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00:07A few summers ago I was at the beach with my family and right when we got there we took
00:14off
00:15our shoes and ran to the ocean's edge and we've all experienced it before the waves kind of come
00:22in and as they wash out we feel ourselves sinking because the sand beneath us is getting wet but at
00:31the same time if we're looking out to the horizon line it doesn't seem like much changes it's very
00:35discombobulating marine biologists call this area that is sometimes above water sometimes below water
00:42the intertidal zone in many ways that's where we are right now as a society we are in an intertidal
00:50moment you feel like everything's in some ways the same you still wake up you're still you
00:58but there's a shift and you can't quite put your finger on it it's really a crossroads moment for
01:04humanity this year's consumer electronics show promises to deliver more gadgets they can do
01:11more things than ever before well I think what we're seeing is a new digital wild west
01:18where no one is in charge thank you for the lives let's get to 40 000
01:24this is freaking crazy more than three billion people in almost 70 countries and territories
01:30have been asked to stay at home
01:37abnormal behaviors may include panic aggression confusion or anxiety during waking hours
01:46i don't believe we've even seen the tip of the iceberg i think we're really on the verge of
01:51something wonderful and terrifying
01:56that local distribution and file sharing has the new radio and now it's radio across the planet
02:03how come you're smoking weed in the uh capital
02:05because i can't do you feel like too much is changing too fast
02:16so
02:36I'll be back.
03:10I use the term the intertidal moment to kind of describe where we are in the current kind
03:15of arc of human history, which sets this apart from almost any other intertidal that has
03:21come before.
03:22This is probably the first time that we can actually recognize that we're actually in
03:26an intertidal.
03:27So instead of it just kind of happening, everyone feeling discombobulated, we all feel something
03:32is not working, and at the same time, we're grappling and looking for something else.
03:39I'm curious about how we can find and embrace the creative potential of this moment.
03:43But first, we have to get a bearing on what moment we're actually in.
03:47That's led me here to Columbia University, where I sat down with a group of graduate students
03:52training to become the future leaders of tomorrow.
03:55So it's 2014, and you're being asked to kind of describe this moment in human history in
04:01the big scope.
04:04Talk to each other.
04:05Talk to me about how you're going to describe what it is that we're going through right now.
04:09Coming out of the pandemic, and there's a lot of confusion around, well, if we're coming
04:14out of this, what are we going into?
04:17The world that we knew before is just much different.
04:21What is, you know, that next step?
04:24What's the life that we're moving towards?
04:26Nobody really knows.
04:28Like, from individuals to business leaders to government leaders, we're all here just
04:33really trying to figure it out.
04:35And that sense of leadership, as this is who I want to follow to get there, is probably
04:40more unclear now than it maybe has ever been.
04:43I think this is an interesting moment of excitement and opportunity, but it's all founded in a level
04:50of uncertainty that I have not been in before.
04:52There were a lot of things that I think we took for granted, a lot of certainties that
04:56we had taken for granted that I think have all bubbled up to the top right now in terms
05:00of, you know, where is their security?
05:03What does it look like for something to function correctly for everyone?
05:06What is it that we are taking for granted?
05:09Just revenue building can't be the bottom line.
05:13That individualistic mindset can't be it anymore.
05:16So in 2040, if I looked back and I explained to my kids, hopefully, what this time looked
05:22like, I think it was a time of opportunity with responsibility.
05:25I feel like also climate-wise, this is, I mean, these years are really going to be like
05:31deciding about our future, right?
05:32So by 2040, hopefully, we'll be looking back and say, we made some very wise decisions in
05:37that regard.
05:37And we won't have to tell like our kids, well, sorry, we like did it wrong.
05:51When things are stable, it feels safe.
05:57But that's the opposite of what the world feels like right now.
06:02From our own lives, to our own jobs, to our families, to our country, to the climate, to
06:08the politics, it feels unsteady.
06:12It feels in flux.
06:14When that happens, your brain, your amygdala is going to say, this is not safe.
06:21I don't feel like we're in a stable place.
06:25You look at any long form of humanity over thousands and thousands or hundreds of thousands
06:32of years, if you go way back to the beginning, and it's flat.
06:36It's flat in terms of population.
06:38It's flat in terms of technology.
06:40It's flat in terms of communication.
06:41It's flat.
06:42And then for the last eye blink, it explodes.
06:49You've never had a period on a planet like the last 50 years.
06:52It's really half a century of unprecedented human progress.
06:58Education levels increased.
07:00Infant mortality reduced.
07:03Life expectancy grew extraordinarily all over the world.
07:07Now, there were costs to that globalization.
07:11We are now at the beginning of a new globalization.
07:17In ways that even a year ago, never mind 20, seemed inconceivable.
07:23And of course, I'm talking about the AI revolution.
07:25We're living through a moment of extraordinary change.
07:29Even good change can be hard.
07:31In an information environment that we're living in, it is completely surrounding us.
07:36It's coming at us 24-7.
