Ask an Expert: Peter Diamandis

Oh, yes! Here comes my robotic bird drone. Okay. That's the name your mom gave you? Okay. Hi, everybody, this is Peter Diamandis. I'm the Chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman of Singularity University, and we are here for the amazing show: "Ask and Expert", where we take questions from the Twitterverse about subjects we teach here, at Singularity University. We are, probability taking them from alien planets too, but I haven't heard any yet. So, what's your question? Here she is, my robotic bird. All right, PDX4EVA, asks: "When is your first space mining expedition, and how do I sign up?" All right. So, here is the deal. You can sign up to watch it, but we are sending robots, we are not sending people. Our Arkyd spacecraft, we just lunched one, a few months ago. Our next one is going up at the end of this year, and about every year two or three next generation space craft go up. Our objective is to send the first one of these out of the earth orbit to an asteroid sometime in the next three years, and these space craft are going out for doing prospecting. They have on board a set of sensors. Hyperspectral sensors will be looking for nickel, iron, platinum group metals and so forth. Midwave IR sensors that can look for water. Because water on these asteroids is like finding and oil field. Water is hydrogen an oxygen, which is the most powerful fuel in our solar system. The house of representatives in the United States just passed legislation that allows a private entity to own materials that takes off of asteroids. It goes to the Senate, it already got the support of the White House. So, stay tuned for before the end of this decade asteroid prospecting missions. The mining comes next. We will figure that part out, you know, next. Hey, my drone is back. Wow. Almost back. Sit, stay, stay. Be nice, be nice. Paygows asks: "Does your vision of abundance look like the federation of the Star Track or something else?" Great question. So, the fact, in mater is, I'm a Trekkie, full disclosure here, and in the Star Trek universe effectively there are no money. In the original Star Track there are no money, right? We came in with the Ferengi and latinum, or whatever the heck is called, in the later series. But in a universe where you have a fabricator, where you can take energy and make matter, why do you need money for? And this is exactly where we are going. We are heading towards a universe of abundance, where what used to be scarce, and cost a lot of money, is effectively becoming free. I'll give you an example. Right here in the valley, not far from here where I'm filming this for you, there is a company that has energy, water, methane and hydrogen coming in one end, and out of the other end, comes diamonds. Perfect diamonds, where the cost per carat is like ten bucks. So the problem is, now you go to propose to your girlfriend, you get diamonds to your wife, and she says: "Oh my god, this ten carat diamond only costs 100 bucks." I mean, honestly, we are going towards a world of abundance, where we are learning how to take what was scarce and limited, and make it abundant. And I do believe it looks much more like a Star Trek universe. And that's exciting. Where energy, water, food, materials, become lower and lower cost. All right, here we go. Lol, here it is. All right. Man, ran out of juice. Batteries went dead. Okay. Cody asks: "What tech is Peter using daily?" You know, Cody, I'm actually using the same tech you are. My smartphone is the fundamental, right? I'm using Skype. One cool tech I'm using is my beam robot. So, here in Singularity University, I've got 15 beams. One in my leaving room at home. And beams are, these robots, and with them I can do telepresense. On my laptop, I can beam in someplace, and drive the robot around, and actually go to talk to people, participate in meetings. I can be in Seattle one moment, in La Jolla the next, here in Mountain View the third, and actually be mobile, and have interactions with people. So, I'm using that. I fly an SR-22 airplane. And when I fly that, I'm using the Global Positioning System. And really some decent narrow AI autopilot, to keep me safe in the air while I'm texting to the ground. I love technology, I love experimenting with it, and I can't wait to tell you more next year. Thank you for watching "Ask an Expert". I'm Peter Diamandis, here in Singularity University. And that's it for this season, but we'll be back for season two, soon enough. Don't forget to click right here to subscribe. Oh, boy. I said, don't forget to click right here, to subscribe. Right there. And you too will have confetti falling from the sealing. See you guys next season. That's perfect man.