#11 - Three Breakthroughs: Huge Oil Found in Antarctica, Apple and AI, Warp Drive Breakthrough

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Hello everyone, and welcome to the Tech Optimist segment on 3 Breakthroughs in Science and Technology. I'm Drew Wonsalack, a senior associate here with Alumni Ventures. And joining me is Mike Collins, co-founder and CEO, where we talk about 3 major breakthroughs in science and technology that are changing the world around us. Hello, Mike.

Hello, Drew. Happy June.

Happy June. How you doing?

I'm great. I was just in Rocky Mountain National Park with a couple of other Dartmouth venture capitalists, and the weather was great. And we were able to catch up. And, you know, our country may have some issues, but I'll tell you, our national parks kick ass and just awesome. So

how many— you're a big national park guy. How many? What's the, you know, tally? How many? What's next?

You know, one of the guys I was with is a list guy. And he knew like he had been to 37 or whatever. I've been to a lot. I would guess in that kind of range, 30 to 40. Several pretty obscure ones. Isle Royale, which is an island in Lake Superior, I've been to. So anyway, I've been to my share. But Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, got to be in the top 10.

Okay. What's number 1? Do you have a number 1?

My number 1, I think, would be either Zion or Glacier. Very different.

I was gonna say.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, the rock formations in Zion, some epic hikes, the Narrows, Angels Landing in Zion, just amazing hikes. But I'm more of a mountain guy, I think, at heart. So, you know, the mountains of Glacier up in Canada, Banff, Is amazing. Rocky Mountain National Park. Great.

Not afraid of heights?

Oh, very much afraid of heights. But sometimes you have to push your envelope a little bit.

That's right. That's right. All right. Well, I'm happy to kick things off here with our

first— Today, you get the first call from the lottery. What's a big breakthrough?

Well, this headline is as intriguing as it is concerning. I would say we have found some massive oil deposits off the coast of Antarctica, our 7th continent, which is, you know, not owned by a specific country. So you can imagine the kind of imminent oil rush that could come from this could be concerning, but also, you know, shift some geopolitics that we should be taking a look at. So this discovery was spearheaded by Russia's state geological survey company, Rosgeologia, I think is how it's pronounced. And they found an estimated 500 billion barrels of crude oil beneath the cold waters of the Riser Larsen Sea. So I just want to break down before we kind of jump into the discussion, you know, what this means, why it matters. So first, some context. As I mentioned, Antarctica has been protected by international treaties since 1959, which set aside the continent for scientific research and environmental protection. So not under kind of the ownership of a specific nation. These treaties prohibit exploiting the region for hydrocarbon drilling. However, you know, despite these agreements, nations like Russia and the United States have continued to probe Antarctic waters for potential oil reserves. So the waters around Antarctica, as opposed to, you know, the landmass itself. Russia's been doing this since the 1970s. They've been sending ships, equipment kind of every decade. And now they've struck what could be one of the largest oil finds in history. in the history of the world. It's not only significant for its size, but also because it's a region that had previously unexplored for oil. So we don't even know what other deposits could be there. This could be, you know, orders of magnitude larger than what's already the largest discovery. How does this work? This is obviously an area that's pretty untouched. It's wilderness. The oil is lying beneath layers of freezing ocean water and thick sea ice, making it incredibly difficult to access with current technology. So we know it's there, but it's going to be difficult to get to it. It's kind of like finding a, you know, a treasure chest buried beneath a mountain of ice. We know it's there, but it's a monumental challenge to get to it. And then finally, you know, why does this matter? So this is a discovery that will ignite geopolitical tensions. As I highlighted earlier, the treaty system in place will be up for renewal in 2048. So we got a little bit of, you know, a few decades to go. And that treaty has kept kind of peace and protected the environment of Antarctica. But, you know, Russia found this, you know, there's, there's, there's plenty of people that would love kind of the abundance of oil that we found. So some major impacts, I think, geopolitically, the technology, someone's gonna go try to get this oil. And how are we going to do it? Some immediate thoughts on kind of the news?

Yeah, I mean, again, it's a couple of thoughts. One, I remember in college taking energy classes where we were all talking about peak oil and the danger of always underestimating human ingenuity about, you know, to find new ways to extract oil on our planet because of the profit motive. You know, you've got fracking, you've got shale, you've got all kinds of things that— 30 years ago people thought were impossible. And then new discoveries, new technologies to find more oil. Yeah. And I just think so. That's one, the humility of underestimating innovation and exploration one does at peril. On the flip side, clearly fighting for resources has been the story of kind of the human existence. And, uh, yeah, especially in these kinds of cases, um, reminds me of space where people are also going to be fighting for resources, at least at some point in the future. Right. So yeah, hopefully we can find common ground and a way to share and work together and Again, innovate. So perhaps we have to dig up less of our planet to fulfill our energy needs would be something that obviously, you know, we're all committed to.

