Legendary Inventor Danny Hillis (Plus Kevin Kelly) — Unorthodox Classes from 400+ Patents, Fixing the Inconceivable, Actual Al vs. “AI”, Hiring Richard Feynman, Working with Steve Jobs, Creating Parallel Computing, and A lot Extra (#782)

December 12, 2024

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Danny Hillis is an inventor, scientist, writer, and engineer. Whereas finishing his doctorate at MIT, he pioneered the parallel computer systems which are the premise for the processors used for AI and most high-performance pc chips. He has greater than 400 issued patents, protecting parallel computer systems; disk arrays; most cancers diagnostics and remedy; varied digital, optical, and mechanical gadgets; and the pinch-to-zoom show interface. He’s a co-founder of The Lengthy Now Basis, and the designer of its 10,000-year mechanical clock.

Danny has based a number of firms, however his solely common job was as the primary Disney Fellow at Disney Imagineering. He has revealed scientific papers in Science, Nature, Fashionable Biology, and Worldwide Journal of Theoretical Physics and written extensively on know-how for Newsweek, Wired, and Scientific American. He’s the writer of The Sample on the Stone: The Easy Concepts That Make Computer systems Work and Connection Machine. He’s now a founding companion with Utilized Invention, engaged on new concepts in cybersecurity, medication, and agriculture.

Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly) is the founding govt editor of WIRED journal, the previous editor and writer of the Entire Earth Overview, and a bestselling writer of books on know-how and tradition, together with Wonderful Recommendation for Dwelling, The Inevitable, What Know-how Desires, and Vanishing Asia, his three-volume picture book-set capturing West, Central, and East Asia. Kelly is the writer of the favored essay “1000 True Followers.” Subscribe to Kevin’s e-newsletter, Recomendo, at recomendo.com. Each version options 6 transient private suggestions of cool stuff.

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#782: Legendary Inventor Danny Hillis (Plus Kevin Kelly) — Unorthodox Classes from 400+ Patents, Fixing the Inconceivable, Actual Al vs. ‘AI’, Hiring Richard Feynman, Working with Steve Jobs, Creating Parallel Computing, and A lot Extra

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Need to hear the final time Kevin Kelly was on this present? Take heed to our dialog right here through which we mentioned Kevin’s lengthy wager towards the human inhabitants, resurrecting extinct species, energetic optimism vs. passive optimism, Kevin’s $20 time machine, the “dumbsmarten” way forward for AI, suggestions for touring with youngsters, the thrill of being a vacationer in a single’s personal city, sabbaticals, and way more.

What was your favourite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know within the feedback.

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

Join with Danny Hillis:

Utilized Invention

Join with Kevin Kelly:

Web site | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube

SHOW NOTES

[07:56] How Danny and Kevin first met by way of Stewart Model.
[09:58] The funniest one who ever opened Danny’s interview field of surprising objects.
[14:01] Danny’s transition to Disney as a Disney Fellow and Vice President of Imagineering.
[19:12] The distinction between engineering and creative approaches to problem-solving.
[28:56] The event of parallel computing and founding Considering Machines.
[37:15] The three standards by which initiatives are chosen at Utilized Invention.
[40:36] Zero-trust packet routing (ZPR) and the way forward for cybersecurity.
[46:46] Studying by “hanging out” with specialists like Seymour Papert, Marvin Minsky, and Richard Feynman.
[59:20] Danny’s work in biotechnology and most cancers analysis with David Agus.
[01:07:44] Staying sustainable with systems-oriented considering in agriculture — as nature meant.
[01:16:10] Danny’s superpower.
[01:17:48] Homeschooling, schooling on the transfer, and the affect of Mrs. Wilner.
[01:22:00] The failure of Considering Machines and different regrets/surprises.
[01:26:00] The “Entanglement” that blurs pure and technological boundaries.
[01:30:54] The present state of AI versus true intelligence.
[01:34:34] How AI might assist humanity higher perceive its place on the intelligence spectrum.
[01:39:42] What the long run appears wish to a short-term pessimist/long-term optimist.
[01:50:50] The cone of silence we by no means heard from once more.
[01:53:10] Debugging dementia and different ailments.
[01:58:05] The MRI various Danny’s tackling.
[02:00:51] We don’t we now have a freezer model of the buyer microwave oven?
[02:01:23] Danny’s place in pinch-to-zoom iPhone innovation historical past.
[02:04:51] The professionals and cons of patents for inventors and society.
[02:08:01] Inventors Danny finds inspiring.
[02:10:04] Danny’s cause-and-effect heresy.
[02:14:47] Quantum computing and its implications.
[02:18:34] The scientific pursuit of understanding consciousness.
[02:23:00] The query Danny asks himself earlier than investing time in a venture.
[02:25:26] Danny’s 10,000-year billboard.
[02:29:49] Parting ideas.

