Can We Predict the Future? with Charles Liu

Summary

StarTalk Radio: Can We Predict the Future? with Charles Liu Episode Release Date: March 7, 2025

Hosts and Guests:

• Neil deGrasse Tyson – Host, Astrophysicist, Director of New York's Hayden Planetarium
• Gary O'Reilly – Co-host
• Chuck – Co-host
• Charles Liu – Guest, Professor at City University of New York, Host of the "Loonaverse" podcast

---

1. Introduction to Predicting the Future

Timestamp: 00:47 – 04:05

Neil deGrasse Tyson opens the discussion by highlighting the perennial fascination with predicting the future, particularly through the lens of science fiction. He reminisces about classic shows like The Jetsons and movies like Blade Runner, acknowledging that while many predictions miss the mark, accurate forecasts can provide valuable insights.

Neil deGrasse Tyson:
"Predicting the future and getting it wrong most of the time. But when you get it right, it's good." ([00:47])

Charles Liu introduces his perspective, emphasizing the role of younger scientists and innovators in shaping future technologies. He underscores that scientific models, while inherently imperfect, are essential for informed predictions and educational discourse.

Charles Liu:
"We are taking what knowledge we have now and modeling it for the future. And models are always wrong, but sometimes they're useful." ([05:14])

---

2. Science Fiction and Reality: The Jetsons and Blade Runner

Timestamp: 04:05 – 11:14

The conversation delves into how science fiction has shaped our expectations of the future. Tyson critiques the optimistic yet often inaccurate visions presented in The Jetsons, noting discrepancies between imagined robots and real-world advancements in automation and AI.

Neil deGrasse Tyson:
"They didn't understand that a robot can be anything that does something that you wouldn't otherwise do." ([09:03])

Chuck adds that current robots, like those in Amazon warehouses, are far more utilitarian and less humanoid than those depicted in classic sci-fi.

Chuck:
"They're all boxes just moving around. They're moving the boxes, doing stuff. Moving boxes. But they're all robots, right?" ([10:43])

The discussion transitions to Blade Runner, exploring the concept of the Turing Test and the blurred lines between human and machine intelligence. Charles Liu connects this to contemporary issues with AI, emphasizing the ongoing challenge of distinguishing authentic human emotions from machine-generated responses.

---

3. The Turing Test and Artificial Intelligence

Timestamp: 11:14 – 22:05

Tyson elaborates on the Turing Test, a measure of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior indistinguishable from a human. He relates it to modern AI applications, expressing concerns over the authenticity of machine interactions.

Charles Liu:
"If you can tell the difference between the responses of a machine and the responses of a human being without seeing who's behind the curtain, that determines whether a machine is truly intelligent." ([19:30])

The hosts discuss scenarios from Blade Runner where replicants fail to exhibit genuine human emotions, drawing parallels to today's AI systems like ChatGPT. They debate the implications of AI passing sophisticated tests of consciousness and intelligence, highlighting the ethical considerations and potential societal impacts.

Neil deGrasse Tyson:
"We're conducting the Turing Test in real time, but a better not." ([19:14])

---

4. Predictions in Neil's Book: Starry Messenger

Timestamp: 22:05 – 40:14

Neil deGrasse Tyson introduces his book Starry Messenger, particularly the chapter "Exploration and Discovery," where he makes a series of predictions for the year 2050. He acknowledges the inherent inaccuracies in such forecasts but values them as a means to reflect on progress and missteps.

Neil deGrasse Tyson:
"I'm gonna make predictions for 2050 so that in 2050 people can look back and see everything I got wrong." ([06:35])

Charles Liu and Chuck provide critical yet constructive feedback on Tyson's predictions, discussing the feasibility of turning space programs into commercial industries and the advancements in medicine through genetic profiling and AI.

---

5. The Nature of Exponential Growth in Technology

Timestamp: 40:14 – 52:03

The hosts explore the concept of exponential growth in technology, emphasizing how rapidly advancements can alter societal norms and capabilities. Tyson points out that exponential curves often appear vertical due to their steep ascent, making it challenging to predict their trajectory accurately.

Neil deGrasse Tyson:
"The line always looks vertical when you're at that end of the exponential." ([50:12])

Charles Liu cautions that exponential growth isn't limitless and can plateau, using historical examples like the human population to illustrate how initial predictions may not account for technological and societal adaptations.

Charles Liu:
"Sometimes the exponentials turn over. There's a period of exponential growth followed by a leveling off." ([52:34])

---

6. 2050 Predictions: Space Industry, Medicine, and AI

Timestamp: 40:14 – 55:24

Space Industry: Tyson predicts that by 2050, the space program will transition into a thriving space industry driven by space tourism and asteroid mining. Charles Liu challenges this, suggesting that without significant cost reductions and governmental support, such a transition may not materialize within the next three decades.

Charles Liu:
"Prices are not going to drop low enough for people to want to go into space just for the heck of it." ([42:08])

Medicine: Tyson foresees advancements in personalized medicine, where treatments are tailored to individual genetic profiles, eliminating side effects. Charles Liu expresses optimism but tempers expectations, noting that while behavioral control may advance, curing diseases entirely by 2050 remains uncertain.

Neil deGrasse Tyson:
"Medicine will be tuned to your genetic profile so that there are zero side effects." ([50:42])

Artificial Intelligence: The discussion shifts to AI's role in medicine and other fields. Tyson is bullish on AI's potential to revolutionize healthcare, while Charles Liu emphasizes the need for cautious optimism, acknowledging both the transformative benefits and the ethical dilemmas posed by AI advancements.

---

7. Final Predictions and Reflections

Timestamp: 55:24 – 56:48

As the episode concludes, each participant shares their final predictions:

• Chuck:
  "We are at a global tipping point with respect to democracy globally. It's either going to be that people want to govern themselves through democratic processes or that we're all so sleep that we descend into authoritarianism worldwide." ([54:21])

• Gary:
  "Desire to fully engage with climate change because the knock-on effect has influence on so many global societies. We're suffering from climate migration and rising sea levels." ([54:35])

• Charles Liu:
  "Within 25 years, there will be a professional sport played in orbit." ([56:03])

Tyson reflects on the importance of continual innovation and the unpredictable nature of technological progress, reinforcing the theme that while predicting the future is fraught with challenges, it remains a vital exercise for understanding and shaping the trajectory of human civilization.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Neil deGrasse Tyson ([00:47]):
  "Predicting the future and getting it wrong most of the time. But when you get it right, it's good."

• Charles Liu ([05:14]):
  "We are taking what knowledge we have now and modeling it for the future. And models are always wrong, but sometimes they're useful."

• Chuck ([54:21]):
  "We are at a global tipping point with respect to democracy globally. It's either going to be that people want to govern themselves through democratic processes or that we're all so sleep that we descend into authoritarianism worldwide."

• Gary O'Reilly ([54:35]):
  "Desire to fully engage with climate change because the knock-on effect has influence on so many global societies. We're suffering from climate migration and rising sea levels."

• Charles Liu ([56:03]):
  "Within 25 years, there will be a professional sport played in orbit."