You know, you—

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you mentioned the kind of the resilience of, you know, like ingenuity. Like we know it's there. Someone's going to go try to find it. There are, I think, some pretty serious environmental concerns, generally just drilling for oil, but in this environment specifically, because if something were to happen and you had some sort of oil spill, which we obviously know has existed, existed in history, the harsh environment makes it so difficult to kind of contain and clean that up. So yeah, there's kind of this balancing act that I imagine that's going to happen where You know, like we probably shouldn't go after it, but, you know, someone will. And so it's like, how can we peacefully split the pie, you know, protect the environment while doing so? And do we, do we even need it? You know, we will see.

Yeah. And then the question is, is again, the, the benefits of some alternatives we're looking at. You know, you've talked a lot and looked at a lot kind of fusion, fission.

Yeah.

You know, these kinds of things have risks, have costs, have environmental impacts, but Yeah, you start digging in, you know, these sensitive regions of our planet, those comes with costs too. So, you know, I think we have to— it's a matter of we have to keep pushing on all fronts. The demand for energy is always going to grow.

Yep.

And so that's just a given. And so we just need to work on all fronts on all these matters. But yeah, it's a— it was big news.

Big news, big news.

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All right, Mike, I think you have our, our second breakthrough of the week.

Yeah, and again, I'm, I'm sticking with the AI theme. And again, today is June 4th. So I'm going to talk about Apple and AI, which is kind of not an announcement, but it's an anticipated announcement. So, you know, I think among the big tech companies, the relative silence of Apple, one of the most powerful tech companies ever, has been remarkable. And I think we're gonna hear the first of what is gonna become a lot of big announcements out of Cupertino and Apple over the next couple of years. They're smart. They have leaned into privacy.

Yep.

The Apple ecosystem is the most powerful mobile ecosystem, I think, on the planet. It's especially powerful among, you know, the top quartile of the population socioeconomically. And, you know, they have your music, they have your calendar, they have all of your apps, they have your Instagram, they are in your pocket, they have your attention. And for them to— it just— they are going to be in the AI space. And I think, um, I, I am anticipating that a big part of their June development conference is going to be starting to tease that roadmap where they will take what they're really good at and what they have. Mm-hmm. And for them, I think AI is a sustaining technology. So again, going to kind of the Clayton Christensen model of disruptive versus sustaining, I think AI is going to be both. And I think this is going to make Apple even more powerful because they're going to take all the things that you trust them for, and you've already given, and they're going to use AI to bring all those things together and amplify them in really, really powerful ways. I also think AI in certain new use cases is going to be incredibly disruptive. I think some places maybe in healthcare, I think, et cetera, some vertical markets, and we'll have plenty of opportunities to talk about some of those breakthroughs in future episodes. But I am, I would not be betting against Apple to be a major player in this space. They have a reputation of not always being the first to the start line, but when they do it, they do it really well. And so, yeah, I think it's, I think it's going to be Apple and AI is going to be a big news story. for the second half of 2024. And I'm really excited to what they tease and they'll get it figured out.

It seems like they're teasing a little bit of at least a Siri upgrade. Do you think they develop a lot of their AI capabilities in-house? There's been rumors and reports on relationships with OpenAI or even Google. And there's precedent. I mean, Google is kind of the search engine provider for iPhones, right? It was kind of taken from an out-of-house structure, in-house structure. Do you think they develop it themselves or is this something that they get paid from someone else to do?

Yes, both. Meaning, again, we're talking about a trillion-dollar company. We're talking about I think there's a bunch of partners that they're going to be working with, but I got to believe that they're also building things themselves. This is a company also that has really leaned into being vertically integrated, right? Mm-hmm. And beyond the data, beyond the trust, beyond the relationships, this is also a company that makes its own silicon. So I just think we're going to be seeing some of these language models getting smaller, getting more efficient, being put on chips. They're going to be on your phone. Again, I am not going to tell you exactly how they're going to execute it.

Sure.

But I'm going to say they're going to figure it out and it is going to build on their already powerful brand and moat. is my prediction, which is, I think one of the earliest and most powerful applications for AI is going to be the Apple version of AI as your personal assistant. So it knows your music, knows your calendar, knows your preferences and your health information. Again, you know, people wearing Apple Watches, all of that. I think it's going to be AI helping all of that work together and personal to Drew, personal to Mike, confidential to Drew. You're going to decide how much of this personal information. I think they're going to try to make AI and privacy.

Yeah.

The niche that they're going to just be, um, because there's a lot of stuff which is like, oh, do I want, do I want all my information out there being scraped, being trained upon? You know, again, I think they've leaned into privacy as one of their things. And so again, you know, smart people, they're going to lean into their assets and this will just be making those assets even better. And yeah, you know, improving Siri is a low bar for sure. But I, again, I would not underestimate Apple. Coming out of this as one of the big winners of the AI revolution. So that's the second one.

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What's your third one?

