Bill Joy: What I'm worried about, what I'm excited about

Summary

The speaker discusses the surprising effectiveness of simple technologies like clean water in reducing global poverty compared to complex ones like antibiotics. He expresses concern over the potential for abuse of powerful technologies like nanotechnology and genetic engineering, which can empower individuals or small groups to cause harm on a large scale. He emphasizes the need for public policy, moral progress, and sensible defense measures to mitigate these risks. The speaker also highlights the importance of innovation in education, environmental solutions, and biodefense to address global challenges, advocating for responsible technology development and the application of market forces to encourage safety and accountability.

Takeaways

• 🌐 The speaker emphasizes the surprising effectiveness of simple technologies like clean water in reducing global poverty compared to more complex ones like antibiotics.
• 🏛️ Historically, societal structures like the Ten Commandments and concepts of individual liberty were developed to prevent abuse of power, but new technologies pose a different kind of threat.
• 🔬 The speaker expresses concern over the potential for abuse of powerful emerging technologies like nanotechnology and genetic engineering, which can be accessed by individuals or small groups.
• 🌐 The digital nature of modern technologies allows for the possibility of individuals causing harm on a massive scale, such as pandemics, which society is ill-equipped to handle preemptively.
• 📚 The speaker is optimistic about the potential of education technology to empower global learning, anticipating significant advancements in affordable computing power.
• 🌿 There's a focus on environmental issues, with the speaker highlighting the importance of new materials to address challenges like clean water, energy, and transportation for the growing urban population.
• ⚙️ Carbon nanotubes are presented as a revolutionary material with unique properties that could lead to innovations in various fields, including environmental solutions.
• 💉 The speaker discusses the urgent need for innovation in biodefense and pandemic preparedness, identifying gaps in current strategies and the potential of new technologies to fill them.
• 💡 The importance of policy and moral progress is stressed as essential to managing the risks associated with new technologies, rather than relying solely on technological solutions.
• 🛡️ The speaker suggests market-based solutions and legal accountability as potential policy responses to mitigate the risks of technological abuse and to promote a safer and more sustainable future.

Q & A

What surprising discovery was made regarding the reduction of death rates in the 20th century?

The surprising discovery was that clean water had a more significant impact on reducing death rates than antibiotics, contrary to what one might initially assume.

What is the potential danger of the new technologies like nanotechnology and genetic engineering?

The potential danger lies in the possibility of abuse, as these technologies are so powerful that they can extend beyond the control of nation-states and into the hands of individuals or small groups, potentially leading to catastrophic consequences.

Why is it challenging to prevent misuse of powerful digital technologies?

Preventing misuse is challenging because these technologies tend to be digital and easily accessible, such as genome sequences that can be downloaded from the internet, allowing anyone with the knowledge to recreate potentially dangerous organisms.

What is the speaker's view on the role of technology in addressing global issues?

The speaker believes that while technology can be a powerful tool for addressing issues like education, the environment, and pandemics, it cannot solve the larger problem of potential abuse by a few individuals with access to powerful technologies.

How does the speaker suggest we can address the issue of potential misuse of technology?

The speaker suggests that policy solutions, market forces, and accountability through the law are needed to prevent misuse. Additionally, limiting access to certain information and steering the future by focusing on lower-risk outcomes are also suggested.

What is the significance of Moore's Law in the context of the speaker's discussion?

Moore's Law is significant because it predicts the continued advancement of computing power, which the speaker believes can be harnessed to create affordable and powerful educational tools, such as a $100 or even a $10 computer by 2020.

What is the speaker's perspective on the current state of educational software?

The speaker believes that while we have powerful computers, the educational software available today is not as advanced as it could be, and better software is needed to take full advantage of the computational capabilities.

What are the speaker's thoughts on the environmental challenges faced by the growing urban population?

The speaker is optimistic about the potential of new materials to address environmental challenges, such as providing clean water, energy, and transportation in a green and profitable way.

What is the role of venture capital in the speaker's approach to solving global problems?

Venture capital plays a crucial role by funding innovative projects that can make a significant impact on global problems, such as education, the environment, and biodefense against pandemics.

What specific example of a new material does the speaker mention, and what are its properties?

The speaker mentions carbon nanotubes as an example of a new material with incredible properties, such as extreme strength, self-repairing capabilities, electricity production when exposed to light, and high electrical and thermal conductivity.

