+1: #575 You, Horseshoes & Autonomous Cars

You're listening to Optymyze with Brian Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. In our last plus one, we talked about the fact that Americans check their phones 8 billion times every day. Every time I think about that, I say, wow. We also talked about the fact that at least 5 billion of those 8 billion checks are essentially kryptonite for the love in your life. Today I want to talk some more about some wisdom from Yuval Noah Harari's new book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. But first, let's talk about horses. I live in a small town in Southern California called Ojai and I'm pretty sure it's one of the very few places in the world where people ride their horses next to Teslas. Now, of course, no one in town is getting around primarily via horses, but it's always fun to see a few people on horseback cruising through town or to see a few horses parked outside the local cafe. So the other day I saw a fresh horseshoe print on my trail and for whatever reason, I thought of Elon Musk's talk to governors. Note, as I've mentioned before, I pretty much never watch YouTube videos or Ted talks. I read books, period. But a good friend of mine, thank you Michael, strongly encouraged me to watch this talk. So I did and I'm glad I did. I highly recommend it for a fascinating look at one man's vision of the future. We've got a link to it in the plus one. So in this discussion, Elon talks about the future of cars. Long story short, he tells us that at some point in the not too distant future, all cars will be self driving. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when. To make his point, he tells us that just as some people still ride horses for fun, none of us ride horses as a primary means of transportation these days. Likewise, some people will have fun driving a car around in the future, but that won't be the primary means of transportation in X years. That, my friends, is what I thought of when I saw a horseshoe print in the dust of my trail. Well, that in a passage from Harari's new book, in a chapter on work, he talks about the huge shifts in our global economy that will result from the advances in artificial technology. He tells us, and this is a long passage, but I think worth it, the benefits for human society are likely to be immense. The benefits of artificial intelligence, AI doctors could provide far better and cheaper healthcare for billions of people, particularly for those who currently receive no healthcare at all. Thanks to learning algorithms and biometric sensors, poor villagers in an underdeveloped country might come to enjoy far better healthcare via her smartphone than the rich person in the world gets today from the most advanced urban hospital. Similarly, he says, self driving vehicles could provide people with much better transportation services and in particular reduce mortality from traffic accidents. Today, close to 1.25 million people are killed annually in traffic accidents, twice the number killed by war, crime and terrorism combined. He says more than 90% of those accidents are caused by human errors. Somebody drinking alcohol and driving, somebody texting a message while driving, somebody falling asleep at the wheel, somebody daydreaming instead of paying attention to the road. Self driving vehicles will never do any of those things, though they suffer from their own problems and limitations. And though some accidents are inevitable, replacing all human drivers by computers is expected to reduce deaths and injuries on the road by about 90%. In other words, switching to autonomous vehicles is likely to save the lives of 1 million people every year. Finally, he says, it would therefore be madness to block automation in fields such as transport and healthcare just in order to protect human jobs. After all, what we ultimately ought to protect is humans, not jobs. Displaced drivers and doctors will just have to find something else to do again. Of course, the long term economic ramifications of all this are beyond the scope of today's +1. Two things I want to focus on. First, let's take a moment to appreciate just how quickly our world is changing and that a lot of the things we take for granted as the peak of sophistication will be viewed in the not so distant future as a bit like riding a horse. Second, you know what Harari tells us is the most important quality for us to cultivate and to teach our children to prepare for such a rapidly changing world. Well, he says that for every dollar and every minute we invest in improving artificial intelligence, it would be wise to invest a dollar and a minute in advancing human consciousness. In short, we need to optimize. Let's.

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