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00:08I started football at four years old. I started really, really young.
00:11I always wanted to be forward.
00:14Always?
00:14Yeah.
00:15I wanted to score goals.
00:18When you are kids, you dream true to score goals.
00:23You know how to juggle.
00:24Yeah, sure.
00:27Right foot or left foot?
00:28Right foot.
00:28Right foot, like me.
00:30You take the ball to go like this.
00:33You know, and you go right, left, right, left.
00:39So easy.
00:40Not easy, but if we try, yeah, for sure.
00:44Why not?
00:47Is this the first thing you learned when you started playing?
00:50Is this what you started doing?
00:51No, the first thing I learned is to score goals.
00:53Does not help you to score goals, that.
00:56I'm in Paris today with the world-renowned athlete Kylian Mbappe, to get his perspective on what it takes to
01:03visualize the outcomes we want to see unfold.
01:06Because in this moment, we're becoming urgently aware that we have real choices to make, the outcome of which will
01:12shape so much of what comes next.
01:15We get to decide.
01:17And while we focus a lot on what we don't want, we often fail to take the most important step
01:23of all, picturing what kind of futures we do want.
01:27Seeing the goal we are aiming for.
01:29No, please.
01:42No, please.
01:46No.
01:56What's the importance of visualizing success in making anything happen?
02:03You know, it's a part of yourself.
02:05Me, I was born with that.
02:07I always have this idea of success, to be someone and to achieve many things.
02:12And every year, every month, every day, I have new goals.
02:16And not only in sport, in everything you do.
02:18In life, you have objectives, you have goals for your family, for yourself, at work.
02:24And I think that's the step to success.
02:27Walk me through the moment right before you take a penalty kick.
02:30You're taking a shot on goal.
02:31What are you seeing in your mind?
02:37If I score, what happened?
02:40If I miss what happened?
02:48And that's, like, 100 questions in a second that's coming in your mind.
02:54And you have to be able to say, like, now is the present.
02:59You know, you let the future come in your mind, but the most important thing in the penalty
03:04is to be in the moment.
03:08And you go with the confidence that you're going to score.
03:11There is no other option.
03:16I assume you don't visualize you missing the goal.
03:20No, never.
03:21Never.
03:21That can happen, but never.
03:23If you visualize that you miss a goal before the shoot, you lose 50% of your confidence.
03:30And you need 100% of confidence to score a goal.
03:35I'm often asked, as a futurist, well, what if?
03:39And most of those what ifs are usually worst-case scenarios.
03:43What if an asteroid comes hurtling towards our planet?
03:47What if AI gets out of control?
03:50I think at this point, we can ask ourselves a potentially more important what if question.
03:56What if we're successful?
03:58What if we are able to provide basic and beyond basic services for everyone on the planet?
04:05Because we tend to think of the what if through a kind of a negative lens.
04:10If we want to be able to move forward and build out those flourishing futures for the generations
04:15to come, we have to be asking ourselves, what if we actually got it right?
05:18The Greek term telos means ultimate aim, ultimate goal.
05:22What is it that we are doing and why are we doing it?
05:25For over 100,000 years, the telos for Homo sapiens was basically to survive, to make sure
05:32there would be another generation.
05:34Now for the first time in the human story, we have the opportunity to step back and say,
05:39well, what's next?
05:41Where do we want to take this?
05:43To what end for the Homo sapien project?
05:47Is it just to build cool technology or is it to build a world beyond our imagination?
05:54But how do we change the way we think?
05:56What does it take to set aside old assumptions and ask bigger, better questions about the future we want to
06:02see unfold?
06:04I came to Dubai to meet Raya Bitshari, who believes that the kind of imagination we need right now has
06:10a lot to do with transforming how we teach young minds.
06:14Here at the School of Humanity, she's challenging decades of traditionally held ideas about education in order to change the
06:21way her students learn how to think and rethink everything.
06:26Hi, everyone. Welcome to our Designing with Nature session.
06:30Why are we learning this? Why is this important?
06:33It's a field of study where we look at lessons from nature in order to inspire human innovations.
06:38And it's a really powerful tool to help us solve some of the problems that we're facing today.
06:42We all, for whatever reason, have a story we tell ourselves about what it means to go to school, what
06:49it means to learn, what that experience should feel like.
06:51And there's this mainstream kind of narrative in our collective imagination.
06:57Changing that for an entire species is tough.
07:00A lot of the structures that we're experiencing in schools today came from the assembly line.
