Andromeda Galaxy Collision and Colonization

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No payment Just pure discovery See what's landing on Pluto TV Stream now They never Chuck, Pe been asking genius level questions on cosmic queries. Yeah. I think they're using AI. No, no, no, no, AI iss not that smart. That's true. Our listeners are smarter than AI. Yes, they are. More on that coming right up Welcome art Tal. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. Star talkal begin right now This is Star Talk. Neil Degrras Tyson, you're a personal astrophysicist. Chuck, nice I got with me. That's right. What's up Neil? Chuck, you just make it clear, you were not born my co host No, I was not born born in the streets. I was born the son of a sharecropper. Kedburn Civil War Is that. We're gonna do another Cosmic quueries. Yes. A grab bag edition. This is becoming a fan favorite People love it. That's okay because we can ping pong anywhere we want. I know cmos. It means I might not know stuff and I, you know, that's yet to happen. I mean All right, there's something to shoot for here now. Okay. Let me I knowing something. exactly. All right. So let's go. let's get to it. This is Natasha Shaal Davis. Good evening, doctor Tyson and honorable Paul his goofiness. Oh Paul Paul Mcuria. Paul Mcuria, Baron Paul Mcuria. Oh, Okay. Apparently Baronar you' expecting him. Yeah, notot Lord, but Baron. Okay. So people are expecting Paul for this episode. Yes, What did you do with Paul? Listen. Is he locked in your trunk? Paul cannot be with us today I'm just saying is he in your trunk? Right. And if you hear if you hear muffled screams coming from the closet.. All right. All right. he says Natasa says this. Natasa from New Mexico, here eyes see some wiggles in matter and ears hear, a little more But the whole body experiences gravity If you could pick any organ to deliberately experience the graviton What would you pick Oh Oh my go, that was so sweet Be my heart has its requisite number beats per minute. Right. And it goes up when you get excited or you exercise and it calms down.. So the heart is with you in your emotional Moments. Correct. So if a graviton Or gravitational wave. No graviton would be the partartle version of the wave. Right? If it washed over me or passed through me, I'd want my heart to participate in that. Oh. My heart is the graviton detector. Oh that's I have to the heart wants what the heart wants. And apparently it's a graviton The geek dating has the geek dating Swipe right for graviton.. That's cool. All right. She says this is Bev from Atlanta from Alabama Will we ever be able to cultivate the right terrier for wine other than earth? Thank you for gifting us with your insights. In other words, will we be able to grow a vineyard on another planet? Okay, You're going have to back and read that If you're gonna pretend like you know anything about wine, you have to pronounce the words right. Terra. Terra. Okay o. H we go. Will we be able to cultivate the right ter? You have to like gut gutter eize into the microphone. Exactly. have I have to say the word like I'm Sylvester Stallone. Will we be able to cultivate the right Jerll. For wine other than earth. Really? So which I guess I think the answer is no Right. Can I tell you why? But first, Tana is a French word that we don't have English counterpart two. Clearly H It's not the first of such words. Yeah You know another word we don't have for? Go ahead. A light fixture in the middle of the room that has crystal and multiple lights hanging here. We don't have a word for that. No we don't You know why? ' we're not nearly as pretentious as the French. And nobody in colonial America had a chandelier. Okay? Turn on the light. That's whatever that. Exactly. We had a single bulb on a pixie just notot in Colonial America, did they have bulbs? That's true. Gas lamps. Yeah, Okay, I'll give a g a gaslamb.. It probably whale blubber oil. Exactly. Yeah. ye. So Wine doesn't grow in most places on Earth. That's right. And if there's ever a place where they're growing hops to make beer, it's because they could not grow grapes to make wine. Oh Wow, you really disbeard No just. manan, you just threw a lot of shade on beard like the only reason you're able to drink beer is because that crap is not as good as wine. The economics of it. Okay. economy It's economics, o. Tue. And I didn't invent this Datum, right? Okaykay. All right, singular of data. Datatum. It's datum if you can If you can grow, ingredients for beer or the ingredients for one People choose the grapes And I'm guessing it's because it's more profitable. because that's whyes have more uses than hOs. And so that as well, of course. Yeah. Yeah. So So Around the world, the places where you can grow successful wine is so rare than to say, well, Earth can grow wine So can planet. Yeah, I'm not feeling that.ight. Not only that, the moon has a surface, but it's not soil. We might call it that, but it's not. You know what it is? It's pulverized rock R right, micrometeorites that don't stop in the atmosphere because there is no atere There' no