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.
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[00:00:00] TED Audio Collective Optimism about advanced technology can open a sea of opportunities and possibilities, especially if we add empathy into the equation. Tools like AI can provide personalized care and support to vulnerable populations, addressing needs in areas like health care and education.
[00:00:30] And for those whose work might be displaced by new technologies, scalable retraining in new industries that emerge can promise a future that everyone can participate in. It's all a matter of our priorities, for this tech and for our society at large.
[00:00:48] This is TED Tech, a podcast from the TED Audio Collective. I'm your host, Sherelle Dorsey. Today, we hear from Node Adventure capitalist, businessman and techno-optimist Vinod Khosla. At almost 70 years old, he's had quite a bit of experience in the world of tech.
[00:01:07] And in this talk, he shares 12 big and bold ideas on what awaits us as new technology transforms our future. But before we dive in, a quick break to hear from our sponsors. Imagine This. In 2030, the CFO of a Fortune 100 company is a bot.
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[00:02:09] From stars to dwarf planets to black holes and beyond, we've got you. Listen now to the Shortwave podcast from NPR. And now, Vinod Khosla takes the TED stage. I'm a techno-optimist, but techno-optimism should be practiced with both empathy and care.
[00:02:33] And I'm a believer in what is possible if you do it that way. First, I want 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.
[00:02:54] I personally believe only the improbables are 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.
[00:03:23] 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,
[00:03:51] 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
[00:04:16] 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
[00:04:41] 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.
[00:05:05] Most expertise will be near free, the cost 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,
[00:05:26] 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,
[00:05:42] 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.
[00:06:05] 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.
[00:06:25] 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.
[00:06:51] 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,
[00:07:15] 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,
[00:07:32] 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. In terms of food, we will have new types of proteins which we need and new kinds of fertilizer essential to agriculture.
[00:07:53] Rubisco is the most prevalent protein on the planet. Every place you see green, there's rubisco 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.
[00:08:19] 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 anytime on demand.
[00:08:51] 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.
[00:09:10] 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.
[00:09:32] 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.
[00:09:50] Not the kind of geothermal you've heard about, even heard about at TACC, 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
[00:10:11] that will let us look a kilometer below the surface. We are well on our way though. There will be carbon solutions for everything. Antnodes are working on this. There's only a dozen major emitter categories. I wrote a blog on it about two years ago.
[00:10:30] 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
[00:10:51] 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.
[00:11:15] 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 are lots of reasons this won't happen, but I won't delve into them. But I do think a really abundant world is possible.
[00:11:34] It only takes a few motivated and passionate entrepreneurs to make it happen. Thank you. That was Vinod Khosla at TED 2024. And that's it for today. TED Tech is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced by Nina Byrd-Lawrence, edited by Alejandro Salazar,
[00:12:02] and fact-checked by Julia Dickerson. Special thanks to Maria Ladius, Fer De Grange, Daniela Bellarezzo, and Roxanne Heilisch. I'm Sherelle Dorsey. Thanks for listening in.