07:05We really needed to train millions of factory workers.
07:10In fact, the reason we have bells in between lessons is because in the factory you would have bells to
07:17signal the movement from one assembly line to another.
07:19You have this global standardization that is very much an echo of the industrial era future, and you don't see
07:26enough mainstream alternatives to that journey.
07:28We're actually moving towards a creative economy, especially with the rise of AI and automation.
07:35The kinds of tasks and thinking and processes that will be most difficult to replace with machines are the ones
07:41that are most creative and imaginative and require higher-ordered thinking.
07:45So this kind of Henry Ford model of education makes sense in the early 1900s, when millions of people are
07:51moving off of farms and we have to get them ready to kind of work in factories.
07:55Now here we are, really, at the beginning of the 21st century.
07:59What does it look like if we want to do it differently?
08:03Yeah.
08:04So what I love to do when people ask me that is take a step back and apply first principles
08:08thinking.
08:09So imagine our education system didn't exist, and we weren't tinkering with it, we weren't building on top of it.
08:14We just kind of set it aside, and we got to design something from scratch for today's world.
08:18What would we teach young minds, how would we teach it, and why would we teach those things?
08:23For my team and I, we think that the purpose of education should be to help humanity flourish.
08:27And that can mean different things to different people, but it's all about contributing to human progress.
08:33It's striking to see the effect these ideas are having on the students, here and around the world.
08:38Through her vision to see a future where everyone has access to high-quality learning opportunities, both online and in
08:45person, regardless of where they are in the world.
08:48While I was there, I got to sit down and hear from a few of these students themselves.
08:54What tomorrows do you actually want to see?
08:57For me, I would like to see some progress.
09:00But with progress comes consequences.
09:03I don't think we'd ever achieve a complete utopia.
09:06And I don't think a complete dystopia exists either.
09:10To me, I'd like to see a balanced world.
09:11With progress and, like, to me, important fields would be medicine, business, the environment is a big one.
09:19With AI, people now using chatGBT, there are so much better things that are going to come in the future
09:24that we can't even imagine right now.
09:26Thinking about that there's going to be a lot of new things, that really gets my hopes up.
09:30The future is progressing fast.
09:32It's not only about the governments doing everything, right?
09:35It is also our responsibility as individuals living in our countries, living on Earth, to have a personal understanding of
09:43these topics.
09:44Since, as a community, we will be affected by the future.
09:48One way, again, linking back to improve this is to improve the education system because we need more, you know,
09:55critical thinkers and people that are a lot more curious than the current education system allows us to be.
10:00You guys are a generation that is inheriting a lot.
10:03Yeah.
10:04How does it feel?
10:05I mean, yeah, we have had a lot just dumped on our shoulders.
10:09But there are lots of lessons to be learned.
10:11We learn from our past generations, and also I think it just shapes us as a generation to think like
10:18problem solvers.
10:19We are creating the future.
10:21I feel like that's the only thing that we can be certain about, so we can be a little bit
10:25more positive about that.
10:28Education is the most powerful tool that we have for human progress and for uplifting humanity.
10:33I can only imagine if every child on Earth received access to a quality education that allowed them to upskill
10:40for the emerging workforce, to tackle their local challenges, to flourish in life, what that would mean to improve the
10:47society around them.
10:49That's really what the objective of education should be.
10:52It's not about tests or jobs or exam prep.
10:54It's for us as a species to take a step back and say, where do we want to go?
10:59It's a chance to be motivated by hope more than fear, to be motivated by curiosity more than concern.
11:05And it isn't to say forget the fear.
11:07It isn't to say forget the concern, but to realize the future of what we can create is so amazing.
11:18The future itself is something that has its own history.
11:23There's a history of the idea of the future.
11:27For most of human history, the idea of the future is one that was essentially determined.
11:33That according to the book, according to the cosmology, we have a story about how the world began, we have
11:40a story about how the world will end.
11:42But one of the effects of secularization, let's say, in all of its forms over the past centuries, is that
11:48the future was no longer determined.
11:50The future was open.
11:52The future was open. It was contingent.
11:53And I think this contingency of the future is something that we need to embrace.
12:01Giving people a creative space to think beyond what their world is now is really important, because the world now
12:10is broken.
12:11So we don't want to just confine ourselves to the box of the world of now.
12:15It just doesn't work.
12:17Giving people that space to say, what if?
12:28Build within us is the ability to imagine and reimagine the world as we want to see it.
