So I have been obsessed with the brain for
about a decade, and in 2013, as he mentioned,
I sold my company Braintree and I started
Kernel, and what I'm trying to do with Kernel
is build the tools that will allow us to read
and write our neural code, which is similar
to how we've been able to sequence the genome
and we've built tools to edit the genome.
So when I announced Kernel, a lot of people
thought the idea was crazy but I started it
because I believed that working on the brain
is the single‑most important thing that
we could focus on as a species, so in this
talk I would like to tell you why. To level
set this discussion, I would like to do a
thought experiment with you. Let's imagine
we're playing a game and that it's half‑time.
And all of us are team human and the rest
of the 7 billion people on this planet and
the first half of the game was a few billion,
a few thousand years we had before this, and
we're now looking towards the second half.
So by show of hands, how many of you are feeling
warm and fuzzy that team human is doing a
good job and we're winning in the first half?
Okay. How many of you are not feeling warm
and fuzzy that we didn't do so well in the
first half? Okay. So now let's say looking
forward to the second half, how many of you
who said you were feeling warm and fuzzy are
feeling great about team human for the second
half? We got a good plan in place, we're feeling
good. Okay. How many of you do not feel warm
and fuzzy about the second half of game play?
Okay. So more. Okay. So the difference about
this game is that there is no definitive score,
each one of us assign our own score, and so
I personally think the score is tied, and
I think that now is the time for us to deeply
contemplate how we might enter this new path.
So for those of you who said that the world ‑‑
that the team human is doing well, I think
have a lot of data to support your opinions
that the world has never been a better place,
global living standards are up, is down, it
seems like every day we hear of a new amazing
scientific discovery, those of you who are
discouraged about the world also have a lot
of data to support you, so we have global
instability, we have political mayhem, inequality
is on the rise, there's a plentiful number
of things we might be worried about, climate
science. So with all these contemplations,
then the question is, what do we do? Next
slide, please. So to baseline myself in this
analysis, I decided to get an expert opinion,
so I asked my 7‑year‑old daughter Genevieve
what her future concerns would be and I brought
them with me. We'll look.
Number one she said her fear is monsters,
number two, parents dying, three, Nageney,
our snake, coming back to life, it was sad,
we brought Nageney out to play, she was in
the bedroom, she found the smallest little
hole in a cabinet, she climbed in, we spent
hours drilling holes in the wall and cabinets,
we can't recover her, we could smell her for
a few months, now she is now scared of her,
and number four t animals taking over the
world. First glance, we look at this, it's
funny, we relate to this, it's cute. But on
closer examination, I actually found that
my concerns about the future are pretty similar
to Genevieve's. First let's take monster's,
I'm afraid of monsters, just not the ones
that hide under my bed.
My father was addicted to drugs for the first
25 years of my life, my stepfather has early
symptoms of Alzheimer's, watching someone
lose their humanhood before your lives is
a devastating experience, and I suffered from
debilitating depression from age 24 to 34
where in my mind I was tortured and I couldn't
find a way out. I spent a decade ‑‑ let's
take the second one. Previous slide, please.
Second. Let's take dying. I grew up in a deeply
religious family in Utah where Mormonism was
the only reality through which I understood.
And I was told that God had a plan, that someone
was in charge, we were all taken care of,
and that if I obeyed his rules, I would have
a wonderful afterlife.
As an adult I decided to leave the faith,
so for the first time I had to deal with a
situation that I had never confronted before,
that I had to now build in my life, my fellow
humans, any previous version of humans that
I previously contemplated. I could no longer
say without a doubt that God is in charge,
all is under control. And with that realization
I thought okay, well then who is in charge?
It must be my fellow humans who are in charge.
With that information I looked at the history
of human civilization and how we treat each
other and how we treat this planet, and I
thought, oh oh.
Third on the list, a dead snake coming back
to life. This is the fear that something unseen
will come back and bite us. We know this fear.
This is climate change, technology, AI, just
to name a few. Not only that, but since we're
playing a game here, with winners continuing
to exist and those who don't go extinct, the
second half of the game we're about to play
is going to be much harder. We don't understand
or pay attention to things we cannot see.
So when we are paying attention are our systems
simply can't work fast enough to keep up.
This leaves humans in a reactive position
where we only respond to things that reach
a level of crisis or emergency. And all it
takes is a single person who knows how to
hack electrical grids, build biotech or deliver
nuclear weapons to cause irrevocable damage.
Our complexity has made us extremely fragile.
So over the last year, I guess the last one,
animals taking over the world, so quite frankly,
I think the current debate about AI creating
an existential risk is misprioritized. I quite
frankly am much more fearful of the damage
and destruction that is potentially caused
by human behavior, or as my girlfriend likes
to say, we have 99 problems, and an algorithm
ain't one. So collectively, humans remain
unchanged from thousands of years ago. So
over time, the scenery has changed and through
this quality of life has improved, but when
it comes to human behavior, the song remains
the same, we've gone from killing each other
with stones to murdering each other en masse
with automatic weapons, our technological
tools progress exponentially while human behavior
capability has flat lined. So my daughter's
fears, it turns out, are pretty similar to
mine. It's half‑time and I'm looking at
the scoreboard and I feel uneasy.
