>>Astro Teller: Have you ever heard something
so crazy that it just might be obvious? Because
I've got something like that for you guys
today.
You know, sometimes we're not thinking big
enough and we all sort of know that. The joke
is, you know, Henry Ford said that if you
asked a customer what they would want, they
would say a faster horse, right?
But a faster horse isn't thinking big enough.
That's a small idea. It would be nice to have
a faster horse if you have a slow horse, I
guess. But a mechanical horse, a horseless
carriage, would be an even bigger idea, right?
And we can see that in retrospect.
The trick is seeing it at the time.
Now, sometimes people are prophetic and can
see things ahead of time. Jules Verne was
incredibly prophetic. He saw rocket ships
and submarines coming from a hundred years
away almost. That's pretty good.
But even he and everyone of his generation
couldn't see the Internet coming, and personally
I find it like heart-poundingly exciting not
only that the Internet exists but that there
are other things like that waiting for us,
internet-size things which we collectively
can find, invent, build, and harness for our
collective benefit.
So I'm going to give you a choice, a little
end-of-Zeitgeist exercise here. Okay? Choice
A, Choice B.
So here it is.
Choice A, you get to invent a new way of turning
coal and oil into electricity. A hundred percent
guaranteed. You definitely will make it happen
if you choose Choice A. And it will make the
production of electricity using coal and oil
10% more efficient worldwide, guaranteed.
Or, Choice B, I will give you a 5% chance
-- just 5%, 1 chance in 20 -- of creating
free energy for everybody. A source of energy
which is totally carbon-neutral, which is
completely cheap, and we can roll out to the
world.
Wow! That would be amazing but you only get
a 5% chance.
All right. So show of hands. Who is going
to do Choice A with me?
All right. Who is going to do Choice B? Right
on.
So probably a few of you are humoring me,
but I would like to believe that most of you
have just genuinely identified yourself as
Moonshot thinkers. I love it. Amen. I'm in
the same camp.
But here's the secret to that. Or one of the
secrets, anyway.
You know, clearly doing Choice B is worth
more than Choice A. I don't think it would
be an exaggeration to say it's easily worth
200 times as much by any reasonable calculation.
So if I gave you 1 chance in 20, we still
are up by a factor 10 over Choice A in expected
utility. Good.
That's why you all chose it, I think, for
different reasons, but it boils down to that.
The next secret is that we're assuming that
it's 20 times harder just because it's 200
times as valuable, but often it's literally
easier to go bigger. Why would that be? It
doesn't feel intuitively right. That's like
something for free. That shouldn't be the
way the world is.
Actually, it is. If you choose to make something
10% better, you are almost by definition signing
up for the status quo and making it a little
bit better. That means you start from the
status quo. You start with all of the existing
assumptions. You start with all of the lock-in
to the tools, the technologies, the processes
that you're going to try to make a little
step function on top of.
It's not bad. But you're going to be in a
smartness contest, in a resources contest,
with everyone else on the planet.
Your team is probably not going to win in
that contest. It doesn't matter how hard they
work, how much money you have. It's just that
hard.
Here's the weird thing: If you sign up for
Moonshot thinking, if you sign up to make
something 10 times better, there is no chance
of doing that using the existing assumptions.
You're going to have to throw out the rule
book.
You can't do that with the existing tools.
We all know that intuitively. So you're going
to have to start over. You're going to have
to supplant all of those -- that smartness
and the hard work with bravery and creativity.
You're going to have to perspective-shift.
Now, it's not guaranteed that you're going
to win by doing that, but when you change
your perspective, you never know where you're
going to end up. That startover moment is
incredibly powerful.
So history is littered with examples like
this where, you know -- here's one of my favorite
examples.
A long -- whatever, 70 years ago now, people
were working very, very hard, incredibly smart
people were working incredibly hard with almost
infinite money at their disposal to make vacuum
tubes better because the largest company in
the world depended on getting vacuum tubes
better. But at the same company, the startover
work of Bardeen and Brattain and Shockley,
basically three people in a lab, changed the
world by inventing the transistor, and it
was the fact that they weren't working on
a vacuum tube that gave them that opportunity.