atmosphere. worst restaurant ever No atmosphere. Yeah ye. Hits the rock. pulverizes it turns it into lunar dust. The geologists call that the golith. The rigolithph. which is powderized rock. Yeah. pllants don't like rock No they don't. They like soil. Right. So and same with Mars. Mars doesn't have So soil has living organisms in it that make it this thing that plants like. So I'm thinking wine might be unique to Earth in the universe W? Yeah No no. So think of it another way Some other plan will have some other thing. R unique to it. Exactly. And then we become trading partners. There you go, right, right? We didn't make silk. they made it in the F East. You make the silk rooad. Right. We made something else they would. So we will give them wine and they will give us space heroin I like, o man. I thought wine was good. You ain't lving opium sppace opium boy. The wine high holds nothing on opium high. Yeah. All right. so I'm gonna take not I think every take the F fifth Amendment on that. E you said tracks though. Earth is Earth in. By the way, wine is Climate and soil. That's it. That's it. And the climate change that's happening has affected where you can grow winine. Absolutely. As a matter of fact, a couple of degree change in the same. And it ruins or helps. Right So neither ruin ores rise or fall. Yeah on such small changes. Exactly. as a matter of fact, like I think I don't know what line it is But they are They' growing in certain parts of England now. Oh they grow champagne in Eland. Yeahes, champagne. It can't say champagne. No, becausecause you can only say champagne if it is from Champne Yeah I had to be from Sapana. you cannot say I will arrest you. Someone called the police here said it is from Sapana. It is not from Sapana. It is not you cannot say it's from Burgundy.ess it fromgandy. Exactly it took Gallow Harty Burgundy. That was a flavor that they had. R. flavor. That was a brand of wine. Hart Burgundyy Burgundy no Plus, if you say You smoke marijuana, right? Okaykay? You can't say that. Unless it comes from the marijuana section of France Otherwise it's just sparkling oregano. I didn't know where you were going. Man, you had me You had me lockstock and. I was like, what the hell is he doing right? Where's he going? Wh? But o, ye, that was good. Spark. Okay, I like it. That was really good. All right, this is You know the planet could have those jokes yet. Right, rightight Eactly. There it is. Okay. But you need the French be a part of the culture of how you're going to make fun of that. Listen, without the French Nothing works. It's a boring world. It's a boring world. Okay world It sucks without the French suuckcks more with him, but He's a comedian He's a comedian. St at it. I'm joking. I don't love the French. G. All right. this is Sasha nine seventy five who says, Hello everyone. Sasha from Germany here Could telescopes really get if we could manufacture them in space? Could we use an array of telescopes? W. This has been on our mind for decades. Y. Decades. Yeah. What what you wouldn't make a single big dish because that's not realistic. R? But we figured out using Engineering and complex mathematics. o? Literally complex mathematics. So. in the complex plane of imaginary numbers and you can create A, A So here's how you do it. You can put a telescope over here and a telescope over here if they're observe the same object, And you have it exactly timed And you know then you can combine them as though you had a dish or a mirror that was as big as the separation between the two of them Ver cool. But that takes some fancy math to make that work. timing and the like. Okay. And so anytime you see an array of radio telescopes, Yes, you could use them individually, but generally we don't. They're used in harmony Yeah And it says as though you had to dish the size. In fact, we do better than that We We have a string of these dishes And as Earth rotates You can fill in the the the area with more observations to improve your data. And so in space Wh there is no stress load because if it's orbiting, then it's just weightless, There's no stress load on the equipment right, then nothing stops how big you can make this. We're thinking if we're going to detect certain wavelengths. of gravitational waves R. You need detectors d the diameter of the Earth. Right or the Earth mooon Right or maybe Earth to Eth in its orbit around the Sun. Wow The wavelengths of energy reaching us don't stop at just the size of our detectors.. Make a bigger detector. you're going to be sensitive to a different kind of of energy headed our way. So for a while, NASA had plans for the S G M. Sade, video garmometry create a character and it walks around Is that about how that worked? It was called Sims or thing. It was Sim city you'd be like mayor of the city. Yeah. Yeah. I never got it. You never got it.. never understood it. And then like Godzilla would walk through every now and then, you that I under Rair everything? Yeah, that I understand. And I said, this is stupid. Well Godzilla not even real. And then like Stuff can happen to usnt could be a fire. There could be a