 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. Yes, science is likable. Science is the finest of humanity. Science is up here. Politics down there. You know, science rises up and elevates us. Politics spoils us. Like Oscar Wilde said, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. That, by the way, is Ethan Allen. He's the host of likable science, and I just hang around on Fridays with him once in a while and we cover interesting things. And we're talking about new technology for 2018, which is actually new science and technology for 2018. And the first thing about the stars you mentioned, Ethan, is the neutron stars. What's going on? There's a lot happening in astronomy, isn't there? Right. So last year, it was actually given by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It was given the breakthrough of the year, was the observations of two neutron stars that got close enough to one another that they began to spiral together and eventually collapsed together. What's a neutron star? So a neutron star is basically a sort of sun-sized star that has, it's at the end of its life, it's burned itself out basically and it collapses down to a little ball probably only a few miles across instead of the 143 million miles, whatever the sign is. Very dense. Yeah, very dense. Spewing out lots of odd radiation and when two of them get together as they get closer and closer, they begin, of course, irradiating one another, pulling on each other. All sorts of interesting stuff starts happening. Emissions of various sorts, types and varieties. And in all of the theoretical before, the astronomers and cosmologists had figured out what this ought to look like. And they actually saw it happening and they had literally thousands of observatories around the world trained in on this event in the minutes, to days, to weeks, to months following it. And so many of their predictions came true. These guys had actually been right. They had figured out what really would happen. There were a few surprises, but a lot of stuff was great. A whole new world. A whole new world for astronomy. Huge data banks now filled with information. Time for a short rant. There's more happening in astronomy than ever before. It's increasing, not only in the power and the flow and the vision of its science, but in its appreciation of the universe, the result of trying to find the role of humankind in the larger firmament. It's quite something. And the world, the scientific world, we know this because they came here about a year ago with the astronomy conference at the convention center that they come from everywhere and they're so excited from every country. It's like it's a great common denominator for all of science to look at the science of the stars. And the one thing that is so sad, may I say so sad, is that Hawaii used to have a reputation globally for being a center of astronomy, a center of the science of the stars, now is a reputation with two black eyes over the thing at Manukau. And if I could talk to a minute, you know, those guys who are out there complaining still now today, it's a court. Everybody's arguing about it. They don't want it. They oppose it in every which way. It's so important to them to oppose it. They are wrecking our reputation as a center of astronomy for the world. For the more, they're essentially limiting options for young Hawaiian students to get inspired about science on a local level to see the great science that can happen around here and to get involved in it. Yeah, enormous destructive power. Destroying possibilities and opportunities for Hawaii. And yet, you know, I went to the big island about a year ago and I met with Kalabash family over there. And there were like hundreds of people in this big gathering. And I asked them systematically, what do you think about TMT? Every one of them loved it. Every one of them wanted it. So what's going on here? Can we manage the minorities in our political spectrum? I used to joke about this in Seattle. They would hold a vote, decide to go one way, and then one person would raise their hand and say, oh, no, I don't like that. And they, oops, now I've got to like, re-vote about the whole thing. Power of veto. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes it seems that we've got these tiny little minority. Tiny minority rules. Yeah. Meanwhile, it's wrecking us as not only in our reputation, but in our prospects going forward. We're going to lose the edge. We'll never be as great as we might have been in astronomy. Not only for the astronomers, but for the kids and the people and the reputation. And the whole image of Hawaii is a place with some excellence and some value. Of course, at the risk of starting our discussion on the wrong path, the same could be said sort of nationally about the U.S. Well, let's take it another way. How about Iran for you? Go ahead. You know, this administration in science, what do you think? You know, this administration doesn't believe in science. They basically have said that a number of times, a number of places. They think climate change is a Chinese hoax. When it's one of the best established, most well-documented situations happening in the world, you know, they've given to people who want to limit what science does. They want to cut budgets incredibly severely. They want to cut all the EPA science, so we can't study our environment and keep making sensible, evidence-driven policy choices. You know, don't care. It's a failure of the schools. And it's a failure of those who claim to be educated. You know, how can you be educated and not understand science, not give some validity to science? You know, knock it off. Just don't care about science. You know, reject science. Reject rationality and