Speaker
yearbook Logo
Home > NewsRelease > Legendary Inventor Danny Hillis (Plus Kevin Kelly) — Unorthodox Lessons from 400+ Patents, Solving the Impossible, Real Al vs. “AI,” Hiring Richard Feynman, Working with Steve Jobs, Creating Parallel Computing, and Much More (#782)
Text
Legendary Inventor Danny Hillis (Plus Kevin Kelly) — Unorthodox Lessons from 400+ Patents, Solving the Impossible, Real Al vs. “AI,” Hiring Richard Feynman, Working with Steve Jobs, Creating Parallel Computing, and Much More (#782)
From:
Tim Ferriss - Productivity, Digital Lifestyles and Entrepreneurship Tim Ferriss - Productivity, Digital Lifestyles and Entrepreneurship
For Immediate Release:
Dateline: San Francisco, CA
Friday, December 13, 2024

 

Danny Hillis is an inventor, scientist, author, and engineer. While completing his doctorate at MIT, he pioneered the parallel computers that are the basis for the processors used for AI and most high-performance computer chips. He has more than 400 issued patents, covering parallel computers; disk arrays; cancer diagnostics and treatment; various electronic, optical, and mechanical devices; and the pinch-to-zoom display interface. He is a co-founder of The Long Now Foundation and the designer of its 10,000-year mechanical clock.

Danny has founded multiple companies, but his only regular job was as the first Disney Fellow at Disney Imagineering. He has published scientific papers in Science, Nature, Modern Biology, and International Journal of Theoretical Physics and written extensively on technology for Newsweek, Wired, and Scientific American. He is the author of The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work and Connection Machine. He is now a founding partner with Applied Invention, working on new ideas in cybersecurity, medicine, and agriculture.

Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly) is the founding executive editor of WIRED magazine, the former editor and publisher of the Whole Earth Review, and a bestselling author of books on technology and culture, including Excellent Advice for Living; The Inevitable; What Technology Wants; and Vanishing Asia, his three-volume photo-book set that captures West, Central, and East Asia. Kevin is the author of the popular essay “1000 True Fans.” Subscribe to Kevin’s newsletter, Recomendo, at recomendo.com. Every edition features 6 brief personal recommendations of cool stuff.

Please enjoy!

This episode is brought to you by Momentous high-quality supplements, Eight Sleep’s Pod 4 Ultra sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating, and AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Listen onApple Podcasts
Listen onSpotify
Listen onOvercast
#782: Legendary Inventor Danny Hillis (Plus Kevin Kelly) — Unorthodox Lessons from 400+ Patents, Solving the Impossible, Real Al vs. 'AI', Hiring Richard Feynman, Working with Steve Jobs, Creating Parallel Computing, and Much More

This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep, and heat is my personal nemesis. I’ve suffered for decades, tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, pulling them back on, and repeating ad nauseam. But a few years ago, I started using the Pod Cover, and it has transformed my sleep. Eight Sleep has launched their newest generation of the Pod: Pod 4 Ultra. It cools, it heats, and now it elevates, automatically. With the best temperature performance to date, Pod 4 Ultra ensures you and your partner stay cool in the heat and cozy warm in the cold. Plus, it automatically tracks your sleep time, snoring, sleep stages, and HRV, all with high precision. For example, their heart rate tracking is at an incredible 99% accuracy.

Pod 4 Ultra also introduces an adjustable Base that fits between your mattress and your bed frame to add custom positions for the best sleeping experience. Plus, it automatically reduces your snoring when detected. Add it easily to any bed. 

And now, listeners of The Tim Ferriss Show can get $350 off of the Pod 4 Ultra for a limited time! Click here to claim this deal and unlock your full potential through optimal sleep.

This episode is brought to you by AG1! I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG1 further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. 

Right now, you’ll get a 1-year supply of Vitamin D free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit DrinkAG1.com/Tim to claim this special offer today and receive your 1-year supply of Vitamin D (and 5 free AG1 travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive daily, foundational nutrition supplement that supports whole-body health.

This episode is brought to you by Momentous high-quality supplements! Momentous offers high-quality supplements and products across a broad spectrum of categories, and I’ve been testing their products for months now. I’ve been using their magnesium threonate, apigenin, and L-theanine daily, all of which have helped me improve the onset, quality, and duration of my sleep. I’ve also been using Momentous creatine, and while it certainly helps physical performance, including poundage or wattage in sports, I use it primarily for mental performance (short-term memory, etc.).

Their products are third-party tested (Informed-Sport and/or NSF certified), so you can trust that what is on the label is in the bottle and nothing else. If you want to try Momentous for yourself, you can use code Tim for 20% off your one-time purchase at LiveMomentous.com/Tim. And not to worry, my non-US friends, Momentous ships internationally and has you covered. 

Want to hear the last time Kevin Kelly was on this show? Listen to our conversation here in which we discussed Kevin’s long bet against the human population, resurrecting extinct species, active optimism vs. passive optimism, Kevin’s $20 time machine, the “dumbsmarten” future of AI, tips for traveling with children, the joys of being a tourist in one’s own town, sabbaticals, and much more.