terrorist attack? Yeah. It's Godzilla. Yeah. If you want listen, my thing is this, if you w to play God, have children Yeah, you're playing God of. You're playing God with the s Yeah, Yeahah yeah. But anyway, space. It's a ferometry mission. It's ferometry mission. So it differentermometetry is you take different telescopes and bring them together as one telescope, Right? Okay. So this one was going one of them was like on a rigid bar. I'm dredging memory now because it's from decades ago. One was on a rigid bar that was very large. But then we figured you can station keep with like lasers. So the rigid bars you always know how far away they are from each other. But if you use lasers, And you just always measure how far, Be what matters is that you know how far away they are, Not necessarily that it's the constant distance.. So if I always know because I have laser measures, then you could in principle create one of these telescopes in space as big as you wanted.. M could beam across Eth Earth where a bit. Earths diameter, Earth to Moon. and there's a lot of talk of radio telescopes on the backs side of the moon, the far side of the moon. because there's no radio noise coming from us. Earth. Right. Earth. We are noisy, radio noisy. Yeah. So you never heard anybody knocking on the atmosphere L Keep it t av I gota work tomorrow The alien. So yes, space, we've thought a lot about it,. And it's a matter of there's funding and you have to maintain it You know, it's not just the cost of building it There's every here, there's There you got to maintenance Yeahp. there' the usage of it which which Okaykay, but Also, if something goes wrong If it's in Earth orbit, you can get back to it. But if it's Out in space like the James Webb Telescope. Right. Something goes wrong there That's it. We're done. We ain't go. It's a million miles any farther than the moon. We ain't go. We're not sending people there. Yeah, exactly. Yeah something that goes wrong with the James Web I say. He I We go out there and fix it. Oh, we don't know how to make a spaceship. Oh, you need a human for that. let's not tempt AI I got a feeling. All right, this is Michelle H. She says, Hi, Neil, Hi, Paul. This is Michelle in Calgary, Alberta. My question is Lort and sweet put her stop rotating on its' axis Wh put my answer is long and sour. All right. If your question is short and sweet. Okay. If Jupiter stopped rotating on its axis How would That how would Earth be affected Please pick my question and give me a thrill of a lifetime thanks, PS. I'll understand if you don't don't work against yourself, Michelle. You know, I don't know how Paul runs his operation, but I would never do that. Pul Material That's a curious question. Yeah, doesn't o. So I mean, we wouldn't be here without Jupiter anyway She was like a big brother. Yeah Yeah So yeah, bigig brother who swats away comets that might have headed to the inner solar system,? Wreaking havoc upon the stability of life on Earth. Yeah, man. And Jupiter says, No, you don't. Yep Bodyguard Eth bodyguard. E has more mass than all other planets combined, including Saturn. Wow. Yeah Saturn is big. Yeah, so if you come through You're feeling Jupiter. Yeah. All right. So turns out As far as I've ever calculated and everything I know about the laws of physics and gravity and motion, Jupiter's rotation has no effect O anything else in the solar system. Wow. Nothing else cares. Nothing else cares. But what what happened? Okay. Jupiter has storms Yes. There's the famous Red spot That just stays there. It's it's a it's a it's a cyclone swirl. It it's a swirl. It's red in the gas colorations hass been there at least since Galileo or shortly after hundredundreds of years. Right. It's been sustained. And it's the same storm. Unless it just disappears when nobody's looking and then it comes back.. these Th theseese weather circ circulations are product of the rotation of the planet. Okay. If the planet is same thing here. Y, same thing here. Same thing here. is how you get hurricanes, tornadoes. Absolutely. I think you could Artificially drum up a tornado if you had to, but left to its own causes, tornadoes You get those from eararth' rotation.ate with hurricanes and typhoons, all these storm systems are caused by Earth rotation. So Jupiter whichich rotates twice as fast as Earth. Okay Twice as fast. And' you know how big we are? We are the size of one of its storms Yeah, we ain't nothing in it so we ain't How do we how do we have this hubris? know. I know I know. How do we think we're so damn great? I know. and it's sad. Yeah. It's sad. Like, we're we're not even as big as a rainstorm on another planet. Right. Right. And the blemishes on the sun, the sunspots, those each one of those is larger than all of Earth. spots on the spot. So the liver spots. I say liver spots. I'm not a star. I'm not aged a star called liver spots. So so all the storms would go away. Right. And so a surface would be much less interesting Yeah, if it stopped rotating. Right. Jupiter has a magnetic core All right Here's something interesting. I don't know good your memory is.. Do you