Mining asteroids, traveling on laser beams, and developing self-aware robots: science fiction or science fact? World-renowned physicist and futurist Michio Kaku says that these milestones are not only in humanity's future, but are beginning to occur right now. Dr. Kaku joins the Curiosity Podcast for a fascinating inside look at interstellar travel, artificial intelligence, human immortality, and alien contact. Additional links from Dr. Michio Kaku: Official Website of Dr. Michio Kaku Dr. Michio Kaku on Twitter @MichioKaku "The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth" "Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel" "The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind" Other resources discussed: How Elon Musk Names His Inventions | Inverse New technology is forcing us to confront the ethics of bringing people back from the dead | Quartz Eternime wants you to live forever as a digital ghost | CNET Augmented Eternity and Swappable Identities | MIT When you have an itch, what is happening under your skin? | HowStuffWorks Cody Gough on Twitter @ProducerCody Ashley Hamer on Twitter @SmashleyHamer Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter withCody Gough andAshley Hamer — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Mining asteroids, traveling on laser beams, and developing self-aware robots: science fiction or science fact? World-renowned physicist and futurist Michio Kaku says that these milestones are not only in humanity's future, but are beginning to occur right now. Dr. Kaku joins the Curiosity Podcast for a fascinating inside look at interstellar travel, artificial intelligence, human immortality, and alien contact.
Additional links from Dr. Michio Kaku:
Other resources discussed:
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/michio-kaku-on-interstellar-travel-artificial-intelligence-and-immortality
CODY GOUGH: I am curious. Why is the second space race so important to pay attention to?
MICHIO KAKU: Well, first of all, you have to realize that the dinosaurs did not have a space program. And that's why the dinosaurs are not here today to talk about it. They didn't know what hit them.
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CODY GOUGH: Hi, I'm Cody Gough with the pro space program, curiosity.com.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today, we're going to learn about the future of humanity.
CODY GOUGH: Interstellar travel, artificial intelligence, and even human immortality. They're not just science fiction, they're starting to happen right now.
ASHLEY HAMER: This week, we really explore what we don't know because curiosity makes you smarter. This is the Curiosity podcast.
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CODY GOUGH: We're not going to see the Earth as doomed, but at some point, you've got to realize that our planet does have an expiration date. Do we have what it takes to get off this rock before the end of the world?
ASHLEY HAMER: Today's guest thinks so. Dr. Michio Kaku is a professor of physics at City University of New York, co-founder of string field theory, and the author of a lot of super popular science books, including his newest book, The Future of Humanity. This guy is the real deal.
CODY GOUGH: If you like reading articles on curiosity.com, then you will love his book, which is super accessible and gets into all the details we won't have time to talk about in this episode.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, we don't really have time to completely explain all the technology he mentions, but we'll do our best.
CODY GOUGH: Just to buckle up because humanity's future hangs in the balance.
MICHIO KAKU: Now, we do have a space program. But NASA was basically the agency to nowhere. It never went anywhere, never did anything except shoot satellites around the planet Earth and explore a few planets. But now we're entering the second golden era of space exploration, which is totally different from the first. The first one was very expensive. NASA's budget in 1966 was 5% of the federal budget. That's huge. That's gigantic. That is unsustainable. Now it is 0.5% of the federal budget. And now guess who's bankrolling all these fantastic space shots? Private individuals.
If you would have asked me five, 10 years ago, would there be a moon rocket backed up by private enterprise for free? For free, given to the public to launch astronauts to the moon with a reusable rocket. I would say, you were nuts. Absolutely nuts. But that's happening now. Elon Musk, a billionaire, is financing the Falcon Heavy rocket, which is a moon rocket. That's why millions of people tuned in on the internet to watch the launch of the Falcon Heavy. Thousands lined up the streets of Cape Canaveral.
This was a historic event. For the first time in 50 years, we launched a moon rocket, a moon rocket from Cape Canaveral. Not only that, it was for free, and third, it was reusable. I mean, what's there not to love?
CODY GOUGH: What were your thoughts when you watched that launch?
MICHIO KAKU: Well, when I watched the launch, I saw the Tesla, the red Roadster being launched into outer space, and I thought to myself, well, look, Elon Musk is a showman. I'm sure he's going to get a lot of flak from science buffs for shooting a sports car into space. But I said to myself, well, look, it's his sports car.
[LAUGHS]
And after all, he's paying for it and we're getting a free moon rocket. I mean, think about that. That is unheard of. Now you probably saw the movie The Martian with Matt Damon, that costs a hundred million dollars. You know that the Indians sent a space probe to Mars for $70 million. Hollywood movies now cost more than actual space shots. They had to give an Oscar for the best supporting spacecraft. That's how cheap space travel has become. Who would have thought that?