enlightenment. They'll get you somewhere. And if you reject science, we are rejecting rationality in many ways. Not only science, but all rationality. That's what we got in Washington. Disgusting. Anyway, moving on. Okay, the thing on ThinkTech is we can speak freely about this. CRISPR, which is a fabulous new technology, biotechnology, call it. And it has been moving faster, but perhaps with more wrinkles than before. Talk to us about that. Well, the interesting thing to keep in mind about CRISPR, what we think of it as a new technology, it's really a very old technology. CRISPR and Cas9, the protein that's involved in this, is basically, it's a system that bacteria developed eons and eons ago to fight off viral infections. You know, how we didn't invent this stuff, the bacteria figured it out or natural selection, selected a long time ago. Because it's bacterial based, right, there have been some wrinkles because once they've started trying this in people now, what they find is that some people are basically have antibodies already to these bacterial enzymes that are at the heart of this little gene, scissors as it were, scissors, pastures as it were. And then it won't work for them. But people, some people got really freaked when this first came out when reports kept that there were people who were had essentially antibodies against it. But they point out, one, it's probably very wide spread in bacteria, we've been using pretty much off of one strain bacteria that pretty commonly infects people. So it's not really a surprise that people might be protected against that as it were. So the thing is to do is to pull up some bacterias out of the hybrid thermal vent. These bacteria we will never seen before, right? They won't have interacted with people, grab their CRISPR system, basically. And we won't know what nobody will be immune to it. Yeah. So that would solve the problem. Yeah. Yeah, it's just a matter of opening your mind a little bit and seeing something outside the box good for them, figuring this out. So what can CRISPR do for us going forward, assuming we can, you know, sort of make it ubiquitous? Oh, I mean, it's, it's potential is enormous, virtually, virtually endless. Because it can go in, find certain problems with certain cells, snip out bad parts, either so the ends together or insert correct parts back in. So everything back up very neatly and send it on its merry way. So if you spot, you use it particularly prenatally or very early in development, you spot there's a defective gene, you send CRISPR into when your little blastocyst of 16 cells or whatever runs and fixes all 16 cells and you're as good as no, basically, you know, it has tremendous, tremendous options ethical ethical issues on that. Well, as with all science and all technology, I mean, how it gets used is dependent upon who is using it and what their motives are. So, right, I mean, if we're using it to cure diseases, that's all the good if you're using it to try to create a race of super beings that that's bad, you know, if you're if you're using it to make an infection again, the only target certain groups or types of people, that's even worse. Yeah. So, well, you know, there was a thing about primates, you see that primates now being closed. Yes, right. Plown a monkey, cute monkey really cute. And so they can clone a monkey. How far are the way from, you know, you wouldn't have to come and host a show, you wouldn't have to come and be involved in the show. We can both be at home. We can have our clones doing it for us. What what efficiency that is? Well, there's a little difference. If they clone you now, your clone will grow up. And therefore, your clone would not be you because your clone live in a very different world than you grew up in would have very different experiences, right? They might genetically be identical to you, but they would not be experientially like you know, the thing with CRISPR is that it's actually more powerful than cloning because in cloning you have to wait the natural gestation period and all that stuff. But in CRISPR, you know, I think that it's not often said, but CRISPR can operate can work and do those magic things almost immediately. It's like Star Trek. It happens right away, right? Yeah, it can do things very rapidly, depending on how you've set it up, it can do things very widely in your body. Yeah, it has, again, it's just, I mean, it's not even the Model T yet, I mean, it's a very crude system as of yet. And it's still already just just waking people up and realizing as the whole field of medicine is going to be changing here, changing the genetic makeup, changing the DNA. While you watch, it really is out of Star Trek magic wand and the coming we should all stay alive long enough to take advantage of it. It's a great piece of science. It's interesting all this in our lifetimes, but accelerating happening faster. And yet the government seems to be treating it as happening slower or resisting it. I mean, these things could make, you know, the human experience so much more rich, more, oh, I don't know, more enlightened, more, more fabulous than it has ever been to make you religious actually. Science making religion. There it is. Let's talk about dentistry. That's another one that came up. Sure. So again, there's just astounding stuff happening in dentistry. People are now looking at ways to be able to literally have you grow teeth anew, basically, which as adults, of course, we cannot regrow teeth. But there are figuring out ways to do this. Some great odd variety of ways of doing various drug or chemical treatments. Somebody has a now a laser treatment that somehow stimulates cells to actually start growing again, it won't apparently grow the enamel, but at least it