Sergey Brin – Self Driving Into the Future (2014)

so I want to bring it without further ado Sergey Brin co-founder of Google [Applause] oh I'm so glad you didn't wear your toe shoes thank God but you know I can take these off pretty soon you'll see my toes I thought so so you were last at one of our conferences I think over a decade ago I think it was thirsty or maybe the second and you know it was all about search at that point I can remember us having a discussion about advertising and why would someone click on an on organic search result and I think I'm pretty sure I remember you talking about how you had bought a a green laser pointer or something and how useful that was to you how how well I mean but you were trying to give an example of you know the benefits of this so how is Google a different company from the company that it was at that point first of all the green laser pointer has proven very useful but my vision still intact it was a I remember it was a it was one of the really high power ones he can't really get in the u.s. properly but yeah I followed an ad I think it was like 50 milliwatts or something and it was one of our advertisers how has Google changed I think you know clearly it's much larger company there's a lot more to deal with you know in many ways it's maybe less fun but I think the roots and what we do are similar we with search we took a university research project and you know made it sustainable and we've been very lucky for it to be successful in providing search to the world on the web and I think many of the other things that we do and especially the things that I focus on Google X are also about taking research and bringing it to life and things that we hope will transform the world so getting on this is you're a larger company let me start with that sentence because you are a larger company it's very upsetting I'm not sure I can accept this right now okay when you talk about larger people think about the power of Google now much more so than they used to they're scared of it they've got worries in Europe there's all kinds of things going on how do you perceive the company how internally do you all look at it when people look at you in a much different life as a much more aggressive company a company that has so much information about them company that has no governance in the way - given all the the data you have collected about people how do you look at it from the inside looking out as what you consider the company ok I'm sure the internal view is you know very different than the external view you know it's kind of David versus Goliath only the external view Google's the Goliath and the internal view or David but I think I think the truth is in between I think that you know there are many services we provide to many people and I think we have a lot of responsibility to do a good job of that and to be responsible world citizen I think I think at the same time there are a lot of issues of the world on the internet you know the kind of thing that Gwyneth Paltrow talked about just a second ago and and and I think in many cases people associate all of those things with Google and you know sometimes it's just outside of our domain or perhaps it's something that's not that's a social phenomenon worldwide and not necessarily Google specific you've been you were you personally were very tough on sort of the whole question of doing business in China under the conditions that the Chinese government had set up and I think you got a lot of praise for that but we obviously all know now that our government I'm not saying it's the equivalent thing but our government also does some some things that in the gathering of information that are troublesome to a lot of people worrisome how do you propose to handle that I mean you can't I guess you could but you're with China you just exited you just didn't participate that's probably not an option here I would assume so what do you do know it's a great question you know in China we exited in the sense we reorganize the way the business works there and we're to not be subject to their censorship laws internally and we do still serve search to China we have always but anyway that's its own nuanced you the the Snowden revelations are a huge disappointment to certainly to me and obviously to the world as a whole I think I think from my perspective if you go back to the Cold War when presumably the NSA was spying on a small number relatively small number of people you know Soviet whatever generals and various you know Communist Party officials and so forth and as consequence in theory was protecting us from total nuclear annihilation I think that you know that's one kind of balance I think in recent in the recent decade or two if you look at counterterrorism as the mission and in order to rent that you kind of have to surveil everybody and you know like apparently they did on a very mass scale and to stop something that's not quite you know the entire annihilation of the world I think the balance looks really different and I guess I don't know that anybody ever really did that but yeah it came as a shock certainly came as a shock you all had no that this was occurring no no and when you see the slides you know the things about you know tapping our back bone fibers things like that those all came as a shock now we were doing things over the number of years to secure our users and our networks anyway because we realized we are up against nation states we aren't specifically thinking of the US but we were already in process of encrypting or arise but but fortunately from a technological point of view you know when you make something secure you make it secure