So that sounds pretty good. Let's all go do
moonshots, right?
Oh, wait, there's a catch.
But the catch isn't what you think.
The question is: Are you in a context that
would let you take a Moonshot?
Imagine going to your CEO or your board of
directors and telling her or them that you're
going to spend the next 12 months on something
that has a 95% chance of being a complete
waste of time and a 5% chance of saving the
world and producing more money than there
is currently money in circulation.
You just all raised your hand and said you
want to do that, but now imagine going and
saying that to your CEO or your board of directors.
They're not going to let you do it, are they.
That is the problem. That is the trick.
It's the bravery to do it, not the fact that
it doesn't work. That's why I'm up here evangelizing
to you.
So there have been lots of contexts, or a
good number of contexts, in which a large
number of people were given the resources
and the pressure to go extremely fast and
the permission to be as weird as they needed
to be in order to make something radically
better happen.
Unfortunately, the main way that the world
has produced those contexts in the past has
been on the subject of warfare.
So Bletchley Park, the invention of modern
computer science and modern cryptography,
or the Manhattan Project and the harnessing
of the atom.
But why do we have to wait for a war to get
amazing people together and give them that
permission? We can look at these examples
and say "Wow, yep, they made amazing things
happen that didn't look possible before because
they were given both the pressure to go that
fast and the permission to be as weird as
possible."
Because there was exigency of war. But why
can't we just create that? It's not like the
world doesn't have enough problems to work
on.
So in honor of one of the few nonmilitary
examples of being like this, where JFK gave
his speech at Rice University and then the
Apollo 11 mission to put a man on the moon
came after it, let's tall this moonshot thinking.
There's been a lot of moonshots in history.
So the Great Wall of China, which was also
motivated partly by trade but mostly by military
issues, that was surely a moonshot.
There was the most audacious person in China
at the time would not have believed that 1700
years later, there would be 6,000 kilometers
of almost continuous wall. No one would have
believed that that was possible. But it was.
When Rome was at its height, the problem of
getting water into the greater Roman area
and getting the roads to span out from Rome
looked totally insurmountable not only because
there weren't enough people who could do it
if you could literally or metaphorically carry
the buckets of water, because there was almost
no water in Rome, that was part of the problem,
but it just wasn't technically feasible.
But because they needed it to be so, they
created a series of technical innovations
which allowed them, particularly with the
water, to bring water in through the aqueducts.
We have this failure of imagination which
we're all prone to. When I tell you let's
go back the anti-gravity drive, your first
reaction is it's not possible, not because
you're an expert in anti-gravity drives but
we all believe that if our imagination can't
explain to us how something can happen, the
most plausible explanation is not that our
imagination is failing us but that it's not
possible. And in that way, our imagination
is not doing us any favors.
So part of moonshot thinking is fighting back
against that natural human tendency to get
over that disbelief point.
So moonshot thinking starts as an exercise
in imagination. You have to see something
as possible. Then it becomes an exercise in
persistent vision. Once you see it's possible,
you have to, over an extended period of time,
continue to believe that it's possible and
help a large a group of people believe that
it's possible.
And then believing it's possible is not enough.
You actually have to have an exercise in determination
coupled with an exercise in creativity so
you can actually go make it.
Not all crazy ideas are worth doing, of course.
That's not my suggestion.
So in order for it to be a moonshot, there
has to be a huge problem in the world. I don't
think it would qualify as a moonshot if there
wasn't some huge problem that was global,
longstanding. And that's clearly not enough
because if I told you warfare -- war is a
big problem in the world, we'd all go, "Yes,
I guess so, Astro." But if I said I was going
to start a new religion which was all about
hugging and we would just get hugging going
and warfare will end, I'm not sure that will
work, but in any case that's not a technology
moonshot, and we can have a separate conference
on whether the hugging religion is a good
one.
So there's got to be something else. There
has to be some kind of science-fiction sounding
product or service which, if you could make
it, would make that problem go away.
Okay. Pretty good. But wait a second. A time
machine, I'm sure we could solve a lot of
the world's problems by making a time machine.