How does the speaker envision the use of market forces to mitigate risks associated with new technologies?

The speaker suggests using market forces by incorporating the cost of potential catastrophes into the price of doing business, requiring those engaging in risky activities to take insurance against those risks, thus providing a feedback mechanism for safety.

Outlines

00:00

🌐 Technology's Role in Global Poverty and Security

The speaker begins by questioning which technologies can effectively combat global poverty. They were surprised to find that simple, accessible technologies like clean water had a more significant impact on reducing death rates than advanced solutions like antibiotics. The discussion then pivots to the potential misuse of powerful technologies such as nanotechnology and genetic engineering, which could be exploited by individuals or small groups, posing a threat beyond the capabilities of nation-states. Historically, society has developed moral and legal frameworks to prevent abuse of power, but the speaker expresses concern about the lack of preparedness for the new asymmetric threats posed by digital technologies that can be accessed and misused by individuals. The speaker also reflects on the importance of not just technological solutions but also moral and policy advancements to address these challenges.

05:01

🏗️ The Impact of Technology on Education and the Environment

The speaker shares their experiences post-9/11, highlighting the stark contrast between their preparedness for such events due to their research and the general public's surprise. They emphasize the importance of not abandoning the rule of law in response to asymmetric threats and criticize the current approach to handling such threats as ineffective and potentially worsening the situation. The speaker then transitions to discussing their work in venture capital, focusing on innovations that could address global challenges. They express excitement about the potential of extending Moore's Law to create more affordable and powerful computers, which could revolutionize education. They also discuss the environmental impact of urbanization and the need for new materials to address challenges in clean water, energy, and transportation, highlighting carbon nanotubes as a breakthrough material with vast potential.

10:01

🛡️ Addressing Global Challenges Through Investment in Innovation

The speaker delves into specific examples of how new materials, particularly carbon nanotubes, can be used to solve environmental problems. They outline the unique properties of these materials, such as their strength, self-healing capabilities, and electrical conductivity, which make them promising for various applications. The speaker then announces a significant investment in a fund aimed at pandemic and biodefense, emphasizing the need for innovative solutions to fill gaps in preparedness. They discuss the importance of developing new antiviral drugs, better surveillance systems, rapid diagnostics, and vaccines to combat potential pandemics. The speaker concludes by reiterating the need for better policy and market solutions to manage the risks associated with technological advancements and to ensure that the benefits of technology are harnessed safely and effectively.

15:03

🌟 The Future of Technology and the Need for Proactive Policy

In the final paragraph, the speaker discusses the limitations of technology in solving broader societal issues, emphasizing that the management of technology cannot be solved with more technology alone. They argue for the need for better policy solutions, such as using market forces to price in the risk of catastrophe and holding individuals accountable through the law for the consequences of their actions. The speaker also advocates for a more proactive approach to designing the future, where we can steer the trajectory of technological advancements towards lower-risk outcomes. They stress the importance of limiting access to certain information to prevent abuse, acknowledging the challenge this poses to values like free speech but arguing it's a necessary trade-off for maintaining civilization and the rule of law.

Keywords

💡Global Poverty

Global poverty refers to the condition where a significant portion of the world's population lacks the basic necessities for a healthy and safe life. In the video, the speaker discusses the potential of technology to alleviate this issue, emphasizing the surprising effectiveness of simple technologies like clean water over complex ones like antibiotics.

💡Death Rates

Death rates are the statistics that measure the number of deaths in a given population over a specific period. The speaker mentions examining death rates in the 20th century to understand how certain technologies have contributed to their reduction, highlighting the impact of clean water over antibiotics.

💡Off-the-Shelf Technologies

This term refers to readily available and easily accessible technologies that can be purchased and used without significant modification. The script discusses how such technologies have been crucial in improving global health, contrasting with the more complex and potentially dangerous emerging technologies.

💡Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale. The speaker expresses concern over the potential for abuse of this powerful technology, which can be accessed by individuals or small groups, and its implications for global security.

💡Genetic Engineering

Genetic engineering involves the direct manipulation of an organism's genes using biotechnology. The script raises concerns about the misuse of this technology, similar to nanotechnology, where its power could extend beyond the control of nation-states.

💡Asymmetric Situation

An asymmetric situation refers to a scenario where the power or capabilities of the involved parties are unequal. The speaker describes the new challenges posed by digital technologies that empower individuals or small groups to levels comparable to nation-states, thus creating an asymmetric threat.

