Byron Reese – Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur In Conversation With Futurist Ian Khan

by Ian Khan | Feb 10, 2021 | Ian Khan Blog, Ian Khan's Blog, Podcast

Byron Reese – Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur in conversation with Futurist Ian Khan

In this episode, i speak with globally recognized Futurist Daniel Levine, also a co-contributor to the recent book “After Shock”.

Bio (In Byron's own words)

Hello, my name is Byron Reese. I enjoy studying technology and history, contemplating their intersection with the future, and writing and speaking about it all.

I have always loved technology. As a kid, I was always taking stuff apart to figure out how it worked. I grew convinced that I must have a knack for engineering because whenever I would put something back together, I always had a few pieces leftover. If that isn't talent, I don't know what is.

Like many people that are fascinated by technology, I loved science fiction. I was, and still am, a big Star Trek fan. Years ago, I read a quote by the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry. He said that in the future, “There would be no hunger, there would be no greed, and all the children will know how to read.”

This quote gnawed at me, and I wondered if it was true. Or did it just sound true because it rhymed? So I decided to try to figure it out. That's how I became a futurist.

I got into business early in life. When I was 12, my mom asked me to paint our house number on our curb with a stencil. Our neighbor, Mr. Roland, saw me doing it and asked me to do his as well. Afterwards, he gave me $5. Five bucks! For five minutes work. In 1980! I remember hearing a distinct “ka-ching” inside my head. I immediately started going door-to-door and made a kid-sized fortune. I have been an entrepreneur ever since.

After I had some business success as an adult, I began getting invitations to give talks. Good speakers write a speech and give it over and over. I am not a good speaker. I have never given the same speech twice. I just can't bring myself to do it… it feels like I am phoning it in. So, I would give talks about whatever I was interested in at the time. After a while, I noticed that the same themes were coming up over and over. Suddenly that collection of speeches looked a lot like a book. That's how I became an author. My latest book is about AI and is called “The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity.”

Today, I am requested to speak to both technical and non-technical audiences around the world. I invite you to check out my Talks on Tomorrow and visit my blog for a collection of writing including my articles on artificial intelligence and interviews with today's AI thought leaders.

Whether I am writing or speaking, you are sure to find me exploring the intersection of technology, business, and the future. Follow me on Twitter at @byronreese

About After Shock

The world's foremost futurists reflect on 50 years of Future Shock—and look ahead to the next 50

Contributors include:

Alan Kay
Aaron Frank
Adrienne Mayor
Alexander Mankowsky
Alexandra Ivanovitch
Alisha Bhagat
Amy Zalman
Anders Sorman-Nilsson
Andra Keay
Andrew Curry
Andy Hines
Anita Sengupta
Anne Lise Kjaer
Aris Persidis
Aubrey de Grey
Barry O'Reilly
Barry Vacker
Bill Davidow
Bill Diamond
Bryan Alexander
Byron Reese
Carlos Osorio
Carver Mead
Cat Tully
Cindy Frewen
Clem Bezold
Daniel Burrus
Daniel Levine
David Brin
David Guston
David Krakauer
David J. Staley
David Weinberger
Deb Westphal
Diane M. Francis
Donna Dupont
Eleanor “Nell” Watson
Eric Daimler
Erica Bol
Erik Qualman
Fotis Sotiropoulos
George Gilder
Grady Booch
Gray Scott
Hannes Sjoblad
Harish Natarajan
Hazel Henderson
Helen Messier
Ian Khan
Ignacio Pena
Jack Uldrich
James Canton
Jane McGonigal
Jason Jackson
Jason Schenker
Jay Gambetta
Jeff Eisenach
Jeffrey C. Bauer
Jerome Glenn
Jerry Fishenden
Joe Dispenza
Joe Tankersley
Joel Garreau
John L. Petersen
John M. Smart
John Sack
John Sanei
John Schroeter
Jonathan Venn
José Morey
Kaitlyn Sadtler
Kirk Borne
Klee Irwin
Kris Østergaard
Lisa Bodell
Maciej Kranz
Martin Guigui
Martin Rees
Maggie Greyson
Michael Tomczyk
Michel Laberge
Mick Ebeling
Moon Ribas
Naveen Jain
Neil Jacobstein
Newt Gingrich
Patricia Lustig & Gill Ringland
Paul Saffo
Paul Stimers
Po Bronson & Arvind Gupta
Ray Kurzweil
Rebecca Costa
Richard Browning
Richard Slaughter
Richard Watson
Richard Yonck
Rodrigo Nieto Gómez
Rohit Bhargava
Ross Dawson
Ruth Miller
Sanjiv Chopra & Pankaj K Vij
Sohail Inayatullah
Sridhar Mahadevan
Stan Rosen
Stephanie Mehta
Steve Waite
Tanya Accone
Terrence (Terry) Sejnowski
Teun Koetsier
Theodore Jay Gordon
Thomas Frey
Timothy Chou
Vikram Mansharamani
Wolfgang Fengler
Zoltan Istvan