It's the poster child for a science fiction
sounding product or service, but I don't know
how to make one, so we probably shouldn't
count that as a moonshot. JFK didn't know
how to get a man on the moon, nobody did at
the time, but there was reason glimmers of
reason to believe it was possible to have
the faith and to give it a shot.
So you also have to have some reason to have
that belief, that faith in the first place
that you can get to that place. That's the
third element which is required in order for
it to be a credible moonshot.
So at this point, I have a lot of CEOs, and
so I'm going to guess that many of you in
this room are thinking, "Ahhh! Astro, wait.
What about that stuff? You remember, money?
That thing we promised to go get for our shareholders?
You haven't said the word money yet. You completely
have left the land of realistic."
Okay. Deep breath. It's going to be okay.
I grant you if you go and make something 10%
better in the world, the money might not come
find you. But if you make something ten times
better in the world, and it is a serious problem
in the world, do you really believe that the
money is not going to come find you? No.
If you were worried about money, if you were
busy making a business plan at the beginning
of this conversation, it's because you don't
really believe that what you're working on
is of sufficient global scale and severity.
Because if you did, you wouldn't be wasting
your time on the business plan at the beginning.
You'd be taking the moonshot.
And I'm not suggesting that business plans
have no place, but starting from them is almost
anathema to a real moonshot. A moonshot is
focused on the impact, on creating radical
positive value in the world. And the money
will come find you.
Now, this is sort of baked into the DNA of
Google. Obviously Search, Android, Translate,
many of the things Google has done, we ended
up not only building without a real business
plan but putting out into the world for sometimes
years at a time before we ever made any money
on them.
It's in the DNA of Google to believe that
if you make a lot of positive value in the
world that the money will come back to Google
in a fair and elegant way over time.
And that's baked into Google X as well. That's
how we approach moonshots, which is to say,
look, let's not worry right now about the
money. We'll get there in the end, but right
now, let's focus on making sure we have those
three things. We have an enormous problem
that we're properly pointed at, we have a
science fiction sounding product or service
which, if we could make it, would make that
problem go away, and we have some reasonable
it's possible. So self-driving cars I think
is our poster child for what that kind of
three moonshot elements would look like.
And I don't think this is just about Google.
This is the essence, it's one of the benefits
of moonshot thinking. Anyone can have this
same benefit. I promise you, if you work on
the impact and you achieve the impact, money
will not be your problem.
So when I go and I talk to small companies
about this sort of thing, they say -- I get
this rousing chorus of, "Yeah, whatever, Astro."
That's a nice attitude but we don't have any
money.
That's what you're talking about, that's what
big companies do, they have the money to take
moonshots.
Be a decent answer, I guess, except when I
go to the big companies, they say, "Yeah,
whatever, Astro. That's not us obviously because
you're talking about taking big risks. We
don't take big risk. We buy innovation after
it happens. That's our thing. Haven't you
noticed? So go talk to the small companies."
Well, I just did. They said to come talk to
you.
When I talk to academics about the moonshots,
they say, "Well, we get paid to talk about
moonshots but we aren't actually going to
build one."
And when I go to the governments to talk about
this, they say, "Yes, absolutely, we love
telling the private sector to take moonshots.
Oh, oh, you want us to do it? No, that's not
going to work out right now. That was 50 years
ago we had the money for that. Come back and
talk to us in another 50 years. Maybe we can
get there again."
Everyone thinks it's someone else's job. Everyone
thinks it's not possible for them, even though
they would like to believe that someone else
can do it.
But it's not about the smarts. It's not about
the resources. It's about the bravery and
the creativity. And everyone has access to
that.
It's up to you.
You are some of the most powerful people in
the world. What are you going to do with that
power?
You could leave this room and so slow and
steady wins the race. Hit your quarterly numbers.
Right on.
I'm telling you there's something else. I
know it feels like stepping off a cliff, but
on the other side, it's amazing. If you choose
to do this, if you empower your people to
do something uncomfortably big, something
uncomfortably important, something uncomfortably
unhedged, something uncomfortably authentic,
something uncomfortably exciting, you will
never go back.