07:37And unfortunately, a lot of times, this information that comes at us is negative.
07:42It stokes fear and anxiety.
07:44But for young people in particular, there is more and more data that we have that is telling us that
07:50many young people are in fact harmed.
07:53There are three numbers that really stick out to me.
07:56If you have a high school with 1,000 kids in it, about 450 of those children are feeling persistently
08:01sad or hopeless.
08:03200 of those children have considered taking their own life.
08:07And 100 of those kids have attempted suicide.
08:11As much as we're struggling right now, as much as our kids are in a mental health crisis, it does
08:15not have to be this way.
08:17There is a choice we have between a world where people are increasingly in despair and a world where people
08:24are connected to one another.
08:26Where we look at the future and see possibility.
08:35Life has always been full of change.
08:37But the growing sense that we are entering uncharted waters is being felt around the world in unprecedented ways right
08:44now.
08:45We are living in a time between times, when what was is no longer working, and what will be has
08:52yet to be born.
08:53But what happens in a moment when the usual shifts we experience all the time in one industry or culture
08:59become heightened and intertwined?
09:01What does it take to navigate through a period when the degree of complexity and confusion in our lives feels
09:07like it's turned up to 11?
09:09And what kind of stress is this all putting on our brain's ability to make sense of what we're living
09:13through?
09:15So Ari, we're going to do a neurofunctional assessment. This is called a TheraQ. It's picking up brainwave activity. There
09:24we go. Beautiful.
09:26This will only take a few minutes. Your assessment is starting now. Close your eyes.
09:35Dr. Brown has spent his life following the effects the modern world is having on us.
09:39Through traditional psychology, as well as neurofeedback systems that are getting increasingly powerful at monitoring our brain's response to the
09:47pressures of this moment we find ourselves in.
09:49One of the things that I'm curious about is how you see this current moment. And by that I mean
09:56this current moment for humanity writ large.
09:59Broadly, I think we're in a time that has moved more and more towards kind of the atomization of individuals.
10:07There are stressors that are putting demands on our bodies and on our brains that are in turn affecting the
10:14way we live our lives and the way we live together.
10:18One way of thinking about this is that our bodies and our brains have a blueprint that was laid down
10:24for what was useful to survive 100,000 years ago.
10:29And back then what was, what you were trying to do was not be eaten by a bear or a
10:34saber tooth tiger depending on how far back you go.
10:37So everything in our evolution was shaping us towards developing an effective fight or flight system.
10:46Dealing with physical threat, immediate threat, and that's not very well suited to our life now.
10:54Instead, we have stressors and demands that are longer term, that are chronic, and our bodies aren't really designed for
11:01that. Our brains aren't really designed for that.
11:02So what happens when you take someone who's wired for fight or flight, you know, hundreds of thousands of years
11:09of evolution, but you stick them in a cubicle, or you stick them, you know, on a factory floor doing
11:15the same thing over and over again, or you put them in a classroom for eight hours a day sitting
11:20at a desk?
11:22I think we perceive a lot of threat right now in our world. And it's not often the kind of
11:28threat that we're designed to deal with. We're designed to deal with concrete, time limited threat.
11:33What we have is diffuse, something bad's going to happen, I don't know what kind of threat. And it's not
11:39time limited, it's ongoing.
11:42A lot of us feel that right now. This kind of low-grade sense of fear and uncertainty about where
11:48we're headed. And it can leave us feeling powerless over what comes next.
11:54But what do we do when some of these threats are not imagined, but rather painfully real? One of those
12:01is a threat to the natural world around us.
12:03The systems that sustain all life on this planet are warning us that things are not okay. And yet, if
12:09you're like me, it's so easy to feel helpless in the face of a challenge this big.
12:14That's led me here, to the northeast coast of Canada, where Valerie Courtois leads a growing group of people who
12:20refuse to ignore this threat.
12:22Right here, in one of the most ecologically important places on Earth.
12:26Tell me about this land, where are we right now?
12:29We're in Desinan, which is the Innu word for our land, or the place of the Innu, specifically known as
12:37Labrador today.
12:39We're at the foot of the Mealy Mountains. Interestingly, the Mealy Mountains is a joint park between the Innu Nation
12:44and Parks Canada.
12:45It's the largest intact forest left on this planet. It is home to over five billion birds.
12:51It's got a quarter of the world's wetlands, a fifth of the world's fresh water.
12:55It actually absorbs twice as much carbon as tropical forests per hectare.
12:59And so, in terms of climate regulation, this is the most important terrestrial landscape on the planet.
13:06There's a movement afoot, several movements afoot, around the planet, especially here, for First Nations,
13:12and obviously in Indigenous groups, to actually have a much stronger part in protecting and preserving these lands.
13:20Why is that so important?
13:22Well, you know, 80% of the world's remaining biodiversity is on lands that are loved by Indigenous peoples.
13:27And that's not an accident. It's because we know that we're responsible for those landscapes.
