TED Talks Daily - 12 predictions for the future of technology | Vinod Khosla

Episode Date: June 8, 2024

Techno-optimist Vinod Khosla believes in the world-changing power of "foolish ideas." He offers 12 bold predictions for the future of technology — from preventative medicine to car-free cities to planes that get us from New York to London in 90 minutes — and shows why a world of abundance awaits.

TED Audio Collective. You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Today, a tech optimist on possible tomorrows based on what we've seen so far. But don't take my word for it. We'll let a TEDster give you the gist.

It's a summation of a guy who's been doing this for about 50 years and understands what it takes to build new things, particularly the hard things. And so I think he has some insights that many other people wouldn't have about why these things are possible. The guy in question is investor Vinod Khosla. His talk is coming up after a break. Support for this show comes from Airbnb.

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And now, our TED Talk of the day. I'm a techno-optimist, but techno-optimism should be practiced with both empathy and care. And I'm a believer in what is possible if you do it that way. First, I'm going to give you a word of warning. Experts extrapolate the past. They prevent radical progress because they don't think non-linearly. They don't think of the improbable. I personally believe only the improbable is important. We just don't know which improbable is important. Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, with a passion for a vision,

they dream the dreams and then are foolish enough, and we need more foolishness to try and make those implausible dreams come true. That's what entrepreneurship is about, We need more foolishness to try and make those implausible dreams come true. That's what entrepreneurship is about, something I've loved my whole life. In the 40 years I've been doing innovation, and innovation only, this may surprise people.

I can't think of a single large social impact change that was driven by an expert in the field, possibly with the exception of biotechnology, that's driven by an expert, by a large institution, a large non-founder-led company. Think about it. In 40 years, not one example. Whether you look at SpaceX or electric cars or Uber, not one example. The earliest one I could think of was credit cards in the early 70s

when Bank of America put credit on plastic. So, what is this plausible world? I'll go through a dozen scenarios that I believe most experts will foo-foo. Most expertise enabled by AI will be free. I'm most excited that every human being on the planet can have 24-7 a free doctor, primary care in a very expensive way, that every child can have a free tutor in a very available, accessible way, and these will be near free. It doesn't matter of other expertise where you're looking at structural engineers or oncologists. Most expertise will be near free because of computing. Most labor will also be free. I can imagine a billion bipedal robots

doing more work than all of human labor does today, freeing humans from the servitude of some of the jobs, working at General Motors on an assembly line for eight hours a day, doing the same thing for 30 years. That's not a job. That's almost slavery. I do believe we will have enough abundance to take care of everybody who's displaced, and that's where the empathy part of techno-optimism comes in.

We will have enough for redistribution to happen. Programming will be near free also. And though we think of computers as pervasive today, I think we'll be much more prevalent, much more pervasive and expansive. In fact, I think we will think of computers almost like a utility. How many of you think about electricity? That's how it will be in the background, not in our face.

Computers will adapt to humans. We won't have to have humans learn computer. Five years ago, when I first spoke at a conference in Toronto on the role AI will play in music generation, I was met with skepticism. In fact, derision. Whether it's AI alone or AI plus humans, the level of creativity in entertainment and design will dramatically go up. The level of diversity of these things will go up dramatically.

I'm excited about that. Surprisingly, Internet access will mostly be by agents. Billions of agents running around doing things for us humans. Medicine is my other favorite. We have pretty good medicine today. But we have the practice of medicine, and it will change to the science of medicine. It will change from what is mostly sick care today, we apply medicine when people are sick,

to health care to prevent sickness. It's a shame that in this day and age, most people who get a heart attack discover they have cardiac disease by having a heart attack not 20 years earlier when that disease started. That won't happen. Food. We will have new types of proteins which we need, and new kinds of fertilizer essential to agriculture.

Rubisco is the most prevalent protein on the planet. Every place you see green, there's Rubisco behind that chlorophyll. Almost everywhere. There's aisco behind that chlorophyll. Almost everywhere. There's a few exceptions. And we will have much more environmentally better proteins than either plant proteins, and possibly better than corn and soy.

So I'm excited about that. And greener fertilizer. Oh, my favorite. Experts completely disagree with me when I say this. We can, in the next 25 years, replace most cars in most cities. Why? By making transit faster than a chauffeured car,

cheaper than a public transit system, and pervasive any time on demand. And yes, we can do it. In fact, we are building the first one of these public transit systems in San Jose today. Another one of these, flying at almost 4,000 miles per hour, we will be able to fly from New York to London for lunch. It will make the world a much closer place.

And we fret a lot about power. And we think solar and wind are the solution. They're great solutions. I've been an advocate for the last 20 years. But fusion power will replace most coal and natural gas power plants today. Again, people say we can't build that many. We can if we are smart, if we just replace their boilers, or maybe their boilers and their turbines.

In fact, all those plants will probably be retrofitted with fusion, possibly with super hot geothermal. Not the kind of geothermal you've heard about, even heard about at TAD, but much hotter, better, more efficient geothermal. Doomers say we don't have enough resources like lithium and copper. In fact, I say we haven't started to look. In fact, we haven't started to develop the technologies that will let us look a kilometer below the surface. We are well on our way, though. There will be carbon solutions for everything.

Entrepreneurs are working on this. There's only a dozen major emitter categories. And I wrote a blog on it about two years ago. And it only takes one entrepreneur to tackle each of these categories. So a dozen instigators can change the world of climate. In fact, we inaugurated last week the first cement plant in California, which from the same amount of

limestone produces twice the amount of cement by capturing the carbon dioxide and putting it into product. You repurpose existing plants, upgrade them like you would coal plants and natural gas plants, and you increase the level of product while decreasing the cost per ton. That's what makes these things scalable. All we need is a few entrepreneurs who will imagine the impossible, dream the dreams, and then be foolish enough to make them come true. There's lots of reasons this won't happen, but I won't delve into them. But I do think a really abundant world is possible. It only takes a few motivated, impassioned entrepreneurs to make it happen.

Thank you. Support for this show comes from Airbnb. If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel. They make my family feel most at home when we're away from home. As we settled down at our Airbnb during a recent vacation to Palm Springs, I pictured my own home sitting empty. Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb? It feels like the practical thing to do, and with the extra income,

I could save up for renovations to make the space even more inviting for ourselves and for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. That was Vinod Khosla speaking at TED 2024. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Autumn Thompson, and Alejandra Salazar. It was mixed by Christopher Faisy-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner, Daniela Balarezo, and Will Hennessey. I'm Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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