---

Conclusion: In this enlightening episode of StarTalk Radio, Neil deGrasse Tyson, alongside co-hosts Gary O'Reilly and Chuck, and guest Charles Liu, navigates the intricate landscape of future predictions. Through the exploration of science fiction, technological advancements, and societal trends, the discussion underscores the complexities inherent in forecasting the future. While acknowledging the frequent inaccuracies of predictions, the conversation highlights the indispensable role of such exercises in driving innovation and fostering informed discourse about humanity's path forward.

Keep Looking Up!

Transcript

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

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[Alikan Hemraj]

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[Charles Liu]

Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching. Over.

[Alikan Hemraj]

Roger, wait. Is that an enterprise sales solution?

[Gary O'Reilly]

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[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Gary, I love that topic you selected. Good for special Edition. Predicting the future and getting it wrong most of the time. But when you get it right, it's good. We talked about the Jetsons. Love me some Jetsons. Come on now. You cannot like the Jetsons. I like Jane, Blade Runner and these visions of the future. Some dystopic, others just kind of fun, right?

[Chuck]

You know, I think the Jetsons are pretty dystopic.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Did you say you like Jane?

[Chuck]

Yes.

[Gary]

All right.

[Chuck]

I didn't think anybody caught that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And you take me to task on predictions I made in Starry Messenger?

[Gary]

Well, of course.

[Chuck]

Here's a prediction. We're about to do the show.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Coming up, Star Talk. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture culture collide. Star Talk begins right now. This is StarTalk Special Edition. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. We got a full house today. First, Gary O'Reilly. Gary.

[Gary]

Hey, Neil.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Hi. How you doing, man?

[Gary]

I'm good.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, good, Chuck. Nice. How you doing, man?

[Chuck]

I'm doing well. Man.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Your hair is looking especially coiffed.

[Chuck]

It's very crisp today.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Crisp today?

[Chuck]

Yes. I actually microwaved it and then I put it on. People don't realize it's. This is a Steve Harvey wig. No, no, they don't even real. Come on, player.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Anyway, it's rocking like a mini version of a 1978.

[Chuck]

That's exactly what I was going for. Shaft. I was going for straight up. Jim Brown.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Jim Brown. Something out of the 70s.

[Chuck]

That's what I was going for.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Stepped right off the screen.

[Chuck]

Yep, yep.

[Gary]

Success.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

There you go. Work on some muscles, come back and you can say you're Jim Brown.

[Chuck]

Sorry, I'm Jim Tan.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So we're going to do predictions about the future, which I think is the only way you can make a prediction.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And there's some stuff I don't tackle alone. I gotta go to geek in Chief.

[Chuck]

Oh, Geek in Chief.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

There's only one geek in chief.

[Chuck]

We know who that is.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That is Charles Liu, friend and colleague.

[Charles Liu]

Charles Neil. Dude, Great to see you. Okay, I also microwaved my hair today.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Just leave your brain out. The thing is fine. So you're a professor at cuny, Staten Island, City University of New York, which satellite campuses across the city.

[Charles Liu]

Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And you're in Staten island and you finally no longer have administrative duties there. Is that correct?

[Charles Liu]

Were that the case forever, is that.

[Chuck]

The same as quiet quitting?

[Charles Liu]

Not the same. No. Professors. What do you mean you don't have any? We're very lucky as professors because we can continually take on positions and leave them and not leave our jobs. So I could be a department chair for a period of time and leave. I could run an honors program and then leave. I could even serve as an acting dean or other administrat and then leave. And still I'd retain my ability to come back and do the research and the coursework and the teaching that I love.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Each of those, they give you a little bump up in the moolah.

[Charles Liu]

One host, One host. Every place is a little bit different.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So we've got you here because you think long and hard and deep about predictions made in sci fi. You probably have some predictions of your own. The accuracy of these predictions and what they might have looked like at the time and what they look like to us with the benefit of hindsight. Well, so. So we're going to. We're going to get all in this.

[Charles Liu]

Yeah, I think it's good, but I think we should first say right away for everybody that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, first say right away that you host a podcast called the Loonaverse. That's what we should say right away.

[Charles Liu]

Oh, that's very sweet.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Thank you. The Lou universe. Charles Lou. You see what he did there?

[Chuck]

The Lou. I didn't do it.

[Charles Liu]

It was my family members.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Not the Lou. The bathroom between Charles and Lou.

[Chuck]

But he's Charles Lou. So it's the Lou Niverse.

[Charles Liu]

No, no, no. I can't take any credit for the name. We talk to scientists who are earlier in their careers. We talk about people who are doing all the hard work and trying different things. Not just necessarily what we think of as a straight up science stuff, but also thinking about the future, thinking about pop science culture, things that we like to talk about here on StarTalk, but on a level for.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I got you and A lot of fresh, unvarnished ideas come out of that first generation. Some of them can change the world.

[Charles Liu]

Right. As you know, Neil, the really tough new pioneer techniques are always done by our younger colleagues. We can have great ideas and we're like, oh, darn it, if only someone had a way, a technology, a tool that could solve these problems. And then some guy comes along, some lady comes along says, yeah, I know how to do that. And they just bring something new. And that's how changes happen. It's no accident that some of the best discoveries, the Nobel Awards, come from people in their 20s and their 30s.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

They're awarded much later.

[Chuck]

Yeah, but, well, they made their discoveries in their 20s. You know, they did a study on that. That more likely to think in a way that will lead to innovation in your late teens and twenties than at any other point in your life.

[Charles Liu]

That's right. Which is why when we hear talking about predictions, it's not so much our predictions, but what we're predicting other people will do in the future.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's an important distinction.

[Chuck]

Interesting.

[Charles Liu]

And so when we think about it from a scientific perspective, we don't want to say so much predictions as models. Right? We are taking what knowledge we have now and modeling it for the future. And models are always wrong, but sometimes they're useful. And therefore we have the opportunity to think about the future and inform and educate.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Gary, set the stage here.

[Gary]

Okay, so in your book Starry messenger, in the chapter at the end of Exploration Discovery, you kind of go on a fool's errand and make a raft of predictions for the year 2050.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Did he just call me a fool?

[Gary]

No.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Would you kick his ass over.

[Gary]

Can it wait?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, a fool's errand, yes.

[Gary]

So we're not going to wait 25 years to find out if this is true.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Let me set that up. So the whole a big part of that chapter titled Exploration and Discovery is an exercise in what do people think would be discovered or how differently did they think they'd be living in one era versus one generation later? And I just, I tightened it to 30 years. So I go 30 year increments from 1870 up to 2020.

[Gary]

We'll probably figure it out.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And everybody's getting everything wrong all the time, of course. Okay. And so I said, time for me to join the list. And I'm gonna make predictions for 2050 so that in 2050 people can look back and see everything I got wrong. So that I'm not.

[Chuck]

I disagree. I don't think that these people predictions are Wrong. I think they're inaccurate. And there's a big difference. Well, don't get all.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All semantic, actually.

[Charles Liu]

No, get semantic. Get semantic.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We want this on this exam. I didn't get anything wrong.