CODY GOUGH: Now in your book, The Future of Humanity, which by the way, is a very accessible read. If you're a fan of curiosity.com, and reading anything that we write about, you're going to be a fan of this book. Because it's written in a way, it reads like a very long Curiosity article. And the thesis at the start of the book is, look, humanity needs to evolve and go to outer space, and advance certain technologies because we're in trouble if we don't.
MICHIO KAKU: That's right. I once interviewed Carl Sagan and he said that, look, no one is saying we should evacuate the Earth to go to Mars. No one is saying that. But we need an insurance policy against meteor impacts, against a germ warfare, against global warming. And we shouldn't leave the Earth to escape global warming, global warming is something that we have to deal with politically on the planet Earth. You can't escape global warming that way.
However, he said, we do need an outpost. We do have to become a two planet species because we live in the middle of a cosmic shooting gallery. Eventually, the sun is going to eat up the Earth anyway. And so we know that is practically a law of physics that the Earth will be destroyed at some point or other. And mother nature tells us that 99% of all lifeforms eventually go extinct. Extinction is the norm. You can forget about mother nature being cuddly, and kind, and cute. Yeah, mother nature can be that, but the mother nature can also hit you with a supervolcano, hit you with a gigantic asteroid and wipe you off the face of the Earth. And remember, only 0.1% of species on the Earth even survive to tell about it. The rest of them die. Right under your feet are the fossils of all the lifeforms that are extinct now. And we don't want to become one of them.
ASHLEY HAMER: In his book, Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan puts it this way. Quote, "since in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space. Every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring, not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable, staying alive."
CODY GOUGH: You talk a lot in your book about the space race. And I feel like that's a major focus. Obviously, of us getting off Earth, we have to have a space race. The first space race was the US versus Russia trying to go to the moon. Are we in the second space race? And if we're there, then who are the players and what's the finish line?
MICHIO KAKU: Well, believe it or not, one space race is between Silicon Valley billionaires. We're going to have a traffic jam around the moon. You realize that we have not one, but two moon rockets, and a third one in the making. In addition to Elon Musk of SpaceX, we have Jeff Bezos, the richest man on Earth, founder of Amazon. He has endowed his own private spaceport in Texas. He doesn't go to Cape Canaveral. He has his own Cape Canaveral in Texas. And he has his own fleet of rockets called the Blue Origin series. So we have not one, not two, but three potential candidates to be the first to go back to the moon, and then to Mars.
NASA has the SLS, Elon Musk has the Falcon Heavy, and Jeff Bezos has the Blue Origin series. And Elon Musk even has an ace in the hole. He has an even bigger rocket called the BFR. B for big, R for rocket, and you could imagine what the F stands for.
[LAUGHS]
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, we won't get into that on this podcast. We're finding other planets like the planets around TRAPPIST-1, and in other solar systems. I can wrap my head around the space race when we're going to Mars, but how do we get somewhere that's dozens of light years away?
MICHIO KAKU: Well, first of all, it's going to be done in steps. The first step is to send microchips to these extrasolar planets. Stephen Hawking, my colleague, has gotten Silicon Valley billionaires, once again, to fund this mission to the stars with laser beams. By firing a bank of a thousand billion watts of energy at a fleet of parachutes, you can inflate tiny chips and shoot them toward Proxima Centauri. They would reach there in 20 years using off the shelf technology.
And then beyond that, we can go to sublight speed by going to fusion rockets, antimatter rockets, and ramjet fusion engines. That'll take us to maybe 10% to 50% speed of light. But if you're a Trekkie, of course, you don't want to go light speed, you want to go super light speed. And that would require, well, string theory, which is what I do for a living, which makes the possibility of warp drive.
So warp drive is cutting edge physics. And we, physicists, believe that, yes, there are solutions of Einstein's equation, which allow for warp drive. But how practical they are is still a matter of debate.
ASHLEY HAMER: While we don't have time to define every piece of technology Dr. Kaku mentions, he does reference warp drive again later in this interview. So a quick explanation might be helpful. Warp drive is a theoretical form of faster than light travel that works by warping space time, the fabric of the universe, basically. In his book, Dr. Kaku illustrates this with the idea of moving across a rug to reach a table.
The normal way you do that is, obviously, by walking across the rug to the table. But you could also tie a rope to the table and drag it, which would make the rug bunch up and bring the table to you. Warp drive does that to the fabric of the universe. It compresses the space in front of you so you don't have to travel as far. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, but with warp drive, there's a loophole. You just shorten the distance you travel instead of increasing your speed.
CODY GOUGH: Can you explain, very high level, what is string theory and what is string field theory?
MICHIO KAKU: Well, string theory allows you to explain what is matter made of. We think that all particles are nothing but tiny vibrating strings. That's why we have so many particles because we have so many musical notes on a string. So a physics is the laws of harmony of these strings. Chemistry is the melodies you can play on these strings. The universe is a symphony of strings. And the mind of God that Albert Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life chasing after, the mind of God is cosmic music resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace.
