on.

There will undoubtedly
be enormous challenges

concerning the biological
approach to longevity.

There could, however,
be an alternative route

to extreme longevity.

When people are
worried about death,

I guess the issue
is what is it

that they would like
to have stay alive, okay?

And I think that's often
very unclear what the answer is,

because if you look at somebody
like Ray Kurzweil, for example,

with his promises
of the singularity

and our merging
with machine intelligence

and then being able
to kind of have

this kind of
infinite consciousness

projected outward
into the Cosmos.

I don't think he's
imaging a human body

living forever, okay?

And if that's what we're
talking about is immortality,

what I kind of think
Kurzweil is talking about,

then I can see it.

I mean, I could see at least
as something to work toward.

In 2005, Google's
Director of Engineering,

Ray Kurzweil,
published a book

entitled
The Singularity is Near:

When Humans Transcend Biology.

He predicts that by 2045,

it'll be possible
to upload our minds

into a computer,
effectively allowing us

to live indefinitely.

When people think
of death at this point,

they think of a body
going into a coffin,

and the coffin
going into the ground.

When in fact that age
of death is dying.

We are ending that stage.

We're entering a new stage

where we could
possibly upload consciousness

into a silicone substrate.

You know, a lot of these
science fiction ideas

from decades ago
are becoming real

and already people are
spending millions of pounds

research today
on making this happen.

Nobody expects to do it
before 2040 at the earliest.

My guess is 2050,
it'll be a few rich people

and a few kings and queens
here and there and politicians.

By 2060-2070, it's
reasonably well-off people.

By 2075, pretty much anybody
could be immortal.

I'm not convinced that
uploading my consciousness

onto a computer is
a form of immortality.

I would like to live forever,

but I'm not sure that
I would like to live forever

as some digibytes of memory
in a computer.

I wouldn't call that
living forever.

The things I wanna do
with my body

that I won't be able
to do in that computer.

Immortality is a question
that keeps arising

in the technology community,
and it's one which I think

is entirely feasible
in principle.

We won't actually
become immortal,

but what we will do is
we will get the technology

by around about 2050
to connect a human brain

to the machine world so well
that most of your thinking

is happening inside
the computer world,

inside the l.T.,

so your brain
is still being used,

but 99 percent of your thoughts,
99 percent of your memories

are actually out there
in the cloud

or whatever you wanna call it,

and only one percent
is inside your head.

So walk into work this morning,

you get hit by a bus,
it doesn't matter.

You just upload you mind
into an android

on Monday morning and carry on
as if nothing had happened.

The question with
that kind of technology

and the extension
of human capacity

and human life
through technology

is where does
the human, um, end,

and the technology begin?

If we upload our consciousness
into a robot,

a humanoid robot that has touch,
the ability to feel,

all of the sensorial inputs,
if they're the same,

there is a potential
of continuity, right?

So you can have the same
types of experiences

in that new substrate
that you have as a human being.

It's beyond a continuity issue,

it's an issue that you have
the ability to record

and recall without the content--

the content being
the sensations, images

and feelings and thoughts
you experienced your whole life

that have associated
with each other

through your neuronetwork.

Where are they stored?

I don't think consciousness
and the brain

is anything to do
with any particular

individual region in the brain,

but it's something
that's all about--

its distributed organization.

I don't think there
are any mysteries.

There are no causal mysteries
in the brain,

and I think that
there's a perfectly--

a comprehensible, physical chain

of cause and effect
that goes from the things

that I see and hear around me

and the words
that come out of my mouth,

which would encompass
consciousness, I suppose.

But the things that--

the moment you say
something like that,

you're on the edge
of the philosophical precipice.

When you think about a machine,

the question is are you
simulating consciousness

or are you simulating cognition?

Cognition requires inputs
and reactions

that are associated
with each other

to create an output
and an outcome.

And you can program that all day

and you can make that
as sophisticated

and as information-dense
as you want,

almost to the point
that it mimics a real person.

But the question is will it
ever have the consciousness

that our species
with our genetics,

with our brain has.