[Chuck]

It was just inaccurate. Oh, my God. Now you know how all my teachers hated me.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We can explore that. Finish up.

[Gary]

Where do we go for our predictions? The tried and trusted sources. We'll have a look at that. Are the people that are making these predictions or writing examples, are they in fact the influences of the future that are based in the past? Or if we leave it alone, does the future take care of itself? We'll get into all the sort of philosophical thoughts about that, but first and foremost.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You mean if we didn't predict the future so that there was no groundwork for new ideas, would that. Would future still have a place to land? Would it still unfold?

[Chuck]

Would it still unfold?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Gary]

So let's look to science, let's look to science fiction as our go tos for what our lives might well be back. I mean, I'll kick it off the Jetsons.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Daughter Judy, who can make the sound. Who can make the sound of jets. That's it. There you go. There you go.

[Chuck]

That's every flying car in the Jetsons.

[Gary]

So this, this was made in the early 60s, 1960s, but it's set in 2062. So it's not that far away from.

[Charles Liu]

Where it was in the future.

[Gary]

Where we sit today, it's not that far. So you've got flying cars, there's a robot in every house.

[Chuck]

Yes, in some places. That's the, that's the case. First of all, we do have flying cars. We have them now. They're just quadcopters, but they're flying cars.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

And if you go to Japan, you're going to find pretty much some kind of robot and robots everywhere.

[Gary]

So in fact, are the Jetsons the most accurate prediction of the near future we have, or do we have to look in other places for accuracy?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So I found this recently. Was it the year 2020? I was looking for years predicted for the future that are already in our past. And in the Jetsons, I think George Jetson, you can triangulate, based on certain script lines, that he was born in the year 2020.

[Chuck]

Oh, really?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, Cool.

[Gary]

Kind of the Jetsons was the other extreme of Pandemic baby.

[Chuck]

Yeah, George Jetson, Pandemic baby. Did he know?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Did he, did he know? I think it was 20. It might have been 2021, but it.

[Chuck]

Was in the last Couple somewhere in that window.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Somewhere in there. So that's the first point. So here's what I think they got wrong. They didn't understand that a robot can be anything that does something that you wouldn't otherwise do, right?

[Chuck]

Any task, any task, any task.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So he's still flying his flying car. He doesn't push a button and say take me to work and have the car do the work as we have today.

[Chuck]

And by the way, if you have a robot who can run your home, you dago as sure could have a car that will just take you to work.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right? So they missed the fact that a robot did not have to have any humanoid features. This is the same with Isaac Asimov's iRobot, which predates the Jetsons, okay? An iRobot, the robots are humanoid.

[Chuck]

Humanoid.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And that's not necessary because it assumes the human form is something you want to emulate. And there's a lot of stuff we don't do well, make a machine do it better. So all I'm saying is I don't think they thought about a self driving car which is itself a form of robot.

[Chuck]

Yeah, if you've ever seen an Amazon warehouse, it's full of robots of autonomous. And they're just all boxes. They're all boxes just moving around. They're moving the boxes, doing stuff. Moving boxes. But they're all robots, right?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Everyone. And you know where they're going, they know where they're gonna put it. And they have their ID and the thing. Now what you don't know is what those robots do when you leave. Could be a quantum thing, right?

[Charles Liu]

The secret life of robots.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The secret life of robot. Like why are you looking at them? They're looking like they're busy, right? You look away, right?

[Chuck]

Then they're partying, they're out the back with a cigarette.

[Gary]

Just like the human version.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You have a book on quantum.

[Charles Liu]

The handy quantum physics answer.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Answer book? Yes, in a series. That's not your first rodeo.

[Charles Liu]

I've done handy astronomy, handy physics and right now handy quantum physics.

[Chuck]

Is it like quantum physics for dummies?

[Charles Liu]

Well, I assume that you guys aren't dummies.

[Chuck]

See, that's where you make a mistake.

[Charles Liu]

No, no, no, that's your biggest mistake. Well, quantum physics is not any harder than classical physics. It's just different and strange.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Weird and strange.

[Charles Liu]

So all I'm trying to tell people by calling it a handy answer book is that don't think of it as this thing that's really difficult. Think of it as just you can flip to it like a manual. It's like riding a bicycle or putting together a piece of furniture.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Quantum manual. So I want the robots in the Amazon fulfillment centers to two quantum states. One where they're busy and the other one where they're out back smoking cigars.

[Gary]

Came up with fulfillment center as a term.

[Charles Liu]

It feels right from a long time.

[Chuck]

The robot, the robots.

[Gary]

It's a warehouse. It's a warehouse. It has become a fulfillment center.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Give me a word here.

[Gary]

I don't like it.

[Charles Liu]

Sears, Roebuck catalog from more than 100 years ago had these warehouses, which is nothing but Amazon. That's right. It's. But it's. They had human beings filling things, filling all the waters. And at some point in the mid 20th century, the marketing decided to call that instead of a warehouse, calling it a fulfillment center. And so the idea was that was Sears. We think it was Sears. But certainly all the other big stores at that time had that information.

[Chuck]

I mean, and sometimes you say things, but you know, sometimes I have fact checked you behind your back.

[Charles Liu]

Please.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, no. I have to. Have to do my.

[Chuck]

And you're always right on point. I gotta do my. Yeah, so 100 years ago, I'm just like, get the. Get out of here.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wait, Chuck, I gotta do my once per show reaction.

[Chuck]

Go ahead. Why do you know this?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, but that was early in this show.

[Charles Liu]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, my gosh. I don't know if I have more than one in me.

[Gary]

I think Charles does.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Keep going. Wait, also with the maid. Rosie the maid.

[Gary]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right. First, it's female. Right. So there's still the genderized robot that was sexist and with the. With the little. With the apron.

[Chuck]

French.

[Charles Liu]

A French.

[Chuck]

So she was a sexy robot.

[Gary O'Reilly]

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[Alikan Hemraj]

Race the rudders. Raise the sails. Raise the sails.

[Charles Liu]

Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching. Over.

[Alikan Hemraj]

Roger. Wait. Is that an enterprise sales solution?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Reach sales professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title and more. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Get started today at LinkedIn.com results. Terms and conditions apply.

[Alikan Hemraj]

I'm Alikan Hemraj and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

[Gary]

If we look at the movies and generally you're thinking about major budgets for production, yet things don't always work out. You take the 1982 Blade Runner movie, Harrison Ford. Remember that?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Based on.

[Gary]

I don't know what it was.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes. Based on a novel by.

[Charles Liu]

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yep.

[Gary]

Well, thank you.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And when did he write that? Early 50s, right?

[Charles Liu]

Quite early, yeah.

[Gary]

So it was set in 2019.

[Chuck]

The original. The original movie.

[Gary]

Right, the movie, yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The 80s.

[Gary]

But so much of it doesn't land. True.

[Chuck]

None of it.

[Gary]

I mean, we have hindsight, which obviously is perfect.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Gary]

But you're thinking about their humanoid. And they're off world.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The replicants. Yes.

[Gary]

Exist.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Didn't have replicants. Right.

[Charles Liu]

Yes.