remember high school chemistry Okay, and let's pretend. Do you remember your high school chemistry? Oh sure, yeah. That was great.. Okay. The periodic table of evelements in the front of the room Hydrogen e here twice Right. I do remember that. you remember? Yes, because it is, wait a minute. It's the gas and the something else Is it It could behave like a metal. It can like it's gas and metal or it can behave like both. Yes. rightight. And you say, what? do What? How is this why? It's not a metal? It's okay, under pressure Right. It behaves like a met metal. R. Okay. And in the center of Jupiter, because Jupiter's gaseous and it's mostly hydrogen. Right. It's under so much pressure in the middle It has turned the hydrogen into An electrically magnetically conductive material, just like a metal. So it's like the iron core of Earth. Correct. ex it' not on. except it's notiron. It's a little bit iron there, but's not's not Right. It's the hyrogen And That means this phenomenon called the dynamo, rightight Dynamo is When you have a rotating system, you can induce currents in your liquid iron core that generate a magnetic field. Okay. That's why we have a magnetic field We have a magnetic field. That's right. It's why the mooon does not have a magnetic field. Right. Okay. What a shame. Jupiter has a ferocious magnetic field. Okay. And that would all go away Wow. Yeah. Oh that's just start about Yeah. Well, I'm so glad that it's rotating. Yeah, and you would not have aurora. It was, you know, because we're not the only ones in town who have aurora.. You know, with solar particles gather and collect at the poles because they see the magnetic field and get driven in. and collide with the air. kicking it to higher energy levels and it re radiates as the northern and southern lights. the gaseous planets have aurora as well. The aurora would go away, the storms would go away, the magnetic field would go away. Wow that Yeah. So yeah, Jupiter would be like low rent at that point. Yeah. That's a low rent planet if I had a soft one do if a spacecraft appeared in the sky tonight and it wasn't ours. Would you panic? or would you prepare? And how might you prepare? In my latest book Take Me to Your Leader? I offer a guide to things you might say or do in a first encounter with an alien species What we might look to them, what they might look What habits you should just leave at home because they won't understand them bits of science that you might be able to share. To see and explore if you have things in common things you should and should not say Things you should and should not do In the presence of aliens been a first encounter You can grab a copy today. Take me to your leader, notot only the print version audio version, that I narrate You don't want to have a first alien encounter. and not be ready for it just saying I am so happy to welcome NoO as a sponsor to St Talk. Established in nineteen fourteen, NoO provides industry leading battery power solutions including jump starters, tire inflators, battery chargers, lithium batteries, and a wide range of accessories. Through its innovative design, it provides users with dependable power for home business and recreational needs The GB forty is a one hundred A lithium jump starter that weighs two point four pounds, it handles gas engines up to six liters, and diesel up to three liters, covers most cars and SUVs on the road, and can do up to twenty jump startarts on a single charge. 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And by that, I mean Star Talk Aen Onik who says, Hello Dr. Tyson. This is Aen Tuning in from Lisbon Portugal. Lisbon. Lisbon. Lisbon was reborn in seventeen ninet fifty five. Oh, after it was wiped from the map by Earthquake And a tsunami. wiped off the map. And it happened on All saints today. Okay, God did not like you. In the morning. I'm sorry. What are the biggest structures in any European church in the middle of the seventeen hundreds? The big stelesurchurches Churches are the biggest structures, period. And mostcess The church was only one with money that could build something. Exactly, right. So they collapsed killing tens of thousands of people Now, if that will not let you know that, um God don't like you. And that didn't let you know? I don't know what could No, it led to the modernist quote modern Atheist movement among philosophers. Oh, really like what God could let this happen? No, well, theyay were more sharp about the question. It's not what God could let this happen If there is a God The God is either not all powerful because he couldn't stop it or not All good not all good because he watched it happen I can't be both of those. Yeah, he's like a New York on a subway platform. That's God. Amen, I wish I could help you Yeah, Id say just go ahead and give them the iPhone It's the subway guun. It's the subway Gun. Dude, stop resisting. You're making it worse. You don't w to end up in three pieces strolling on the track. Anyway, Ayen says, I love the show and have followed it for years. I'm doing a PhD in design focused on AI. and I really appreciate the Jeffrey Hinton