No, a machine has
its own consciousness.

All you're doing
is programming it

to be cognitively responsive
the way you are.

I remember well,
when my father died,

asking my mother,
"if I could've captured

the very being of my father
in a machine,

and I could put him
in an android

that looked exactly like him,
had all the mannerisms,

and it was warm and it smelled
and it felt like him,

would you do it?"
and she said, "Absolutely not.

It wouldn't be your father,
it wouldn't be him."

I think that someday
you can upload

your current neuronetwork...

but that's not you.

That's just your current
neuro map, right?

♪

As with any concept
that proposes

to change the natural
order of things,

the idea of extreme longevity
can be met with disbelief.

But there is currently
an international movement

called transhumanism
that is concerned

with fundamentally transforming

the human condition
by developing technologies

to greatly enhance human beings

in an intellectual, physical,
and psychological capacity.

I really want to just
simply live indefinitely,

and not have the Spectre
of Death hanging over me,

potentially
at any moment taking away

this thing
that we call existence.

So for me, that's
the primary goal

of the transhumanist movement.

Transhumanists believe
we should use technology

to overcome
our biological limitations.

What does that mean?

Well, very simplistically,
perhaps,

I think we should be aiming
for what one might call

a triple S civilization

of super intelligence,
super longevity,

and super happiness.

We have been evolving
through hundreds and hundreds

of thousands of years,
human beings,

and transhumanism
is the climax of that.

It's the result of
how we're going to get

to some kind of great future
where we are way beyond

what it means
to be a human being.

Unfortunately, organic robots
grow old and die,

and this isn't a choice,
it's completely involuntary.

120 years from now,
in the absence

of radical
biological interventions,

everyone listening
to this video will be dead,

and not beautifully as so,

but one's last years tends
to be those of decrepitude,

frequently senility, infirmity,

and transhumanists don't accept
aging as inevitable.

There's no immutable
law of nature

that says that organic robots
must grow old.

After all, silicone robots,
they don't need to grow old.

Their pans can be
replaced and upgraded.

Our bodies are capable
of adjusting

in ways we've hardly dreamt of.

If we can only find the key.

I'm so close now, so very close.

- The key to what?
- To be able to replace

diseased and damaged pans
of the body

as easily as we replace
eye corneas now.

Can't be done.

It can be done!

The relationship
between life and death

and the role of technology
in forestalling death

creates death, in a way,
as a new kind of problem.

Death becomes something
that needs to be solved.

Why would it be good
to live forever?

'Cause if you have a shit day,

it dilutes the depression

within countless
other days, you know?

And all of these metrics
are about failing to exist

in the full light
of your own autonomy.

That's all they're about,

and the paradox
of your own autonomy,

which is you're
simultaneously completely free

and completely unfree
at the same time.

I have been to many conferences

where you got
the anti-transhumanist person

saying, "This is just
denial of death."

At the end of the day,
that's all it's about, right?

And it's a kind of--
the last hangover

of the Abrahamic religions,

this idea that
we're gonna, you know,

come back to God and all this,

and we're gonna realize
our God-like nature,

and this is really the last kind
of point for that.

I think there's
a lot of truth to that,

especially in terms
of the issues

we've been talking about
where everybody just seems

to just take for granted
that if you're given

the chance to live forever,
you'd live forever.

I think yes,
I think that that's true.

I don't think it's--
I think it's true,

I don't know
if it's as problematic

as people kind of claim it is.

In other words, that
there's something wrong

with having this fear of death

and wanting to live forever.

No, I think living forever is--

I think the question is what
are you doing with your time?

In what capacity
do you wanna live forever?

So I do think it makes
all the difference in the world

whether we're talking
about Kurzweil's way

or we're talking
about Aubrey de Grey's way.

The way the human
species operates

is that we're really never
fully ready for anything.

However, the prospect
of living indefinitely

is too promising
to turn down or to slow down

or to just not go after
at full speed.