[Chuck]

That's what they call it.

[Gary]

That did not happen.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So we're not off world. No, we don't have perfectly humanoid replicants.

[Charles Liu]

And the sun sometimes shines.

[Chuck]

However, we were living in a dystopia.

[Charles Liu]

So that is a thing.

[Gary]

And the dystopian future is debatable.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, I have my issues with dystopian futures because it assumes that whatever the trend line is in a culture, in a civilization, that it continues to descend without anybody doing anything about it at any time.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Not the public, not the politicians, not the military, nothing. It just continues to descend and hits rock bottom. And then they make a movie out of it.

[Chuck]

I have a very, very quick.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It can Happen locally.

[Chuck]

I have a very theory on why that happens, why they do it that way. Because most dystopian futures are a warning against authoritarianism.

[Charles Liu]

Well said.

[Chuck]

And that's why. That's the. That's why it's like.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Cause authoritarians can take it down the toilet.

[Chuck]

That's right. And that's why it's like. That's why they're always written that way.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Here's an interesting thing that happened in Blade Runner that we're kind of doing today.

[Chuck]

All right, all right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Do you remember the scene, very tense scene, where one of the replicants who's trying to pass as human is getting interviewed by someone whose task it is to identify the replicants who are no longer presenting themselves as replicants. And the replicants are so good that they have to go through a series of questions where they're testing his. The dilation of his eyes and his emotional reactions to certain situations.

[Gary]

Oh, gosh.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Gary]

Psych profile.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes, yes, yes. And there's a point where he's like. He can't react in a way a human being would or would be expected to. My point is, today, when people show me stuff written by ChatGPT, I'm analyzing that. If they don't tell me that, I'm analyzing it for, is there a human emotion in here that's authentic or is this replicated by something that thinks it can be human? I'm doing the same thing.

[Chuck]

Right. Yeah.

[Charles Liu]

You are conducting the Turing Test in.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Real time, but a better not. Yeah. A really deep version.

[Chuck]

A more discerning version.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

More discerning version. Tell me about the Turing Test. Tell everybody.

[Charles Liu]

Turing, the famous guy. Right. Who helped create computers and so forth. He.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Alan Turing. Yeah.

[Charles Liu]

Yes. It would be important for us to figure out whether or not a machine has become truly intelligent by seeing if you can tell the difference between the responses of a machine and the responses.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Of a human being without seeing who's behind the curtain.

[Charles Liu]

Right. And from there, you develop all the details. Right. The Turing Test, as a general idea, became specific about, for example, the things you're talking about. Right. Neil. Analyzing text or analyzing responses like in Blade Runner. And so, in a sense, it was a predictive strategy to try to figure out whether something is what you think it is or whether it's.

[Gary]

This is not a test more for as much intelligence as consciousness.

[Charles Liu]

It depends.

[Chuck]

Yeah. I was gonna say different versions doesn't make. If machines are intelligent.

[Charles Liu]

Right.

[Chuck]

Does it really make a difference?

[Charles Liu]

Well, that depends on what you think. Intelligence.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

There's some dumbass People. And if a computer was dumbass, that wouldn't mean they're not.

[Chuck]

That's what I'm saying.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

They're not a computer.

[Charles Liu]

Right.

[Chuck]

Exactly. We don't get rid of dumb ass people just because they stupid. You know?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So why can't we have stupid computer together?

[Chuck]

And by the way, we do have smartphones and dumb phones. Like we're moving in that direction anyway.

[Charles Liu]

But this is our own bias against what is intelligent and what is not. Right. When we judge a person to be stupid, that person's still very intelligent. There's intelligence. That person can adapt. That person is likely conscious. That person is likely able to figure out puzzles and so forth.

[Chuck]

True.

[Charles Liu]

But we claim that they're stupid because somehow they didn't get a joke that we told or that they couldn't solve.

[Chuck]

A math problem and things like that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Says the comedian hit it on the head.

[Charles Liu]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's the measure of the comedic Turing test. Did you laugh at my joke?

[Charles Liu]

Did you laugh at my joke, you dumbass? Well, there's an episode of the classic Batman TV show where Robin and Batman tried to test whether there's a robot or not. And what happened was that Batman and Robin told a super funny joke which that robot was supposed to laugh at. And since.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But he didn't know it was a robot.

[Charles Liu]

That's right. They were trying to test whether this was a robot or not.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Charles Liu]

And when the thing did not laugh, they ripped his head off. And he went. Because Batman just told him a super funny joke and he didn't laugh. So he knew that it was a robot. So you are the ultimate test, Chuck. You and your colleagues.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

According to Batman.

[Charles Liu]

Intelligence about actual consciousness.

[Chuck]

Pull the punchline, Batman.

[Gary]

We don't recommend pulling the heads off audience members.

[Charles Liu]

Don't laugh at your jokes.

[Chuck]

That was the only part of the story I liked running around ripping the head off.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I know something that maybe Charles does not know.

[Charles Liu]

Uh oh, you know many things.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Let me enjoy this moment.

[Gary]

Have we got competitive?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Turing obviously did not call it the Turing test.

[Charles Liu]

Correct.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Do you know what he called it?

[Charles Liu]

I do not remember.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Did you ever know?

[Charles Liu]

I might have. He called it I'm not intelligent enough.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

He called it the Imitation Game.

[Charles Liu]

Hence the name of the movie.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The title of the movie which profiled his life.

[Chuck]

That's awesome.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

With Keira Knightley.

[Charles Liu]

Benedict Cumberbatch.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Benedict Cumberbatch.

[Chuck]

It's a good lineup.

[Gary]

Sherlock Holmes.

[Chuck]

I gotta watch this movie. You ever seen this is the first I ever heard of it. To be honest. Both the touring story and the movie.

[Gary]

I mean, it's his life story becomes tragic.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Don't give it away.

[Gary]

I'm not. I've just let him take it as.

[Chuck]

A happy alert, please.

[Gary]

So where else do we go? I mean, there were series like historically the Twilight Zone.

[Chuck]

Absolutely.

[Gary]

That picked our interest.

[Charles Liu]

The Outer Limits, don't forget.

[Gary]

And we move through into more recently, the Black Mirror.

[Chuck]

Yeah. What's his name? Charlie. Charlie Booker, who is brilliant.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So just to contrast the two.

[Chuck]

Go ahead.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I think they both. They both leave you emotionally spent and disturbed at the end.

[Chuck]

And they're also both.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

If you go to the Twilight Zone in its day and you look at sort of the disturbing stories that it told and it didn't always have a happy ending.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Gary]

This is not the Ray Bradbury kind of school of thought. I need you to think.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes. And if you look at Rod Serling comment on his show, he said, look, at the end of the day, we're just selling soap. All right, so how do you sell soap in a way that people don't feel offended or whatever? And he says, if you set it in a fictionalized world where that's clearly not your world, then you can tell stories of people say, oh, that's just happening in that world. And later on they pause and say, wait a minute, that was me. Or that was my friend or my neighbor, or that's how I behaved. And so he was a storyteller par excellence in that genre. And especially, like I said, the disturbing feature of so many of those. And you fast forward to Black Mirror, which has an authentic science fiction future. Always foundation to it. Yes, but. But highlight what that future is, because some people might not know the future.