can grow the root and the pulp. And then it'll be fairly easy to put a cap on that. Yeah, yeah. And here you go. They're using their, one of the most fascinating ones, they found a drug that has been a wide use. It's all FDA approved. It's actually used for the treatment of Alzheimer's. And it turns out it actually promotes tooth growth. So not only can you think more clearly, but you can not be affected by the ravages of Alzheimer's. But your teeth are better, too. What a combination of events, eh? There we go, right. It's a magic panacea right now, right here. Right. You know, I don't think people realize how much technological progress has been made in dentistry over the course of our lifetimes. It's amazing. It really is. I was just in recent having some dental work done. And it's just, it's stunning, even in the course of my lifetime, to think about how it's changed and how much more sophisticated it's gotten, how much better they do it, how much less pain is involved. How quickly can we done? I mean, again, it gets into these other technologies. They know if they have to pull out a tooth, they can three, they can map that tooth first and then 3D print you a tooth right in the dentist's office and stick in an identical shaped tooth. So you have your whole bite is all nice and stable. I just, but today, Friday was Wednesday. I had a terrible time with one of my teeth. It like was falling out. I mean, because I'm old. Sorry. And when you get old, you know, you thought you were indestructible when you were 20 and your teeth would always be around. So you go junk food and all this and, and sugary sodas and whatnot. And then after a while you find out your teeth are not invulnerable. Anyway, so one of my teeth was really in trouble. And I went to the dentist, lucky he took me fabulous dentist, Patrick Hayashi DDS. He's my dentist. And it was just amazing. He fixed that thing. He completely replaced the top of it. He did all drilling in the all the work he had to do. And he had one of those machines that creates the cap, you know, and it just shaves off piece of material and presto you got a cap. And he did this in so short order. He slipped me in between appointments and, you know, and did this in short or it was like, miracle, miracle, magic. And I mean, it's often to do with technology, although you got to have good technique and good assistance in the office. But I must say, I mean, every time I go to see him, I'm more impressed with the way he sees it as technology and uses the technology and makes such an efficient, painless experience for you. Yeah. Ditto for my dentist, Dr. Bonnie Lau. Bless her heart. She's wonderful. She's, you know, trying to stay up with the, the edge stuff that it's, yeah, and it's funny, because dentistry scenes and a lot of age have lagged, but it's really now starting to boom. Yeah. And wow, it's, it's going to go crazy from here. When this thing, you know, aside from having your dementia resolved, grows teeth all by itself, you know, you will be indestructible. Right. Yeah. If they start, you know, replacing your teeth, and you're losing them. And, you know, that's fabulous. I just so fabulous to give me a, you know, it makes me want to take a break. So let's take a break. We'll come back and talk about the biggest thing of all right after this break. This guy looks familiar. He calls himself the ultra fan, but that doesn't explain all this. He planned this party, plan the snacks, even plan to coordinate colored shirts, but he didn't plan to have a good time. Now you wouldn't do this in your own house. So don't do it in your team's house. Know your limits and plan ahead so that everyone can have a good time. Okay. So we don't have dementia anymore. That's why we remember this is Ethan Allen over here. Right. And he is the host of likeable signs. And I just visit with him every now and then doing likeable signs. We're talking about new technology for 2018. And we talked already about neutron stars, talking about CRISPR, talking about the new world and dentistry. But now we're talking about the big one, the big one, huge big one. And it's, it's going to proliferate and propagate all over our society and our world in every corner. It's going to change the human condition. What is it? Artificial intelligence or machine learning? What is that? Well, let me just start with a little story here, if I might. Just getting at how you can't always think one step ahead, right? So years ago, the scientists were investigating the intelligence of chimpanzees. And so they set up a room and hung a bunch of bananas and stuff from the ceiling in the center of the room. And they put a bunch of big crates around the monkey can theory that the chimp could stack up and get up there. And they gave up, put a long pole in the room that chimp in theory could hold and knock down. And then they bring the chimp on in and put him in the room and the chimp looks at the pole and looks at the boxes. He takes his research scientist by the hand and walks the guy out in the center of the room, climbs up under his shoulders and grabs the bananas. And it's just like, yeah, they hadn't thought the one step ahead, this monkey clearly saw the easier way to do this, rather than stacking the boxes or swinging his pole around. That's wonderful, right? That's a wonderful story. And that's sort of what I think we got to be concerned about with AI, that it's getting that stage where it may start outthinking the people who created it, right? I mean, it clearly in some ways already does in some fields. Software is only as good as the people who created it and it only does what the people create. But you know, that's the scary thing about AI. It goes to another level. It becomes, it has its own