By enabling us
to find technologies

to live indefinitely,
we're not making it

so that we're going
to live forever,

we're just making it
so we have that choice.

If people wanna
pull out of life

at some point down the future,

they're certainly
welcome to do that.

However, it's gonna be great
to eliminate death if we want,

because everyone
wants that choice.

There are other
socioeconomic repercussions

of living longer
that need to be considered.

The combination
of an aging population

and the escalating expenses
of healthcare,

social care, and retirement
is a problem

that already exists
the world over.

In the last century alone,

medicine has
massively contributed

to increased life expectancy.

According to the World
Health Organization,

the number of people
aged 60 years and over

is expected to increase
from the 605 million today

to 2 billion by the year 2050.

As people live longer,
they become more susceptible

to noncommunicable diseases.

This becomes
enormously expensive.

Dementia alone costs the NHS
23 billion a year.

Currently, elderly non-workers

account for a vast portion
of our population

and a vast portion of our work
force care for them.

It is economically beneficial
to end aging.

Social life is organized
around people having--

occupying certain roles
at certain ages, right?

And you can already see
the kinds of problems

that are caused
to the welfare system

when people live substantially
beyond the age of 65,

because when the whole number 65
was selected by Bismarck

when he started the first
social security system,

in Germany, the expectation was
that people would be living

two years beyond
the retirement age

to be able to get
the social security.

So it wasn't gonna
break the bank, okay?

Problem now is you've got people
who are living 20 years

or more beyond
the retirement age,

and that's unaffordable.

There's no question that,
within society as a whole,

there is an enormous tendency
to knee-jerk reactions

with regard to the problems
that might be created

if we were to eliminate aging.

There have been people
that said, you know,

"You'll be bored,
you won't have anything to do."

Speaking from a place
of a lifespan

that's 80 or 90 years old,

saying that we're
going to be bored

if we live to 150 years old
really is just invalid.

We have no idea what
we'll do with that time.

Pan of
this transhumanism stuff,

where it gets some kind
of real policy traction,

is people who want us
not to live to be 1,000,

but maybe if we can
take that 20 years

that we're living longer now
than we did 100 years ago

and keep that productive.

So in other words,
if you could still be strong

and still be sharp
into your 70s and 80s,

and so not have to pull
any social security

until quite late in life
and then you'll be--

you'll have 20 extra years

where you're actually
contributing to the economy.

So one of the areas that
we're gonna have to think about

in the near future
if we do achieve

extreme longevity physically

is the idea of overpopulation.

This is a controversial idea,
of course,

and we may face a time period
where we have to say to people,

"You have to be licensed
to have more than one child."

The ideas around children,
I hope, will probably change

when people start to realize
that the values of children

need to be defined first
before we have them.

And that's not
something that we do.

We just have them,
and we don't define why

or for what purpose.

I'm not saying there has
to be a defined purpose,

but I'm saying that just
to continue our gene line

isn't the biggest reason.

At the moment, ultimately,

we see in any society
where fertility rate goes down

because of female prosperity
and emancipation

and education,
we also see the age

of the average childbirth
go up, right?

We see women having
their children later.

Now of course, at the moment,
there's a deadline for that,

but that's not going
to exist anymore,

because menopause
is pan of aging.

So women who are choosing
to have their children

a bit later now,

it stands to reason
that a lot of them

are probably gonna choose
to have their children

a lot later and a lot later
and that, of course,

also has an enormous
depressive impact

on the trajectory
of global population.

If we actually said
to everybody, "Okay,

you're all now
gonna live for 1,000 years,

we could restructure society

so it's on
these LOGO-year cycles.

That's possible,
but the problem becomes

when you still allow people
to live the normal length

and you're also allowing
some people to live 1,000 years

then how do you compare
the value of the lives,

the amount of experience?

Supposing a 585-year-old guy

goes up for a job
against a 23-year-old.

How do you measure
the experience?

What, the old guy
always gets the job?

I mean, really, these kinds
of problems would arise

unless there was
some kind of legislation

about permissible
variation in age.