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

  • Connect with Danny Hillis:

Applied Invention

  • Connect with Kevin Kelly:

Website | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube

SHOW NOTES

  • [07:56] How Danny and Kevin first met through Stewart Brand.
  • [09:58] The funniest person who ever opened Danny’s interview box of unusual objects.
  • [14:01] Danny’s transition to Disney as a Disney Fellow and Vice President of Imagineering.
  • [19:12] The contrast between engineering and artistic approaches to problem-solving.
  • [28:56] The development of parallel computing and founding Thinking Machines.
  • [37:15] The three criteria by which projects are chosen at Applied Invention.
  • [40:36] Zero-trust packet routing (ZPR) and the future of cybersecurity.
  • [46:46] Learning by “hanging out” with experts like Seymour Papert, Marvin Minsky, and Richard Feynman.
  • [59:20] Danny’s work in biotechnology and cancer research with David Agus.
  • [01:07:44] Staying sustainable with systems-oriented thinking in agriculture — as nature intended.
  • [01:16:10] Danny’s superpower.
  • [01:17:48] Homeschooling, education on the move, and the influence of Mrs. Wilner.
  • [01:22:00] The failure of Thinking Machines and other regrets/surprises.
  • [01:26:00] The “Entanglement” that blurs natural and technological boundaries.
  • [01:30:54] The current state of AI versus true intelligence.
  • [01:34:34] How AI may help humanity better understand its place on the intelligence spectrum.
  • [01:39:42] What the future looks like to a short-term pessimist/long-term optimist.
  • [01:50:50] The cone of silence we never heard from again.
  • [01:53:10] Debugging dementia and other diseases.
  • [01:58:05] The MRI alternative Danny’s tackling.
  • [02:00:51] Why don’t we have a freezer version of the consumer microwave oven?
  • [02:01:23] Danny’s place in pinch-to-zoom iPhone innovation history.
  • [02:04:51] The pros and cons of patents for inventors and society.
  • [02:08:01] Inventors Danny finds inspiring.
  • [02:10:04] Danny’s cause-and-effect heresy.
  • [02:14:47] Quantum computing and its implications.
  • [02:18:34] The scientific pursuit of understanding consciousness.
  • [02:23:00] The question Danny asks himself before investing time in a project.
  • [02:25:26] Danny’s 10,000-year billboard.
  • [02:29:49] Parting thoughts.

MORE DANNY HILLIS QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“What the inventor does is actually a very small piece of it. What society does is it creates these preconditions for invention. And once those preconditions are in place, then it’s just a matter of putting together the puzzle pieces and making it work.”
— Danny Hillis

“I’ve also developed the ability to search out the people who really know the thing and hang out with them … It’s not that I know things other people don’t, but maybe I know a different combination of things that other people do know and I’m kind of willing to learn the things I don’t know and have a technique of doing it by just hanging out with people who are smarter than I am.”
— Danny Hillis

“Intelligence is a very complicated multifactored thing like life. It’s not just one thing. At the beginnings of AI, we thought the things that were hard for us to do were the intelligence … As it turns out … the hard part was the stuff that we were so good at, we didn’t even notice — like recognizing a face, jumping to a conclusion, having an intuition about something.”
— Danny Hillis

“It’s much harder to imagine solutions to problems than it is to imagine problems.”
— Danny Hillis

“Maybe I’ve kept a superpower that kids have … They’re not afraid to go in and see something new and strange and start playing with it.”
— Danny Hillis

“I try to ask the question, ‘Will this make a difference over how much time and how long will that difference matter?’ If it makes a lot of difference after I’m dead, I’d rather do that.”
— Danny Hillis

“I read enough papers that I have questions, because you’re wasting the time of a Marvin Minsky or a Richard Feynman if you don’t ask them something that makes them think. So I would say most of my learning was from the people, not the papers. But I always do homework beforehand to see where the interesting questions are.”
— Danny Hillis

“Great teachers … see where you are and they stretch you to someplace you can get to.”
— Danny Hillis

“A lot of people’s use of computers is now, they kind of know the magic incantations that cause this library to do that, but they don’t really know all the things that are going on underneath that that make it work. And so it’s becoming more like nature. Nature, we used to kind of know, ‘Well, here’s the magic incantations we use for making beer. We don’t know really why this makes good beer, this makes bad beer, or this makes champagne, but we know when we do this, it does that,’ and that’s kind of becoming our relationship with computers. So I think that what’s happening … the distinction between the natural and the artificial is becoming entangled … it may just kind of go away because there almost is no pure nature and there almost is no pure technology that we fully understand.”
— Danny Hillis

“I have a granddaughter [who] can sit and talk to an electrician as if she knows what electricity is, just by using the right words and saying phrases that she’s heard before and so on. And she can kind of fake it pretty well, but she has no idea what she’s talking about. And that’s mostly where AI is right at this moment.”
— Danny Hillis

“It may be easier to actually make intelligence than to understand intelligence.”
— Danny Hillis

“I think humans, as we know them today, are kind of halfway between monkeys and what we’re going to become. … We’re in this transitional phase. We’ve still got a lot of monkey in us, and I’m really excited by that thing that we’re going to become.”
— Danny Hillis

“In general, I’m a short-term pessimist and a long-term optimist.”
— Danny Hillis

“Much better to be a peasant today than to be a king a couple of centuries ago in terms of your health, food that you ate, how you spend your time … your comfort, everything.”
— Danny Hillis

“I don’t believe in cause and effect.”
— Danny Hillis

“An idea has a lot more sticking power than any physical thing you could build.”
— Danny Hillis

PEOPLE MENTIONED

The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than one billion downloads. It has been selected for "Best of Apple Podcasts" three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it's been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page.
Pickup Short URL to Share
News Media Interview Contact
Name: Tim Ferriss
Title: Author, Princeton University Guest Lecturer
Group: Random House/Crown Publishing
Dateline: San Francisco, CA United States
Jump To Tim Ferriss - Productivity, Digital Lifestyles and Entrepreneurship Jump To Tim Ferriss - Productivity, Digital Lifestyles and Entrepreneurship
Contact Click to Contact
Other experts on these topics