try to use you know mathematically secure you know cryptography and so forth so it's not it doesn't actually matter who it is who's spying on you in fact by the time the snooping on the Batman slides came out we had already been encrypting the vast majority of our traffic on the backbone for a while prior to that and there are a bunch of crypto things that we had done years before known as you looked at curve diffie-hellman that would that we hoped and stole all the evidence indicates was more secure than than the cryptography without forward secrecy that most sites and and that we were using a number of years prior anyhow I won't bore you with all the details the point is that we we were upping all of our defenses four years prior to that to withstand nation-state level attacks and I think that helped do you you would responsibility now does Google have to prevent this or do something do you think Google's been aggressive enough giving it it's the most important probably Internet company in the world at this point there's always more you can do we have a group that's hundreds or approaching a thousand people that's working on internet security and they're very very talented very good but there's always more you can do and also on a policy front I mean this is there a lot of these revelations have raised a lot of good policy questions for the United States in particular which you know really makes look very hypocritical and and I think I think that's a problem I think that these policy should be revisited so there are people who would listen to that and say well he's saying it's a bad thing for the NSA to know all these things but he's perfectly happy if Google knows everything about us how do you respond to that I mean you know a lot about everybody in this room I don't mean you personally right at this moment personally maybe maybe there's a chip in your shoe I don't know but you know well okay but but the word no does imply a level of sentience that's I don't believe is there so yes there's a lot of data that we process a lot of data that we store and you know ultimately you need to have for example if we do a good job with your email we actually need to store the email so you can search it find it display it and so forth similarly to do a great job of web search we need to have the web pages we need to understand how well we're serving our users currently and things like that so there's a lot of data you just have to have in order to do that there are many precautions that we take in terms of you know internally who and what systems have access to what data and those are things that were also always elevating and always making more secure to prevent any kind of abuse I think that one of the you know unlike for example the NSA certainly which I would distinguish ourselves by a longshot but even other kinds of companies for example you know the credit risk ones we actually have a direct consumer facing brand so that people that the trust that people haven't us is very important to us as a company we won't survive if people don't trust us so we are very motivated to safeguard that data and so you don't propose a possibility of a equivalent of a Snowden whistleblower leaking a bunch of stuff that would shock people about maybe Google not behaving the way you just described I'm sure we've made our share of mistakes and you know certainly you guys have seen some of those and and they've come out and I'm not claiming that we do a perfect job you know there was that of a Street View Wi-Fi stuff for example that was clearly an error too you know we were logging things weren't supposed to be and I don't think that we're perfect way certainly strive to be and I think if we were to look through if you were to come in and you know see our executive meetings or the emails and the deliberations that happen I'll think about how to arrange such a thing no seriously I think somebody going in we have people who care very deeply about privacy people say stop you know even though you know if you process that data and that thing you might learn something you have to employ this safeguard and that safeguard or maybe you shouldn't just shouldn't do that or what do you think of privacy today what's happened to it you is the founder of the company that has more data about anyone any any one group of people that have this much I know what are your definition of what privacy is right now what is my definition of privacy well that's a big question I think that people that privacy is the expectation that certain personal secret things stay secret and don't get exposed to other people that you wouldn't want it to I think that's so is that possible today I think it's remember even many years ago Scott McNealy said oh it's gone forget about it if your privacy is just over it's gone I'm paraphrasing him do you believe that or you believe yeah no no I certainly believe that I think you know I think there are certainly counter examples like the Snowden slides themselves obviously they intended for those to stay private but I think the vast majority of data if you look at people who use Gmail or things like that their private message just stay private okay let's start on talking about what you do all day yeah because we are curious about what you do all day you have been pushed forward this moonshot idea this idea well I don't know how do you define why don't you tell us what you do and can I ask you before you do that Ted I'm super curious about this you are not the CEO like when you were guys were here 10 or 11 years ago I think you were the two of you and Eric we're sort of running the place but you've put most of your energy as you said