This is a bit of a conundrum

because we're all
expanding our lifespan,

and the question is,
would you like to live

for not 100 years but 200?

Would you choose
to if you could?

It would be very,
very difficult to say no.

The reality is the replacement
of human piece pans

is probably gonna take us
in that direction,

but it will be market driven,

and those people with the money
will be able to afford

to live a lot longer
than those people without.

Pretty much most of
the discovery these days

takes place in Western Europe
of the United States

or one or two other countries,
China, Singapore, and so on,

but if they're valuable enough--
and I don't mean monetarily--

if they're worth having,
then people extend them.

We have to star-t somewhere,
and I don't believe

in the dog
in the manger attitude

is that you don't
give it to anybody

until you can provide it
for everybody.

All technologies
are discontinuous.

There are people
at this very moment

who are walking four kilometers

to get a bucket of water
from a well.

You know, there are people
who are having cornea operations

that are done with a needle
where it's stuck in their eye

and their cornea is scraped out.

You know, so these ideas
of totalizing

utopian technological
intervention

are pan of a discontinuous
technological world

and the world will always be
discontinuous technologically.

When a child has to drink
dirty water, cannot get food,

and is dying of starvation
and disease,

and the solution
is just a few dollars,

there's something badly wrong.

We need to fix those things.

The only way that
we could fix them in the past

would've been
at unbelievable cost

because of the limitation

of our industrial capacity
and capability.

Not anymore.

...not the one which is--
which stops us from aging.

In the last 20 years,
healthcare in Sub-Saharan Africa

has greatly improved.

♪

HIV prevalence has gone down,

Infant modality rate
has gone down.

Immunization rates have gone up,

and the drug supply
in many areas has risen.

♪

However, healthcare
and medication

in developing countries

is not always affordable
or even readily available.

It is not just medicine.

According to the World
Health Organization,

over 700 million people
worldwide

do not have access
to clean drinking water.

We still live in an age
where over one billion people

live off less
than a dollar a day

and live in extreme poverty.

It is ultimately
not a scientific issue,

it is a geopolitical issue.

Now a lot of people,
a lot of philanthropists

are of the view that
the most important thing to do

is to address the trailing edge
of quality of life.

In other words, to help
the disadvantaged.

But some visionary
philanthropists

such as the ones that fund
SENS Research Foundation--

and the fact is
I agree with this,

and that's why I've put
most of my inheritance

into SENS Research
Foundation, too--

we feel that, actually,
in the long run,

you lose out if you focus
too exclusively

on the trailing edge.

You've got also to push forward
the leading edge,

so that in the long term,
everybody moves forward.

Due to a lack of funding
from governments,

anti-aging research is often
pushed into the private sector.

If we look at funding
for disease--

cancer, hear-t disease--

they get six billion,
eight billion, ten billion.

AIDS still gets two
to four billion.

Let's look
at Alzheimer's disease.

It's probably the most
important disease of aging,

the brain--it gets
under a half a billion

from the federal government,

and a lot of that
goes to programs

that are tied up
with pharma trials

where we don't really
see it in the labs,

so you're maybe down to two
or three hundred million.

It's not nearly enough
to really make a dent.

The question is, why when it
comes to Alzheimer's disease,

which is a problem
in the elderly

do we just see it as--
the federal government

seems to see it
as a red-haired Stepchild.

They don't take care of it.

Some people say it's because--

people say, "Well,
it affects old people,

they lived their lives,
let them go."

No one wants to admit that,
but maybe subconsciously,

when Congress is
thinking about this,

that's at play, who knows?

Um, maybe it's
much more compelling

to wanna put money into diseases
that affect young people

who still have
their whole life to live

when they have AIDS
or breast cancer

or cancer that can strike
somebody at 30 or 40 years old.

Age might be pan of it,
and even if it's something

where you'd say,
"No, it can't be that!"

you never know what's
happening subconsciously

in those who are
making the decisions.

Otherwise, it just
makes no sense at all.

I don't know how to explain it.