[Chuck]

Is this Black Mirror is a Netflix series? Yeah, I believe it's on Netflix.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's third season, the fourth season.

[Chuck]

But the future is highly techno, technologically driven. It's driven. Everything is driven by technology. But the stories are about how we respond to the technological advancements. It's really never about the technology itself. Very good. It's always about our human nature and how it is affected by the technology.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And one thing that they do, which is just only a little out of reach in our imaginings, is in that future which prevails in almost all episodes because they share the same universe. Right. Like the news that's on the TV is the same newscasters that you see in multiple. So they're in the same world.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What they all have in common is that the human mind is accessible.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

In the way hard drives are accessible.

[Chuck]

Exactly. And often Meshed in the way.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right, right. The way hard drives are connected into someone's head. Rewind an event, Experience what they saw, see what they see through their eyes. Pull it back out, manipulate it. That's a whole frontier of storytelling that's been unplumbed.

[Chuck]

But when you think about it, it's. It's a frontier of storytelling. But it is also a different facet of reality. Because the way you experience something, even though we experience the exact same thing, is totally different from the way I experience it. And so what he does is he blurs the lines between individual realities, collective realities, and a technologically measured reality, which is brilliant because I can look around this room, and I'm seeing everything as it is seen through my.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The Chuck filter.

[Chuck]

My filter. But I'm also seeing it through human eyes as opposed to, like, the eyes of, you know, an eagle or an owl. I'm also.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Or Jordy or Jordyn.

[Chuck]

And I see where I was. That's where I was going. But what I can't do is see it through the eyes of, like, an infrared meter, you know, so all those realities exist at the same time, though, and that's what makes them so brilliant. I love.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So the idea you can download your brain and put it on a computer. Everyone's talking about that black mirror. Makes it real.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And it's scary when you see. It's scary to see what he does.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And you see the nefarious ways people.

[Chuck]

Well, the way they'll manipulate it in the way that really explores the darker side of our human nature. One of my favorite episodes is there's a guy, and he thinks that he's been in some kind of accident. He's in a log cabin, and another guy shows up, and he's just like, hey, man. And he's, like, kind of nursing him back to health. He thinks he's been injured. And then he gets him to admit that he murdered his family or some crazy thing that he did.

[Charles Liu]

Wow.

[Chuck]

Only to find out that he was in a simulation and he was under interrogation by the police.

[Charles Liu]

Oh, wow.

[Chuck]

And then what they did afterwards was they punished him by leaving him in the simulation for a simulated hundred years.

[Gary]

Oh, my goodness.

[Chuck]

So that he would come out of his prison sentence thinking that he had been in prison for 100 years, when really he had only been in prison for whatever the time dilation mentally was for him. Maybe it had been a year, but he would think he would. Who served a hundred years?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So do we all think this is our future?

[Charles Liu]

No.

[Gary]

Really, it Has a possibility.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Why? Why? It feels real enough.

[Chuck]

It feels like we're headed there.

[Charles Liu]

The reason I don't think this thing will work is simply because we are assuming that intelligence and perceptions and so forth can be so fully controlled that we can't tell the difference between a reality and what is not real. We already know that our brains can be fooled. We already know that. So technology is not going to change anything in that respect unless we allow it to happen. And so I don't think that adding technology here, never mind the idea of whether or not our intelligence is actually digitizable. Right. If it's a quantum situation, then you can never pass qubits and digitize as something called the no cloning theorem. That makes that very difficult. So you wind up with a circumstance.

[Chuck]

I was gonna say, now you gotta stop. I wasn't. But you gotta stop, man. You gotta bring it back to the no cloning theorem. Because you can't just walk past that, walk by and just, like, drop that down. Just like, oh, here's the no cloning theorem.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Boom.

[Chuck]

All right, I'm moving on.

[Charles Liu]

Well, okay, the no cloning theorem is just one of many different pieces of quantum computing. Sort of like the laws of quantum computing, the same way that Asimov had laws of robotics.

[Chuck]

Okay.

[Charles Liu]

This particular one, the no cloning theorem, means that if you have a quantum bit of information, you can't just make as many copies of it as you'd like. You can't make copies. So, like us, we can digitize a photograph taking little. Little pixels.

[Chuck]

Exactly.

[Charles Liu]

And then make each pixel exactly the same as another pixel on a hard drive or a USB stick or something, and then you get an exact copy of the previous picture.

[Chuck]

Absolutely.

[Charles Liu]

No cloning theorem says that for quantum information, you can't do that. So anytime you have some quantum.

[Chuck]

So why wouldn't you be able to do that with a qubit as opposed to bits and bytes, which we're able to do with.

[Charles Liu]

Right. As soon as you read a qubit, it is destroyed.

[Chuck]

That makes sense because it existed in a superposition to begin with.

[Charles Liu]

Yes.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Go check.

[Chuck]

So the moment that they actually realize the superposition, all other positions are made null and void at that particular instance.

[Charles Liu]

That's a great way to describe it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Damn.

[Gary]

So you can.

[Chuck]

Damn, Chuck, give that man a degree.

[Gary]

Can you only capture a freeze frame of that. Your consciousness at a certain time? Because if you were to do it five minutes afterwards, it would potentially be different.

[Charles Liu]

That is one consequence of this no cloning idea. Right? You can know what you are this very moment.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Charles Liu]

But you cannot know what is the next moment after five minutes and the moment after that.

[Chuck]

Oh, my God.

[Charles Liu]

That's right.

[Chuck]

This is why this show is so goddamn great. Do you understand? This is science. This is what makes it so awesome.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Why'd you. He blew a gasket.

[Chuck]

I'm sorry.

[Gary]

Just unplugging. All right, so if we're thinking about our future, if we're thinking about getting on and thinking about 50, 100 so many years in advance.

[Charles Liu]

Yes.

[Gary]

What you describe in Starry messenger is the exponential growth of our lives. Our inventions, our ideas, in our understandings.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Charles Liu]

Right.

[Gary]

And then you sort of frame it in a 30 year gap.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Gary]

I'm just wondering. And we'll return to exponential growth because I need to know how far away we are from being vertical on the graph. But if you took someone from 1995 and brought them to 2025, would they be completely out of sorts with the way we are today?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Let me tell you why that is definitely the case.

[Gary]

All right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. They would not know how to function. All right? Little things like you sit them at a restaurant and say, where's the menu? Oh, here's the QR code. They'll have no idea what that is or what it means or what it.

[Chuck]

They have.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, they don't know what social media is. They. They lucky them, they barely. Lucky them, they barely have an email address because those were on the rise beginning in the 1990s. For the general public, the. The idea that you would have self driving electric cars just on the road with no driver. You walk around la. These cars are just all over the place. Okay. And what role the smartphone has played in our lives beginning from 2007 onward.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The idea that you can walk and talk to someone with something smaller than the size of a pack of cigarettes to someone on the Riviera. Where's the Riviera?