12:35Thomas More's famous book, Utopia, was really about this kind of far-off land where everything seemed perfect.
12:40Utopias are fascinating. They fill us with wonder and awe at what could be.
12:45I'd like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love.
12:52Grow apple trees.
12:53To all who come to this happy place, welcome.
12:57Our experimental prototype city of tomorrow.
13:00We call it Epcot.
13:03Demonstrating to the world what American communities can accomplish through proper control of planning and design.
13:09But here's the thing, it eventually falls in on itself, because nothing is perfect.
13:15Now we know we don't want dystopias, and we know utopias fall apart, so what's left?
13:20An idea called protopia.
13:22And protopian thinking and being a protopian means that you believe our best days are ahead of us.
13:28That we could actually build a tomorrow that will be better, but it won't be perfect.
13:33And the job will then be picked up by the next generation.
13:38These are the projects I'm interested in.
13:40People who are building better futures.
13:50It's an amazing thing to see firsthand.
13:52How better futures don't just happen.
13:54They're built by everyday people who decide to lean in, rather than look away from the challenges before us.
14:01And perhaps no set of challenges today is more pressing than the ones we see across the natural world.
14:06Where human activity has damaged and destroyed the systems of life that sustain us all.
14:11Here in Freeport, a scuba diver-turned-coral farmer is working to rethink how we preserve these systems of life,
14:18underwater.
14:19We are at Coral Vita's farm in Freeport, Grand Bahama.
14:23It's the world's first commercial land-based coral farm for reef restoration.
14:26So just like we can plant trees for reforestation, we grow and plant corals for reef restoration.
14:32This is a self-contained system where, whether by modifying the temperature, the light, the flow, we can determine this
14:40is what makes corals grow the fastest, is the healthiest.
14:43We can cycle corals through this system to figure out how we can do our job even better.
14:47What exactly is coral?
14:49A lot of people think it's a colorful rock.
14:52In fact, it's an animal that has plants living inside of it.
14:55It's an ancient distant cousin of a jellyfish.
14:58Within its sort of tissue skin layer, it has this symbiotic algae that lives inside of it.
15:03It's what gives corals their color.
15:04Also through photosynthesis is what feeds the corals for the most part.
15:07And then as the corals grow, they make limestone rock for their skeleton.
15:11They really create the habitat, the nurseries for fish, for shrimp, for all sorts of sea life and wildlife.
15:18They're like the skyscrapers of this underwater world.
15:21Since the 1970s, we've lost half of the world's coral reefs.
15:25And we're currently on track to lose over 90% by 2050.
15:29They support the livelihoods of up to 1 billion people in over 100 countries around the world.
15:34Along with sustaining a quarter of all marine life.
15:37They act like natural sea wolves.
15:39They reduce wave energy on average by 97%.
15:42So they protect property, they save lives.
15:44They power tourism economies.
15:46There are entire fishing communities that are completely reliant on these reefs.
15:50So as they die, it's an ecological tragedy that impacts all people everywhere.
15:55We started Coral Vita in order to create a new model to scale restoration globally and so that there will
16:02be future reefs for generations to come.
16:05So yeah, this is basically where we grow the corals.
16:08So we set up these tanks.
16:09We're pumping clean seawater through.
16:11And we work our magic for 6-12 months on average before we then outplant the corals.
16:18So all the coral that I'm looking at in here at one point actually came from the ocean.
16:23Yeah, so this is actually a good example we call is coral brood stock.
16:27And so this was a piece of Elkhorn coral that we've sort of put onto these plates.
16:33This might have broken off because of a storm or someone dropped their anchor.
16:37It was tumbling around the reef.
16:38We collected it, fragmented it into these tiny little pieces that then triggers the accelerated growth rates.
16:45Until it's time to actually screw this in and then the coral will grow over and do its thing.
16:49And so this is something that naturally happens, obviously, but it takes a much longer time.
16:54Exactly.
16:55So normally in nature, it could take years if not decades.
17:00And this will be ready to outplant in closer to 6-12 months.
17:15Sam invited me out with his team to plant some of the newly ready coral.
17:19And see firsthand both the damage and potential he sees here on this local reef.
17:25Where are we right now?
17:26We are sitting right on top of Rainbow Reef on the south shore of Grand Bahama Island.
17:3250, 60 miles off the coast of Florida, we're on top of this incredible barrier reef.
17:37And where we're doing a lot of our restoration efforts from our coral farm here.
17:41We're focused right now on a few hectares area worth of reef.