13:32And unfortunately, Western society has lost its way.
13:36And so we're finding that more people are looking to Indigenous peoples and looking to us for new ways of
13:43thinking about that relationship.
13:45How do you feel about the biodiversity loss that these lands are going through right now?
13:51I feel grief. I feel a loss of responsibility, and I feel guilt that we've gotten to this place.
14:00But I also know that not all is lost.
14:03You know, the world is resilient. The land is resilient. We are resilient.
14:13Valerie has spent years lobbying the Canadian government to invest in protecting these ecologically rich environments.
14:20And her work led to the creation of a group known as the Guardians, a First Nations-led initiative across
14:26the country,
14:26tasked with defending the long-term health of the land.
14:31Together, they steward not only these fragile ecosystems, but also an ancient way of seeing themselves,
14:37a relationship with the land itself.
14:41This is the first time that we talked about working as a superintendent here in the National Park
14:46and also was working with the Indonesian. We've been asked to do up the guidelines about how to protect it.
14:53And I say to the government that we've been doing this for thousands of years.
14:56If we didn't manage the way we managed, there wouldn't be any animals.
15:00There wouldn't be any resources at all.
15:03And now you're expecting us to write it and put it on paper and have it stamped and say this
15:08is how it is.
15:09It's a way of thinking.
15:10Exactly.
15:11It's a mindset.
15:11In the Western world, you get people that want to over-cut, want to over-kill,
15:16want to kill every fish in the water, every caribou that walks under our earth.
15:22But they don't think like that.
15:24There's not clear-cut in the whole area just for profit or to sell to somebody else.
15:30They just think, okay, I just need this or this long, or I need this to feed my family and
15:35my mother-in-law,
15:36so I'll take this many salmon out of the river, and then I'm done.
15:40I think we need to kind of go back to that relationship and make a conscious effort to do it.
15:48I think if more people were connected to the land, we'd be a much better world.
15:56Our languages come from the land.
15:59Our practices, our laws, everything comes from the earth.
16:03We can learn those things again.
16:07I don't know about you, but I want to be here for a little while,
16:09and I want my children to be here for a little while,
16:11and I want my grandson to be here for a little while.
16:15We have a role to play, and we should be helping decide and taking care of this place.
16:28It's an unforgettable experience to spend time with people who simply refuse to give up,
16:34building on ancient wisdom to look beyond our modern moment to a future worth fighting for.
16:39These are the stories we need right now.
16:42It's so easy to see what's wrong, and even easier to lose hope altogether.
16:46But the creativity comes in finding new ways to do something about it.
16:50I'm in Rotterdam to meet Boyan Slat, who's doing this very thing,
16:54inventing a technology designed to give our oceans a second chance.
16:58Tell me how you got started.
16:59I was 16 years old, I went scuba diving in Greece,
17:02and I was hoping to see all these beautiful things.
17:05Then I looked around me and I just saw a garbage dump,
17:08I just saw more plastic bags than fish.
17:10And I was so dismayed and shocked by that,
17:15that I asked myself a simple question, why can't we just clean this up?
17:22The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the largest accumulation of trash in the world's oceans.
17:28It's an area halfway between Hawaii and California.
17:31It spans twice the size of Texas, and it contains about 250 million pounds of trash.
17:38Plastic is one of the largest threats our oceans face today.
17:42There's now 700 species known to be directly impacted by plastic pollution.
17:47A few hundred of those are actually threatened with extinction.
17:50The most uncertain factor, but perhaps even the most impactful factor,
17:54is the health impact to us humans.
17:57Plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces.
18:00They transport toxic chemicals into the food chain,
18:03and that's a food chain that includes more than 3 billion people that rely on fish as their key source
18:09of protein.
18:14Boyan and his team are working towards a goal to clean up 90% of floating plastic pollution.
18:19And here's the most powerful part.
18:21It took several attempts before they created something that even had a chance to achieve that.
18:26It was touch and go.
18:28People said the system he was inventing would never work.
18:30But then it did.
18:34The system itself is a long U-shaped floating barrier that we drag forth very slowly,
18:40just to make sure that the fish can escape in time.
18:42It acts like a funnel, plus it goes towards the center,
18:45where we have what we call the retention zone, which is a collection bag.
18:49Every few days, when it's full, we take the bag onto a ship,
18:53we empty it, we sort the waste, and then ultimately we bring it back to land for recycling.
19:01Actually, the oldest object we've ever collected.
19:05And you can see how it's been degraded, so these flakes are coming off.
19:09The thing is, because of UV light, because of the sun,
19:12the plastic becomes more brittle.
19:14So then layer by layer, like an onion, it kind of peels.
19:17So this eventually can end up in the fish that we eat.
19:20Yeah, and this can turn into millions of pieces of microplastics.
19:23So here what you see is essentially the recycling process in steps.
19:29So actually half of what we get out of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is fishing nets.
19:34So it looks just like this.
19:37I would say probably the most harmful type, because this ensnares a lot of wildlife.