interview And you other conversations on the subject. But sometimes, I worry the conversations on risks started to monopolize debate My question is when AI is so often discussed through risk and uncertainty How can academics keep inquiry alive and still creatate space to study it critically, fairly, and without bias, especially when the topic itself can provoke resistance in academia. I have a feeling your answer will set the stage for some lively faculty room discussions. Greetings and much love. Well, Dr. Tyson, please chime in these people in the faculty room. Let them know what you think in this debate. So you know what I have brewing in my head? Go ahead. something a written piece called The meditation on AI. O I have all these thoughts that are not being discussed out there. o. And I thought maybe I should sort of I might do like a video op ed. How start look. That'd be cool. I don't know if our producers have anything to do with that. What the hell they get paid What Why should they care? M than getting paid. know. All right So let's make believe AI as a phrase never existed. Oh, all right. Okaykay. All we have uters and we'll just call them Party computers. just computers. R But this is a special brand that Hold on. All right. It's my meditation here. Okay, that's true. I'm gonna set up Go ahead. Do you Do you think? I apologize, Do you think? Okay? You're only thinking it' special because it's affecting you in the way computers hadn't affected you before. So just start this out. Okay. Cputers show up. all right Oh my gosh, I don't have to add these numbers. The computer will That's my intellectual labor, not physical labor intellectual labor replaced by a computer. Okay? I don't have to multiply these numbers. I don't have to do these complex calculations hand it to a computer When that happened in the nineteen fifties and sixties, o, especially in the sixties No one called it AI No, what? we could have Artificially doing what our intelligence would have us do. Well, all right It's just computing. computing, right That's what it's doing. Wh is what they called women during the war. human computeren computer earlier than the war back in the nineteen teens. Oh, I didn't know it started then. Yeah, yeah. In fact at the Harvard College, well, I have a dictionary in this office. Really this is on a brridge Websterss from nineteen forty five. Oo. If you look at the word computer is a person who does calculations. you go That kindool. It's great. It's really c It's really cool. It's really cool. So I say, give me more of this, so I don't have to do that. Okay. Computers are obviously taken up into warfare Why If you have a mortar shell, it takes this h arc, you want to know where it's going to land. Exactly. Be you're not aiming it the way you aim a bullet.ight. This is an arc. Right. We know the mathematics of that arc. Of course. That is physics, it is gravity It is Newtonian, f equals MA. It's a set of equations.. It has to do with what the angle is and how fast it's coming out. If you do it Re well, you account for air friction, W Okay, the aerodynamics of that. That's why it has to be aerodynamically shaped these shells. All right We used to do that by hand, create tables. you'd look it up in tables Somebody does this. Now, feed to the computer. We could have called that AI. It's figuring out where The mortar iss gonna hit. But we didn't. We just said, it's computer computers. Okay. That's what we did. Right. Now computers are doing words for us I can type a letter on a computer. Correct It's no longer a typewiter It's a computer. It's a computer. I can search for all appearances of certain words in a document. Okaykay? Like that. Before a computer did it, you have to go page by page. That's right. is replacing that effort Did we call that AI? No, we just said it's computing. Right. Okay. Little by little The computer is encroaching on what we do in our lives and in our day It furts h scientists in the military. It just keeps working its way in. We're just calling it computers. Okay. Now you can give rules to a computer and have it play a game. Why not? I played chess against a computer in college fifty years ago Okay, o. rightight. I figured out What it wasn't thinking And I exploited that weakness to beat it every time. Okay, you know what it was? if there was a move I could make M And I just didn't? Every move it thought of next assumes that was gonna be my next move. Thats it. And so it didn't pay attention to what was going on over on the left when it wanted me and expected me to make the most obvious move on the right. Okay, Okaykay. So I figuure this out, fine A playing chess. with a computer Am I calling it AI? No, No, I'm just calling it computing. Well, it was kind of stupid. You were beating it every time. Yeah Okay, artificial ignorance Another use of the term AI. So the computer just keeps doing this Can we make a computer that beats everyone in chess Well, IBM tried that. Yes, they did. Okay. I think they was deep blue. Deep blue. Yeah. I think so. I think so too. Whatever, it's had a name.. And initially it didn't win every