Bryan Johnson, the entrepreneur on a mission to change how the human brain works, highlighted Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 during the opening of one of the biggest tech events in the world.
Mr Johnson made his fortune selling his payments company Braintree to PayPal for $800 million in 2013.
He has since plugged more than $100 million of his own money into his new venture - neuroscience startup Kernel.
On a mission to better understand the brain, Mr Johnson wants to get to the stage where we can then use that information to improve or ‘hack’ it in order to improve the human race and develop new ways of thinking.
“Everything we are, everything we build and everything we aspire to become stems from the brain so why is the brain such a blind spot in society?” said Mr Johnson.
He proposed a vision where a tool could interface with your brain which would allow you to feel what it’s like to be someone else, to understand their contextual framework, to see another person’s memories. He suggested this could change how humans interact and behave with one another.
“What if instead of destroying our enemies, we destroyed the concept of enemies,” posed Mr Johnson.
How this will be done, through a microchip inserted into the brain or another method of augmentation, has not yet been made clear by Mr Johnson.
Initially focusing on medical applications in order to understand why the brain sometimes fails, the end goal for Kernel is to augment the organ to make us smarter and healthier, with the potential for us to interact directly with computing devices.
Speaking in front of a crowd of 15,000 in Lisbon’s Web Summit, Mr Johnson alluded to a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and a conversation about Vision 2030.
“I was recently in Saudi Arabia with a gentleman who was telling me about his 2030 goals for his country and I thought that’s amazing because that’s 13 years away and the world is going to change 100 times over between now and then,” Mr Johnson said.
Outlining how much of a challenge future planning is, Mr Johnson recalled the rest of the conversation, “I said let’s play a game here and let’s imagine we have a robot and we’re trying to get it to the far end of that sand hill over there. We program the robot and do a topographical map of the area… the problem with that plan is the moment the robot begins, the sand shifts and now the robot is stuck.
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“The better way to do it is to say we build the robot, we get the sand dune and we program the robot to respond in real-time to anything that comes its way so no matter how the sand shifts it can move to the end point. We as an end point need to become that adaptable and the key to becoming that adaptable is building a base line tool of technologies and cognitively intervening”.
He concluded, “In short, a revolution on the scale of something we have never seen is coming and it’s going to be on our front door steps in 15-20 years.”.
Compared to how rapidly AI is and will continue to develop, Mr Johnson told the audience he believes human ability has “flat lined” and proposes that the improvement of the human race should become the “number one priority”.
Reflecting on the comments made earlier in the evening by Stephen Hawking, who said artificial intelligence will make or break civilisation, Mr Johnson said he was more afraid of the potential of lone wolves who seek destruction than artificial intelligence.
“2017 kind of seems like the year where we all became a little frantic about the realisation that AI may take over the human race and I don’t think those concerns should be discredited. I think we should be very thoughtful on these things - at the same time I personally am much more concerned about human behaviour than I am about AI.
“The power for a single individual to create a bio-attack, to knock us off the electrical grid is devastating and we cannot let singular individuals create so much destruction in society.”.
Profile Idealz
Company: Idealz
Founded: January 2018
Based: Dubai
Sector: E-commerce
Size: (employees): 22
Investors: Co-founders and Venture Partners (9 per cent)
SPECS
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Iftar programme at the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding
Established in 1998, the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding was created with a vision to teach residents about the traditions and customs of the UAE. Its motto is ‘open doors, open minds’. All year-round, visitors can sign up for a traditional Emirati breakfast, lunch or dinner meal, as well as a range of walking tours, including ones to sites such as the Jumeirah Mosque or Al Fahidi Historical Neighbourhood.
Every year during Ramadan, an iftar programme is rolled out. This allows guests to break their fast with the centre’s presenters, visit a nearby mosque and observe their guides while they pray. These events last for about two hours and are open to the public, or can be booked for a private event.
Until the end of Ramadan, the iftar events take place from 7pm until 9pm, from Saturday to Thursday. Advanced booking is required.
For more details, email openminds@cultures.ae or visit www.cultures.ae
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MATCH INFO
FA Cup fifth round
Chelsea v Manchester United, Monday, 11.30pm (UAE), BeIN Sports
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Email sent to Uber team from chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi
From: Dara
To: Team@
Date: March 25, 2019 at 11:45pm PT
Subj: Accelerating in the Middle East
Five years ago, Uber launched in the Middle East. It was the start of an incredible journey, with millions of riders and drivers finding new ways to move and work in a dynamic region that’s become so important to Uber. Now Pakistan is one of our fastest-growing markets in the world, women are driving with Uber across Saudi Arabia, and we chose Cairo to launch our first Uber Bus product late last year.
Today we are taking the next step in this journey—well, it’s more like a leap, and a big one: in a few minutes, we’ll announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Careem. Importantly, we intend to operate Careem independently, under the leadership of co-founder and current CEO Mudassir Sheikha. I’ve gotten to know both co-founders, Mudassir and Magnus Olsson, and what they have built is truly extraordinary. They are first-class entrepreneurs who share our platform vision and, like us, have launched a wide range of products—from digital payments to food delivery—to serve consumers.
I expect many of you will ask how we arrived at this structure, meaning allowing Careem to maintain an independent brand and operate separately. After careful consideration, we decided that this framework has the advantage of letting us build new products and try new ideas across not one, but two, strong brands, with strong operators within each. Over time, by integrating parts of our networks, we can operate more efficiently, achieve even lower wait times, expand new products like high-capacity vehicles and payments, and quicken the already remarkable pace of innovation in the region.
This acquisition is subject to regulatory approval in various countries, which we don’t expect before Q1 2020. Until then, nothing changes. And since both companies will continue to largely operate separately after the acquisition, very little will change in either teams’ day-to-day operations post-close. Today’s news is a testament to the incredible business our team has worked so hard to build.
It’s a great day for the Middle East, for the region’s thriving tech sector, for Careem, and for Uber.
Uber on,
Dara
The Dictionary of Animal Languages
Heidi Sopinka
Scribe
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Joker: Folie a Deux
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson
Director: Todd Phillips
Rating: 2/5