MORE DANNY HILLIS QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“What the inventor does is definitely a really small piece of it. What society does is it creates these preconditions for invention. And as soon as these preconditions are in place, then it’s only a matter of placing collectively the puzzle items and making it work.”
— Danny Hillis

“I’ve additionally developed the power to go looking out the individuals who actually know the factor and hang around with them … It’s not that I do know issues different individuals don’t, however perhaps I do know a special mixture of issues that different individuals do know and I’m sort of keen to be taught the issues I don’t know and have a method of doing it by simply hanging out with people who find themselves smarter than I’m.”
— Danny Hillis

“Intelligence is a really sophisticated multifactored factor like life. It’s not only one factor. On the beginnings of AI, we thought the issues that had been exhausting for us to do had been the intelligence … Because it seems … the exhausting half was the stuff that we had been so good at, we didn’t even discover — like recognizing a face, leaping to a conclusion, having an instinct about one thing.”
— Danny Hillis

“It’s a lot more durable to think about options to issues than it’s to think about issues.”
— Danny Hillis

“Perhaps I’ve saved a superpower that children have … They’re not afraid to go in and see one thing new and unusual and begin enjoying with it.”
— Danny Hillis

“I attempt to ask the query, ‘Will this make a distinction over how a lot time and the way lengthy will that distinction matter?’ If it makes a number of distinction after I’m lifeless, I’d slightly do this.”
— Danny Hillis

“I learn sufficient papers that I’ve questions, since you’re losing the time of a Marvin Minsky or a Richard Feynman when you don’t ask them one thing that makes them assume. So I might say most of my studying was from the individuals, not the papers. However I all the time do homework beforehand to see the place the fascinating questions are.”
— Danny Hillis

“Nice academics … see the place you might be they usually stretch you to someplace you will get to.”
— Danny Hillis

“Lots of people’s use of computer systems is now, they sort of know the magic incantations that trigger this library to try this, however they don’t actually know all of the issues which are happening beneath that that make it work. And so it’s turning into extra like nature. Nature, we used to sort of know, ‘Properly, right here’s the magic incantations we use for making beer. We don’t know actually why this makes good beer, this makes dangerous beer, or this makes champagne, however we all know once we do that, it does that,’ and that’s sort of turning into our relationship with computer systems. So I feel that what’s taking place … the excellence between the pure and the synthetic is turning into entangled … it might simply sort of go away as a result of there nearly is not any pure nature and there nearly is not any pure know-how that we totally perceive.”
— Danny Hillis

“I’ve a granddaughter [who] can sit and speak to an electrician as if she is aware of what electrical energy is, simply through the use of the correct phrases and saying phrases that she’s heard earlier than and so forth. And she will be able to sort of faux it fairly nicely, however she has no thought what she’s speaking about. And that’s principally the place AI is true at this second.”
— Danny Hillis

“It could be simpler to truly make intelligence than to grasp intelligence.”
— Danny Hillis

“I feel people, as we all know them at the moment, are sort of midway between monkeys and what we’re going to turn out to be. … We’re on this transitional section. We’ve nonetheless received a number of monkey in us, and I’m actually excited by that factor that we’re going to turn out to be.”
— Danny Hillis

“Usually, I’m a short-term pessimist and a long-term optimist.”
— Danny Hillis

“Significantly better to be a peasant at the moment than to be a king a few centuries in the past when it comes to your well being, meals that you simply ate, the way you spend your time … your consolation, all the pieces.”
— Danny Hillis

“I don’t consider in trigger and impact.”
— Danny Hillis

“An thought has much more sticking energy than any bodily factor you can construct.”
— Danny Hillis

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Legendary Inventor Danny Hillis (Plus Kevin Kelly) — Unorthodox Classes from 400+ Patents, Fixing the Inconceivable, Actual Al vs. “AI”, Hiring Richard Feynman, Working with Steve Jobs, Creating Parallel Computing, and A lot Extra (#782)

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

SHOW NOTES

MORE DANNY HILLIS QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

PEOPLE MENTIONED

Associated

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