personality, maybe it doesn't do exactly what your program did to do. I was just reading about one of the new AI courses in playing Go now and beating Grand Masters and all. They now had to have an AI system for Go that they gave one of the world's very best players. They gave him a, I feel there is a two chip or a four chip head to start. I mean, you get to place four blocks, which is huge, huge advantage. And the machine still beat him. I mean, yeah, you can't, it's very interesting, yeah. Well, you apply that kind of acumen, if you will, to other things and you can do bloody anything. As a matter of fact, I always used to say, give me a problem, any problem, any process, and I can find software that will improve it. Any process at all. Now it's much more than that. Now give me, oh, I don't know, give me something you can't do, that you never could do. A process you have not been able to actually do yet. I'll give you software, I'll give you AI that can go way beyond that. You can think of the problem, solve the problem, think of the next problem after that and branch out in every which way. And that's what we got going. One of the things that came up in the last couple of weeks was the story of Amazon Go, which is the Amazon Store, which uses AI and a system involving a number of sensors and, you know, and software processes that can identify everything that's going on in a 5,700 foot store. What you're taking off the shelf, what you're putting back on the shelf, and it knows it knows what you're doing, it knows what's on the shelf, but it knows you walked out the store to charge you accordingly. This is really smart and it's a little box that big, right? It's a software. The point is that between sensors and software and integrating other kinds of technologies with it, you can have a store now without a cashier. Too bad about the labor force, without a cash here. In fact, all you have in that store are people who explain to you how the artificial intelligence works. That's all it is. The stocking from the warehouse to the shelf is all being done by automated vehicles. More and more people are becoming extraneous to a lot of the infrastructure. I have to give Bezos credit for that, you know, for thinking up, thinking out of the box for those things. I mean, so if it is one thing, it's another thing, it's always a step ahead, it's always finding out another way to make the human experience more easier and more satisfying actually. So you can go into the store and buy something without checking out. What's next? I mean, as you can go to the store and it can tell you what you need because it keeps inventory of what you bought last time and what you seem to need and what your, you know, what your profile is. And before you know it, you know, it's delivering all this to you with a drone. Who needs the store at all? Right, your refrigerator will be telling the store what to send over when basically. Yeah. And all this through the power of software and artificial intelligence. I mean, he's leading the way. Although they say that they have stores like this already in China, good for them, that they figured it out. But I mean, Bezos is the one that has, you know, been prominent in the news lately. And I expect that there will be much more coming down that pike. Right. But it brings us into one of the real big sort of challenges is these AIs, his AIs only sort of as good as the people who build it, right? And by good, I sort of mean ethical. And there's now a movement afoot to actually start really trying to build ethics in artificial intelligence. Build systems that have some moral compass basically in them and won't put their own brain power as it were to work on bad stuff, you know, but will only sort of work to better humanity. It's a very, I mean, very interesting area. And as AI gets sort of smarter and smarter, becomes more and more critical that we think about this first, right? Before we get stuff that's too smart, right? Yeah. If it's too smart and ill-intentioned or sort of built by somebody with bad intent. Well, you could have bad people using it. I mean, you and I talked about the weaponized miniature drones a while ago. Yeah, yeah. That was that was an example of artificial intelligence too. And you could decide that everybody fits in a certain category that could be racial, it could be philosophical, it could be anything. And we're going to wipe out that part of the population. This makes Hitler look like a piker. I mean, you take any part of the population, destroy it with these artificial intelligence drones. And some bad guys are going to be thinking of how to do that. You know, it's that low politics against the enlightenment of science. And they use science in order to achieve low politics ends. This is very scary. And China is getting into AI now in a very big way. And of course, China has well-deserved historical reputation for doing a little short cutting on things, cutting quality, learning about ingredients. And civil rights, human rights. Yeah, yeah. And so one has to worry, you know, when they get a bunch of AI stuff spinning off into their sort of their backwaters and black ops groups, you know, what's going to happen? Well, with AI, with Amazon Go and other things like that, I mean, we're seeing it, we've seen it before Amazon Go, we've seen the world collecting data, government collecting data about us, industry collecting data, selling data. I mean, there's no place you can hide. Walden Pond is gone, you know, the great outdoors of Pacific Northwest, you know, you can't run and hide. You can't do that. So we all live in this grid of, you know, data collection about everything. And so, I mean, there's a value in doing that in Amazon Go, because it knows that you want this