Full Transcript : Hi friends this is Ian Khan and you're listening to the Ian Khan show. And this is an aftershock special episode, which means I'm speaking with a co contributor to the recent book aftershock. I'm speaking with Byron Reese today and Byron is an Austin based author. And his most recent book is the fourth age smart robots, conscious computers and the future of humanity. Byron Reese. barn Welcome to the Ian Khan show.

I'm so excited to have you on board. Where exactly are you right now. I am in Austin, Texas. And I'm happy to be here. amazing to be here with you. Oh, thank you. I so appreciate you making time for me. You know, we're both contributors to aftershock, which our good friend john shorter has put together thanks to him for bringing together an amazing group of people like yourselves and others that I've interviewed on the show so far. Byron, I am learning I'm drinking from the hose when I'm interviewing people like yourself just because of the things I'm hearing and people that are sharing. So thank you for joining me, I'm happy to be here. Let's talk about connection. You know, in your article in your work, and I've seen some of your work online as well, you talk a lot about people need to change their perception of a world driven by technology, because it just has a bad rep so many times when it comes to not losing jobs, but creating more jobs, engagement. And we're living in a post COVID world today, the world has definitely changed. What are your thoughts in a COVID world, and your ideas of technology in general. Human beings are about 100 watts of power, that's what we have your and if you were dropped on a desert island, you would feel the limits of that. And a long time ago, we learned a trick, and that is technology. And we use technology to multiply what we're able to do. You can measure it in a number of ways. One way is you know, energy consumption. Now the average person in the West uses 10,000 watts of power few 100 extra yourself throughout society because of this trick we learned. And all it does, it's a very simple thing all technology does is any increases human productivity. And that is always good for everyone. And if you challenge that, if you disagree with that, consider the alternative where you pass the law that said everybody has to work with one arm tied behind their back, what would happen? Well, you would create 100 jobs, because you need twice as many people to do anything. But the jobs wouldn't pay very well, because productivity went down. And so it's always good to increase human productivity. That's the story of why we live so much better lives and even our great grandparents lives. Absolutely. Let's break some misconceptions here. I've worked with a lot of industries, myself, you're out there, you're doing amazing work of it, what you do, you often hit a roadblock, when you tell people hey, here's five different things, five different new technologies are ways to create efficiency in your organization, whether it's an accounting firm, a manufacturing company, a doctor's clinic, and the first thing they think is Oh my God, is my job going to be done Am I going to be done and probably the first few thoughts that go to their head, or like, I'm going to lose my income, I'm gonna lose my house, I'm gonna lose my kids in car and my wife's gonna leave me, my kids and all that whole barrage of negative thoughts. How can we really convince people that technology is actually good for us? I mean, the proof is all around us. How do we get to to these people? Well, I would say it this way, I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out the half life of a job. And I think it's 50 years or put another way, I think, every 50 years, we lose half of all the jobs. It's been going on for about 250 years. And what's interesting in this country, with the exception of today, and the Great Depression, unemployment, it's never been over 10%. We know it's not over 10% now because of technology, nor in the depression. So you think about all these technological changes that came along, and you can't see them in a graph of unemployment, you replaced all animal power with steam and 22 years can't see it that an unemployment, you invented a kind of artificial intelligence known as the assembly line, you can't see it. Here's the kind of conceptual thing that I think maybe helps people a little bit. They say to me, Look, there's a range of jobs whose jobs at the top that are high paid high skilled jobs, and their jobs. Were at the bottom that are low skilled, low pay, like order taker, fast food. And they say, look, technology's great at creating these new jobs at the top like a geneticist, but it destroys the jobs and the bottom line, order takers, fast food. And then here's what people say. And I think this is what freaks everybody out. They say, you