When you talk
to people about aging

and rejuvenation medicine,
you're talking about things

that they haven't put
in the same category

as things that they can fight.

They are willing to put money

towards solving cancer
and curing cancer.

It's something they might have
the potential of experiencing.

But the thing that's 100 percent
in terms of probability,

they haven't classified that
as in the same category

when actually it is
and actually it's more dramatic

because 100 percent
of people experience it.

You need to have
the will to be cured.

Beyond that, medical science
will play its pan.

I think it's essentially a crime

to not support
life extension science,

because if you support
the other side,

you're an advocate
for killing someone.

When you actually support
a culture of death,

when you support
embracing death,

what you're really doing is
not supporting embracing life.

Everyone ought to be healthy,

however long ago they were born.

When someone says, "Oh, dear,
we shouldn't defeat aging,

we shouldn't work
to eliminate aging,"

what they're actually saying
is they're not in favor

of healthcare for the elderly,
or to be more precise,

what they're saying is
they're only in favor

of healthcare for the elderly

so long as it
doesn't work very well.

And I think that's fucked up.

In September 2013,

Google announced
the conception of Calico,

an independent biotech company

that remains to this day
a little mysterious.

Its aim is to tackle aging
and devise interventions

that enable people to lead
longer and healthier lives.

In September 2014,

the life extension company
announced it was partnering

with biopharmaceutical
giant AbbVie,

and made a $1.5 billion
investment into research.

I think one of
the biggest obstacles

that we have at the moment
to come to terms

with this future world
we're talking about

is a lot of people
who basically

don't want it to happen at all

and so are placing
all kinds of ethical

and institutional restrictions

on the development
of this stuff

so that it becomes difficult,
let's say, in universities

to experiment with certain
kinds of drugs, right?

To develop certain kinds
of machines maybe even,

and as a result,
all of that kind of research

ends up going into
either the private sector

or maybe underground, right?

Or going into some country
that's an ethics-free zone

like China
or someplace like that,

and I think that's
where the real problems

potentially lie, because
we really need to be doing,

you know, we need to be
developing this stuff,

but in the public eye, right?

So it should be done
by the mainstream authorities

so we can monitor
the consequences

as they're happening
and then be able

to take appropriate action.

But I'm afraid that
a lot of this stuff

is perhaps being driven outside

because of all the restrictions
that are placed on it.

That I think is very worrisome,

because then you can't
keep track of the results,

and you don't know
exactly what's happening.

And I think that's
a real problem already

with a lot of this
more futuristic stuff.

Arguably, the human condition

is defined by
our anxiety of death.

It's of little wonder
that throughout history,

mankind has built
countless belief systems

in a bid to pacify
the fear of death

through the promise
of endless paradise.

Ultimately, death always wins.

If it's not so much death
we fear, it's dying.

The relationship
between life and death

is often figured
in terms of immortality

and the quest for immortality.

There's a philosopher,
a brilliant philosopher

called Stephen Cave, who,
in his book Immortality,

argues that our fear of death
is the great driver

of all civilization,
of all human endeavor,

and he identifies
four different ways

in which people
seek immortality,

so firstly the idea
of extending life,

of living forever.

Secondly, the idea
of resurrection

so that we might come back
after death in some form.

Thirdly, the idea
of the immortality

of some pan of ourselves
beyond the physical body.

So perhaps the immortality
of the soul, for example,

or living on in Heaven.

And finally the idea
of leaving a legacy.

I think that one
of life's challenges

really actually is
to come to terms

with our own finitude
and modality

and human limitations,

and this is
an enormous challenge.

♪

Technology, a reflection
of our times.

Efficient, computerized,
with a sleek beauty all its own.

Technology is
the human imagination

convened into reality.

We are all interested
in the future,

for that is where you and I
are going to spend

the rest of our lives.

(high-pitched tone)

♪

It's impossible to say for sure

where these new technologies
will take us

and how we will prepare
to implement them into society.

It is likely that they will
affect the sensibilities

of global infrastructure.