Now, when string theory was first created in 1968, it was a mishmash of hundreds of different kinds of formulas because we didn't understand the nature of these vibrating strings. I wanted an equation 1 inch long that would satisfy Einstein's dream. He wanted an equation 1 inch long that would read the mind of God. That's what he wanted. That was his goal in life. Well, that 1 inch equation is my equation. That's called string field theory. String field theory is that 1 inch equation that summarizes all of string theory.
CODY GOUGH: What's the equation?
MICHIO KAKU: Well, I can't write it down on radio but you can get it by going into the archives of Physical Review magazine, where all the equations are listed, or you can get one of my PhD level books. Springer publishes my PhD level books. You have to have, unfortunately, five years of calculus and three years of graduate physics, and then you can read my book.
[LAUGHS]
But the equation is 1 inch long.
CODY GOUGH: Wow. Well, congratulations.
MICHIO KAKU: Thank you. However, I should caution you that we now have something called M-theory, which includes membranes. And that's why at this point, we're stuck right now. Because in addition to vibrating strings, we now have vibrating beach balls, and vibrating spheres. We have membranes. And nobody on the planet Earth has that 1 inch equation for membranes yet. Some of the finest minds on Earth, out of all the billions of people on the Earth, the finest minds, some of them are working on trying to find that one inch equation for M-theory for membranes.
CODY GOUGH: Why is it so important to reduce these very complex equations to 1 inch equations?
MICHIO KAKU: Well, believe it or not, the equation for light can be summarized by Maxwell's equations, which simply says df is equal to zero. So that simple equation, which is half an inch long, explains radar, microwaves, laser beams. Einstein's equations are a little bit longer but it's expressed as, the Lagrangian is equal to the square root of minus g times r. That is Einstein's equation, and that is 1 inch long, and that gives you black holes, it gives you the big bang. However, the standard model of particles is the bad boy.
That would require me to sit down and give you a lecture maybe half an inch-- not a half an inch long, but maybe three or four pages long that's the quantum theory, which has quarks, and protons, and neutrons, and Yang-Mills particles, and gluons. He goes on and on and on. That's why we want string theory. Because that equation is 1 inch long and summarizes all of the above.
CODY GOUGH: It sounds more like poetry than a science--
MICHIO KAKU: Physicists are ultimately poets. What do poets and physicists both strive for? Beauty. And what is beauty? Symmetry. And which equation has the largest symmetry known to humans? It is string theory. So string theory has a symmetry called supersymmetry, that's why it's called super. And that symmetry is the largest, most beautiful symmetry ever discovered in the history of science. And that's why string theory has created so much excitement, among both mathematicians and physicists.
CODY GOUGH: Well, let's jump off the page back in to the implications of the technology we're developing. I want to turn back to the space race. I'm thinking about government and economy, and religion and different beliefs. And I'm wondering if policies, and how we act when we're creating outposts in outer space, or colonies on Mars, if they'll be determined similar to how they were in the Wild West or during colonization of places on Earth, where things organically emerge. Or is somebody working on figuring out what ideologies we should bring to space? I mean, how are we going to govern these places the best? Is anybody working on that?
MICHIO KAKU: Well, the short answer is no. It is the Wild West, as you said. However, we have to realize that even the Wild West has some order to it. When Thomas Jefferson, long time ago, initiated the Louisiana Purchase, he doubled the size of America. However, he wrote in his memoirs that it would take a thousand years, a thousand years to colonize the West. Well, we did it in a few decades. Why? Because we discovered gold, gold in California.
In 1849, we had the gold rush. California, we had millions of people within just a few decades in California. Now we're thinking of a new gold rush, the asteroid belt. Not only do we have Silicon Valley billionaires backing moon rockets, we have Google, Google billionaires talking about the mining of asteroids to pay for all these developments, to pay for these rockets, to pay for all these expeditions. One asteroid brought back to Earth, that maybe 50 feet across, could amount to about $50 billion in platinum based metals and also rare earths.
And NASA had a program called asteroid direct, where astronauts would, in fact, grapple and retrieve, and bring back an asteroid. This was actually on the books. However, it's been shelved temporarily. But it could be a way to foot the bill. But of course, that means we're going to have to have treaties because who owns all these riches in outer space? We have the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which basically says, no nuclear weapons in outer space. But it never foresaw the fact that private individuals could create moon rockets. So you can put your stake in the moon for private interests. That was never even considered in 1967. That was considered preposterous. Now it could happen within the next few years.