kind of milk instead of that kind of milk. But, you know, there's other things. And China is experimenting with that, maybe more than experimenting, collecting data about everybody. We got to show two weeks ago a presentation at the China seminar, Richard Hornick came and spoke about mind control in China. Well, you do mind control by collecting data about people to find out what they're thinking. There's lots of ways you can find out what people are thinking. And then you hold that against them. You make a quotient of how faithful and attractive they are to the current political administration. And you reward those who are, and you punish those who are not, and you do this on the basis of a scientific analysis based on the data they have about you personally. Yeah. I mean, we're seeing bits and pieces of that already here. I mean, my wife says it's truly disturbing to her when she gets online and her computer comes up. Because we see you've been investigating this, that, or the other thing here. How about, you know, here's more things? It's chilling. Yeah. I think it's going to see a lot more of that. Oh, yes. I think it's, you know, it's an accelerating process. Right. Right. And what's more is, you know, remember at the beginning of this people said, I'm privacy. Privacy is very important. And then maybe they said a little less. They were enticed by it. Other people didn't give a rip about privacy. So the result is that little by little we migrate to a new normal. And their new normal is, well, they know everything about me. What can I do about it? You know, you can know about me. It's all right. Well, it's not all right. It's not all right if they're looking at your mind and making quotients about you and determining if you get benefits or don't get benefits on the basis of what you are thinking that's coming. Yeah. I mean, this stuff with, you people say, you know, having one of these Alexis devices in your house. I mean, that thing is just gathering data all the time. It's listening to what you're saying and, you know, the sort of what you're, what you may be playing on your music, what you may be watching on television, what you may be doing on your computer. And it's taking all that data and feeding it in. And that, that, you know, do you want somebody listening in on you? Well, I don't want to tell you a chilling story, just a little story, my own story. Sure. Just last night, two o'clock in the morning, the house is silent. You know, my wife and me, we're both sleeping. All of a sudden, Alexa goes off, really. And she starts saying something. I don't know what it was. It didn't matter. We just woke us both up and we didn't give her any reason to wake up. We didn't say, you know, Alexa didn't call her name. It was nothing happening. It was quiet. What's going on? And my wife said to me, it's listening, isn't it? Well, you know, I could be mumbled, Alexis, in your sleep or something. She came right on. Yeah, I mean, I'm surrounded by gizmos that if they don't watch you now, they will soon. His big brother is watching you as well. You've got to have that next step when Alexis knows you're asleep, unless even if you call out her name, you're really not interested in talking to her. Yeah. But again, making nuanced judgments about people and their intent. Yeah. So, I mean, this is the dark side of science, but the fact is I love science. I love computer technology. I love making things easy, expanding my consciousness, learning things I would never learn. Having a browser there, it's like the portal to the world. Sure. And you know, the problem with it, I'll tell you what the problem is, for the problem you're sitting down. Sure. The problem is we become dependent human beings. And if it ever was taken away from us, we'd be in a dark place. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The other problem is, again, like the, what's the acronym, picnic for problem in chair, not in computer. I mean, so much of our technological problems are really the problems of the user and their intent or their motivation or their desires and not really the technology itself. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, 2018, here we are. We're sailing in. We're one month in, as a matter of fact, already see how quickly the front goes. It's very exciting. Things are moving more quickly now. What is your advice? What is your advice, Ethan? Take camera one to people and how they integrate these fantastic changes, transcendental changes happening every day at an accelerating rate. How do they handle that, this camera one? Camera three. Camera four, whatever. No, people, that's why I think learning science is so incredibly important, why people have to understand the basics of science. And it's not a set of facts and knowing chemistry and biology and physics. It's a way of thinking about the world. It's a way of asking questions, making observations, weighing evidence, being aware of your own biases, checking out alternative ideas. I mean, this is really, it's more important than ever that we do all this. How do you know whether or not when you're ready to get a self-driving car or when that technology is safe to sort of deal with? You've got to really think about a lot of different things, right? Yeah. And when you know what technology to bring in your home, what it's going to do, what it may do to you. It's a glorious time. Let science teach us about the scientific method. Let us teach us about avoiding confusion in the human biochemical condition. Let science give us rationality and enlightenment and a better life, a better thought process and better teeth. Absolutely. There we go. Thank you, Ethan. Thank you, Jay. It's been wonderful, as always. Pleasure always. Have a good one. Bye.