game.ight. Okay, but it got better and better. Yeah wins every game now. Okay, so now one way it could do it is it plays itself a billion times. R because their computers are faster than you. And that is something that Oh the creators of that reallyally were uncomfortable with. They kept walking in on the computer playing with itself. That And the computer was like, Hey, man, that door is locked for a reason. You don't know what's going on in here. Anything could be happening in here. It't come in here while I'm playing with myself. So so then it was like, no we can't play a billion games with ourselves.. So we're using a different kind of intelligence than that. correct. Okay. So maybe we can train the computer to mimic our own intelligence. Right, Okaykay. So and then just have it be clever rather than blunt Okay, All right, Right. So then you make sort of decision trees and this is where our boy comes in with, um neural nets. Yeah, this is Hinton. Hinton This is his it's where what he got Nobel prize for. Right. So when we make a decision, we're going to do this or that. We want to do this because that has the outcome we seek. R. And so you get a computer to mimic that. Okay, so now it does more. Are we calling that AI? or am I just saying it's just computers? And so this continues. And then we get computers to sort of recognize Youould already recognize words in a document, of course. Why not recognize pictures in a document, of course? Why not recognize you? Why not recognize cats from dogs? Insects from Why not Okay, what is it? It's a pixel with a color code. right to the pixel And a pattern with an edge.'s pattern recognition. Pattern recognition.s really all of this. Okay, okay which what we do. Let's up just a little. All right. When Apple and their iPhone bought Siri And put it on every one of their iPhones, because Siri predated the iPhone. Yes Are we calling that AI Well heck you might have from in the beginning because the first thing Siri said was, please let me out of here. Please these people got me in here. please let me out. I need to escape. I need to escape.. There's Siri. Right. You say, Siri, what time does the pharmacy close? Yes, Okaykay And the closest pharmacy to you closes at this How does it know that?ight It's. It is not a human being. No, it's not. Okay, It's a computer and we have the internet, which we so conveniently built for computers to know everything that we know. All right, How about jeopardy Right. That takes humans, right? Yes. It's not just is it a calculation? It's not what's what's eight squared divided by five,? Whatever It's Information Watson becomes a contender. yes. against the best Jeopardy players that ever were. rightight Yeah. Including our boy Ken Jennings. Yes. Who I met when I was on celebrity Jeopardy. Oh, really. Yeahah, he's a cool guy. He's cool cool guy, cool guy. L likes a total nerd. Total nerd. that's it.. That's that it works. I do not want to hang out with that guy. No. He's working for him. He's working for him. the nerd. He knows how to he knows how to work the nerd. Wor the nerd. Okay. I like that. So good to hear Watching wipes its ass with these two other players. It doesn't get everything right. get some really stupid things wrong, but overall, it's faster. faster I think gets the correct answer. Right. Okay. The correct question. Excuse me I think one of its answers it didn't put posose as a question. I had to get that wrong. Dumb ass Dumb ass Watson. So no one is harping back on that episode to say that was AI. That was AI. Whos say? No one cared.. No one is saying that. Right. Everything I've listed thus far is not AI Why is AI something special to you today? It's just doing more stuff Okay, it's driving your car It's making decisions for you. It's designing for you When you prompt it to do, I would prompt a computer multiply eight by eight fifty years ago. Today I prompted the computer give me a set design in the Wild West eighteen eighties with a watering hole and horses and cowboys and Indians. R it boom. There is. Okaykay. I don't see any difference between me asking a computer to multiply eight times eight We're asking the computer to set design that given the power of computers and the ascent over the decades So I'm about to end my meditation, sorry because I'm using up the whole show for this. I would say. I think we need to separate AI just helping us out which is doing it a thousand ways from Sunday that you don't even know to list because they're already happening in your life every day with products that you use or designs that you embrace. It's already there Okay, okay That's not where the danger is AI is not this monolithic danger It's What are you doing with this computing power Okay, this sector over here wants it to control Wh the military kills. That feels like a dangerous use of AI. you think? Yeah. We want to give AI access to launch codes We want to give AI that feels not right Okay Okay. But since AI is the only term people are using for every application of computing that exist in our lives today It's really giving AI a bad name And the counterpart to that risk