There are always anxieties
surrounding new technologies,

and this time is no exception.

♪

I think people fear change,

and so the future represents
this enormous amount

of change that's coming at us.

I do think it's
overwhelming for people,

you know, they are
afraid to change

the paradigm that they live in,

and when we talk about
the future of work and death,

what we're really
talking about is changing

a paradigm
that has existed for us

as long as we can remember.

All of this Kind
of scare mongering

about harm and risk
and stuff like that

really is--it's based on a kind
of psychological illusion,

namely that you imagine that you
kind of see the bad state

as a bad state when it happens,

whereas in fact,
what more likely happens

is that you kinda get adjusted
to the various changes

that are happening
in your environment

so that when you actually
do reach that state

we're talking about,
it'll seem normal.

And because, look,
when the automobile

was introduced in
the early 20th century,

people were saying
this is just gonna pump

a lot of smoke
into the atmosphere,

it's going to ruin
our contact with nature

'cause we'll be in
these enclosed vehicles,

we'll be going so fast,

we won't be able
to appreciate things,

there'll be congestion,
blah, blah, blah,

they were right!

They were right, but of course,

by the time you get
to that state

where the automobile
has had that impact,

it's also had all
this benefit as well,

and your whole life has been
kind of restructured around it.

Arguably, people who are using

or have been conceived
using in vitro fertilization

are cyborgs way before
they were ever even people.

Now that doesn't mean
that we understand kinship

in a radically different way.

Just look at
the Industrial Revolution!

Is anyone actually--
does anyone actually regret

that the Industrial Revolution
occurred?

No, it was fairly
turbulent, right?

You know, we did actually
have a little bit of strife

in the translation
from a pre-industrial world

to the world we know today.

But the fact is, we adapted.

The most important thing here
is to try to compare it

to something in the past.

Imagine we were--
it was 1914, 100 years back,

and I told you that
most people on the planet

would have the ability to have

this tiny cell phone screen
in front of them

and video conference with ten
of their friends all at once.

If it was 1914,
you would look at me and say,

"That's absurd,
this guy's insane."

However, it's
the son of same concept

when I tell you now in 50 years

we're going to be digital
beings of ourselves,

it's no so far-fetched.

You have to look at it
in the historical context.

All concepts of
technological progress

in that way are linked
to post-enlightenment ideas

or non--they're linked
to the idea

of the arrow of time
being in free flight forward,

but they're also chiliastic,
they propose an end state.

They propose the end state,

and the end state
is the singularity,

but they propose it
as something desirable.

Now any kind of philosophy
like that, it's, you know,

jam tomorrow, jam yesterday,
but never jam today.

They're all philosophies
that are about

accept the shit you're in--
work, consume, die--

because there is something
better in the future,

or there's something
more innovative in the future.

There are good scenarios
and there are bad scenarios.

I don't know where we're headed.

I mean, I don't think
anyone really knows.

You know, if anyone
claims to know the future,

they're guessing,
they're extrapolating forward,

and we draw
some lines and curves

and see where
technology's gonna be.

What that means,

I don't think any of us
really understand.

Everyone assumes that
the future is going to be

dramatically different
from today

and that's absolutely true,

but it's also true
that the future will be

an extension of today's world.

The problems
that exist in today's world

are still gonna be
with us in the future.

Human nature is
not gonna change.

The end point
in all of this game

will become a bit of a moral

and an ethical question
for society

where decisions
will have to be made.

Like life itself, work
and death, for better or worse,

are two features
of the human experience

that are thrust upon us.

Whether or not
we define work and death

as problems in need of remedy,

human ingenuity is a progressive
and natural extension

of our own evolution.

♪

Advancing our technological
capabilities is a way

of dealing with our limitations
as human beings.

♪

Must we do something

just because we're capable
of doing something?

Or can we withhold
our hands and say

"No, this is not
a good thing to do"?

This is something
that the human species

must decide for itself.

You and I, we can't just
leave it to the scientists.

We have to know
what's going on and why!

♪