ASHLEY HAMER: As of this recording, two countries have passed laws to make asteroid mining legal, the United States and Luxembourg. In 2015, the US Congress passed H.R.2262, the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act. Along with legalizing space exploration by private companies, it says that anything an American citizen finds in space, they can keep, use, and sell as they see fit. Luxembourg passed a similar law in 2016. The only problem is that the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 that Dr. Kaku mentioned says that outer space can't be claimed by any country, whether you're talking about colonizing or taking resources. But America and Luxembourg say that because their laws only reference private companies, not countries, they're not actually violating the treaty. It'll probably take an International Court to decide that when the time comes. We've got a link in the show notes if you'd like to read more about that on curiosity.com.
CODY GOUGH: Well, this is what happened in the Wild West. They called this the Wild West because the US government couldn't go, and police, all that huge area. And similarly, if you violate an international treaty, I mean, what are you going to do on the moon? Just throw somebody in handcuffs? Nobody's up there to really enforce it.
MICHIO KAKU: That's right. There are no laws of regulating this stuff. And we may have to create new laws because laws always follow technology. Technology comes first. And then the lawyers start to muddle about it and how to divvy up blame and retributions, and things like that. So that's how fast the technology is going. Things are much cheaper than they were in the 60s, the technology is more advanced than in the 60s, and the law has yet to catch up with this.
CODY GOUGH: I'm wondering about the law down here. You write in the book about the dataless rocket? And that involves lasers incinerating lithium deuterium?
MICHIO KAKU: Lithium deuteride.
CODY GOUGH: Deuteride. Which results in a mini explosion that causes a temperature increase of 100 million degrees Celsius?
MICHIO KAKU: That's right. We're talking fusion. The power of the sun.
CODY GOUGH: That's the sun. Now if we test that on Earth, is there a chance that a bunch of rocket scientists could just incinerate our planet?
MICHIO KAKU: No. First of all, outside Livermore, California, we have the largest laser fusion facility in the world. A huge banks of laser beams, the most powerful laser beams on Earth converge on a tiny, tiny pellet of lithium deuteride. Lithium deuteride is the basic ingredient of the hydrogen bomb. We are talking about a mini H-bomb, but it is so minuscule that it simply releases a burst of energy, but that's it. You're not going to blow up Livermore in California this way.
However, this is a prototype for a fusion rocket. So, yes, many people have looked into the dynamics of what it would take to build a fusion rocket. It's not going to melt down because it has no nuclear waste to generate the heat of a meltdown, but it will generate fabulous amounts of energy. Now fusion reactors do not exist yet on the planet Earth. Period. But we think the ITER fusion reactor in Southern France, which will become operational in the coming years, will attain breakeven. That is creating more energy than it consumes. So a fusion power could not only save us from the greenhouse effect, not only solve the energy crisis, but eventually, it could take us to the stars.
CODY GOUGH: I think your book is so cool because you talk about things like fusion power and you explain exactly what they are. We certainly don't have time on a single podcast to dive into every technology. But for those who aren't aware, what is fusion power and how is it different than nuclear power?
MICHIO KAKU: Well, fission power, which is the power of the atomic bomb, uses uranium. But when you split uranium, what do you get? Nuclear waste. Nuclear waste that is very hot, nuclear waste that can burn right through metals. And that's why we had the Fukushima reactor accident, and Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island. That's the danger of using uranium. Because it creates waste, waste creates heat, and heat causes meltdowns.
Now, fusion reactors are totally different. mother nature does not use uranium to light up the stars. The stars are lit up using fusion of hydrogen, which is clean, no nuclear waste. The waste product of hydrogen burning is helium, which is commercially valuable, in fact. And so a nuclear reactor cannot melt down. Once the nuclear materials are not sufficient to create fusion anymore, it simply shuts off. Automatically, all by itself. It doesn't melt down because there's no nuclear waste. That's why mother nature uses it.
Mother nature does not use uranium. Uranium, we think in the galaxy, may only be found on the planet Earth. It's amazing. Only on the planet Earth do you find uranium fission reactors, like what we find in your backyard. In outer space, we don't expect to see them. And stars, of course, use fusion, not uranium fission.
CODY GOUGH: Well, that's a lot about power in the space race. I've got to ask also about the big debate over artificial intelligence. Elon Musk has mentioned that he's not a fan and there are some red flags you've got to watch out for. And Mark Zuckerberg is pretty bullish on AI. So who's right?
MICHIO KAKU: I think both are right. I think Zuckerberg is right, initially, in the short term because AI will give us prosperity, jobs, it will reinvigorate the economy. In the long term, however, we have to realize that we can't be naive. By the end of the century, robots could be as smart, let's say, as a monkey. Right now, our robots are about as smart as a cockroach, a stupid cockroach. Robots are pretty stupid now. However, eventually, they'll be as smart as a mouse, then a rat, then a rabbit, then a cat, then a dog. And by the end of the century, they may be as smart as a monkey.
CODY GOUGH: By the end of the century?