I'm happy to take questions. Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>>Astro Teller: This is like a personality
test, by the way. There's cool points for
the first question.
Yes.
>>> What's that? No, on the screen.
>>Astro Teller: It's a joke.
>>> Oh.
>>Astro Teller: It's a space elevator. We
don't know how to make a space elevator, but
we've been accused of making one for a while,
so it's become our poster child, kind of like
our mascot. At some point, maybe someone will
make a space elevator. Maybe we will, too.
Right new the physics does not make it possible.
But I like space elevators because they would
solve some interesting problems for humanity.
We can argue about whether they're the biggest
problems in the world. And while they're unbelievably
hard, what it would take to make a ribbon
up into space that actually has the strength-to-weight
ratio to do that, they don't break any laws
of physics. And as soon as you leave the breaking
laws of physics land, everything is possible
in my opinion.
Yes.
>>> With what we beforehand, the talk before
about the immortal jellyfish, do you think
immortality is a moonshot?
>>Astro Teller: It's an interesting question.
Obviously people feel like dying is a bad
thing. I suppose we could feel pretty good
about ending dying, but this is now my personal
perspective. I'm not completely sold that
having everybody live forever wouldn't make
humanity worse off. I'm not saying some people
shouldn't work on it. I think it's a legitimate
moonshot. Me personally, that's not the moonshot
I would pick because I feel somewhat conflicted
about the potential benefits of having everybody
live forever. But if some people work on it,
that absolutely qualifies for a moonshot.
You know, what we just heard, huge problem
in the world: people dying. Okay; check. Finding
some magical way for them to live forever.
I think that one's a little underspecified
right now. I would have liked to hear more
about that in the talk. But we have an existence
proof in the form of the jellyfish, and that's
all the glimmer you need. I think the good
part about the last talk was that he was saying
there's an existence proof. So I can't tell
you I know how to do it but don't tell me
it can't be done because that jellyfish is
doing it. And that's the kind of feeling it
takes to start a moonshot.
>>> (Off microphone).
>>Astro Teller: Yes, naivete is incredibly
useful. You have to be dumb enough to start
on new projects, so I won't discount naivete,
but I will hide the fact that I'm a professional
at nothing other than being naive with the
following, which is that transplanting expertise
from one domain into another is a great way
to do that perspective shifting that I was
talking about.
So on the surface you will see people like
Elon Musk going into the space industry when
that's not where he spends his life because
he had other expertise that he was bringing
there.
Lots of entrepreneurs do this, especially
serial entrepreneurs, where they learn rules
about the world and then they take it into
a new industry. And because they don't know
the rules of that industry, that tearing up
of the rule book is less frightening to them.
So we can paint that as naive and there's
probably some naivete in there but there's
probably also some real benefits to the expertise
by analogy that you get the perspective shifting
from.
Yes.
>>> When is the right time to euthanize a
moonshot that might be floundering?
>>Astro Teller: That's a great question. The
essence of being able to make a moonshot factory
is being able to do that at least some of
the time. To be able to kill things that are
not working.
The problem is at the beginning when there's
three people and you're still sort of doing
the proof of principle kind of work, it's
not that emotional. It's easy to kill it.
But at some point when you get to larger groups
and you've spent more time on it, it becomes
more emotional. And the trick, more than anything
else, is a culture where the people on the
moonshot be believe that there's something
even more important than solving that moonshot,
which is the intellectual rigor of killing
bad ideas as soon, the moment that they know
that it's the wrong idea.
And you have to help them. You have to put
them in a context where that kind of, what
we normally would label as failure, is seen
as a moment for opening the champagne bottle.
And so I can tell you at Google X, we have
ended projects. Those are not the ones that
we announce. And when we're working on something
and we decide not to go forward with it, we
make a celebration out of that, because the
people who come and tell you, no, this was
the wrong thing, let's go find something else
to do, those are the keepers. Pour money at
them.
It's the people who never come and tell you
that, those are the money pits that you're
not going to get anything out of.
One or two more questions.
Yeah.
>>> How do you decide who joins your team
and who doesn't?
>>Astro Teller: I don't want it to sound like
getting voted off the island. It's kind of
grim that way.