into Google X why why do you know did you not want to be the CEO or what was the deal there that's not true am I not to see you wasn't one of my both points for this preparation okay well so know I'm not the CEO and very much by choice I you know all I mean there are many challenging regulatory issues that we deal with and challenging employee issues and a whole bunch of things that I'm glad Larry is taking on and not me I have been working on Google X about three years maybe a little bit more now and I've really really loved it and it takes me back to my roots anyway which is you have to take some more research the early tech thing and to try to bring it to life into something that's gonna be widely used and and also it's kind of at a reasonable scale we have precisely eight projects and I don't allow any ones until we graduate them for the most part you know things like indoor maps the indoor location for maps came out of Google X but most of the work we've done is not yet come out and it's probably know of all of them care enough yeah I know you're building a time machine because when I came to see this new thing I thought it was a time machine you're gonna make me go back and kill Hitler so something like that but you wouldn't you have but you have you have you have most noon project yes Project loon those are the balloons these are piled titude balloons that you know similarly satellites can provide internet around the world and those are flying we had recently announced we had to one go twice around the world I can actually probably I think we've had hit we certainly hit three times around the world by now and I think maybe four point of which is to connectivity everywhere yeah I mean if you go most places world even heck you know around here in California there's no coverage in many places and obviously in the developing world that's even worse and these balloons are really affordable way to get coverage everywhere all right glass last such a colossus yeah we would have been very disappointed if you didn't bring those yeah you know I brought it I mostly wear it outside is the thing I have the shades on and there's a lot of there's a lot of controversy around it but it's also a very interesting concept of where we're going there's there's well there's a fair amount backlash in the press I don't know day-to-day certainly when I were I love to use it I use it mostly outdoors when I'm biking or with my kids it's great I was just in the ocean with my kids the other day and I was you know waiting these aren't waterproof yet but I happen to be waiting and I could take great pictures and I wouldn't have been able to like fumble with my phone while I'm keeping them from drowning and so anyway I get a lot of use out of them for when I'm doing sports or with kids and I'm outside and we've had a lot of explorers have had really positive experiences with them and they're more and more actually we keep we just recently opened the site up so anybody can become an explorer now but we're still in the Explorer phase we're still learning I've certainly learned a lot about about just from using these over the past of year or so and fundamentally what I've learned for myself and I think what a lot of our explorers have learned is they get the most value out of them when they do use them in the context in combination with eyewear so this is you know the shades version like so dorky by wearing shades and doors right now but but we also just started shipping a few months ago the prescription version so you know if you guys wearing glasses you'd have us be able to also record the video of your interview which could be fun but you just did which I did because when you put it on to see what yes make and wear them at home commercial product my credit history come up on there yet what's the point what is where are you going with these with these we'd like to make glass whole jokes all the times just fun for us press people but where you going what's the concept of what is well fundamentally if you think about we're computing is gone you know from the big mainframes to your desktop laptop out to a mobile phone it's gotten closer and more intimate and more instantly available at any time but it's still not as convenient as it could be in fact the way I've thought about Google since we spun and out of the university is augmenting your knowledge with the knowledge of the world and for that to be true you know obviously all of us sometimes get asked questions were like oh look at all put out don't even have you know speech-enabled on the phone oops dropped everything oh here's my hotel key wall for later Sergei we're not going there no because glass don't leave the glass off I promise this isn't San Francisco okay we're down in Palos Verdes but with a point being you made what was the word you used about taking out a phone it was not man leaders what was it oh I'd rather not repeat that okay I'm gonna go use the gwyneth defense it becomes more intimate computing you want it to be like your knowledge you know when you and there's something important or useful to you you want to be able to to access that quickly and get it out of the way quickly I mean that's kind of a thing that I think people miss that they're like oh there's all this extra electronics in my life now the fact is I'm much more present with my kids for example when I have that because you know in tonight take picture it's done that's it I'm not you know fumbling with my hands or you know looking down I'm able to be there and and go on with my life or whatever sports I'm doing I'm able to have that and if there's something important or I just want to check the time it's right