MICHIO KAKU: Yeah, I think so. Progress in this area is very slow. And you have to realize that monkeys have self awareness. That is, they know they're not human. Robots have no self-awareness. Robots do not know they are robots. You can go up to our most advanced robot on the planet Earth, slapping on his back, congratulated, and he wouldn't know what you just did. It wouldn't a human from a machine. So robots have no self-awareness. But by the end of the century, yeah, Elon Musk is right. They could become self-aware. At that point, they're dangerous. At that point, we should put a chip in their brain to shut them off if they have murderous thoughts.
CODY GOUGH: The first rule of robotics is that it? Or second rule, I think. Who wrote that? Asimov?
MICHIO KAKU: Asimov write the Three Rules of Robotics of Asimov.
ASHLEY HAMER: Isaac Asimov introduced the three laws of robotics in his 1942 short story runaround, which was included in the 1950 collection, I, Robot. They are as follows. The first law, a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. The second law, a robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the first law. The third law, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law.
MICHIO KAKU: And I think that, yeah. I think we should have a fail safe system, which automatically shuts down robots once they decide they want to kill people.
CODY GOUGH: Do you think that once people decide they want robots to kill people, that's going to be impossible to stop?
MICHIO KAKU: At that point, the robot will shut down. When the laws contradict each other, then the robot realizes, oh, I can't fulfill all laws simultaneously. If my master is a serial killer, and my master's ordering me to do all these horrible acts, the robot will shut down.
CODY GOUGH: That's good. That's good to know. Because what are the stakes if we get that wrong, do you think it'll just be a speed bump and maybe halt progress for a bit, or do you think it's going to go full terminator, end of humanity?
MICHIO KAKU: Well, let's take a look, not at this century, but the next century. The 22nd century, when we do have self-aware robots. Robots that can remove that chip in their brain that is a failsafe system. Then what do we do? At that point in the 22nd century, I think we should merge with them.
CODY GOUGH: Merge with robots?
MICHIO KAKU: That's right.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, you talk about being human and changing what it means to be human in the future in your book. So--
MICHIO KAKU: That's right. I think we'll still look like us. We're not going to have brains in a vat of liquid that simply thinks. We're not going to have electrodes dangling from our head, looking like some kind of freak. We have something that I call the caveman principle, or the cave woman principle. Our emotions haven't changed for hundred thousand years. So after you have food and shelter, and a mate, what do you want? You want to look good. You want to have the prestige of the opposite sex. You want to have admiration. That's what you want. And you can't have admiration if you look like a brain in the vat of liquid.
[LAUGHS]
Or electrodes dangling from your head like a freak, no. So I think in the future, when we merge with robots, we'll still pretty much look like us, except we'll have superhuman powers. For example, we can have an avatar, a mechanical avatar not an imaginary one, and our consciousness could be downloaded into a mechanical avatar which has superhuman powers. We could explore the universe as a robot.
CODY GOUGH: That's really a lot to wrap your head around. What about biological avatars, like in the movie Avatar?
MICHIO KAKU: Yeah, I'm talking about mechanical avatars that can survive in any environment, on any star, on any planet. And I think we could do it with laser beams. We're going to have the connectome project map the human brain in this century. Once we have a code that contains the map of the entire brain, I think we'll put it on a laser beam and shoot the laser beam to the moon. In one second, you're on the moon without any booster rockets or accidents to worry about. 20 minutes, you're on Mars. For years, you're on Alpha Centauri.
I think that in outer space, in fact-- I'll stick my neck out-- this superhighway, superhighway of digitized souls rocketing throughout the universe at the speed of light on a laser beam already exists. This is how aliens move from point A to point B. Forget UFOs. UFOs are so past 20th century. Aliens that are very advanced are not going to rocket across the universe with UFOs because that's too clumsy. They'll ride on laser beams. They'll simply put their consciousness on a laser beam and shoot their laser beam at the speed of light throughout the universe. And there could be a superhighway right next to the Earth containing billions of digitized souls, but we are too stupid to know it.
CODY GOUGH: That's really, very science fiction sounding.
MICHIO KAKU: That's right. However, we will have this technology in a hundred years.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, you're a futurist. You've studied all this stuff really closely. What kind of steps are we taking that lead you to believe we can teleport our brains into robots across the--
MICHIO KAKU: The digitization process of your soul is happening now. Just recently, a Silicon Valley company has offered to digitize you. That has taken everything known about you like your credit card transactions, your Instagram, your videotapes, everything, and create a composite of who you are. So in the future, when you go to the library, instead of taking a book out about Winston Churchill, you will talk to Winston Churchill.
You'll sit in front of a holographic image, all the mannerisms, all the stories, all the anecdotes of Winston Churchill in that image. In fact, you're going to be digitized in the future so that your great, great, great, great, great grandkids will go into a library and talk to you. And have a very nice conversation with their famous ancestor, who is part of Curiosity. And so, yeah, I think this is a form of digital immortality.