[Chuck]

In France.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

French. France. So what I'm describing is how the way we currently live and take it for granted would be wholly foreign and exotic and unfamiliar to someone transported from.

[Charles Liu]

1995 respectfully and with love. I disagree completely.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Because of 95 to 2025 or just in general, a 30 year interval?

[Charles Liu]

No, it's specifically for 1995 to 2025 because we had Star Trek. We already saw what could be. We have Jules verne, we had H.G. wells, we had Lucien from the second century A.D. lucian.

[Chuck]

Wow.

[Charles Liu]

Yes.

[Chuck]

He wrote, I love Lucian.

[Charles Liu]

Well, I do, actually, but he was Lucy. He was a guy from sort of the Greek area of the world, which at that time was fertile with culture and imagination and so forth.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

About when was this?

[Charles Liu]

About the second century A.D. you know.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Who else was the second century? I don't know if they had Ptolemy. Ptolemy, okay. He wrote Almagest.

[Charles Liu]

I do not think he was a coincidence. That's.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's a laying out the universe.

[Gary]

People that Charles has named there, they're historic.

[Charles Liu]

Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wait, wait, Lucian is not the name. That's the name of the.

[Charles Liu]

Lucien is the name of the person who wrote. Is credited with writing a science fiction novel called A True Story.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wow.

[Charles Liu]

Yes. Voyagers are on a boat and they are caught in a storm, and they wind up on the moon. And at the moon, there are creatures who don't look like humans, but they're engaged in a great war.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

These are the kinds as Greeks want to be. So clearly other people would be fighting as well.

[Charles Liu]

These are the kinds of things that have been imagined for a long, long time. And I don't think that anyone in 95 showing up in 2025 would go, oh, my gosh, people are talking into a box. They'll say, oh, wait, that happened in Star Trek. Okay, how does this work? And they just tap, tap, tap. And because everything was built for humans by humans, they would be able to.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Adapt instead of by aliens. Right, right, right, right.

[Charles Liu]

Almost immediately because of the commonalities of humans from 1995 to 2025.

[Chuck]

Okay, so now let's take it back to. And let's forget second century A.D. sure. Which is a time of enlightenment.

[Charles Liu]

Yes.

[Chuck]

Let's go to a time of darkness. All right, so like now let's go to the Middle Ages. You know what I mean?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We're Dark Ages.

[Chuck]

Yeah, Dark Ages. Not the Middle Ages. The Dark Ages, where we go where we're consumed by superstition and everything is squelched in terms of any enlightenment with those people transported to today.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And by the way, just to be clear. Or would everything be Chuck? Just to be clear, in the book, I localized it to the era of the Industrial Revolution, where you can fully expect that inventions will change how you live. There was a period where no one expected their great, great grandchildren to be living any differently than they did.

[Chuck]

Absolutely.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So I don't know that you can go that far back.

[Chuck]

You can't go that far back.

[Charles Liu]

No, you can. You can. I'll say that because first of all, we should understand that Dark Ages was a term coined by European historians. True. In fact, historians who claim that Rome fell in the year A.D. 476 did not take into account what we know to be true, that other people ran that area, known as the Roman Empire in many different ways centuries thereafter. And then there was the Holy Roman Empire. That happened starting at AD With Charlemagne. Meanwhile, there is an Eastern Empire that was based at Constantinople.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Eastern Orthodox.

[Charles Liu]

That's right. All of that concept.

[Chuck]

And by the way, Rome's still here today.

[Charles Liu]

That's right. I was there this summer. It's a beautiful place. It was very hot.

[Chuck]

Still happening.

[Charles Liu]

Right. So our sense of what history is also makes us think about predicting the past. What has been framed for us as the Dark Ages was actually a period of great innovation. And people were thinking about a lot of things, but not necessarily in Europe. In the Arabic speaking world, things like algebra were being created, things like mathematics.

[Chuck]

Chuck.

[Charles Liu]

Yes, Chuck.

[Chuck]

You can't be talking about what brown people did, okay? It doesn't count if it didn't happen in Europe.

[Charles Liu]

You're making my point exactly. Truer words were never spoken. And see, this is the point.

[Chuck]

You'll be telling me there were pyramids in Africa.

[Unknown]

Get out of here.

[Charles Liu]

Right? I mean, surely no Egyptian people could ever have made these and must have been done by aliens because what, Egyptians aren't as smart as people who look like Europeans and they couldn't do geometry? This is a very, very inappropriate way of looking at.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The Road is calling.

[Chuck]

Embrace the thrill of the drive with.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The all new fully electric Audi Q6E Tron, featuring effortless power and advanced Audi tech. The next chapter of Audi starts now.

[Alikan Hemraj]

Race the rudders. Race the sails. Race the sails.

[Charles Liu]

Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching. Over.

[Alikan Hemraj]

Roger. Wait, is that an enterprise sales solution?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Reach sales professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title and more. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Get started today at LinkedIn.com results terms and conditions app.

[Gary]

We use the imagination of these authors, these filmmakers.

[Charles Liu]

Yes.

[Gary]

And then we kind of replicate some of the things that they came up. So we follow slide. We have Sliding Doors. We first saw them in Star Trek.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I first saw them in Star Trek.

[Charles Liu]

Yeah.

[Gary]

Okay. So the thing is, are they shaping the future from their position in the past? And we follow that.

[Charles Liu]

Great idea. Great point.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's hilarious. Are you asking. We never saw Sliding Doors as a future feature where we'd pursue it? Would it have been pursued? And would we be trying to open the grocery store door holding our bags?

[Charles Liu]

Great question. Here's my thought on this. We make predictions all the Time, probably there are a thousand predictions about the future that are in the literature or just around on newspapers or even written down by people from 100 years ago. As Yogi Berra said, it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future. But if you make a thousand predictions.

[Chuck]

One of them will come to you.

[Charles Liu]

And we're looking backwards.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You cherry pick the few that came through. Yes.

[Charles Liu]

And if the future shows up with sliding doors, you go back and go.

[Chuck]

Hey, remember that you. Sliding doors.

[Charles Liu]

Like we don't talk about. Anybody who predicted doors would go up and down or the doors would squirrel out, but they exist, you know, so somebody probably did that. Even though Star Trek as a show itself didn't have doors that swirled out. There are ways to do this that we have all thought of. They just didn't dominate our society for whatever reason.

[Gary]

Okay, all right, let's go to your 2050 predictions from Starry messenger predictions.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, no. By the way, I put in my predictions so that in 2050 people can make fun of me.

[Gary]

Well, we're going to do it right now.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

As I highlighted, we're not waiting.

[Chuck]

Why wait until then?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Exactly. Everybody else is on the table. Predictions. Just quickly, to put this in context, in the book, I describe a prediction in 1900 made for the year 2000. And in the year 1900, steamships were setting records across the ocean. Railroads crossed the continents. And so in this for the year 2000, they had a steamship coming out of the ocean with railroad wheels flipped down. It goes straight onto a railroad track, Straight onto a railroad track, and then continues on land.