there like that so it's very much about getting the benefits of Technology the information you want instantly when you want it and not more so and you know in my case I do really love the photography but without crowding your world with more management and you know the phone does let's come a really long way but there is a barrier to you know taking out of your pocket or purse and turning it on and fussing with that and looking down at it and not being present so it's gonna be a commercial product this year this year I it plus or minus plus or minus I'm not sure I can't tell you exactly you know it's hoped that we could by the end of the year but I'm not sure I mean we do want to incorporate the learnings that we've gotten and we've learned a lot about how people actually use this and what works for them and what doesn't work for them and it just takes time to incorporate those changes in to be able to manufacture scale third one is the driverless car the self-driving car yes so there's something new on that we're gonna show you first the video right did you told me yes without the video Liz Liz Gaines and I went down to Google and they actually surprised me which is a rare thing anymore with a product that they are going to announce right now video my reality show it's an interesting idea and sort of conceptually where things are going where people just get in these vehicles and then just get driven places by them it's delightful it's kind of an obvious idea at the same time like shouldn't there be why do we why we belonging things onto cars why don't we just create cars that are self-driving from the start so it's kind of interesting it's also adorable I like it much better than Google glass I will not put those things on okay what's the hate these things don't look at my taxi I can't take your picture now we're so good car this is a fully your Samsung will be happy you said what you're introducing does it have a name this thing this is just our prototype it doesn't have a name because we're still at the prototype stage all right so this is a fully self-driving car not added on to a car this is yeah I mean you notice the key thing is it doesn't have a steering wheel no I noticed that you notice that when you're in it or our pedals no brakes no accelerator no no no which was worrisome to me on many levels so you just got in I pushed a button and it went and it did the course that it was supposed to do based on the maps and the radar and things like that yeah so we took a look from the ground up as to what would it be like if we had self-driving cars in the world and what should they be like and and we've been building prototypes of that and you you got the experience one of our earliest prototypes actually and that's that's a project if you you've had to go past this prototype because it crashed too often or what and we have not had any crashes we test these things very carefully and you were you were in the parking lot but no we have not had any any crashes how does the world look with these cars yes so the reason that I'm super excited about those these prototypes and the self-driving car project in general is the ability to change the world and the community around you I mean first off there are all the people who are underserved by transportation today and you know if you're not in a major city you're not like in Manhattan there's not you know those Olien cabs out there there's not great public transportation buses and things most places in the u.s. certainly where we are in Silicon Valley they're not and if you look at people who are too young too old disabled in various ways can't get around that's that's a huge issue and it's really it's really a challenge for them I was I remember actually when we were just first got this prototype shipped and I was biking to work and I passed by a bus stop on my bike and there was this little old lady who had just walked up and I saw the bus had just left and she was carrying like her groceries or something and I felt really sad for her because I knew you know the buses come really infrequently it was gonna be at least an hour for her where we are and you know and it was going to be a big burden for her to get to wherever she was going and she probably was gonna have to walk a long way from the bus stop anyway and we could serve so many people by having white so what would be the scenario for that for the woman she would summon one of these cute some of the cars one of the cars or perhaps they'd actually be enough of them around she could hail it but at the very least just with a phone app you get the car to pull up with her Galaxy s5 I'm sure she had a cell phone I'm not positive she would call it up it would just arrive empty correct one of these yeah and then she would say where she wanted to go she would say where she want to go or she could use she you know whether way this is very early stages of R&D the actual you know UI for the summoning isn't something we've put a lot of work into or she would just do that actually in the app probably just say I'm going from here to here and then the car would pull up she would get it let's go to where it was going and it's it has the same qualities as the self-driving cars you're you're you're fashioning on to current cars the lasers the radar the cameras yeah so actually we can do better the main reason that I wanted to do that well we collectively the team and I decided to develop this prototype vehicle is that we can do a better job than we can by adding on to an existing vehicle which most of our cars we have Priuses and Lexuses right now and the things that we were able to do first of all the experience feels different you've