So we’ve heard a lot artificial intelligence. I’ve actually been involved with AI for 61 years, is a record. And we’ve heard a lot about what people think about AI today. So I tried to figure out, what did we think artificial intelligence 61 years ago. So first of all, people asked, “What are you into?” I’d say intelligence. And they’d say, “What’s that?” So no one really aware of it.
I joined, in 1962, 1956 was the conference where artificial intelligence got its name. So the views were quite different. People who in computer science had heard of artificial intelligence. Most people were quite skeptical. They thought it would never happen, or if they thought it would happen, maybe would happen in a century or several centuries. But the people that actually came that Dartmouth conference in 1956, they were quite optimistic. Some of them, including Minsky, thought it would take like, one semester to reach —
(Laughter)
To reach the level of intelligence that humans had. And in fact, that led to our first argument. He was my mentor for 50 years. we argued about that because I thought it would take decades, but we would see it within lifetime.
So we’re the only species that actually creates tools that enhances our intelligence. I mean, I’ll bet almost everybody has one of these that makes us more intelligent. This connects to the cloud. It gets more intelligent every year.
Basically, the singularity is going to that into our minds. We’re going to become smarter. And there’s two things we have in our anatomy that enable us to do that.
One is our brain, but we’re not the only species that has brain or even a comparable brain. Elephants and whales actually have a brain that’s larger than [ours]. But there’s another aspect of their anatomy that they don’t have that no one else has aside from humans which is our thumb.
So I can look at a tree and I imagine, yeah, I could take those poles and create a tool and then I can actually do it. Now, monkeys, if you look at them they have a thumb, but it doesn’t really work very well, it’s actually an inch down. They can grab without much force. They can create a first generation of tools, but they can’t use that tool to create another set of tools. So they really can’t a whole set of tools that will enhance their intelligence.
We’re the only that does that. And that’s what artificial intelligence is doing. From the very first hominid that created a very primitive tool to Gemini and GPT-4 today, we create tools that make us smarter.
And so I’ve been monitoring the growth of computation, which is right here. I spent like, 45 years on this. And as you go up the chart, it represents exponential growth. You might think that someone was charge of this. Gee, we’ve done this much, it’s in a straight line, let’s get our next computer to be right here. But no one was of it. No one even knew that this was happening for first 40 years. I discovered this 45 years ago. I had various reasons to feel it would continue at this pace.
In 1939 that represents 0.000007 calculations per second per constant dollar. At the upper right corner, you’ve got a Google computer, which was 130 billion calculations per second. And Nvidia just came out with a chip which is a trillion calculations per second. So this little chart represents a growth of 75 quadrillion-fold increase.
That’s why we didn’t have large models in 1939 or even three years ago. We did have something called large language models. didn’t work very well three years ago, began to two years ago. We’ve seen a tremendous progress that’s happened the last two years.
In 1999, I was asked to make a prediction of when would see AGI, artificial general intelligence. And so I figured that this chart would continue, which it has. And I figured we’d need about a trillion calculations per second to do AGI. So I estimated 2029.
That was met with a lot of skepticism. Stanford actually been monitoring my predictions. They called an international conference to talk about my prediction. And hundreds of AI scientists came from around the world. And they agreed that would happen. We would achieve AGI, but not within 30 years. The estimate was 100 years.
And I’ve talked actually to some of the people who were there said 100 years then and they’re basically agreeing it’s going to happen very soon. Musk says it’s going to in two years. It’s not an unreasonable position. Other people saying or four years, I’m sticking with five years. But it could happen soon. But everybody agrees now, AGI is very soon.
So I have another book coming out, “The Singularity is Nearer.”
(Laughter)
And I’ve got about 50 graphs in there. I can’t it right now, but if you talk to me later, I can explain these charts, but it basically shows that intelligence is going to take over everything. The amount of —
(Laughter)
The amount of money that we make right now is ten times greater in constant dollars it was 100 years ago. We were very, very poor 100 years ago, there was no government programs. So we’re much richer than we were then.
And the movement, not only of computation, but every single technology, is done by creating, taking the latest thing we’ve created and the next one. We take the latest chip and we use that to the next one.
We have greater wealth, as I said, that leads to better education, leads to better doctors, leads to healthy people, leads to more global wealth. All of these things work together. AI supercharges everything.
So I could about each thing as being actually revolutionized. I think the most interesting thing is actually medicine. There are a lot of who are experts in AI who are against what’s happening, and they’re very nervous about it, and they think it’s going to wipe us out. But tend to get diseases which are threatening to them. And what’s to happen? People are going to get diseases and AI is going come up with a cure, very soon, which will lead to a great deal of appreciation.
People say that is not creative. It’s very creative. You can actually put together possibilities that might work. For example, Moderna was trying create their COVID vaccine. They actually put together a list of mRNA sequences. Now, what would we do in the past? Someone would come in and say, “OK, there’s several billion. Let’s try this one.” Or maybe they’d pick three. You can’t … do a clinical test billions of different possibilities. But that’s exactly what they did by simulating reaction. And that took two days. So in two days, they created the Moderna vaccine. And that is still on the market. It’s the best vaccine. It was done in two days. And we’re going to do that with every other thing.
There’s some very promising cures that are out there, which AI produced, and they’re looking very promising. The next few years is going to be remarkable for medicine. We had 190,000 proteins done by people in 2022. 2023, AlphaFold 2 did 200 million, basically every protein and how they fold. Every that’s used in humans and every other species on Earth done in a few months. And we’re going to be able to through cures for diseases at the same rate.
So we’re going to simulate trials digitally. It’ll be much safer. It’ll be a million times faster. And by the of this decade, as we go into the 2030s, we’re going to achieve a new milestone. It’s longevity escape velocity.
Let me say that again, because you’re going to be hearing a lot about that. Longevity escape velocity. now you go through a year and you use up a year of your longevity. However, progress is also progressing, which is actually bringing us back. It’s giving us cures for diseases, new forms of treatment. So right now you’re getting back about four months. So you lose a year, you get back four months, so you’re losing eight months.
However, the scientific progress is on an exponential. It’s going to get faster and faster. And as we get to early 2030s, let’s say between 2029 and 2035, depending on how diligent you are, you’re going to get back a full year. So you lose a year, you back a year. As we actually go past that point, you’ll actually back more than a year and you’ll go backwards in time, which would cool.
(Laughter)
Now some people are concerned we’re going to run out of resources. And actually, if we just went ahead and didn’t make any new resources, we would out of resources like energy, for example. But this is not happening in a vacuum. AI is revolutionizing everything. For example, we only have to connect one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the Earth to meet all of our energy needs. It’s plenty of headroom and that’s growing exponentially will achieve that within ten years. And that’s also growing exponentially. So … We will have plenty resources.
And when we get to the 2030s, nanobots will connect our brains to cloud just the way your phone does. It’ll expand intelligence a million-fold by 2045. is the singularity. We will be funnier.
(Laughter)
Sexier, smarter, more creative, free from biological limitations. We’ll be able to choose our appearance. We’ll be able to do things we can’t today, like visualize objects in 11 dimensions. We can speak all languages. We’ll be to expand consciousness in ways we can barely imagine. We will experience richer culture with our extra years.
So I’ve recently become a grandfather I’m very much looking forward to that, spending more time with family, friends, loving and being loved, all enhanced by AI. believe this gives life its greatest meaning.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)