17:44Where we've been planting thousands and thousands of coral.
17:47All right, well, let's get to it.
17:51All right.
17:51All right.
17:52All right.
18:16Well, let's get to it.
18:16Over the years, so much of human technology has treated the effects to nature as an afterthought.
18:23Now, it's remarkable to see innovation designed to ensure healthier futures for these life support systems that impact us all.
18:31A reminder that the tools we hold in our hands right now, if used wisely, can protect and preserve life
18:39in new and needed ways.
18:57Our ultimate vision is that every nation on Earth that has coral reefs has large-scale land-based coral farms.
19:04And it doesn't have to obviously be us, that there's countless other people that are doing this because we have
19:09an opportunity to do so, and we also have an imperative to do so.
19:24I was in a conversation with someone not that long ago, and they were talking about how, you know, the
19:28future of smart cities and smart appliances, you know, smart refrigerator that tells you when you're running low on milk.
19:36And while smart is good, what we need right now is wisdom, and there's a difference.
19:44What we need to be able to do is kind of step back and discern where do we want to
19:48go?
19:49Where do we want to take this?
19:51Where do we want to take this species?
19:53Where do we want to take this whole thing that we call Homo sapiens on Earth?
19:58And that isn't just about smart.
20:01To answer that question, we need wisdom.
20:06The fork in the road where we are right now can lead in a lot of different directions.
20:12There's reasons to be optimistic.
20:14We've got to believe that there's a better way, and something better is to come, not because at all it's
20:19guaranteed, but because the alternative is completely unthinkable.
20:25We do have the tools.
20:26We can, in fact, imagine and compose radically different kinds of futures.
20:30There's nothing stopping us at the technological level.
20:33All of these technologies are just beginning and super important for the elevation of humanity.
20:40The technology may be an aid, but the technology is not going to save us.
20:45Who's going to save us is us.
20:47It's we who need to solve it.
20:53What does it look like to innovate, using technology to solve for some of the biggest challenges we face?
21:00It's my first time in Iceland, a place that's so beautiful it's overwhelming.
21:06I'm here to visit a country that runs completely on renewable energy, at a moment when many countries are struggling
21:12to achieve a fraction of that.
21:15Iceland is unique in that it straddles the mid-Atlantic ridge, sitting on top of a volcanic hot spot.
21:21So when they began to rethink how to power the country, they decided to make use of the unique resources
21:27they have right here at home.
21:29One of the technologies they're using here is geothermal power, and I wanted to understand more about how it works,
21:35and the ideas it could offer all of us, in search of futures with cleaner, more renewable energy.
21:42We are in a geothermal power plant, and the name of it is Hattli Saidi, and this is by far
21:47the largest geothermal power plant in Iceland, and one of the largest in the whole world.
21:51What exactly is geothermal?
21:53So geothermal is just the heat generated by the Earth Corps, and we want to extract this heat and use
21:59it for electricity and just heating purposes.
22:02While I was there, Angelica showed me around, and explained more about the process, as well as some of the
22:07challenges they're still working to solve.
22:09We drill down approximately 2.5 kilometer steps, we take mostly water and steam, and after that we just use
22:16it for the electricity production, or the heating process for our homes.
22:20How does the steam become electricity?
22:23So after we have separated these two different phases, steam enters a turbine, it rotates pretty fast, the blades, and
22:30when I say fast, I mean 3,000 rotators per minute.
22:33Wow, yeah.
22:33After that, this kinetic, like mechanical energy, is converted to electrical in the generator, and after that, you see all
22:40the power lines over here?
22:42That's when it's getting sent into the national grid of the whole country.
22:48Historically, geothermal power has been limited to areas in the world with naturally occurring heat in the Earth and groundwater.
22:54But recently, there's been exciting work to see what's possible by using existing oil and gas wells.
23:01Water can be pumped into the well, where it is heated by the Earth, then drawn back to the surface
23:06for power.
23:08That's a huge opportunity, as the U.S. alone currently has vast amounts of abandoned, dry, or unproductive oil wells
23:16that can be repurposed,
23:17along with the human skill sets needed for this new work.
23:22So this is actually a re-injection pore hole, and this is where we re-inject the hot geothermal water
23:29that we have used back underground.
23:33Like so many things, geothermal power is a big step forward, but it's not perfect.
23:38There's still a small amount of CO2 being produced from the hot water being extracted.
23:43So the team here has gotten creative about a way to capture the carbon resulting from the process,
23:48and mineralize it into a rock substance that they inject back into the Earth itself.