CODY GOUGH: But that will be a bit of an echo. It's not still going to be you, it'll be more of a copy.
MICHIO KAKU: It'll be indistinguishable from you. Now of course, is that really you? Well, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, it all depends on how you define you.
[LAUGHS]
If you define you as your biological entity, then, yeah, this is a tape recorder. However, if you define you as the sum total of all your experiences, and knowledge, and memories, and sensation. If that is you, then, yeah, we have created an immortal version of you.
CODY GOUGH: How accessible is this kind of technology going to be?
MICHIO KAKU: It already is, to a degree. It's happening now. We're not talking about thousand years in the future. We're talking about now. Silicon Valley is already beginning to look into the possibility of digitizing everything known about you.
ASHLEY HAMER: In fact, it's already been done at least once. Eugenia Kuyda is the co-founder of the Russian AI startup, Luka. Luka's claim to fame is a chat bot Kuyda made from the digital trail of her best friend, Roman Mazurenko, who died when he was hit by a car in 2015. She used the thousands of text messages she exchanged with him to build an interactive AI. Once it was done, the chat bot of Roman was so convincing that even his mother approved. Today, many developers are working on similar programs.
There's the startup Eterni.me, which uses your social media posts and interactions to create a quote, "immortal avatar." Though it was founded in 2014, Eterni.me is still in private beta so you can't use it yet. Hossein Rahnama, a professor at the MIT Media Lab in Ryerson University, is building a similar AI that he calls Augmented Eternity. That's not available yet either. But one thing's for sure, most of us produce a massive digital archive of our personality. Emails, Facebook posts, tweets, Snapchats, Instagram posts, the technology to turn that archive into a digital avatar of yourself exists at this very moment. It's only a matter of time before it's accessible to everyone.
CODY GOUGH: Is this for one percenters? I mean, is digitizing yourself $800 million, or--
MICHIO KAKU: Oh, well, initially, it'll be for rich people like all technologies. All technologies costs money. Therefore, the people who first buy into it will be rich people. But after a while, mass production and costs go down as a consequence. But all technologies obey that curve.
CODY GOUGH: Like airline travel?
MICHIO KAKU: Yeah. when foreign airlines first came out, only the very rich and powerful could ride on airlines commercially. Now everybody does it.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, you mentioned the Human Connectome Project, and I want to go back to that. In the next 50 to 100 years, where do you see life expectancy moving in the traditional sense, and where do you think we're closer to that biological immortality, I guess, where we're elongating with genes or more of a digital immortality?
MICHIO KAKU: I think we'll have both. In the sense that we've already isolated about 60 genes that seem to control the aging process, in the future, we'll take the genes of old people, millions of them, and compare with the genes of young people, millions of them, and see where the aging takes place. And we're doing that now, analyzing where aging takes place.
Now in a car, where does aging take place in a car? Well, the engine. Because that's where you have moving parts and that's where you have combustion. Well, where in a cell do you have combustion and oxidation? The mitochondria. Bingo. We now know where aging takes place. And we'll correct the mistakes that build up. Just like you clean up your engine, we will clean up the mistakes in your DNA and have some form of immortality.
So in the future, your children-- your grandkids, I mean, when they hit the age of 30, they may decide to stop. They may like being 30 for hundreds of years.
CODY GOUGH: Wow. In other civilizations may be doing this, you also write about the transition of humans from a type zero civilization to a type one civilization in the next 100 years. What does that mean?
MICHIO KAKU: Well, we rank, we physicists rank civilizations by energy, not by little green men writing flying saucers. Type one is planetary. They consume planetary energy. They control the weather, for example. Type two is stellar. They control entire stars like Star Trek. The federation of planets is a typical type two civilization. Type three is galactic. They play with black holes. They roam the galactic space lanes like Star Wars.
Now, what are we on this scale? Do we control the weather like a planetary type one? Or do we control the sun like a stellar type two? Do we control the galaxy like a galactic type three? No, we are type zero. We get our energy from dead plants. We don't even rate on this scale. But you take out a calculator and you plug-in the formula, and we are about a hundred years from becoming a type one civilization.
For example, what is the internet? The internet is the first type one technology to hit the market. That's why it's so noble. It is a truly planetary telephone system. And what language will these type one people speak in 2100? Well, already on the internet, English and Mandarin Chinese are the two most popular languages on the internet. What is the Olympics? The beginning of a type one sports. What is Chanel and Gucci? The beginning of a type one fashion. What is rock and roll? The beginning of a type one youth culture. So we're seeing the beginning of a type one power system and also a type one culture happening right before our eyes.
CODY GOUGH: Got it. So the culture component is just the globalization of any particular component of the culture.