probably tried one of our prior but feeling you're just sitting there in the front there's no steering wheel no pedals for me it was actually very relaxing it was just I don't know how you felt but I was I wanted a drink who wants a drink you can't want to text and drink at the same and you can and I was you know in about 10 seconds after get and I was like doing email and I forgot I was there and it ultimately reminded me of you know catching like a chairlift by yourself I guess you had your partner and there with you so but there was a bit of solitude when you catch one of these by yourself but and I found really enjoyable and it's a more comfortable yeah yeah that's very comfortable but the big win is really in safety and it has to do with where we can put all the sensors the lasers the radars things like that the placement becomes much more optimal in terms of not having obstructions to them being able to see around there are these prototypes have redundant steering so typically a typical car will have power steering motors and but the theory is that if that fails then you are the backup which it's actually you know takes a lot to turn the steering wheel of a car when this power steering goes out but the driver is the backup so in the self-driving car we don't have that so that has redundant power steering motors and the brakes are also redundant for that same reason what about cars other cars on the road like you this is in a city they only go 25 miles per hour correct so these these vehicles are limit by 5 miles an hour which is another level of safety and you know because you're you know any kind well first of all all the sensors and all the software we put in will avoid collisions now nothing can be perfect and you can't you know there's laws of physics that are some somebody appears right in front of you you just can't stop in time and so having the lower speed increases safety and we've actually designed these with some safety features that haven't ever been created before but there's about like 2 feet of foam on the front and the windshield is actually made out of glass but it's you know a plastic kind of like this it gives and we've already done a whole bunch of testing and simulations and we'll do physical tests that should make it far safer than any other car for pedestrian protection how did you get this built did you commissioned a car factory or how did you get this boat we've worked with partners like in the Detroit area Germany and California we've used automotives so this is using car parts that are kind of standard but sometimes we've we've modified them to our needs for example the whole body I mean of their you know we've worked with with partners auto manufacturing firms that have helped us with the body in how many are you building plan to go up to about one or two hundred of these these are the prototypes let me tell you a little bit more about why else we're building part of the part of the vision so people can't get around to get around as as as one there is also a huge tax on the community by having all these individually owned and operated cars most cars set parked about if you got 96 or 97 percent of the time and for every car there are about three parking spaces and this is just a huge load on the community in terms of space you know the land area we dedicate to parking for example if you guys look out here there's tons and tons of parking and by the way the stat I recently read was that about 30 percent there during a peak hour about 30 percent of the driving you see in a city is people looking for parking so that that goes away if you just if you have self-driving cars but you know just drop you're waiting to go and they go off pick up another passenger in terms of congestion on the roads themselves the self-driving cars can also affair quite a bit better we hope eventually they'll be able to form trains so that they use much less space on the roads and conceivably there's nothing preventing them going at much higher speeds these are limited 25 miles an hour there's no reason you couldn't go 100 miles an hour or faster safely once you prove that they can do that safely this is an electric car right this one is electric that's correct you talk about all those advantages but there's a disadvantage which is people a lot of people like the idea of having their own car our being able to not depend on some service or whether it's Google or some other company to get the car to them and all of that they want to be able to jump in their car this is a very deeply held feeling among you know tens and millions of Americans they want to jump in that car and go where they want to go could be across the country it could be around the corner and well I'm certainly not advocating that we get rid of all cars that do not drive themselves though some of the safety that features that we developed might be more broadly applicable to to individually operated cars as well I think that there's a mix you know some people do want to do that some people don't I know you had the experience of being in there and it was interesting because I felt like I was in on a ride it felt like a ride in a weird way it's adorable it's like this little round thing and so it looks like you know I named it Phyllis but but it was it was enjoyable it did feel like I was on a Disney ride it felt like you know and it was it wasn't disconcerting because I've been on rides or a bus or a subway it felt more like public transportation and so that was interesting I suppose I could get used to because I do like to text and I don't text and drive by the way but I do like to I mean it's a waste of time to be in a car in a lot of ways