23:54Now at the moment here in this power plant, we are capturing around 12,000 tons per year of this
24:00CO2, and we mineralize it every year.
24:04How much electricity does Iceland get from geothermal?
24:06So we get around 750 megawatts of electricity from all these mostly eight geothermal power plants throughout the country.
24:14This is nearly 30% of our electricity coming up from geothermal.
24:19The rest comes from hydroelectric.
24:21So we are literally 100% renewable electricity production over here.
24:25As a nation?
24:26Yeah.
24:32I got to see the impact and opportunities created through geothermal energy close by, where a team of farmers are
24:39growing produce in the middle of winter.
24:42Every day we have something to pick in any greenhouse.
24:45We are harvesting two tons of tomatoes every day of the year.
24:48Every day?
24:49Every day of the year.
24:50This is only one of nine greenhouses, and that makes 40% here of the domestic market in Iceland.
24:56You can see the white pipes here all around the glass houses.
25:00You find them also underneath the plants and above the plants.
25:02This is actually our heating system, and those pipes are connected to our own hot spring in the village.
25:08And from there we can take the water with a temperature of 90 to 95 degrees in Celsius inside the
25:13houses, and that's what we use for heating.
25:15So the warmth that I'm feeling right now, the warmth that is growing tomatoes in the middle of winter in
25:19Iceland, is geothermal?
25:21All the way geothermal.
25:22It's just the hot water basically radiating the heat into the houses.
25:27I think over there you can try this one.
25:29Yeah.
25:30It looks good to me.
25:31Look at that.
25:32I mean, this is, when people say like a tomato straight from the vine, this is it, right?
25:36That's it.
25:39It's good?
25:39Yeah.
25:41Mmm.
25:43That's amazing.
25:57Being out here traveling like this, it's kind of mind blowing.
26:01To see these things, and feel these things, and meet with people who are all kind of like working on
26:07the edge, trying to make better futures for my kids, my grandkids.
26:12It's just like inspiring, but they're curious.
26:16They're not sitting back and saying like, I'm just going to let the future wash over me.
26:21They're thinking, can I do it a different way?
26:24Can it be better?
26:25Can I make it better?
26:27And then they're connecting it with like action.
26:29And that curiosity is infectious.
26:33And that feels like a through line across the board.
26:38The more I travel, the more I see how there's no one size fits all solution to the challenges we
26:44face.
26:45This moment requires us to address multiple things at once.
26:48And beyond creating cleaner, new forms of energy, there's still much to do in terms of identifying and reducing existing
26:55energy pollution.
26:57So I came to Ball Aerospace in Boulder, where a team of scientists were preparing to launch a methane tracking
27:03satellite into space.
27:05It's like a smoke detector for the planet.
27:07Methane is a colorless, odorless gas.
27:09We can't see it with the naked eye so that they don't know it's a problem until we make the
27:14invisible visible.
27:15You're part of a project called MethaneSat.
27:18What is that?
27:19So MethaneSat is the first time that an environmental NGO will be launching a satellite.
27:24And what it's designed to do is globally map methane pollution, primarily from oil and gas development, but also from
27:31landfills and agriculture as well.
27:33And to then make that data actionable to the public.
27:37What exactly is methane?
27:39Methane is a super pollutant.
27:40It's like this thick blanket that is very powerful.
27:43It's 80% more potent than carbon dioxide.
27:47And we're talking about an industry that has hundreds of thousands of wells just in the U.S., spread across
27:52very rural areas often.
27:54Limiting the methane that's being wasted, that's leaking out from these oil and gas well sites, is going to help
28:00us address that problem quickly and get that mitigated.
28:04What was it like when the idea was first floated of a not-for-profit launching a satellite?
28:10It's a game changer. I mean, you're right. We're the first to do this.
28:15We saw an opportunity to really fill this gap in the data.
28:20Building from the science that we did here on Earth, going around and sampling these sites, if we wanted to
28:26bring that to scale, if we wanted to be able to see not just what's going on in the U
28:30.S., but what's going on around the world, we are going to need to think differently and to think bigger.
28:38While I was there, we got to suit up so we could see the satellite itself in person.
28:43A team of scientists have been hard at work here for over a year and will be the first satellite
28:48of its kind.
28:52It blows my mind to think about it that this will be up in space.
28:56What you're looking at here on the top is going to be pointed down towards the Earth.
28:59We have one channel for methane and we've got the oxygen channel.