MICHIO KAKU: Right. However, this transition is the most dangerous. Between type zero to type one is the most dangerous of all transitions. Because we still have all the fundamentalism, sectarianism, nationalism, that we had when we came out of the swamp. We still have a lot of that garbage with us. But by the time we're type one, will be planetary. A lot of that garbage will be behind us.
CODY GOUGH: And what will these aliens look like if we do run into any?
MICHIO KAKU: Well, I think the aliens, first of all, will have three basic attributes. Why did we become intelligent? We became intelligent for three reasons. One, we have stereo eyes, the eyes of a predator. Because predators are smarter than prey. Two, we have thumbs that is a grasping instrument. A tentacle, a thumb, a claw. Third, language. We can hand down generation after generation knowledge and wisdom. Now in the entire planet Earth, which animals have all three?
CODY GOUGH: Well, we sure do.
MICHIO KAKU: But that's it. Only us.
CODY GOUGH: So you do think that aliens could look very much like us?
MICHIO KAKU: No, they could be like octopus, squids. They could have tentacles instead of opposable thumbs. As long as they have some kind of hand-eye coordination, some kind of language. Most animals, of course, have almost no language at all, or very primitive language of maybe a vocabulary of 20, 30 words. But a child can have a vocabulary in a thousands. And so you see that in the animal kingdom on the Earth, very few animals have all three.
CODY GOUGH: Of course. Now, you never, at any point, would say that we're in danger of extinction in the next couple hundred years, hopefully. There are some other cataclysmic events that may happen in more of a long term, do you think we're going to beat the clock?
MICHIO KAKU: Well, I'm confident that the transition to type one, well, that transition is the most important and we're very close to it. And I'm pretty confident that we'll make it, but by the skin of our teeth. We'll just squeak by because that's what a democracy is. Democracy's debate everything till the very last minute. So the question is, when we finally resolve to get rid of nuclear weapons and global warming and bio germs, at that point, is it going to be too late? That's not clear.
CODY GOUGH: And you think that the US will lead the charge?
MICHIO KAKU: Well, let's hope so. One of the reasons why, for example, Elon Musk thinks there are no aliens out there visiting us anytime soon is because they fell into this trap of self destruction. Self destruction because of nuclear weapons and global warming, and things like that. So we have to realize , that, well 99.9% of all lifeforms didn't make it.
CODY GOUGH: What are you the most optimistic about and believe will happen in the next 100 years?
MICHIO KAKU: I believe, and I'll stick my neck out, I believe that we will make contact with an extraterrestrial civilization in outer space in this century. We'll pick up a signal. Now some people come up to me and say, Professor, that's stupid because I've been abducted by these people. I've been in a flying saucer, I know they exist. So my advice to you, if you've been abducted by flying saucer people, my advice to you is steal something. I don't care what it is. An alien paperweight, an alien chip, an alien paperclip. Steal something so you have bragging rights afterwards. Otherwise, it's just your word against everybody else's word, that you were abducted by aliens in outer space.
CODY GOUGH: What do you say to people who are anti-science, who don't believe in advances like some of the things they're talking about?
MICHIO KAKU: Well, one of my colleagues says that if you don't believe in science, then try to live in a world without science. Your life expectancy would be above the age of 20, you wouldn't live very long. You'd succumb to starvation, disease, warfare, because resources are so scarce. You wouldn't have an art, a language, there'd be no books. You would live as a cavemen, or a cavewoman, without science. And so he says, go ahead. Try to live without science and you'll live like a caveman.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, not so fun. I know you're a fan of Star Trek because you mentioned it many times in the book. Do you think that the future of space travel is going to be closer to Star Trek or closer to Firefly?
MICHIO KAKU: Well, I'm not aware of Firefly, but, yeah, I think the Star Trek takes place in the 23rd century. I think they've achieved the planetary civilization. They've colonized a few neighboring stars. Now where I differ with Star Trek would be warp drive. I think warp drive is possible. Einstein's equations say so. But to be able to harness Einstein's equations to make warp drive a reality, would require civilization more advanced than Star Trek. Maybe type three rather than type two, which is what Star Trek is all about.
CODY GOUGH: We wrap up every interview with the curiosity challenge. So I'll give you a break for a second, and then I'll ask you a question about something that we learned on curiosity.com. Research shows that people are more comfortable around robots when they're programmed to do one very human-like thing. Do you know what that thing is?
MICHIO KAKU: So robots are-- you're more comfortable with them when robots are programmed to do one thing? Well, I guess, chat with you. Gossip with you.
CODY GOUGH: Close. That might be one of them. But in a study presented in 2015 at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, and later there was some research in 2017 from a team of researchers from Austria and the UK, people were a lot more comfortable around robots when they make mistakes. These studies actually showed that robots programmed to forget people's names, cut people off, or repeat themselves and fumble with objects, were rated as more likable and trustworthy by volunteers.