really think that person who was the order taker at the fast food place can learn to be a geneticist? Can the people who are losing their jobs, learn to code or whatever? And the answer is no, that isn't how it works. Ever. What happens is a college biology professor becomes a geneticist and then a high school biology teacher goes into the college job, then a substitute teacher gets hired on full time at the high school all the way down the line. The question isn't, Can people at the bottom do the new jobs that are created? The question is Can everybody on this planet do a job a little harder than the job they have today? So anybody listening, can you do a job just a little harder. There. The job you have today, if so, that's 250 years of economic history in this country for 250 years, we technology creates jobs at the top, it destroys jobs at the bottom, and everybody shifts up a notch. And that's why we have 50% of the jobs lost every half century, but rising wages, and it's for that reason, there is not a person listening, I would wager, who is absolutely out there mental and physical capacity. And I have found that most people want to do more if they make a little more money. And that's what the future looks like you use technology to multiply what you're able to do you increase your productivity, and you're paid more for it. Absolutely. also believe that and I completely agree with you, I think majority of people in the world undermine their capability of creating some change, sometimes maybe they don't connect with, you know, when people come out and say, Hey, I'm going to change the world. And there's all the naysayers who say, yeah, we've heard that before they're going to fail. But you know, what there's, there's there's a middle ground here, right between the super motivational people to the super D motivated people. There's people who are creating change right now, by taking action, creating plans, creating strategies executing on their tasks, and there has to be a systematic process of notching up. There's got to be systematic process. And I think there's a disconnect there, where people don't understand that process. And they give up, they just, they just give up on themselves, which is not great. No, I think to just add to that, I think the number one jobs skill in the future is the ability to teach yourself new things. And the good news is, everybody can do it. If I went I'm 52 years old, if I went back to high school, I went to school in the 80s. And I could there's only one class I could have taken back then that would be useful to me today. And that was piping? And who would have guessed. And so it's like everything, you know, for the most part you didn't learn at school, you taught yourself or somebody taught you and so your capacity to learn more, and to do what you're saying have an impact is without question and everybody has that's what makes humans different than other creatures. Absolutely. Now, it's been so interesting doing this book aftershock, because john reached out to I think all of us and said, Hey, write about future shots. This book was written 50 years ago by Alvin Toffler 50 years ago, it's so far back. And then you've got to brush your old copy of Future Shock and say, Okay, let's see what's in. Let me have a read. And there you find Alvin Toffler writes about things, 50 years forward, amazing things, very accurate things in the state of the world. Like he got it right, so many different times in so many different things. What were your initial thoughts? When whenever you read that book, or looking at Toffler and his work, felt somewhat inadequate? You know, it's, I wasn't even sure I was going to contribute, because it's such a guest company. But I'll come right back and answer that very directly. But if you go back just 25 years, that's when the mosaic browser came out. The first, you know, the consumer web. And if you went back 25 years ago, half that time, half of 50. And you ask a very smart technical person, hey, what's this browser thing going to do to the world? They would say two jobs, they would say, look, it's gonna probably get rid of all the stockbrokers get rid of all the travel agents get rid of all the Yellow Pages, all the newspapers are gonna have trouble. And they would have been right about everything. But what nobody would have gotten was everything that would create it, Uber, Etsy, Airbnb, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, all of that. And that's where the fear comes from is you can always see what it's going to destroy. But none of us have imagination to see what's going to create and Toffler did, and that's, to me, what's different, we all get nervous about what technology is going to take away or change that we don't like on namas. None of us can look at everybody could in 1995 see that there would be at CDA