19:42So what we then do is we wash it and we shred it, you get to this kind of pulp.
19:46Yep.
19:47And then ultimately we injection mold it, we compound it, so we add some editors to make sure that the
19:54material is safe and high quality.
19:57And then it becomes this.
20:00So these are what you call pellets.
20:01And these are the building blocks for any new object.
20:05So you can just mold this into something new.
20:09And the idea is that we are producing durable, sustainable products out of this.
20:14And with that, help fund the cleanup.
20:17Actually, as a proof of concept, we made these sort of high-end designer sunglasses.
20:22So this is 100% made from the plastic we took out of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
20:31They look good on you.
20:32These are great.
20:33So if the garbage patch is cleaned up in 10 to 15 years, what's to prevent another one 20 years
20:40from now forming?
20:41Realistically, the amount of plastic that's being produced is not going down.
20:45In fact, the projections are that by 2060, the amount of plastic produced will increase threefold.
20:52So really what we need to do is we need to decouple the plastic usage from the plastic flows into
20:59the ocean.
21:02We have interceptors now in 11 rivers, some of the most polluting rivers in the world.
21:07And we believe we can stop most of the world's plastic emissions from leaking into the ocean.
21:15What do you think when people say what you're doing is impossible?
21:20I think when somebody says something is impossible, I think the sheer absoluteness of that statement should make you suspicious
21:30of it.
21:31If you look at history, everything that we now take for granted used to be impossible at some point in
21:38time.
21:39So, you know, if you're an entrepreneur, if you're trying to make something, if you're trying to create something,
21:45yes, I think it's very important to listen and to listen to people's advice.
21:50But if there's one bit of advice that you should really ignore, it's people who say that something can't be
21:57done.
22:00The challenges facing Boyan and us all are daunting.
22:04Intertidal times are full of danger, but it's also where all the creative juice is.
22:09And for those of us who want to push the envelope on who we are and what's possible on this
22:14planet looking forward,
22:16this is our moment.
22:24Man, one of the most fragile of Earth's creatures, the builder of civilization.
22:30Entrusted by nature with the unique but dangerous ability to alter the very conditions that gave him rise.
22:37We've been in moments like this before.
22:39The big one is moving from hunter-gatherer to agricultural.
22:43That was maybe 10,000, 12,000 years ago.
22:46We went from being in small clans and tribes to now actually starting to urbanize.
22:53We also have things like the Gutenberg Press.
22:56So we went from an era where knowledge could only be held by a few people
23:01to now being able to mass-create knowledge in a way that would actually bring it out to people.
23:08Now from that you got the Reformation and all sorts of upheaval around Europe and around the world.
23:14Another one is kind of moving from this idea that the Earth is the center of everything
23:19to moving towards heliocentric models of how the world works.
23:24Moving from us being the center of the universe to just being one kind of node
23:29in a multi-noded galaxy and universe was highly disruptive.
23:32The Industrial Revolution, moving from this idea that the power that we had in the world
23:38was just what we could do with our own hands and backs.
23:41It changed where we lived, what we ate, how we traveled.
23:44It changed how we fought wars.
23:47And it also fundamentally changed the way we told stories about who we are and where we're going.
23:54When we go through these moments of flux and creativity, all sorts of new things start to arise.
24:09That's the potential before us right now.
24:12These threats and challenges hold opportunities to remake the world.
24:16As the old ways break down, fall apart around us.
24:20What does it look like to reimagine what comes next?
24:24In Albany, Evan Baer and his team at Ecovative are working to answer that question.
24:30Using mushrooms.
24:42So we're going to head right over here.
24:45All right, so I understand this is kind of just a beautiful piece of mycelium basically in a sense, like
24:51foam-like substance.
24:52What is this?
24:53This is a leather-like material.
24:55We call it a forge or hide.
24:56And it's made from this foam.
24:57We just squish it and tan it and color it and you get something that behaves, looks, and feels a
25:01lot like leather.
25:02And so how long will this last?
25:04So this particular leather-like hide will last for a year or two in this application as tanned.
25:08You can make it last longer by putting other tannery chemistries in like we use for conventional leather.
25:12So this is where we actually started with something called mushroom packaging.
25:15These are just little corner blocks that would go on a box you might get in the mail and, you
25:18know, they've got little breakaways on them.
25:20And then when it gets to you, unlike Styrofoam, the big difference is you can just start to break this
25:24up.
25:24If you have a compost at home, you can put in your compost.
25:26Or you could put it in your yard waste bin.
25:28And within 30 days, this will turn into a nutrient, not a pollutant, in whatever your local ecosystem is.
25:34What are the biggest problems that you're trying to tackle here?
25:37The problems that we focus on at Ecovative are around plastic pollution.
25:40So this idea that we just create this incredible miracle material that can't degrade and it's like clogging up the
25:44lungs and everything of our Earth's ecosystem.
25:46And the other is around animal agriculture.