Obviously some of the moonshots, once we're
in the middle of taking them, require expertise
of various sorts, and so we will go out and
we will recruit for someone who has particular
expertise. So Google glass, for example, needs
world class optics people. And we will look
for other characteristics also, but when we're
looking for an optics person, they should
probably have some kind of background in optics.
We can be flexible about that.
But there are other people that we look for
generalist capabilities in. I'll give you
an example.
We hired someone not that long ago who was
arguably the top researcher at Xerox PARC.
And it was certainly not why we hired them,
but one of the reasons that we hired him was
that he had just finished building a helicopter
in his garage and was getting flight certified
on it.
That person clearly doesn't know limits. And
that's a good attitude, especially because
this was not a mechanical engineer. This was
someone who understood much more about chemistry
and MEMS. That he was building a helicopter
in his garage, good sign.
So, you know, I could give other examples,
but that's the ethos of the kind of place
that you want. If you're really going to take
moonshots, you have to get the mix just right.
You have to get Peter Pans with Ph.D.s. It
can't be all Peter Pan but it can't be all
Ph.D.s either. You have to be sort of responsibly
irresponsible. And so you have to recruit
for people who seem to be -- you know, you
want them to be safety conscious but still
wear T-shirts that say "safety third" on them,
that kind of thing.
All right. Next question.
Yes.
>>> Astro, yesterday we had a panel with presidents
and Prime Ministers, opposition leaders, and
they were talking about the difference between
being a politician and being a world leader.
If you had the opportunity to address world
leaders, how would you get them back into
this moonshot game so they could take us as
a people and as a species forward?
>>Astro Teller: Well, one of the things I
would like to suggest -- all right, so I'm
now imagining talking to world leaders. It's
an awesome question -- is I think especially
in governments, all groups end up feeling
like you have to have a lot of money. And
to take a moonshot all the way to actually
create the impact is not cheap, but as the
signs that it's working are there, money shows
up. So I really don't think resource is the
main thing.
But governments in particular seem to believe
that moonshots from a government is entirely
driven by money. And that's not true.
There are lots of things that governments
can do that amplify other people's ability
to take moonshots in various ways. And it's
often cheaper to do that than not.
So the tax structures that they have. You
know, here's an example in the United States.
Right now, you get a tax benefit if you hold
your stock more one year and one day.
That's called long-term capital gains.
I have some news for you. Moonshots take longer
than a year.
What if we said, oh, long-term capital gains
is going to go up from 20 to 30%. But if you
hold your stock in any public company for
five years, we'll make it 15%.
Now these companies are just naturally -- because
people want the tax benefit are going to hold
their stock for longer. There's probably -- if
you pick those particular numbers, a little
bit more revenue would come to the United
States government. And because shareholders
now are with the company for longer, the companies
will feel empowered to take longer-term bets.
There are thousands of examples like that,
that are actually net positive to the governments.
So, I'm not picking on the tax example. But
I think there are innumerable examples where
governments could take moonshots and enable
moonshots without spending a dime. That's
what I say to the world leaders.
Next one?
>>David Rowan: I've got what might be a final
question for you. I am going to do a moonshot
question.
>>Astro Teller: All right. Bring it on.
>>David Rowan: I'm going to go ambitious.
So what are you working on that comes after
self-driving cars and Google glass?
>>Astro Teller: It never hurts to ask. That
was ambitious.
[ Laughter ]
>>Astro Teller: You know what? We're going
to be talking about some of them later this
summer, so there won't be too long a wait.
But probably the right way to think about
what we're doing is we're interested in working
on large problems in the world to which computer
science, electrical engineering, mechanical
engineering, computation can be applied successfully.
But there was a picture up here, we're not
actually working on agricultural robotics,
but that's a perfect example of the kind of
thing we could do. And we are thinking as
broadly as that.
And I look forward to telling you in detail
about some of them in the next couple of months.
[ Laughter ]
>>David Rowan: I had a 5% chance, didn't I?
[ Laughter ]
>>Astro Teller: It was worth a shot. Thank
you very much.
>>David Rowan: Astro Teller.