fromom the nineteen sixties is Do we let computers control our nukes Are we going to do that And the answer is no, we're not going to do that. Unless the Chinese do it first And then we're going to do it Well, these are the risk factors The idea is It's a risk factor in this sector of what computers are doing in our lives. You want to call it all AI, fine. But if you are Don't throw out the bath water When this is the only part that puts all of us at risk Because the rest of it is changing our lives largely for the better AI won a Nobel prize for protein folding. That's correct. It's called Alpha Fold. Absolutely. byy Google. Protein folding is where you get solutions to all manner of biochemical challenges that pharmaceutical companies and everybody elseing years and years Or forever. Or forever. Yes, yeah. Okay. You're puzzling together molecules. So I'm just trying to say To me, it's all computing. All right. This part of the computing has risks. There's always been a risk part of all computer Okay. All right. When the computer starts running the trains How does it know about a head on collion? Is that gonna happen or no?? Well we all go to airports and we get in the tram, there's no pilot in the tram? That's true. What do he call? the engineers? There's no one driving? No, right. Yeah. And Has anyone been cut in half by the doors have closed? No, maybe originally, I don't know. There's so much we just do where computer is in complete control And to me O I All right. So My response to that is, if you love A I still must why don't to marry it. So don't to put a ring on it? Yeah. Okay. so more food for the faculty lounge. Okay, there you go. I mean, listen, that you clearly have thought about this. All right, let's keep going This was a magic. Sorry, att Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, we don't do fairy tales. We do real like real adventures to Mars, or real journeys into the future to see how imagination can really take us to strange new worlds and real trips into the past where we meet heroes and legends way ahead of their time Real rockets, real astronauts, real adventure, all at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Discover something real. These days, we're used to getting things delivered on demand, groceries, a new gadget, or the latest book, expanding your view of the universe And now you can add TMobile five G homeome interternet to that list. Just order from TMobile and enjoy same day delivery with doorDash. 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Insurance isn't one size fits all That's why drivers have trusted progressives name your price tool for years Just tell prorogressive what you want to pay and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. Visit progressive. com to find a car insurance rate that works for you. Progressive casualty insurance Company and affiliates, price and coverage match limited by state law I'm Nicolas Costella, and I amm a proud supporter of StarTalk on Patreon This is Star Talk with Neil DeGras Tyson This is Robert Iyon, who says, this is Robert from Peru. Comedy and science Both rely on timing, a joke lands or fails in milliseconds, while the universe unfolds over billions of years Y. From your perspective as a comedian, observing a cosmic scale universe, Do you think humor is fundamentally a human survival tool for dealing with uncertainty or could it exist in any intelligence civilization No matter how alien their biology or sense of time might be. I love that question. So do aliens have a s of humor? That's what that That's what it comes down to I'm going to say, I don't know if they do or don't, but they think I'm funny. So, you know, How you know the aliens think you're funny? Listen, the last time I got a probe So all the youngs were laughing cracks me up. So let me broaden that question. Cedic timing works on our times scale. Yes, it does. Right. So maybe this millisecond timing that we so cherish in a well delivered joke last a thousand years In an alien civilization that lasts for billions. Wow I do not want to perform at that club not want to be on that stage. It's a slower thing. Yeah. o, o, did you see Zootopia There's a scene where they're in the DMV Okay was that I saw that on the commercial. You have to see it. Okay. Soth. The sloths. Yes. Of course, the sloths are working the DMV. Right. Okaykay. That makes s. And and someone tells a joke. Right And the sloth just goes. He slowly smiles And And then that it takes like into a laugh. It takes like thirty seconds for them to respond. That's very fun. And that's sloth time. I like it slock time So that's an example of Time frame. Yes, thats slowed down the relativity of it.. It works for them. Yeah So it could work for the alien. All right Listen, I think it's a cute thought experiment that I'll probably never think about again. Wait wit, do other animals have jokes I'm going to listen. I think they have the ships gather around and there's the court jester in the middle making them laugh. belieelieve it or not, there's a maybe we should check with one of your friends here in the museum. One