and all that it would have been started in 1996. But they weren't, you know, it took a decade or more before these really kind of core companies even came into being because it just takes a while to kind of get with the flow of the technologies. Oh, I could sell what's in my attic with this thing or what have you. So I think that's what's so impressive about Toffler is, is he could I mean, nobody's perfect, but he could see both sides of the equation. Well, yeah, I can have a lot of faith that the other side of the equation is there, but I don't purport to see it. Yeah. You know, I think, you know, my kids are gonna be short Wranglers. And you know, all these made up words I'm just making up because I don't know what they are. But they're gonna be something is different. But it'll come out to be but I don't know what it is. And thank you so much for that. They say that we are living in an era of exponential growth. And there's all bars, charts, data that exponential growth in the world in technology is happening Wait, Moore's law has been broken by 2025 or 2045 will be a new road race and we'll have implants. How much of that do you subscribe, like, what's your vision of where we will be realistically in the next 25 years? Here's the next 25 years. Well, I'm, I'm not a singularity. And I don't believe that our computing that once computers become, you know, smarter than us, then two years later, they'll be twice as smart. And then four times, and then eventually they won't even know what we are. I think that viewpoint is based on a, I used to host this podcast on AI, that's my shtick. And I had 120 guests, and I would ask them all the same question. And 95% of them answered this question. Yes. And then I give lots of speeches. And I ask audiences the same question and only 15% of audiences say yes, and the question is, are people machines? Are you a machine? And people in AI are, you know, normally say, Well, what else would we be? And at some point, if we're nothing but machines, we're gonna build a mechanical person. And then two years later, that will be twice as good and, and they're entirely right. If we aren't machines, for whatever reason, scientific, spiritual, whatever you want to pick biological quantum, then there is no machine that will ever do what people do. And therefore I don't think that those kinds of nightmare scenarios are even possible, until I, unlike my 95% of my guess, I don't believe we're machines, or it hasn't been proven to me that we're machines, we have brains, we don't understand that give rise to minds, we don't understand. And we have consciousness, which means we don't, a computer can measure temperature, but you can feel warm. And that difference is often called the last scientific question. We don't even know how to pose scientifically. And so I'm convinced computers, and I think they need all three of that I think they need a brain in mind, and first person experience. And I'm convinced I don't have that much faith, they do that, that we're going to build that. So to me, if I believe as I do, increase productivity is always good for people, all this technology is just going to increase our productivity. I mean, I wrote a book called infinite progress because I believe that you know, our destiny I look in the night sky sure looks like there's a lot of room out there for us to expand into doesn't feel crowded at all. And I imagine a day you know, is a billion people on a billion different planets, each with a Mary Curie and each with a Leonardo and each with a JK Rowling and each with a Lynn manual, Miranda, you know, all the rest. And that's the world I believe in not, oh, we're just machines, we're going to build a better version of ourselves, and it's going to rule over us and i don't i don't believe it. Thank you. Now in 2020, we've seen something unprecedented, which is COVID-19 never saw it. Never were expecting it. Like everybody was going about their business. What can you say? It's unprecedented? But do you really mean that? It's never I mean, that that is probably the most common thing in human history, isn't it? famines? I mean, pandemics are more common than wars. But go ahead. My point was that I don't think an average person was expecting to undergo what we went in 2019, let's say the lockdowns and people are getting sick, and many people succumb to this pandemic. So there's there was a lot of unknowns that hit an average common person. What should we expect from a world should we always expect in a world that's full of technology? In a world where human relationships are not what they used to be 20 3050 years ago? And also looking into the future a few years? What should our expectations be from the world that we should always expect change, we should always expect and be ready for events like this. And I want you to hear it from you as an