MICHIO KAKU: Yeah, but who wants a robot that's dumb and makes mistakes, and--
[LAUGHS]
Your Uncle Charlie could do that. Who wants that? I mean--
[LAUGHS]
CODY GOUGH: So you don't want that so much?
MICHIO KAKU: You want a robot that's a little bit different, that gets it right. You don't want to ask for a theater tickets and find out, oops, wrong day, wrong theater, wrong show.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, I guess it depends on the mistake they're making. If they're violating one of the three rules of robotics, that's a mistake I don't want them to make. But-- and then, if you had a trivia question, if you've got one?
MICHIO KAKU: How come most people don't realize that Star Wars actually comes from Flash Gordon?
CODY GOUGH: That is a good question.
MICHIO KAKU: That's where Star Wars comes from. It comes from Flash Gordon. But most people I talk to say, what's Flash Gordon?
[LAUGHS]
CODY GOUGH: I don't know Flash Gordon. I mean, it's a bit older, but did George Lucas really take a lot of--
MICHIO KAKU: That's right. George Lucas has said, quote, "after Vietnam, I wanted Flash Gordon." Almost scene for scene, you can see huge chunks of Star Wars came from Flash Gordon. The city in the sky, the underwater city, invisibility. So many things in Flash Gordon eventually wound up in Star Wars.
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
MICHIO KAKU: And George Lucas mentioned that. He admits that.
CODY GOUGH: Even if--
MICHIO KAKU: But most people don't know that.
CODY GOUGH: Wow, George Lucas pulling a fast one on us. Well, yeah, I think that's certainly a lot to think about, the future of humanity. I mean, everything from gene editing to digitizing humanity in the future.
ASHLEY HAMER:
MICHIO KAKU: And it's coming.
CODY GOUGH: It is really coming, and you're so confident. I mean, you've done a lot of research.
MICHIO KAKU: My colleagues are making it possible. My colleagues are building the future in their laboratory. That's what we, physicists, do. We invent the future.
CODY GOUGH: Well, thank you to you and your colleagues. And again, the book is, The Future of Humanity. Dr. Michio Kaku, thank you so much for joining me.
MICHIO KAKU: Thank you.
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ASHLEY HAMER: I'm just itching to tell you the answer to this week's extra credit question, which comes from Christy Bishop. Christy writes, what's the purpose of itching? If you have a question you'd like answered on a future episode, send it in to podcast@curiosity.com. The answer after this.
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CODY GOUGH: Another step towards creating a global culture, like Dr. Kaku talked about, is by following your favorite people on Twitter. And guess what? That includes me and Ashley.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's right. You're probably already following Curiosity at curiosity.com. But you can also find me on Twitter @smashleyhamer. That's Hamer with one M.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm @ProducerCody. Honestly, I think Ashley's tweets are funnier than mine, but I try to be funny here and there while also sharing my favorite articles from curiosity.com. What do you tweet about?
ASHLEY HAMER: I mostly tweet about science. It's fun stuff. I don't get political.
CODY GOUGH: I don't get political either. So follow us and tweet at us. We're always happy to hear from you, and Twitter is the fastest way to let us know what you think about the Curiosity podcast.
ASHLEY HAMER: Let's scratch the surface of that extra credit question. Christy Bishop wanted to know why we itch. Like the sensations of pain, cold, and heat, itching not only helps you keep tabs on your surroundings, but it also acts as a warning sign that something might be about to harm you, like a stinging insect. Itching comes from the stimulation of itch sensing nerve endings called pruriceptors. Those nerve endings are identical to the ones that create the sensation of pain. They're just specialized for itching.
Scientists actually used to think that itching was just a mild form of pain, but they abandoned that idea when research showed that the two sensations triggered different responses. While pain makes you withdraw, itching makes you scratch. Once you scratch that itch enough to remove whatever's irritating your skin, those same nerve endings send an all clear signal to your brain, and the itching subsides. Thanks for your question.
CODY GOUGH: I'm sure you have some questions after listening to this episode. But hopefully, now you understand what we said we wouldn't have time to dig into everything we talked about in one podcast.
ASHLEY HAMER: But we've got you covered on curiosity.com. You can find links in our show notes to lots of articles we've written about the technology we talked about on this episode. Or you can find a link to buy the book, The Future of Humanity, if you want a one stop shop to learn more.
CODY GOUGH: The book really does read like a Curiosity article. I mean, a 300 page Curiosity article, but it is seriously super accessible. And if you buy the book using the link in our show notes, then Curiosity will get a share of the sale, which helps support the work that we do.
ASHLEY HAMER: We really appreciate your support. For the Curiosity podcast, I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough. From team rocket, blasting off at the speed of light.
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SPEAKER: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.