29:03The oxygen channel is helpful for us to correct some of the observations that we get.
29:07Everything below that is the spacecraft bus. That's what provides the power, the heat.
29:13So as the satellite goes around the planet, they're always going to rotate to get maximum sun?
29:17Yep. That's how we keep consistent lighting conditions. It's called a sun-synchronous orbit.
29:22But obviously once it's up there, we're going to want to keep flying it for as long as possible.
29:27So we'll just be the U.S.
29:28No.
29:28And then what happens in other countries that are doing this?
29:31Their citizens and their governments will be able to also see this data because it's open and free.
29:36That's absolutely right. And so with MethaneSat, we'll be able to say, like, what's going on in Russia?
29:41What's going on in Turkmenistan? You know, in other places where we get energy.
29:45I think a lot about the world that our kids are going to inherit.
29:49The problems that we're seeing already with climate impacts.
29:53Methane is the way that we can really bend that curve as quickly as possible.
29:57By cutting methane emissions, we can slow the rate of warming by up to 30%.
30:02It's not to say that carbon dioxide isn't important. It's incredibly important, too.
30:07But we really need to do both, and we need to do them as quickly as possible.
30:12One of the ironies of this moment is that, in many respects, we know much more about how planetary systems
30:19work,
30:19how our own bodies work, where we are astronomically than we have known at any other time in history.
30:26And yet, it seems as though the ability of complex societies to deliberately, comprehensively, and effectively compose themselves,
30:36to govern themselves, to make things work, isn't tracking. There's an irony. We know more but can do less.
30:45We haven't taken a long-term view. We've completely ignored the things that we know, with a fair degree of
30:51certainty,
30:52in many cases are coming down the track of us.
30:55We work on these very sort of linear trajectories in terms of what we measure.
31:01And all of those things add up to a system which has this kind of terrible pull into the short
31:10-term,
31:11and very few incentives to look to the long-term.
31:17One thing we know is coming towards us, an unprecedented amount of human migration,
31:22due to the effects of climate change around the world.
31:25And even though big, long-term challenges like this have proven difficult for us to address,
31:30we now have more than ever a chance to rethink our societies and how we think about who gets to
31:35be a part of them.
31:37Gaia Vinks is an environmental journalist who has spent years arguing that not only are enormous shifts in migration already
31:44upon us,
31:45but also what we've been told is a geopolitical problem, could in fact, if managed well, be a powerful opportunity.
31:53So you wrote the great upheaval is coming. What do you mean by that?
31:57You know, the climate that we experience in our lives and which our culture has been built on,
32:04it's really the fabric of everything we do.
32:06And so when that changes, it means everything changes.
32:09We're seeing drought, wildfires, flood, and all these events.
32:14They are going to create unliveable regions across the planet.
32:19And the conditions are going to be so extreme that people are not going to be able to adapt.
32:23They're going to have to move.
32:28So we're going to see an upheaval in terms of populations moving.
32:32But at the same time, everywhere on Earth is going to have to adapt to these new conditions even if
32:37they don't have to move.
32:38You look at somewhere like Mumbai, which is home to around 30 million people, possibly more.
32:44At least 9 million of those live in slum housing.
32:48They will migrate. They will try to migrate because they will have no choice.
32:52Millions, perhaps billions of people.
32:55Among the many choices we have, we can put up barriers.
32:58We can send back boats of people fleeing disaster.
33:01We've seen it doesn't work. It's very expensive.
33:04So what's your alternative to accepting people in?
33:09Is it conflict? Is it conscripting armies of young people to fight these people?
33:14Because, you know, that's not the future that I would like to see and I don't think that benefits anyone.
33:20There are places where we can live and there is plenty of room for all of us.
33:25Especially if we get on with adapting it and create the societies we want.
33:30There's this talk of like a clash of civilizations or a clash of cultures.
33:36This nomadic century that we're going into.
33:38There's a worry that these cultures won't be able to work together.
33:43They're just too different.
33:44But you see culture somewhat differently.
33:47Throughout history, the way that humans have resolved their problems is through technological adaptation and through social adaptation.
33:56We work together. We cooperate to solve problems.
33:59If we don't do that, history shows us that leads to loss of life, economic destruction and the loss of
34:06entire civilizations.
34:08But when we do, brilliant things happen.
34:11So the first thing we need to do, in my opinion, is look ahead.
34:16Look ahead at the future and create that world first in your mind.
34:20Because that's how everything is created.
34:23What does a good Anthropocene look like?