💡Pandemic

A pandemic is an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects an exceptionally high proportion of the population. The script discusses the potential for misuse of digital technologies to cause pandemics, which society is ill-equipped to handle due to lack of experience and proactive measures.

💡Moore's Law

Moore's Law is the observation that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles about every two years, leading to an increase in computing power. The speaker uses Moore's Law to predict the future of computing, suggesting that by 2020, powerful computers could be available for as low as $10, impacting education significantly.

💡Environmental Problem

The environmental problem in the script refers to the challenges posed by urbanization, resource consumption, and pollution. The speaker discusses the role of new materials and innovations in addressing these issues, offering hope for a greener future.

💡Carbon Nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes are a nanoscale material known for their exceptional strength and unique properties. The script highlights their potential applications in various fields, including energy production and environmental solutions, as an example of new materials that could revolutionize technology.

💡Pandemic Preparedness

Pandemic preparedness involves the measures taken to plan and prepare for a potential pandemic. The speaker discusses the gaps in current preparedness and the need for innovations in surveillance, diagnostics, anti-virals, and vaccines to mitigate the risk of a pandemic.

💡Policy Solutions

Policy solutions refer to strategies implemented at the governmental or organizational level to address specific issues. The script suggests using market forces and insurance mechanisms to encourage safety and accountability in the development and use of new technologies.

💡Accountability

Accountability is the obligation to report on or be responsible for one's actions. The speaker argues for the importance of holding individuals and organizations accountable for the consequences of their actions, especially in the context of powerful new technologies.

💡Steering the Future

Steering the future means actively shaping the course of events to avoid potential risks and achieve desired outcomes. The script concludes with the idea that by focusing on specific problems and investing in solutions, we can influence the direction of future developments, such as reducing the risk of pandemics.

Highlights

Simple technologies like clean water have had a more significant impact on reducing death rates than complex ones like antibiotics.

The potential for abuse of powerful technologies like nanotechnology and genetic engineering poses a significant concern.

Historical progress from individual rights to international peace agreements shows humanity's struggle with power dynamics.

New technologies, being digital, empower individuals and small groups beyond nation-states, creating an asymmetric threat.

The ease of accessing and replicating harmful biological materials online highlights the danger of self-replicating technologies.

The societal challenge is to act preemptively against potential threats, which is difficult due to a lack of direct experience.

The solution to technological threats involves not just intellectual but also moral progress, as suggested by historical figures like Russell and Einstein.

Limiting individual access to technologies with pandemic potential is crucial for societal safety.

The importance of maintaining sensible defense mechanisms against potential misuse of technology.

The speaker's personal journey from concern over technological threats to involvement in finding innovative solutions.

The potential of Moore's Law to significantly reduce the cost of computing power, making advanced technology more accessible.

The need for better educational software to take advantage of the increasing power of computers.

Innovations in new materials offer hope for addressing environmental challenges and promoting green development.

Carbon nanotubes, as an example of new materials, have extraordinary properties that could revolutionize various industries.

The establishment of a $200 million fund to focus on pandemic and biodefense, aiming to fill gaps in preparedness.

The importance of developing a range of antiviral strategies, including cocktails and rapid diagnostics, to combat pandemics.

The necessity of policy solutions that leverage market forces to encourage safety and accountability in technological advancements.

The idea that we must design the future by making deliberate choices to steer society towards lower-risk outcomes.

The difficult balance between the value of free speech and the need to limit access to information that could be misused.

Transcripts

What technology can we really apply to reducing global poverty?

And what I found was quite surprising.

We started looking at things like death rates in the 20th century,

and how they'd been improved, and very simple things turned out.

You'd think maybe antibiotics made more difference than clean water,

but it's actually the opposite.

And so very simple things -- off-the-shelf technologies

that we could easily find on the then-early Web --

would clearly make a huge difference to that problem.

But I also, in looking at more powerful technologies

and nanotechnology and genetic engineering and other new emerging

kind of digital technologies, became very concerned

about the potential for abuse.

If you think about it, in history, a long, long time ago

we dealt with the problem of an individual abusing another individual.

We came up with something -- the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not kill.

That's a, kind of a one-on-one thing.

We organized into cities. We had many people.

And to keep the many from tyrannizing the one,

we came up with concepts like individual liberty.

