#782: Legendary Inventor Danny Hillis (Plus Kevin Kelly) — Unorthodox Lessons from 400+ Patents, Solving the Impossible, Real Al vs. “AI”, Hiring Richard Feynman, Working with Steve Jobs, Creating Parallel Computing, and Much More

Artificial Intelligence could revolutionize every aspect of our lives, but only if we can develop AI that reliably carries out its tasks. While some see AI as a cornucopia that will free the human race from drudgery, others see dangers in ceding so much power to digital, non-human minds. In Rebooting AI, Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis argue that modern AI underdelivers on its promise while AI proponents oversell what it can do. Marcus and Davis are AI advocates who feel that current AI research is heading in the wrong direction, with its narrow focus on “big data” and machine learning.

In this guide, we’ll examine how the public perception of modern AI differs from reality, how AI works, and the many ways in which it fails. We’ll then describe Marcus and Davis’s prescription for producing stronger AI systems to benefit the human race. We’ll also highlight where modern AI trends are leading, other experts’ thoughts on machine cognition, and how AI development is affecting business and society at large.

Zero to One is entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel’s unconventional advice for technology startups. Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and the first outside investor in Facebook, argues that technology has stagnated. Most new companies improve incrementally on existing products, but Thiel argues that the most valuable and game-changing startups create something new. They move the world from zero to one. Creating new things is not only the best path to profits—it’s also the only path for human progress. In this guide, we’ll compare Thiel’s perspective with W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy, Geoffrey Moore’s strategy for high-tech startups, and the insights of other innovation experts.

From the first home computers to the smartphone revolution, Steve Jobs was a guiding force in the worldwide electronics industry. His innovations, his obsessions, and even his shortcomings impacted the way we use computers today. To understand Jobs’s life is to understand why the modern information landscape functions the way it does.

Walter Isaacson’s biography is considered to be the definitive work on Steve Jobs’s life. He was given full access to Jobs and those who knew him with no limitations on what he might uncover. The result is an intimate portrait of a man who was thoughtful and callous, insightful and blind, and whose passions left a mark on the world.

This guide gives an overview of Steve Jobs’s life, then explores the themes that emerge from Isaacson’s narrative—Jobs’s knack for innovation and his emphasis on design, coupled with a domineering personality and his will to reshape reality to his liking.

Bob Iger has had a long career—22 years at ABC, then 23 at Disney (after Disney acquired ABC). He started as a bottom-level crew member on television sets and eventually became CEO of Disney for 15 years. He led Disney through momentous changes in technology, global expansion, and its noted acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm. He still looks back at his career in mild disbelief as an incredible, lucky ride of a lifetime.

This book is a retelling of his professional career, with his leadership principles woven in. You’ll learn why being an optimist is good for your career, how to take big risks, why you should always sweat the details, and how to fire someone respectfully.

When Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios, started his career, he had one goal: Create films using computer-generated animation. Despite a multitude of challenges, Catmull worked tirelessly to advance the technology of computer animation and, eventually, co-founded Pixar to marry his love of animation with his expertise in computer technology.

Through the journey of Pixar’s creation, Catmull developed leadership strategies that fostered creativity in the workplace while ensuring that the company remained profitable and successful. In Creativity, Inc., Catmull breaks down the most important factors in building and sustaining a creative culture. From removing fear from failure and protecting new ideas, Catmull explains the ways Pixar’s creative culture allowed it to grow into the animation behemoth it is today.

A Victorian scientist builds a machine that can travel through time. In the distant future he finds that, rather than advancing, human civilization has totally collapsed. The Time Machine, first published in 1895, is one of the earliest known science fiction stories. This literary classic by English author H.G. Wells popularized the concept of time travel and introduced the now-common phrase “time machine.”

This guide will organize The Time Machine into four sections. It begins with the Time Traveller showing off the time machine he invented. He journeys into the future, where humanity has evolved into the childlike Eloi and the bestial Morlocks. He then goes even further into the future and sees the end of the world. Finally, he goes back home to tell his friends what he’s seen. Our commentary will discuss the science behind the story, including which concepts are real and which are fiction. It will also discuss the literary techniques and symbolism Wells used to craft this story.

The rapid pace of technological change has impacted our lives and our world in many ways, and our headlong rush into the future may have staggering implications for our species. In The Singularity Is Near, computer scientist Ray Kurzweil predicts that a profound technological shift will change everything about how we live, how society functions, and even what it means to be human. From using genetics to reprogram the body to having the power to digitally augment our brains, the technological Singularity will lead to a future in which even death may one day be forgotten.

In this guide, we’ll explore the ongoing revolutions that together may overturn our current order—bioscience, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. We’ll examine Kurzweil’s predictions for these technologies, as well as some of their potential dangers. As the book was published in 2005, we’ll also look at how well Kurzweil’s predictions hold up and the different paths that some technologies have taken.

These days, the world is moving faster than ever. Every day new scientific discoveries are announced, conflict breaks out somewhere in the world, and nature and the climate behave unexpectedly. If you feel overwhelmed or destabilized by this, you’re not alone—no period in the history of humanity has ever been subject to such quickly changing conditions as today.

In Thank You For Being Late, author, journalist, and columnist Thomas Friedman explains how these conditions arose—the three forces that shape the world, technology, globalization, and climate change, all accelerated at once—and how we can adapt to them.

Do people who turn their backs on religion leave something crucial behind? Atheist philosopher and scientist Sam Harris thinks they do. He argues that those who reject the contemplative aspects of faith traditions are missing out on the contentment that comes from seeking transcendental states of mind, which has historically been the domain of religion.

Harris is known for encouraging skeptics to confront religion. In 2017’s Waking Up, he lays out a reason-based approach to spirituality that’s rooted in what science and meditation teach about the workings of the human mind.

In this guide, we’ll explore Harris’s definition of spirituality, what neuroscience says about the nature of consciousness, and Harris’s argument that while consciousness is real, your sense of self is an illusion. We’ll examine what spiritual enlightenment looks like from a secular worldview, its implications for self-improvement, and what science and theology have to say about consciousness, the soul, and the mind.

Modern technological progress is ablaze with the potential of artificial intelligence, but we still don’t fully understand how natural, human intelligence works. If we could crack the code of human cognition, many scientists believe we could use that knowledge to create even more powerful and useful AI.

In A Thousand Brains, neuroscientist Jeff Hawkins presents a theory of intelligence rooted in how each component of the brain creates mental models and makes predictions, just as the brain does as a whole. Hawkins is known for his groundbreaking work in both mobile computing and neuroscience. In this guide, we’ll explore Hawkins’s theory that intelligence springs from a basic neural circuit in the brain, and we’ll describe how this model could be used to advance AI research. We’ll also look at alternate theories of the brain, while expanding on the practical applications of Hawkins’s theory and the dangers inherent in both human and machine cognition.

Do we have free will to make our own choices and decide our own actions? To many of us, it certainly feels like we do. But philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris thinks that we aren’t really in charge of our decisions—and in Free Will, he makes the case that not only is free will an illusion, it’s an illusion that we’re better off abandoning altogether.

Harris argues that all of our thoughts, feelings, desires, and decisions are caused by influences that are outside of our control and, often, even our consciousness. So, he asks, how could our decisions possibly be free? Yet Harris also makes the case that though our choices are predetermined, the effort we put into making decisions and acting according to them still matters. In this guide, we’ll examine Harris’s ideas and put them into the context of what other philosophers, neuroscientists, and psychologists have discovered about the origins of our thoughts and decisions.