So I believe humans individually and collectively,
our systems, our thinking and our ideas are
woefully ill equipped to deal with the future.
We are stuck in the Paleolithic age of our
cognitive evolution. Now, I realize some of
you may think I'm being overly pessimistic
in saying all this, but I want to call a spade
a spade. We have very real, very hard problems
to solve with no quick and easy answers. In
fact, if I were to ask each one of you in
this room what you think should be done, I
bet you could readily tell me your idea.
For example, if we could just get rid of corporate
money out of politics, if we could just get
everyone access to education, if we could
just depend upon scientists to solve our problems
and hope that our systems don't break in the
meantime, ultimately any one or all three
of these solutions might help us and build
a better future, but I can only tell you from
what I believe personally and to be critically
important to the advancement of the human
race, everything we are, everything we build
and everything we aspire to become begins
with the brain. I believe that if we want
to understand, if we can understand how the
brain works, we might be able to define and
overcome the default configuration that leads
to the fundamental problems we face as a society.
So based upon our current brain technology
such as EEG, MRI, deep brain stimulation or
retinal prosthesis, we have quadriplegics
that can move robotic arms, allow doctors
to image otherwise invisible tumors, allow
patients with Parkinson's to ameliorate their
tremors and the blind on see 60 pixels of
meaningful light respectively. So we also
have tools readily available to us like cognitive
behavioral therapy, therapy, exercise, medication
and diet, that are all known to reduce anxiety,
depression and a number of mental illnesses.
But the question is are these tools enough?
So scale matters.
Each one of us has roughly 86 billion neurons,
these tools show us the potential of what
we can accomplish with access to a minuscule
subset of neurons, at a time, but what if
we could record from and write to millions
or billions of neurons? If we could crack
the neural code and that is if we could read
and write the language of our nervous system,
could we lessen devastating disease and dysfunction
and proactively monitor our neural health?
Could we better manage our internal state
and explore vast untapped potential of the
human race? And could we tap into global consciousness
and feel what it's like to walk in another
person's shoes? Could we enhance our abilities
to remember, imagine, communicate, empathize,
love and express creativity? The total cognitive
output of humanity is not zero sum. It's potentially
infinite.
So if you had the ability to enhance yourself,
what one feature would you improve? My girlfriend
says even with the most powerful form of cognitive
tools that I never could be funny. I don't
think she's right. I think I could. And I
think there's hope for all of us in the things
we aspire for. There is positive proven ceiling.
But honestly, if you ask me what I think will
happen, if we could develop these tools for
writing and reading neural code, I don't know,
the top neuroscientists in the world don't
know. If you asked the top scientists in 1872
what electricity might power one day, I doubt
they would have said power washers and dryers,
dating apps. We need to better interface with
the brain if we want to consciously evolve
as a species.
Who is going to fund this endeavor? Who is
going to build the tools that are sufficiently
powerful on a time scale relevant to our survival?
When I looked around, that is why I have built
a team of 35 and personally invested $100 million,
to build the tools that allow these questions
to be asked. But it's not enough. So we need
neuroscientists. Neuroscience is incredibly
difficult, it's expensive, sometimes takes
decades to bring these technologies to market,
so despite truly impressive discoveries we
have made during the '90s, we've mapped a
minuscule portion of the brain and the structure.
Your neural code, that is what it is and how
it works, is still in alien language.
Furthermore, the study of the brain is underresourced.
In the U.S. the brain initiative was funded
at one‑third of one percent of the totals
NIH budget, pharma R & D budgets have dropped
to zero and antidepressants and anti‑psychotics
are derivative of all drugs, so we lack effective
treatments, let alone cures for majority of
neurological and psychiatric illness, despite
remarkable progress, the harsh realities,
the paralyzed still can't walk, the blind
still can't see, and the depressed still can't
imagine a way out. It's half‑time, time
is not necessarily on our side. We need a
game plan. We need more investors, need more
scientists and engineers, we need more storytellers
to inspire us in this pursuit. Now is the
time to focus on the brain.
It's easy for us to point at the moon and
say, hey, let's go there. But what do we do
if I say hey, let's go inside here? Let's
make neuroscience the new rocket science.
I've spoken a lot about fears driving action
today, but the reality is that humanity's
greatest accomplishments have been achieved
when anchored in hope and aspiration, we have
all fears, it's embed in our reptilian brains,
we mistakenly fear low probability events
more high than others. I didn't share my burdens
with Genevieve, I don't want to burden her
already burdened mind. I do want to be able
to look at her and my two boys with the justice
most confidence and tell them that I did everything
in my power to give them a world that they
could build upon and deliver to their children.
Thank you.
(applause)