25:48So the mass production of animals for food or materials.
25:51I grew up farming in central Vermont.
25:53It's fine to raise animals.
25:55Doing it industrially is not ecologically responsible or ethically responsible.
26:00Evan sees times of disorder and chaos like these as full of opportunity for transformation.
26:05Rather than simply seeing problems, he sees openings full of potential to invent entirely new ways of doing things that
26:13most of us take for granted.
26:15Welcome to the magic store.
26:20What you see in here are the aspects of a conventional vertical mushroom farm.
26:24You've got your shelving system here.
26:26You've got your environmental controls.
26:27And now we've modified it to use the soil we use to grow our special forms of mycelium.
26:32And rather than getting a bunch of mushrooms growing out of that bed, you're actually getting a slab of mycelium
26:36tissue.
26:36That's really the power.
26:37There's no wasted space.
26:38There's no wasted space.
26:39It doesn't cure mycelium all the way across.
26:40I get a slab.
26:41One of these rooms can produce 20,000 pounds of mycelium.
26:45So a harvest machine will pull up and it comes out like a conveyor.
26:49It comes across and squishes it in a basically like a pork belly or a mush belly we call it.
26:53And then those come off and those go to the bacon facility.
26:55Wow.
27:02So now this came out in a block.
27:04Yeah.
27:04And then you started slicing it?
27:06It rides along just like a piece of pork belly would be.
27:09So run it through the slicer.
27:10You get your slices of bacon.
27:12You add salt and sugar and some natural flavorings.
27:15And then at the very end we put the coconut oil on which is the fat because mushrooms don't have
27:19any fat in them.
27:20Yeah.
27:20This is a minimally processed, sliced and smoked basically.
27:23Compare and contrast the inputs that would go into, you know, five pounds of this versus five pounds of bacon
27:32from a pig.
27:33So to produce a million pounds of our product takes about an acre of land in one of our vertical
27:37farms.
27:37And it occurs over about ten days.
27:39To produce the same amount of bacon using a pig, you'd need about a million acres of land.
27:45And you would also need to feed that pig high quality food.
27:48So like grains versus wood chips.
27:50And then you have to grow them for a period of six to nine months.
27:53And so in each of those dimensions, land use, the input material and the timeframe,
27:57we're massively like by an order of magnitude improving the equation.
28:06Tastes like bacon.
28:08But tell me, where does this go? Because so far, you know, we've heard about packaging, right?
28:13Yeah.
28:13Obviously there's food and you mentioned leather.
28:15Yeah.
28:16Where do you take this?
28:17My dream is we grow everything.
28:18You know, I think we can grow almost everything around us from the buildings to the medicines we need to
28:22the food we eat.
28:23And we'll do that through structural materials, nutritional materials, and even things that might be alive when you use them.
28:29Such as?
28:30Well, you could imagine a building that senses the environmental conditions within it,
28:34and maybe even releases beneficial compounds to like clean the air.
28:38You can imagine buildings in an earthquake develop cracks.
28:40And in those cracks, there are like embedded little water bottles that break open.
28:45And the fungus is not dead, but is dehydrated, which it can do.
28:48And it'll start growing and seal up all those cracks.
28:52Mushrooms are uniquely situated to save the world.
28:55What Ebbett and his team are doing here is inspiring.
28:58And it gives me a renewed sense of possibility for the kind of futures we can choose to create in
29:03this moment.
29:08Here in New York, an architect named Bjarke Engels is working with a similar perspective to reimagine the cities in
29:15which we live.
29:17I think maybe the best way to explain what's so special about architecture and the power of design is that
29:24the Danish word for design is form-giving, which literally means form-giving.
29:31When you design something, you're giving form to that which has not yet been given form.
29:38In other words, you're giving form to the future.
29:41So when you're designing a place or a building, you are giving form to a little part of the world
29:47that you would like to find yourself living in in the future.
29:53How do you think about the moment of time that we're in right now?
29:56It's kind of chaos and flux and a lot of people will want to look backwards or others will want
30:01to stick their head in the sand to keep what they have.
30:04How do you think about this moment?
30:07We're living in a time where a lot of technologies are bringing possibilities to the table that we have never
30:15been even close to before.
30:17And I sense that this innovation that has been maybe locked in virtual in the last few decades has finally
30:25arrived in physical space.
30:27And maybe give you one example.
30:29The building we designed in Copenhagen called Copenhill is the cleanest waste-to-energy power plant in the world.
30:34The steam that comes out of the chimney is actually cleaner than the air of Copenhagen.
30:40Suddenly the power plant no longer had to be some ugly, dirty, polluting eyesore.
30:45It could actually be a welcoming, inclusive environment.
30:49We could make the facade into the tallest man-made climbing wall in the world and we could turn the
30:53roof into an alpine ski slope.
30:55So it's an idea we call hedonistic sustainability that the sustainable building or the sustainable city is not only better
31:01for the environment,
31:02it's also much more enjoyable for the people that get to inhabit it.