34:26For me, it's a place where nature is restored.
34:31Where people have clean air, clean water, available food.
34:37They have cheap, abundant energy.
34:41And they have opportunities for jobs in their city.
34:45But we won't get there by accident.
34:47We only get there by identifying what that vision is that we've shared and agreed on.
34:53And then what the steps are to get there.
35:08I'm in Delhi, a vibrant city that's home to more than 32 million people.
35:13I'm here to spend time with a local architect named Manas Batia, who has a unique vision for the future
35:19of this city.
35:21He's honest about the very real challenges Delhi faces.
35:24But that's not stopping him from imagining something better.
35:28Using new AI tools and techniques, he's working to completely reimagine the relationship between nature and the cities in which
35:35we live.
35:37So as I look at a lot of the work that you're doing now using AI, what fascinates me is
35:42the direction you're taking it.
35:44What about nature do you think is so important to the work that you do?
35:49I am from Dehradun, which is like a valley.
35:53And it is close to the Himalayas.
35:56It's all very green and very, very beautiful.
35:59So every day I would just go out by the riverside, go for a trek in the hills.
36:06I would just sit there with my sketch pad and I would observe nature.
36:11I can sort of imagine spaces in those patterns and in those, you know, wilted leaves.
36:18Because nature itself is a big inspiration for my projects that way.
36:24I think the first time I moved to Delhi, I hated the place, I would say.
36:28It was like a concrete jungle.
36:30It was difficult to adjust at first.
36:33Now the entire idea is how can I combine those two concepts
36:38so that the future of architecture and the future cities
36:42could be better than the current concrete jungles we are living in.
36:47When we are being taught about architecture, every design starts with an idea.
36:53And then the designer turns to tools like sketch pads and, you know, pencils and 3D softwares.
36:59There was a tool which was lacking that could really help me envisioning my thoughts quickly.
37:05These visions which I had as an architect, finally there is a tool which I can use to actually express
37:11myself.
37:12Midjourney was something which could take the design to a next level.
37:17These are some of the explorations that I have currently been doing.
37:21This is one of my favourite ones.
37:24It's like a pavilion which was inspired from bioluminescence.
37:28There are other projects as well.
37:31I took the instructions from the parameters.
37:34You can see how I've tried to show what it would look like if you were, you know, inside a
37:40hollowed out tree.
37:43So you could have those grand atrium spaces and the staircases.
37:49In theory, right now, we can't necessarily grow a tree like this, but this could inform people who are working
37:56in synthetic biology.
37:58You are showing them what this output could actually look like.
38:01Right. AI is here to stay. It will be like your assistant in your design process all through the way.
38:10Motivating designers to be more expressive and to experiment more.
38:14Just break all the rules and, you know, think beyond the boundaries.
38:19How do you feel Delhi is going to become a city of the future?
38:23This will be one of those cities which will have to adapt very quickly.
38:27The only solution here is to build more sustainably, to build towards a greener future.
38:33If you look at the nature, nothing is unnecessary.
38:37Every pattern and every tree that grows in a particular way, it is following some rules which we call as
38:44sacred geometry.
38:46So the animals and the little creatures, they have been using the design principles and they have been the real
38:53architects, I would say.
38:55So if we start implementing those systems in nature into architecture, pick up all those logics and bits and pieces
39:02of information and, you know, reimagine those systems.
39:06That kind of architecture is what we are all dreaming for.
39:10The future Manas and his team are dreaming about is beautiful.
39:14And it reminds me just how much creativity these new tools have the power to unleash.
39:20I think that the artificial intelligence technology is the most important technology in my lifetime.
39:27It's kind of like a steam engine moment.
39:30If you think back in history, the steam engine was a thing that completely changed the face of the earth
39:37and face of society.
39:38And what I think is going on now with artificial intelligence and scale computing is it's like the steam engine
39:45of the mind.
39:46AI is an amplification of anything that you can do with an electronic device across all of life and all
39:55of work.
39:57You know, over the history of the course of the planet, life evolved at a particular point in time.
40:05Much later on, wait a few billions of years, this life begins to become intelligent.
40:10The intelligence of this life begins to transform the planet in its own image.
40:15They're biological forms, they were animal forms, vegetal.
40:22You can say the whole biosphere has a kind of intelligence.
40:26But now the lithosphere is also intelligent.
40:31We have learned to take rocks and metals and fold them in particular ways and run electric current through them.
40:38And these rocks are now capable of feats of sentience and sapience that previously only apes, us, had been able
40:47to accomplish.