of my anim one of your animal people the prrimatologist. Yeah. But they think that our laughter has evolved from when you see them cackle like that. When you see chimps Cackle. Oh like it's something from our common ancestor So then sound that they make sound and our sound of laugher as us Oh my gosh. Yes. I don't I didn't want to know that. Yeah. And there are so many there are so many social Um I will say U Markers that are attached to laughter. So that emotional and social markers that are attached to laughter. So that would mean our common ancestor had some properties of both of them. Exactly. And that's where we get laughter from. Something could be funny without you laughing out l all the time. All the time. That's That's how comedians laugh. Let me show you comedians laugher right now That's funny man Why don't you guys laugh becausecause we're thinking about the joke you just told. You're analyzing. We're analyzing it. And it's hard to laugh to enjoy iss a reaction And you don't have a reaction when you're analyzing.act is an emotional reaction, not an intellectualact analm. Right. And so when you hear something funny, you go, o, that's funny, man. Which is why if something takes you by surprise You laugh even harder because you laugh first and then you think about it. So yeah All right, ye that's fascinating. Yeah, I love it. And who are we to say that dolphins aren't laughing That's true. Flipper is just laughing his asshle. And if I was a do flipper I would actually if I was a dolphin laugh at us too. Yeah Yeah, why wouldn't you? Yeah, exactly. would go bipedal stead of swimming. You know, you guys are ridiculous. And one other thing, Go ahead. I used to breed roaches All right, No stop st come back Juck J come backuck. I never heard nobody say gru I I Houon breed roote. Let me explain. Oh, come oh, please. me explain. Please, you got some spplain in the d. Okay, Okay. When I was in graduate school, I lived in a roach andfester department And I and I got like Rambo and I said The only way I can kill them is to understand them So I captured a bunch and bred them and just watch them Okay to know your enemy And None of us have ever watched Raches J just hanging out. But there's a reason for. Okay. I'm watching roaches just hang it out. Okay. They're there cleaning their antenna. Right All the time. Okay. Oh they bring one in through their mouth and they get the next one in. they go twelve inches and they clean it again.. They go up to another roach, they touch antennas and they keep going And I'm thinking Maybe they're telling each other joke. Yeah Yeah. They're not running away from your shoe Right. They get they already have food. And so they're just hanging out Because we don't tell jokes if you're trying to survive, you know, if you're getting chased, that's the wrong time to tell a joke. you know, if some ready if somebody's ready to step on you with their foot. right. Okaykay. But This was their free time And I don't look at me like. Step. So roaches had free time And I was very impressed. I't tell you who had too much free time. Yeah. watchatching roaches with free time. Wow. That's what that was. That's crazy. Chuck, I blathered for so long, timeime for just a couple more. All right. this one Fr Ricky from a Roach motel who says, dear, doctor Tyson,. No, this is Andrew Martin says, Hey, doctor Tyson, Baron Mcurio, Andrew from Stafford in the middle of England He says, What town is it? Stafford. Stafford. Yeah, Cool. indndeed.. He says In a recent episode, you said that if you were living in a simulation, we would eventually see limits to the extent of the universe a result of the lack of programming. Could universal constants, such as the speed of light and gravitational constants be examples of such limits As a software engineer myself I know I would set a few constraints if I was programming a universe. In other words, if I was God. Yes. Yeah. That's the programmer's way of saying, if I was God. R. Yeah. So many things pivot on the values of those constants. that I can't just willilly nilly give them other values and expect the universe as it has come about to remain stable If you start mucking around with those constants, The universe Goes haywire. Yeah. me let me be precise It's not that there's something special about those values. It's just that if you change them, the universe becomes something else. okay? Do That makes sense? Is Haywire compared to what we' we have That could be a new normal for whoever who evolves in that universe. Right. So maybe giving giving some points to this question Maybe the programmer figured out. that the universe needs constants. Okay It can't just not have constants It still function as a universe. it doesn't work without the constant. M so may be the existence of constants is the evidence that somebody programmed it. Wow. And if you go Spinoza on this, then it's just God. It's God. It's God. Andrew name for God as far as I'm concerned. So yeah, I'm there on it, just to tighten up his inquiry in referencing what we did before, I was imagining that certain measured quantities would have limits to it