31:08A lot of times when people hear the term sustainability or even regenerative, they think something's going to be taken
31:13away from me.
31:14It's not going to be as fun, I'm not going to be as happy, I'm going to lose all these
31:17things.
31:17That's not the way you think about it.
31:19Twenty-three years ago we opened the Copenhagen Harbour Bath, a simple floating structure that extends the life of the
31:25city into the water around it.
31:27On opening day it became so clear that the clean port is not only nice for the fish, it's actually
31:33amazing for the people that live in that city.
31:35And this idea that the sustainable city is not only better for the environment, it's much more enjoyable for the
31:41people that live in it.
31:43Like half of the Copenhageners commute by bicycle, not because it's environmentally friendly, but because it's the most enjoyable and
31:50effortless way to move around the city quickly.
31:52So in that sense, just keep reminding ourselves that there is a better and more enjoyable way of doing it.
31:57And I think the benefits of an environmentally friendly city is that it is greener and cleaner and more enjoyable.
32:07Tell me about the cities of the future. Where are we going? Where do we need to go? What does
32:13it look like?
32:15If you would return to Manhattan in 10 or 20 or maybe 50 years, you might see streets that entirely
32:24become almost like linear parks woven together in both directions of Manhattan.
32:30People can walk and play where you used to have traffic and parked cars.
32:35You might have different kinds of personal mobility also taking over whole areas.
32:41Because our cities will really become greener and more enjoyable, which will make them more walkable and more bikeable.
32:48So I think a lot of the dichotomy between the city and the countryside, you're going to get much more
32:56interesting blends.
32:59The city isn't the way it is because it has to be.
33:03The city is the way it is because that's how far we've gotten.
33:07And if we would like to ask more of our city or if we would like a city to accommodate
33:14another kind of life than what it used to,
33:17we actually not only have the possibility, we actually have a responsibility to make sure that our city fits with
33:23the way we want to live.
33:30In 1945, my mother was born in Oakland, California.
33:35And very early on, she realized that where she could kind of bring her gifts to bear in the world
33:41was through creativity.
33:43And so she ended up becoming a professional artist.
33:47Growing up, my mom would often bring paintings that she was working on kind of back into circulation.
33:53So most people think of an artist as someone who paints something, they're done, they put it up on the
33:56wall.
33:57My mom had paintings hanging in her garage around the house that she had painted in the 1960s and 70s.
34:04And every once in a while, I'd see one of those on the easel and she would kind of add
34:08to it.
34:08And I'd say, well, I thought that painting was complete.
34:11She said, a work of art is never necessarily complete.
34:13It's up to the artist.
34:15And so what I learned is even when you're crafting something, that you can always come back to it.
34:20You can always make changes because you've learned new information.
34:24You can take from the past, you can augment it.
34:27It really means that things are fungible and changeable as long as you're trying to make them better.
34:43Sometimes the way to make things better is to look at who needs help.
34:47Where is there a need?
34:48And how can we improve on the way things are currently being done?
34:52We have powerful new tools and technology available to us right now.
34:57And rather than just using them to entertain or sell us more stuff,
34:59we can meet actual human needs, altering and improving the experience of being alive.
35:08My name is Veena Somaredi and I'm the co-founder and CEO of Neuro Rehab VR.
35:13We create virtual reality therapy applications for physical therapy, occupational therapy,
35:18for patients who might have gone through a stroke or a spinal cord injury or Parkinson's or MS.
35:23and we help them get back their lymph function as best as we can.
35:27Physical therapy hasn't really changed since the 60s.
35:30It's very manual.
35:31It's very tedious for the patient as well as the physical therapist.
35:35And sometimes you need one or two therapists working on one patient.
35:38So it is not possible in the modern world when there is shortage of work, you know, clinicians and also
35:44access to care.
35:46What's the big opportunity for humanity in terms of these new kind of digital reality realms that are being built
35:55and that we're kind of in many ways kind of living into?
35:58For me, I think on the healthcare side would be access to care, access to care for anybody not, you
36:05know, in any socioeconomic status that they're in,
36:08which has been a huge problem in healthcare.
36:11Being able to like send our systems to somebody who doesn't have access to therapy so they can do it
36:16on their own in their own time
36:18and get back that function that they might have lost and come back into society.
36:24Veena didn't just see what was broken in the field of physical therapy.
36:27She saw what was needed, what could be, and created something new.
36:33While we were at the clinic, she let me experience the work for myself.
36:37So you'll have a green ball coming at you and you have to dodge it.
36:41You can move to your left or you can move to your right.
36:44I see a picnic table.
36:45You'll see the ball coming at you. There you go.
36:48Do you feel like Neo from Matrix?
36:49Yes.
36:50There you go.
36:50I mean, obviously this is helping with balance, but what other things is this helping with?
36:54It's weight shifting is a huge thing with stroke patients.
36:57Okay.
36:57Because usually when they're affected, you know, when I have a stroke, they're paralyzed on one side.