[Chuck]

Worst Transformer ever.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So this was. And another one that's just linear thinking again. It's linear thinking. It's another one. Also, how are people getting around through lighter than air balloons, balloons, dirigibles, blimps, this sort of thing. So they imagine in the year 2000, everyone would have their own personal balloons. So there are these balloons that wrap under your. In your armpit and you have two. And, and so it shows them sort of walking on water, kept buoyant by these two. By these balloons.

[Charles Liu]

Marvelous.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And it's like, okay, because that's, that's.

[Chuck]

That'S the extent of their imagination. Couldn't go much farther than what was available.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's kind of it.

[Chuck]

What was available.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Charles Liu]

Amazing.

[Gary]

All right, one of your predictions, the space program becomes a space industry.

[Chuck]

Already happened.

[Gary]

Funded not by taxpayers dollars, but by space tourism and other projects.

[Chuck]

That part didn't happen.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, it's not 2050 yet now. Okay, dude.

[Chuck]

Well, that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What do you think. What do you think about that dunk at all?

[Chuck]

Protect.

[Charles Liu]

Prices are not going to drop low enough for people to want to go into space just for the heck of it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Not for 30 years.

[Charles Liu]

Not for 30 years. Unfortunately, you're watching the prices now extrapolating outward into the future. You just don't see that pattern happening. Because right now, what's happening is that space is still controlled by governments that are willing to subsidize private corporations once those subsidies are removed.

[Gary]

Does every country on Earth have the same equity in space?

[Charles Liu]

You would hope so. But at the moment, as with any other parts of the world, the dawn.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Of flight, it was very expensive. Very few people was on a plane. If you flew on a plane, that was like the news of the cocktail party that you attended. And then now everybody can fly because the plane. We figured out how to make it cheap.

[Charles Liu]

The plane was and always was from the very beginning in 1903, a private enterprise. Enterprise activity. Space has since its beginning been a governmental activity.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, that's missing some information. So the rapid development of flight between 19, call it 10 and 1930 was.

[Charles Liu]

Funded by World War I?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, yeah. So you had government investments in the advancement of aviation. Advancement of aviation. And the government wanted to deliver mail by plane.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The birth of airmail. So the government said, we're gonna give a contract to whoever can outbid whoever else. And you do it and you win the. I said, I want the contract so I make my plane better because I can carry more for the same amount of money that yours does. Now I win the contract back from you, and this continues until somebody says, hey, instead of sacks of mail, I can carry sacks of people. And then I can. That was the birth of commercial aviation, driven by the government's interest in you making a better airplane.

[Charles Liu]

But it made money. And when we tried to do that with the space shuttle, we didn't make money. So until money is made, that track will not start.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Your sentence had the word until in it. Fine. I'm saying by 2050, the until will happen within there.

[Charles Liu]

I do not think so.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay? That's what it is.

[Chuck]

So here's what I think in response to both of you. What's going to happen is there's a lot of money floating around in space, and it's what really where.

[Charles Liu]

You got.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

To know that you and me, let's go this afternoon. Yeah, I looked in the wrong place.

[Chuck]

And it's in mining. And if we can mine what's out there instead of destroying the Earth to bring back all these precious rare earths that. Well, they wouldn't be rare earths.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Rare space.

[Chuck]

Rare space. If we can bring that back. What happens is to get there, it's going to propel the advancement so fast.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Like a gold rush.

[Chuck]

Like a gold rush. People are going to go so crazy so fast to get out there and get that money that space tourism will be a natural byproduct.

[Charles Liu]

Byproduct.

[Chuck]

That's what I believe.

[Charles Liu]

So not the target, but the byproduct.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Not the target. Happens so often.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I want to read to you. We don't have time for this, but I'm going to do it anyway. I want to read to you a letter that I own.

[Chuck]

All right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Written December 19, 1918.

[Chuck]

Oh.

[Gary]

Oh, I think I know what this will be.

[Charles Liu]

I didn't know you were that old.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

This is to Mr. Allen Hawley, President of the Aero Club of America.

[Gary]

Then I know who wrote this.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Madison Avenue. Dear Mr. Hawley, Many thanks for your very nice Telegram Remembering the 15th anniversary of our first flight at Kitty Hawk.

[Chuck]

Whoa.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Although Wilbur, as well as myself would have preferred to see the aeroplane developed more along peaceful lines, yet I believe that its use in this great war will give encouragement for its use in other ways. Signs. Sincerely yours, Orville. Orville.

[Chuck]

Yeah, look at that.

[Gary]

And in war, take the high ground. And they took it to another level. Pun intended. Right. Let's take another look. Self driving electric cars. You go there and I don't think that's.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's in there. Yeah, yeah, that's.

[Gary]

That's not a limb that's gonna be breaking. That's a.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, no, there are people who say that it'll never happen or whatever. People like driving and. And we already have HOV lanes. Right. If you say you can only go in that if it's a self driving car.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And the self driving cars are going 120 miles an hour, three car lengths between each other. Because they have instant reflexes and they're not putting on makeup and they're not texting and they're not. They could and they still.

[Chuck]

There are cars being made right now that don't have steering wheels. So we are going to live in a self driving driverless car in society. At one point.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I think that would have faster than most people.

[Charles Liu]

Agree.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Do you agree or not?

[Charles Liu]

I think that self driving vehicles will be as prevalent as public transportation is.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Good.

[Charles Liu]

There will still be private transportation for which drivers will still be necessary.

[Chuck]

And listen, you'll drive on the back roads and stuff like that. You'll be able to drive your car. Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But one day at some point they'll become like horses. Yeah. Okay. You can still ride your horse, your horses at the stables, right.

[Chuck]

You go get your horse and you.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Drive and you ride it, right? So now your car, your car is.

[Chuck]

At the garage at the trash.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, it's a special place where people.

[Chuck]

That'S what I mean, back roads, they.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Still want to drive their car. They go there and they drive the car.

[Chuck]

Here's when it's going to happen. At some point you have to make the cars talk to one another and the road itself talk to the car. And at that point, at that point, you won't be allowed to drive on the road.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You want to switch lanes. It tells the other cars, I'm switching lanes and they open up for you. Half all the accidents happen that way. You don't see who's in your blind spot.

[Gary]

But building that infrastructure into the highways and byways is going to be so expensive.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Dude, we went from horse drawn buggies in 1905 to. To. You couldn't give away a horse in 1915 with gas stations and paved roads for automobile tires. And that happened in 10 years.

[Gary]

I don't know if you've noticed lately, but things are bit more expensive.

[Charles Liu]

Yes. And there are still millions of the side. Are you on the side of science?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What?

[Chuck]

The side of science.

[Charles Liu]

There are still millions of square miles of North America where there isn't high speed Internet. So you gotta remember that these are very regional solutions. Right now we can extrapolate on what's gonna happen in, in New York City. But the driving from Laramie, Wyoming to Fargo, North Dakota is not likely to be the same as driving from La Sunset Boulevard in 1950.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Many of those farmers still had horse drawn tractors. Yes. So.