Uh, yeah, a groundbreaking scientific discovery in interstellar travel. So we're going into the, into the stars here. Um, a potential kind of breakthrough in warp drive technology. So this is going to sound a little bit Star Trekky, um, when I describe what happened. Um, I'll start with kind of a metaphor and an analogy for what happened Breaking this down, because I needed a little bit of, you know, education myself to understand this breakthrough. Imagine you're on a long road trip. Normally, you'd have to drive, you know, the entire distance, the, you know, 8 hours or whatever. You're feeling every bump, curve along the way. But what if instead of driving, you could fold the road itself and you could get from point A to point B? You know, this is the classic fold the paper, put the pen through, you know, can we get wormholes and, and, you know, faster than speed of light travel? Mm-hmm. This is what warp drive technology is trying to achieve. Again, it sounds very Star Trekky and sci-fi. This idea came back decades ago. The original concept was creating this kind of warp bubble, is what it was called, an opportunity to manipulate spacetime and viewing spacetime as this stretchy fabric. And we could squeeze and stretch this fabric kind of in front of and behind a spacecraft. And so inside that bubble, you were experiencing time normally, but compared to the environment around you, you could actually move close to or faster than the speed of light.

I think, I think I just— yeah, clarify, I, I don't think it exceeds speed of light. I think it is right to a fraction of the speed of light, which still greatly opens up a whole bunch of stuff. And I believe this is— I think I saw this same announcement. I believe this is still in theoretical model land. Is that correct, Drew?

Yeah. Yes and no. So the original kind of hypothesis was basically theoretically how we could do this. The one problem with the theoretical is it required negative energy, which, if you know anything about physics, doesn't exist. Right. So we were like, if we could discover this material that doesn't exist in any world that we know. Yeah. So there was this huge catch. It couldn't be done. Now, researchers at Applied Physics have come up with a new approach that would use the same structure, but it doesn't need these exotic negative energy particles. Instead, they're using incredibly dense particles to create the same kind of warp bubble structure. So think of like a really dense elastic ball, you know, you put a bunch of rubber bands around that can squeeze and stretch. And when you squeeze one end, right, it moves quickly, that kind of energy and that squeeze to the other side. And so this new warp drive potential technology would work very similar to that. So you're creating the bubble around the spaceship with the dense matter. The ship will move through space by compressing spacetime in front of it and then expanding spacetime behind it. So like a surfer riding a wave, the wave propels the surfer forward, right? I think you get it. So what's revolutionary about this, other than the fact that we could maybe go, you know, travel through space and get to other planets, is exactly that, right? It's like we can control the density and pressure of the bubble. Scientists can use this. We can move between planets, potentially solar systems. So this is not something that will probably exist in our lifetime, but I think interesting how I see this as going from like in the lab, if we could come up with some exotic particle that doesn't exist to now, hey, we might be able to do this. And there's a little bit more of a roadmap. It's still probably a multi-decades or centuries-long roadmap, but, you know, the roadmap's there.

I think the, you know, it does point to all the number of things that 50 years ago were wild science fiction. that now exist. Yeah. So, you hear something like this and you kind of roll your eyes and go, it's like, okay, there's some eggheads in a lab at MIT thinking about stuff on paper and it's never going to happen. Where are my flying cars? This kind of thing. And again, I think with great peril, one says never, right? I mean, fundamental laws of physics for sure, but I don't think You know, I think we're talking about not breaking those. I think we're talking about things that are really hard. We've had these conversations where you can move things from the theoretical science to now it's an engineering problem. And engineering problems, people figure out. Sometimes it takes 20 years, sometimes it takes 40 years. Again, I've seen charts about, you know, mean time between a science fiction description and it becoming reality is on average something like 30 to 50 years, a couple of generations kind of thing. So again, I think it is always healthy and always a reminder. And one of the reasons I think a lot of venture capitalists I know read science fiction, an uncanny number of venture capitalists read science fiction, Yeah. I think there's something about imagining the future and a certain amount of mental flexibility and openness that it takes in order to be a good investor in hard problems, deep technology, those kinds of things. So, for everybody that says, oh, that's crazy science fiction, You know, so is a supercomputer in your pocket. Yeah. You know,

it's similar to like kind of the concept of like the years are long, but the, you know, the decades or the centuries are short. I mean, we're approaching a time where like, you still could have people alive during the first like self-propelled flight in 1904.

Yeah.

And imagine to where we are today. And so it's like, over the 10,000 years of human history, you know, at what point did people think it was just totally against any rules of science that you could pack 200 people into a, you know, metal tube and get from, you know, New York to London in 6 hours? Yeah. So I think, I think you framed it perfectly. It's like theoretical to now it's an engineering problem. And these things, you know, they can take a lot of time, but it's like, Sometimes it's not as difficult or as long-term as we might think it is.

Yeah. And one of the— I mean, one of our partners, Pete, his grandmother, I believe, was 101 yesterday or 103. 103. Yeah. So again, born in, you know, 1921.

Yeah.

Right. And what she has seen in 19— from, you know, What the world was like in 1921, you know, coming off of World War I, um, to today, it is science fiction. So again, that's the kind of stuff we love talking about. Um, we'll do it again next week. Thank you, Drew.

Thanks, Mike.

All right. Have a good one.

You too.

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