37:01Okay.
37:01And they're very afraid about putting their weight on that affected side.
37:04Is it that you can't do it or it's like the fear of doing it and what might happen?
37:08It is mostly the fear, especially with chronic patients.
37:11They're used to what they cannot do.
37:13They know this is what I cannot do and these are my limitations and they're stuck with it.
37:17Yeah.
37:17But once you put them in an immersive environment where they don't see the bias of their diagnosis that, you
37:22know, you don't see your body right now.
37:23All you're concentrated on is on lodging that cannonball, right?
37:27Oh, yeah.
37:27So that takes them out of that fear of not being able to do something.
37:32Now what should I do with the chicken?
37:33Should I eat it?
37:33You can eat it.
37:34Yep, exactly.
37:36I was working with a stroke patient and her goal for therapy was being able to go grocery shopping with
37:42her grandkids again.
37:43And so we were like, let's create that so you can practice everything that you'll have to do in real
37:46life right here in VR.
37:48So it feels like you've done this before and you're not afraid.
37:53So you've got eggs.
37:54So what you're doing right here is pattern matching, being able to pattern match from the item that's on the
37:59shopping list to the item that's on the shelf,
38:02which is something a lot of people can forget or lose that after a stroke incident.
38:08So right here, we're able to simulate everything from the touch, the feel, the visual aspects and the ambience too,
38:15so that they can get used to all of that before they actually go into a grocery store.
38:21Obviously, the VR that where you're mostly working on right now are people who have suffered either from a stroke
38:26or neurodegenerative diseases.
38:27Right.
38:28But I would imagine it also can start working for other traumas.
38:30So this is something that works on PTSD for veterans.
38:35Exposure therapy has been shown to desensitize them for the fear that they might have experienced, the trauma that they
38:43might have experienced.
38:44Just the sounds of being in the battlefield can help them decrease that anxiety.
38:50A fear of spiders or fear of heights, you can work on all of this in a virtual world and
38:55you know that you're not going to get hurt.
38:57And then maybe go back to the real world and be able to experience that without the amount of fear
39:03that you might have had.
39:05The overlap between digital and lived realities is growing every day.
39:09And as new AI tools continue to expand what's possible, Vena believes this work is only the beginning.
39:36AI has been around since the early 20th century as a concept.
39:41One.
39:42Two.
39:43Three.
39:44Hello, Kismet.
39:46Thanks, Dad.
39:46Oh, I love you, Dad.
39:48In the 90s, we got computers that could process vector graphics for video games and that type of thing.
39:55And that enabled a revolution to happen in neural computation.
40:00So we could start to stack up layers of neurons and that's what's called deep learning.
40:06And that's what's really advanced the field so much.
40:10We could create a world where AI is just driving us towards more consumption and more recommendations of products.
40:17Or we could create a world where AI is allowing us to express different things, to understand ourselves in different
40:23ways.
40:24Whichever of those outcomes is more likely to happen has a lot to do with who's making the AI and
40:28why they're making it.
40:30The conversation around artificial intelligence is thrilling and complex.
40:35And at the current speed of innovation, it's hard to keep up with how fast these tools are developing and
40:40to what end they will be used.
40:43Greg Cross and his team at Soul Machines have been working on these technologies for years.
40:48What is surprising you most about the field and or the state of AI today?
40:52We are living in a moment of time where sort of AI has crossed the threshold from something that the
40:59techies and the geeks talked about all the time to it's now on the lips of, you know, just about
41:05every human being on this planet.
41:06Artificial intelligence, will it be the savior of humanity or lead to our ultimate demise?
41:11Many people are going to ask, why on earth did you create this technology?
41:17The speed at which things are moving now is just, you know, astonishing.
41:20You know, stuff that I used to think about, well, that's three to five years away, that's like 12 months
41:24away now.
41:25So what are you and your team working on right now?
41:28So Soul Machines is, you know, sits at this intersection of technology and entertainment.
41:36We create avatars, you know, so CGI characters, and we bring them to life using some very, very specific different
41:44fields of artificial intelligence.
41:46So our digital characters are alive, they're digitally alive.
41:50A lot of people feel we are very much at a crossroads moment for humanity, for our species on this
41:55planet.
41:56But you're generally very kind of optimistic, but what's driving most of that hope right now?
42:01One of the really, really cool things about artificial intelligence is you're creating a learning system.
42:06So, you know, the way in which we simulate human behavior, the subtlety in which we can simulate human behavior.
42:13I mean, this is about making, you know, it sounds like a corny phrase, but making AI your friend.
42:18So right now there's a lot of kind of fear and concern about what AI could do to us, do
42:24to humans.
42:25How do you see this?
42:26Well, I mean, at the end of the day, I think the debate is really, really, you know, the most
42:32positive thing that can happen at the moment in terms of, you know, people talking about what it means for
42:40the businesses that they work in, the industries that they compete in, the communities they live in, the type of
42:45regulatory environment they would like to see.