[Charles Liu]

But I'm talking about, we're talking about the entire world.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You're gonna have the Eisenhower freeway system. Highway system in the United States.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Gary]

It's gonna be limited to certain areas. I'm afraid neuroscience will advance. So far we understand the human minds well enough that mental illness will be cured. You've also gone into developing antiviral serum and cures cancer. Do you feel that?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, I saw some cancers. So with the neuroscience, which is still kind of in its infancy, so I have very high expectations for it. Psychologists hate it when I say this, but I mean it's with love that to me, psychology is to neuroscience what alchemy is to chemistry.

[Chuck]

How can you mean that with love? Hey listen, I like what you're doing. But one day you're just out of work. Okay, just know this.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You got someone on the couch and you for months and months and months trying to cure their illness. The neuroscientists said, where is it? Oh, it's a nip tuck right here. There's a neurosynaptic thing there. And they nip and tuck and you're done and you're out and no one is on the street. Crazy. There's no insane asylums.

[Gary]

Is this where we get to implants that. That just bypasses?

[Charles Liu]

Yeah, that's a great point.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I don't know if it's surgery or implants or that are removable. Then you go back to your original style.

[Gary]

So let's look at AI. Let's look at the influence AI will have in the world of medicine. Is this now us getting to a more vertical line on the exponential.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The line always looks vertical when you're at that end of the exponential. It's always looks vertical to you. Like all the advances happened just in recent years. But I want to get to the AI point to the extent that can help with medicines. I think one of my predictions was we have medicines that this is not some new prediction. I'm just echoing what's already been floating around. But I'm putting a timestamp on it. That medicine will be tuned to your genetic profile so that there are zero side effects.

[Gary]

Yes. You did make that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes. And if we know your. Why is it that you break out in hives and you don't ingesting the same chemical? There's something different about your genetic profile or your hormonal profile. We will know that, understand it, so that side effects will be a thing of the past. That's one of the predictions.

[Gary]

You do make that prediction. I'll get it in there.

[Charles Liu]

Yes. I think what will happen is that we'll be able to control behaviors very well by 2050, but we still won't be able to cure the diseases by 2050. There's a lot to you think eventually.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Just not by 2050.

[Charles Liu]

Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Charles Liu]

It's an issue of when we are able now technologically.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Did you say when?

[Charles Liu]

No, I said when.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Good. Thank you.

[Chuck]

Do you say kuhwhip?

[Charles Liu]

It depends if I'm speaking to Huillhuitan or not. Yes. And I never like qu'whit in. In a quarter century, we'll be able to help everybody who have behavioral problems solve their behaviors. But that doesn't necessarily mean we'll have solved their diseases. And that is what I Would like to see.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That means they'll be living with the disease controlled by some medication or implant, rather than have it removed from them entirely.

[Charles Liu]

That's my opinion.

[Gary]

Is it safe to say that going forward into the future, the changes will happen even quicker?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That is the nature of being on an exponential. That's my point. There's no doubt. If you look at the pace of patents, the pace of research papers, the doubling times, which is how you know you're on an exponential. They've been consistent over the decades. So what that means is in a few years, there'll be double the number of research papers on a subject in a field than has appeared up until that point. That's how you know you're on an exponential.

[Charles Liu]

And the caveat is sometimes the exponentials turn over. There's a period of exponential growth followed by a leveling off.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Charles Liu]

For example, the human population. Thomas Malthus a couple hundred years ago predicted that if you use exponential growth, soon there will be so many people in the world that there will be not enough food production ever. But now we know that our predictions and here's one that we could test in 30 years, 30 years from now, the exponential growth of the human population will turn over. We're gonna top out worldwide around 10 billion.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's about right.

[Charles Liu]

And stop.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, but that's. But you gave the wrong.

[Chuck]

Actually start falling as it has in many places.

[Gary]

People have already made those decisions.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wait, hold on, hold on. You put a cart in front of a horse there.

[Charles Liu]

Oh, okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Malthus is wrong. Not because we our exponential growth of the population will level off at 10 billion. He's wrong because we applied science to farming so that now we are producing more food on less land with fewer farmers than ever before. That's why he was wrong. He did not imagine that farm production would ever become more efficient or more voluminous than it was at the time. And he was just doing a linear extrapolation against the population of the. We are awash in food. Anyone who is starving in the world.

[Gary]

How much of our food goes to waste?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

A third of it or something. I saw the numbers. So anyone who's starving, it's not because the world doesn't have food to feed them. There's some geopolitical circumstance that prevents it. So nobody liked my prediction?

[Charles Liu]

No, no, no, no.

[Gary]

Those are good predictions. Last time I I credit for being brave enough to step there.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. And I even got some critiques in the moment.

[Charles Liu]

Give me each of you one final prediction about something that you would like us to know.

[Chuck]

See. So here's my prediction for it's going to go.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Don't confuse what you want to be true from what will likely be true.

[Chuck]

This is my honest assessment, not my desire. Good. Okay. That we are at a global tipping point with respect to democracy globally. And it's either going to be that people want to govern themselves through democratic processes or that we're all so sleep that we descend into authoritarianism worldwide. And if we do, getting back is gonna take so many generations, none of us will be here to see it.

[Charles Liu]

Gary, a prediction that we find the.

[Gary]

Desire to fully engage with climate change because the knock on effect has influence on so many global societies. We've. We're suffering for climate migration, we're suffering from rising sea levels. And if we can bring the desire to challenge and tackle that positively, I think that will be something we can all look to as the positive step.

[Chuck]

I so hope you're right.

[Gary]

So do I.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But I'm not sure that we will.

[Gary]

I'm not sure I hope we find the desire.

[Chuck]

That'd be great.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

By the way, a little known fact, because I only realized this months ago when I first saw Steven Spielberg's movie A.I. from the 1990s. There's an entire sustained scene underwater.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And you go underwater and there's a Statue of Liberty completely submerged.

[Chuck]

Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So they already took climate change.

[Chuck]

Yes, they did.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

To the limit.

[Chuck]

To the limit.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

At the time that movie was supposed to take place. And that was just a side fact.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Because the real movie was about the AI that they were creating.

[Chuck]

So cool, man.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Gary]

But once again, it's. Take it to the extreme to make the example, to make you think we don't want to go there.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So they do not create the future that they invented for. All right, what's your best prediction?

[Charles Liu]

That within 25 years there will be a professional sport played in orbit. Whoa.

[Gary]

Satellite shooting.

[Chuck]

Shooting.

[Gary]

That'd be.

[Chuck]

Look at that.

[Charles Liu]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

Spaceballs.

[Charles Liu]

There you go.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I like that.

[Charles Liu]

Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Cause we, you know, Chuck is our geek in chief when we talk about sports too.

[Gary]

Oh, yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So when that happens, this will be the first thing you do. We'll do it after. You can do an episode on your own podcast.

[Charles Liu]

I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right, we gotta. We gotta wrap this up, dude. I enjoyed this topic.

[Charles Liu]

Thank you.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Come up with these cool topics for a special edition.

[Chuck]

Great.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Gary]

I have time on my hands.

[Charles Liu]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right, dude. Charles, Chuck, Gary, thanks for pleasure. This has been Star Talk special edition. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, as always bidding you to keep looking up.