40:49This is incredible.
40:51The question is, what do we do with that?
40:53The question is, what is this, you know, really, what is this for?
41:04My final visit is to a place called the Longplayer Lab, an old lighthouse that's been repurposed as a listening
41:11room for a unique piece of music.
41:13What is Longplayer?
41:15Longplayer at its core is a piece of music composed by Gemfiner to last for a thousand years without repetition
41:23and then start again.
41:25So a continuous piece of music which encourages us to think about deep time, futures, hopes for futures and the
41:33hope that there is actually a planet in which it can play into.
41:36The initial score, written for Tibetan singing bowls, is fed through an algorithm that constantly transposes it in multiple ways
41:44in order to play originally and without repetition.
41:47It began playing in 1999 and will not finish until 2999.
41:53Being here makes me wonder what the world will look like at that point.
41:56So it's the year 2999, December 31st.
42:03It's been a thousand years since Longplayer has been composing and performing.
42:08What do you want the world to look like?
42:10I guess I just really hope that there is a world enough for survival.
42:18That doesn't just mean humans, it means all kinds of species.
42:22I hope there is a world that not just sustains but actively encourages joy and love and good feeling between
42:34each other.
42:37When you think about your future, you realise that you have always something more to do.
42:43If you want to have success, we need us as a team.
42:46We are one team, the world.
42:48I cannot change the world alone, but I can do one step.
42:54If everybody do one step, that helps us to grow like a team.
43:00No technology is built entirely in a box and then deployed.
43:03It's deployed, learned from, improved.
43:06That's the society we should be designing to.
43:09Go do it, try it, play with it, iterate it, develop it.
43:13You know, my hope is that we are building these technologies to enable us to be more human.
43:22Looking decades ahead, I actually think we're going to find ourselves closer to what it really feels like to be
43:26a human.
43:27When there are thriving ecosystems, when there is incredible biodiversity, we'll work closer to nature and establishing that harmony.
43:35Humans are driven by the beauty.
43:38So, do we want our cities to be like pieces of concrete, which we build up, serve the function and
43:44then we destroy them?
43:46Or do we want our future cities to be beautifully, aesthetically looking good?
43:51Progress is about problem solving.
43:54It takes creativity, innovation, foresight in order to imagine an exciting future for humanity first, before you can create it.
44:02These are very complex, interwoven, interconnected problems.
44:07And at their heart is the way we operate as humans.
44:11What are the consequences in the short, medium and long term for future generations?
44:16When you apply this framework, then actually you do start coming up with different approaches.
44:21You do start coming up with different ways.
44:23Here going forward, nothing's going to be the same.
44:27Whatever we do now, over this period of the next couple decades, is going to set the foundations for a
44:34lot of what comes next.
44:37A and B speeds.
44:40And the series finale, take one.
44:44B marks off today.
44:49As this chapter of my journey comes to an end, it's difficult to describe the effect it's all had on
44:55me.
44:57I set out in search of people who are making better futures.
45:00People who are building things.
45:03Changing things.
45:05Rewriting the story.
45:07Reimagining what all this is for.
45:08And where we can take it moving forward.
45:13What I've found is that this moment of chaos also holds the seeds of creativity.
45:19An opportunity to remake our world.
45:21And write a bigger, better story about what it means to be human.
45:26Remembering that whatever we face up ahead, we are in this together, not alone.
45:32And at the end of it all, the feeling I'm left with most is not hope.
45:36But it's also not fear.
45:38It's not a final greeting card statement that everything's going to work out.
45:42Nor is it a feeling that all is lost.
45:48It's a feeling.
45:49A truly felt belief actually.
45:52A belief that we have a choice.
45:55A choice to decide to become the great ancestors our future needs us to be.
46:00What does it mean to be a great ancestor?
46:04It means you make the decisions that ensure the future flourishing of generations to come.
46:11We all have agency.
46:14It could be how we consume, how we vote, how we talk to one another.
46:18These very small actions that have long-term impacts.
46:24If I was to be born at any time in the grand arc of human history, I'd want to be
46:31born right now.
46:33Not sometime in the far future when all the problems are solved and everything is unicorns and rainbows, but right
46:38now.
46:38We're at this inflection point where we're going to decide really the fate of our species.
46:46What's so exciting about this moment is we get to decide.
46:52What happens?
46:54What do we become?
47:24What's up?
47:25What do we become?
47:25What do we become?
47:35Transcription by CastingWords