42:48But the debate is absolutely critical.
42:51You have to look at the holistic picture of everything that's happening right now.
42:55AI is not happening in a vacuum. It's a really profound technological shift.
43:01But it's also happening alongside mass extinction, climate change, the greatest economic inequality that we've had.
43:09We're becoming aware that our actions have global effects.
43:14When we start talking about artificial intelligence, that's the first thing in our history that has the potential to either
43:25change us as human beings into a future form or extinguishers.
43:31There's never been such a thing.
43:35This is part of a profound shift in how we see the role of the human.
43:39And that's a little scary, but also potentially very hopeful.
43:44Because I think a lot of the reason we're having these perceptions is because of problems.
43:49It's because of things that human centricity created, short sightedness.
43:56If we think about AI in the long term, it really does matter what we do now because it will
44:01affect future generations, just like it does with everything else that we do.
44:06We cannot be narcissistic as a species.
44:11So what should we be optimizing for?
44:14As leaders, if you want to kind of galvanize and bring people together, you have to have a vision.
44:19You want to co-create that vision, but you need to, you know, there's a tilos, there's an ultimate aim,
44:25there's a goal if we want to move forward.
44:27And I will put on the table that we've lost that.
44:30So, take me there.
44:32I think we are at an inflection point.
44:35Like, across society, we have this access to amazing technology.
44:40We have people that are thinking differently about what is their purpose, what is the world going to be, you
44:45know, in 2040.
44:46So that gives us a chance to make change and make decisions that can be beneficial to all.
44:52However, we can very much have all these conversations and not make any decisions.
44:57So nothing actually does change.
44:59So my fear is that while we have this opportunity, that we don't take advantage of it.
45:04And then we're continuing to live through the same things years from now.
45:10Are we providing basic human rights, basic human needs?
45:13And then beyond that, like, how do we incentivize that innovation, which pushes GDP, that solves cancer, that brings AI
45:20into the new age and allows us to, you know, just sit and make music all day instead of having
45:27to worry about, you know,
45:29building another slide deck.
45:30I would like to challenge you on GDP.
45:32Because I feel like GDP is what we are all chasing now.
45:35The question is, like, up to what point some people or some corporations are super successful, they drive innovation, they
45:41drive the GDP, but actually the rights you're chasing after or the equality or equity isn't achieved because of that.
45:48And I feel like GDP doesn't account for all of those things we care about.
45:52And I feel like that's not always money related.
45:54Sounds like to answer your question, we need a social contract.
45:57That's like the thing I'm tying together from everyone's answers is there's a need for accountability from people that we're
46:06going to call leaders.
46:07It sounds like we need to hold each other accountable in some contractual way that emphasizes the need for rights
46:15and no harm to others.
46:21When I look around and I see people working on projects and ideas, they're not all just thinking, how do
46:27I get as much as I can?
46:28Like, what's my little pot of gold?
46:31I see the folks who are building and making better tomorrows for themselves, for their kids, my kids, future generations.
46:40I mean, I see things that are being worked on right now that are going to have downrange impact for
46:46the better for hundreds of years.
46:49We're in a world of turmoil.
46:51The human nature in turmoil is to kind of cocoon and to become more conservative.
46:57If you're insular, then you don't learn.
47:01We can do better.
47:02We can imagine a better future and work on it together.
47:08My son was born right around the time we finished the Copenhagen Power Plant.
47:13So he doesn't know that there was a time when you didn't ski on the power plant.
47:19For him, that's just like a natural part of the landscape of Copenhagen.
47:24So if that's the normal for him and his generation of Danish kids, imagine when they have to start coming
47:32up with what-if scenarios for their future, they're going to come up with some pretty wild stuff.
47:38Innovation occurs at the intersection of things.
47:40The greatest opportunities are in chaos.
47:42In times of, like, change, there's the maximum opportunity to change everything.
47:49The future is all about integrating different interdisciplinary areas into one.
47:54So anybody who's younger, go beyond just the computer science.
47:59Look at the arts.
48:00Look at what's happening in marine biology and the neuroscience.
48:03And you'll be able to bring all of those ideas into one and create something that nobody might have thought
48:08about.
48:10Progress is not inevitable, and it really requires conscious effort.
48:15Sometimes people ask me, you know, why you? Why did you decide to work with us?
48:19And I think it's a strange question.
48:22A much more interesting question to me is, why isn't everyone doing this?
48:28If there is something that's bothering you, I think it would be strange to just wait for somebody else to
48:35solve it.
48:39Hundreds of years from now, they're going to look back on our moment that we're in right now as potentially
48:46the most pivotal in human history.
48:49The decisions that we make around our technologies and how we're going to live on this planet will actually dictate
48:56who and what we are to become.
48:59We have to ask ourselves, in this moment of complexity, what is it that we want to see happen?
49:06Where do we want to go?
49:25www.webc.gov.au
49:27www.webc.gov.au
49:28www.webc.gov.au