And then, to have to deal with large groups,

say, at the nation-state level,

and we had to have mutual non-aggression,

or through a series of conflicts, we eventually came to

a rough international bargain to largely keep the peace.

But now we have a new situation, really what people call

an asymmetric situation, where technology is so powerful

that it extends beyond a nation-state.

It's not the nation-states that have potential access

to mass destruction, but individuals.

And this is a consequence of the fact that these new technologies tend to be digital.

We saw genome sequences.

You can download the gene sequences

of pathogens off the Internet if you want to,

and clearly someone recently -- I saw in a science magazine --

they said, well, the 1918 flu is too dangerous to FedEx around.

If people want to use it in their labs for working on research,

just reconstruct it yourself,

because, you know, it might break in FedEx.

So that this is possible to do this is not deniable.

So individuals in small groups super-empowered by access to these

kinds of self-replicating technologies, whether it be biological

or other, are clearly a danger in our world.

And the danger is that they can cause roughly what's a pandemic.

And we really don't have experience with pandemics,

and we're also not very good as a society at acting

to things we don't have direct and sort of gut-level experience with.

So it's not in our nature to pre-act.

And in this case, piling on more technology doesn't solve the problem,

because it only super-empowers people more.

So the solution has to be, as people like Russell and Einstein

and others imagine in a conversation that existed

in a much stronger form, I think, early in the 20th century,

that the solution had to be not just the head but the heart.

You know, public policy and moral progress.

The bargain that gives us civilization is a bargain to not use power.

We get our individual rights by society protecting us from others

not doing everything they can do but largely doing only what is legal.

And so to limit the danger of these new things, we have to limit,

ultimately, the ability of individuals

to have access, essentially, to pandemic power.

We also have to have sensible defense, because no limitation

is going to prevent a crazy person from doing something.

And you know, and the troubling thing is that

it's much easier to do something bad than to defend

against all possible bad things,

so the offensive uses really have an asymmetric advantage.

So these are the kind of thoughts I was thinking in 1999 and 2000,

and my friends told me I was getting really depressed,

and they were really worried about me.

And then I signed a book contract to write more gloomy thoughts about this

and moved into a hotel room in New York

with one room full of books on the Plague,

and you know, nuclear bombs exploding in New York

where I would be within the circle, and so on.

And then I was there on September 11th,

and I stood in the streets with everyone.

And it was quite an experience to be there.

I got up the next morning and walked out of the city,

and all the sanitation trucks were parked on Houston Street

and ready to go down and start taking the rubble away.

And I walked down the middle, up to the train station,

and everything below 14th Street was closed.

It was quite a compelling experience, but not really, I suppose,

a surprise to someone who'd had his room full of the books.

It was always a surprise that it happened then and there,

but it wasn't a surprise that it happened at all.

And everyone then started writing about this.

Thousands of people started writing about this.

And I eventually abandoned the book, and then Chris called me

to talk at the conference. I really don't talk about this anymore

because, you know, there's enough frustrating and depressing things going on.

But I agreed to come and say a few things about this.

And I would say that we can't give up the rule of law

to fight an asymmetric threat, which is what we seem to be doing

because of the present, the people that are in power,

because that's to give up the thing that makes civilization.

And we can't fight the threat in the kind of stupid way we're doing,

because a million-dollar act

causes a billion dollars of damage, causes a trillion dollar response

which is largely ineffective and arguably, probably almost certainly,

has made the problem worse.

So we can't fight the thing with a million-to-one cost,

one-to-a-million cost-benefit ratio.

So after giving up on the book -- and I had the great honor

to be able to join Kleiner Perkins about a year ago,

and to work through venture capital on the innovative side,

and to try to find some innovations that could address what I saw as

some of these big problems.

Things where, you know, a factor of 10 difference

can make a factor of 1,000 difference in the outcome.

I've been amazed in the last year at the incredible quality

and excitement of the innovations that have come across my desk.

It's overwhelming at times. I'm very thankful for Google and Wikipedia

so I can understand at least a little of what people are talking about

who come through the doors.

But I wanted to share with you three areas

that I'm particularly excited about and that relate to the problems

that I was talking about in the Wired article.

The first is this whole area of education,

and it really relates to what Nicholas was talking about with a $100 computer.

And that is to say that there's a lot of legs left in Moore's Law.

The most advanced transistors today are at 65 nanometers,

and we've seen, and I've had the pleasure to invest

in, companies that give me great confidence that we'll extend Moore's Law

all the way down to roughly the 10 nanometer scale.

