[music] [music] [music] >> Okay. Hello everybody. Um I was invited here today to talk to you about the future. And I must admit I had to stop and think what on earth would I have to offer to all of you about the future. And it made me think back to when I was in high school and trying to plan out what my future would be. And I realized how much the world has changed in those, dare I say, decades since I was in high school. And
it made me think of my husband's grandmother Edith. So Edith was born in 1901 at a time when the world is unimaginably different to what it is today. So she was born at a time when there was no electric light. There was no TV, no telephones, no internet. She lived through two world wars. She saw horses and carriages give way to cars. She even saw man land on the moon. So she saw such significant changes that she went from writing handwritten letters that would take weeks
and months to arrive at a destination to having video chats online with her with her great-grandchildren. So she was born in 1901 and she died in 2010, 109 years of life on this earth. And if you asked her what was the most surprising thing that she experienced in her life, she didn't mention any of those technological changes. The only thing that she mentioned was how very fast everything changed. And that's what brings us here today because future isn' something that's far, far ahead of us. The
future is something that is present in our everyday, as well as being something that is accelerating rapidly towards us. Because when we think about the future, we normally think of all these imagined predictions of flying cars and robots and various dystopias or utopias depending on what your Netflix recommendations are. But the reality is that every generation thinks that they are at the peak of change right up until the next generation comes along. So the world changed more in Edith's lifetime than it had ever happened for
any generation previously. And what we need to consider, and which is probably the scary truth for us, is the fact that the pace of change that she experienced is likely nothing compared to what lies ahead of us. Because we're the first generations that know for certainty that in actual fact the future is very uncertain, not just politically or socially, but physically. Because we're the first generations to be really feeling that impact of climate change, of artificial intelligence, of genetic engineering, and of space exploration. And none
of that anymore is science fiction problems. They're all science now problems. And to understand that what that means, we need to zoom out. And when I say out, I mean way, way, way out. And I can draw on the knowledge of one of my very famous favorite people who is Professor Brian Cox. He's the renowned British physicist that reminds us to be able to understand our future, we need to understand where we fit within the universe. Because he often repeats a really humbling statement when he
says that every atom in our bodies was actually forged in the heart of a star. So what he means by that is that all of the carbon in your cells, all of the calcium in your bones, all of the iron in your blood, none of that was created on the Earth. It was all created billions of years ago in the life and the death of the stars. So what does that mean for us here now? It means that we don't just exist in the universe. We
are actually part of the universe. And what that means for us is that the universe has been unfolding for roughly 13.8 billion years. But modern humans have only existed for about 300,000 of those years, which means that in actual fact, we are a really young experiment. We're just a brief spark of consciousness in an unimaginably long, long story. And yet here we are today asking questions about what tomorrow will be. And the extraordinary thing is is that we're the only known part of the universe that
can ask questions about where we think we're going because the future isn't something that's just going to happen to us. The future is something that we can actually participate in, which means that we need to ask that question, what do we actually want our shared future to be? Because Edith, she never knew the term exponential growth, and yet she lived through it. She realized what happened when change compounds, when technology builds on itself and when knowledge accelerates. So for us here today, we're also still in
that exponential curve because artificial intelligence is learning at a pace that we can't regulate. And genetic engineering is enabling us to edit life itself. So space corporations and industries, they're planning a permanent human existence beyond the earth itself. And Brian Cox reminds us that be in order to try to preserve our intelligence that we need to consider becoming spacefaring species. Okay, that we need to look beyond that life has to keep moving forward. But before we rush off to Mars, we need to ask about that
question, what kind of future do we actually want to build? Because the future isn't just shaped by all of this technological change. The future is actually shaped by our values. So yes, artificial intelligence can help us to solve many of those problems, but it, you know, potentially can increase or amplify those inequalities that we have. So genetic engineering, it can help cure many of the things that we suffer from, but it also means that we have to redefine what it means to actually be human. So
in terms of that, we have to think about what this means for us in the future because things like connectivity, it has the potential to unite us, but it also has the potential to divide us into louder and angrier tribes. So we have to think the fact that the future doesn't just depend on our intentions, it actually responds to the choices that we make. And we have, you know, the potential, particularly younger generations, to feel overwhelmed or to feel disheartened because it feels like many of
these decisions about our future are being made by governments and corporations and algorithms that we actually have very little control over. But in actual fact, the future isn't democratic by default. It becomes democratic because we make the choice to participate in those decisions that are made. So Brian Cox, my favorite, keep coming back to him, he reminds us of the need to build our scientific literacy, not to create more scientists, but to create or produce citizens that understand reality enough to make really wise decisions. Because
if we don't understand the climate science, we can't protect our planet. If we don't understand how the algorithms work, we can't control them. If we don't understand history itself, we keep repeating the same terrible mistakes, unfortunately with much, much better tools. So remember that the the future, it doesn't respond to our intentions, it responds to our choices, it responds to our actions. So Edith once said to me that when she was younger, she just assumed that the future would be better. And by that she meant
that it would be more comfortable, it would be more stable, it would be more secure, and that this progress was just going to be automatic. But when she was older, she realizes that progress isn't automatic. Progress is actually very very fragile, meaning that our rights can be lost and meaning that our technology can actually outpace our wisdom. So that lesson matters more now than it ever has in the past because here is the weird paradox of our time. We have more knowledge than we have ever
had before. Any generation before us has not had the amount of knowledge that we have had. Um and we also have the capacity to shape what happens to our planet. But sadly, we also have that capacity to perhaps create irreversible damage. But as Brian Cox reminds us that life is on a cosmic level really rare and precious. And so our future isn't guaranteed. It's up to us to make choices that are going to ensure the survival of our species and of our planet. So what does
that mean for us here right now in this room? It means that the future it isn't something that we have to fear or just to fantasize about. It means that the future is something that we prepare for. So we prepare by understanding how the world around us actually works. We prepare by um building systems that challenge all of those um rules that say that we reward short-term goals rather than long-term survival. And we prepare by building our empathy at the same time that we build our
knowledge because if Edith's 109 years on this earth teach us any lesson, they teach us that the future's going to happen no matter whether we're ready or not, but who we become along the way, that part is actually up to us because the future isn't yet written. It's something that is currently being edited by people like you and I. So we have to remember that we are actually the descendants of stardust, okay? That we are a very young young species that is made from really ancient
atoms that hold unprecedented power. And so we need to make those choices that are going to be the best for us and for our planet. And so we have to ask ourselves what do we choose our future to be and what will ultimately become written in our future? Thank you.