as a leader, because you inspire a lot of people, how do you go about understanding what the world needs you? There was a time they think genetically based on the genetic diversity of any to humans, they think there was a time 75,000 years ago that we were down to 800 mating pairs of humans that was it $800 million? I mean, we were an endangered species. And somehow we who would have bet on us then by the way, who would have said, Oh, no, that those are those are the ones that are gonna take over and, and our history since then, has been one of continued, you know, advancement. We even created human rights and trial by jury and democracy and individual liberty and all the rest. And we also and we did it through technology, and through technology, we learned to control our environment better. And that's really what we're trying to do even now. We're inherently a fearful species. We come by that honestly. Someone said once that back in the day, it made more sense for us to see a rock think it was a bear. Oh, it's a bear run away and run away then to see this bear that it's probably just the rock and get eaten. And so we're these kind of tentative frightened creatures. So that's our history. And we have that we have a predisposition to fear and all kinds of things play on it. A lot of I think a lot of people want people to be afraid and you know, profit by your fear and all that The rest. But if you say that you still only be 100 pairs of us, we get nothing. And look at all we did. And along the way, by the way, we created art, and music. And we we learn to care for the weak among us. And I mean, we're doing pretty well. And so I would encourage people not to understand that, you know, in our heart, we're still like, it could be a bear. But know that and to say we, every day have more mastery of our world. And tomorrow, we will have even more. And finally, we're fundamentally good, because if we weren't, we never would have made it this far. The only way we got to hear from way back then, is because we learned altruism, and we learned to work together. And there are all kinds of people who are bad in the world. I'm not denying that. But the way we got here is because more people want to build and destroy and more people want to work together than destroy. And so in our hearts, we're we're good. I believe in us like, we've got this barn. Thank you. I know we don't have a lot of time with you. I do appreciate you jumping on board for a quick podcast episode. As a final question. What advice would you give all our listeners and viewers and people out there in the world who are trying to make a good living trying to do the right thing? What should they do in three steps? maybe one or two or three steps? What's your advice to the world? How do they go about their life? What should they expect from the future? I don't like to tell people what they should do. But I can say what I do. And you were talking earlier about how technology creates new jobs at the top and destroys one at the ones at the bottom and everybody shifts up a notch. I tried to apply that to my life. I tried to say what aspects of my life can technology create great new opportunities and great new experiences? Where am I an order taker at a fast food place? Like I do a ton of things like that in my day to day life? Where can I use technology to destroy those jobs those parts of my life I can I use it to destroy so I don't have to do them. And that's just like philosophically how I look at my day. I want to use technology to either automate mundane things, I don't have to do them or create new opportunities. For me, technology really is this thing. It's it's not magic, but it behaves like magic. It multiplies what you're able to do. It makes you you know more than you were before. It comes with its pitfalls, but it's very powerful when when applied correctly. Incredible. Byron Hey, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Folks. aftershock is one of the books where Byron has gone muted. Byron tell us where people can find you get a copy of your book, learn more about your incredible work. Oh, thank you. I'm an easiest person in the world to find. I'm Byron Reese on everything. I'm Byron Reese on twitter.com. Just type that in your search engine of choice and you will have many options. Alrighty. Well, Byron, thank you for sharing your time with us. Really appreciate it and hope to see you very soon in the future and keep inspiring people. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Hey, friend, this is Ian Khan. If you like what you saw on my video, then please subscribe to my YouTube channel and be inspired every single day with innovative content that keeps you fresh, updated and ready for the future. For more information. Also visit my website at Ian khan.com

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