Another factor of, say, six in dimensional reduction,

which should give us about another factor of 100 in raw improvement

in what the chips can do. And so, to put that in practical terms,

if something costs about 1,000 dollars today,

say, the best personal computer you can buy, that might be its cost,

I think we can have that in 2020 for 10 dollars. Okay?

Now, just imagine what that $100 computer will be in 2020

as a tool for education.

I think the challenge for us is --

I'm very certain that that will happen, the challenge is,

will we develop the kind of educational tools and things with the net

to let us take advantage of that device?

I'd argue today that we have incredibly powerful computers,

but we don't have very good software for them.

And it's only in retrospect, after the better software comes along,

and you take it and you run it on a ten-year-old machine, you say,

God, the machine was that fast?

I remember when they took the Apple Mac interface

and they put it back on the Apple II.

The Apple II was perfectly capable of running that kind of interface,

we just didn't know how to do it at the time.

So given that we know and should believe --

because Moore's Law's been, like, a constant,

I mean, it's just been very predictable progress

over the last 40 years or whatever.

We can know what the computers are going to be like in 2020.

It's great that we have initiatives to say,

let's go create the education and educate people in the world,

because that's a great force for peace.

And we can give everyone in the world a $100 computer

or a $10 computer in the next 15 years.

The second area that I'm focusing on is the environmental problem,

because that's clearly going to put a lot of pressure on this world.

We'll hear a lot more about that from Al Gore very shortly.

The thing that we see as the kind of Moore's Law trend

that's driving improvement in our ability to address

the environmental problem is new materials.

We have a challenge, because the urban population is growing

in this century from two billion to six billion

in a very short amount of time. People are moving to the cities.

They all need clean water, they need energy, they need transportation,

and we want them to develop in a green way.

We're reasonably efficient in the industrial sectors.

We've made improvements in energy and resource efficiency,

but the consumer sector, especially in America, is very inefficient.

But these new materials bring such incredible innovations

that there's a strong basis for hope that these things

will be so profitable that they can be brought to the market.

And I want to give you a specific example of a new material

that was discovered 15 years ago.

If we take carbon nanotubes, you know, Iijima discovered them in 1991,

they just have incredible properties.

And these are the kinds of things we're going to discover

as we start to engineer at the nano scale.

Their strength: they're almost the strongest material,

tensile strength material known.

They're very, very stiff. They stretch very, very little.

In two dimensions, if you make, like, a fabric out of them,

they're 30 times stronger than Kevlar.

And if you make a three-dimensional structure, like a buckyball,

they have all sorts of incredible properties.

If you shoot a particle at them and knock a hole in them,

they repair themselves; they go zip and they repair the hole

in femtoseconds, which is not -- is really quick.

(Laughter)

If you shine a light on them, they produce electricity.

In fact, if you flash them with a camera they catch on fire.

If you put electricity on them, they emit light.

If you run current through them, you can run 1,000 times more current

through one of these than through a piece of metal.

You can make both p- and n-type semiconductors,

which means you can make transistors out of them.

They conduct heat along their length but not across --

well, there is no width, but not in the other direction

if you stack them up; that's a property of carbon fiber also.

If you put particles in them, and they go shooting out the tip --

they're like miniature linear accelerators or electron guns.

The inside of the nanotubes is so small --

the smallest ones are 0.7 nanometers --

that it's basically a quantum world.

It's a strange place inside a nanotube.

And so we begin to see, and we've seen business plans already,

where the kind of things Lisa Randall's talking about are in there.

I had one business plan where I was trying to learn more about

Witten's cosmic dimension strings to try to understand

what the phenomenon was going on in this proposed nanomaterial.

So inside of a nanotube, we're really at the limit here.

So what we see is with these and other new materials

that we can do things with different properties -- lighter, stronger --

and apply these new materials to the environmental problems.

New materials that can make water,

new materials that can make fuel cells work better,

new materials that catalyze chemical reactions,

that cut pollution and so on.

Ethanol -- new ways of making ethanol.

New ways of making electric transportation.

The whole green dream -- because it can be profitable.

And we've dedicated -- we've just raised a new fund,

we dedicated 100 million dollars to these kinds of investments.

We believe that Genentech, the Compaq, the Lotus, the Sun,

the Netscape, the Amazon, the Google in these fields

are yet to be found, because this materials revolution

will drive these things forward.

The third area that we're working on,

and we just announced last week -- we were all in New York.

We raised 200 million dollars in a specialty fund

to work on a pandemic in biodefense.

And to give you an idea of the last fund that Kleiner raised

was a $400 million fund, so this for us is a very substantial fund.

And what we did, over the last few months -- well, a few months ago,

Ray Kurzweil and I wrote an op-ed in the New York Times

about how publishing the 1918 genome was very dangerous.

And John Doerr and Brook and others got concerned, [unclear],

and we started looking around at what the world was doing

about being prepared for a pandemic. And we saw a lot of gaps.

And so we asked ourselves, you know, can we find innovative things

that will go fill these gaps? And Brooks told me in a break here,

he said he's found so much stuff he can't sleep,

because there's so many great technologies out there,

we're essentially buried. And we need them, you know.

We have one antiviral that people are talking about stockpiling

that still works, roughly. That's Tamiflu.

But Tamiflu -- the virus is resistant. It is resistant to Tamiflu.

We've discovered with AIDS we need cocktails to work well

so that the viral resistance -- we need several anti-virals.

We need better surveillance.

We need networks that can find out what's going on.

We need rapid diagnostics so that we can tell if somebody has

a strain of flu which we have only identified very recently.

We've got to be able to make the rapid diagnostics quickly.

We need new anti-virals and cocktails. We need new kinds of vaccines.

Vaccines that are broad spectrum.

Vaccines that we can manufacture quickly.

Cocktails, more polyvalent vaccines.

You normally get a trivalent vaccine against three possible strains.

We need -- we don't know where this thing is going.

We believe that if we could fill these 10 gaps,

we have a chance to help really reduce the risk of a pandemic.

And the difference between a normal flu season and a pandemic

is about a factor of 1,000 in deaths

and certainly enormous economic impact.

So we're very excited because we think we can fund 10,

or speed up 10 projects and see them come to market

in the next couple years that will address this.

So if we can address, use technology, help address education,

help address the environment, help address the pandemic,

does that solve the larger problem that I was talking about

in the Wired article? And I'm afraid the answer is really no,

because you can't solve a problem with the management of technology

with more technology.

If we let an unlimited amount of power loose, then we will --

a very small number of people will be able to abuse it.

We can't fight at a million-to-one disadvantage.

So what we need to do is, we need better policy.

And for example, some things we could do

that would be policy solutions which are not really in the political air right now

but perhaps with the change of administration would be -- use markets.

Markets are a very strong force.

For example, rather than trying to regulate away problems,

which probably won't work, if we could price

into the cost of doing business, the cost of catastrophe,

so that people who are doing things that had a higher cost of catastrophe

would have to take insurance against that risk.

So if you wanted to put a drug on the market you could put it on.

But it wouldn't have to be approved by regulators;

you'd have to convince an actuary that it would be safe.

And if you apply the notion of insurance more broadly,

you can use a more powerful force, a market force,

to provide feedback.

How could you keep the law?

I think the law would be a really good thing to keep.

Well, you have to hold people accountable.

The law requires accountability.

Today scientists, technologists, businessmen, engineers

don't have any personal responsibility

for the consequences of their actions.

So if you tie that -- you have to tie that back with the law.

And finally, I think we have to do something that's not really --

it's almost unacceptable to say this -- which,

we have to begin to design the future.

We can't pick the future, but we can steer the future.

Our investment in trying to prevent pandemic flu

is affecting the distribution of possible outcomes.

We may not be able to stop it, but the likelihood

that it will get past us is lower if we focus on that problem.

So we can design the future if we choose what kind of things

we want to have happen and not have happen,

and steer us to a lower-risk place.

Vice President Gore will talk about how we could steer the climate trajectory

into a lower probability of catastrophic risk.

But above all, what we have to do is we have to help the good guys,

the people on the defensive side,

have an advantage over the people who want to abuse things.

And what we have to do to do that

is we have to limit access to certain information.

And growing up as we have, and holding very high

the value of free speech, this is a hard thing for us to accept --

for all of us to accept.

It's especially hard for the scientists to accept who still remember,

you know, Galileo essentially locked up,

and who are still fighting this battle against the church.

But that's the price of having a civilization.

The price of retaining the rule of law

is to limit the access to the great and kind of unbridled power.

Thank you.

(Applause)