so that was the plus then - is I do like to ride around and scream at people with my car and stuff like that so I mean there's there's both twin both back and forth I expect people will use a mix some people or probably you want to have their own car that they drive and sometimes they'll choose to use that and sometimes they'll choose to use a self-driving car can I ask an obvious question if you have this car system first of all does Google want to be a car company I mean because you've made the Nexus you make you make prototypes of things are you a going to be a car company well we actually don't make the next you want to sell cars so we've worked with partners to build these prototypes and we expect to work with partners in the future including automotive companies and you the Nexus is a great example because you know the Nexus phones are made by Samsung or LG and so forth right and you know look the getting the technology to work and to be robust and reliable I should probably clarify where we are in the cycle the reason that you know we want to talk about it today is because you're going to start to see these driving around and want to explain what that is but but it's still early you know we're still doing lots of development both the software the hardware and the experience what's your estimate of when these might actually be sold or for real or operate in fleets whatever I think you know broadly available still a long way away I kind of when we had the California Bill get signed by Governor Brown those like you're in changed ago I think and I said you know five years toll we can try these in some form I hope that's still true but these I hope within we'll be testing them before the end of the year I hope with safety drivers you can plug in a joystick actually or something similar to that anyway there's the controller that we're working out further and currently we have a fleet of these self-driving modified Lexus vehicles so so we'll have that with the with the safety drivers but within a couple years I hope that we will surpass the safety metrics we've put in place which has to be significantly safer than a human driver and we all start testing them without without drivers and hopefully you'll be able to utilize them in some limited City within a few years but that's that's still on a test basis for the smaller prototypes do you anticipate federal regulatory problems with this I hope not we've already worked with regulators on this obviously the self-driving car project has been around and publicly known for a while and California Nevada and Florida have legislation on the books that sort of addresses it I mean historically most vehicles were self-driving is and you know usually pulled by horses and things so it's not unprecedented go back to the horse laws that's actually the guy in the vehicle would control horses that are just this is how we've worked it you know to try to come up with sensible regulations and you know we're optimistic about being able to test in the US and potentially abroad as well in the future and yeah we hope to be able to question if you have the self-driving car fleet don't you need to own the reservation system which is uber which you have a big investment in to need a reservation there's these things our reservation systems is kind of thing calling up the cars I think you have a huge investment in over right now yeah I think some of these kinds of business questions like how will the service be operated will we operate ourselves or work with partners and things like that are things that will sort out when it's you know closer to being widely deployed I think that these initial test vehicles will probably just operate a service ourselves because it's been a very specialized thing but longer term it's it's not clear and we are almost certainly going to partner with a lot of companies possibly uber so what's the fourth Google X project yeah I'm not gonna tell you about all of them but the glucose measuring contact lens that's that's been one of the ones I've been most excited about and I can take the least credit for starting it it's it turns out bobak who worked on glass before had a real passion about this in the broader sense of what you're doing you're not gonna tell us what the others are one is an invisibility cloak everybody just FYI sorry one is what one is an invisible invisible ax t clothes ability cloak yeah that we've already developed that's why I have you know PR person here whispering okay yes to me it's working pretty well huh yeah but it's really interesting that a company does this you guys make so much money in your basic business search I mean it's literally like you could you could open it you know it's a series of restaurants nobody would care at this point a series of Brussels restaurants you know stare gaze there's something like that what you know if pancake it's their gaze restaurant their gaze restaurants you could open us anything who told you about that okay visibility you could do almost anything what you know a line of sports clothing for you absolutely he shows up in this she's he shows up in sports clothing we went to a black-tie dinner and he and I and he showed up in sports clothing and I went what is wrong with you and he goes what I look great but and you did in sports was I wearing black tie I don't remember this case it was black tie everyone's just the time that's key it was Ben it was the dirty sports clothing anyway we're not gonna talk about this is we're not having a little reality show here so is can go why is Google doing this stuff what is the point of it it's it's got it's fascinating and interesting and by the way I think the self-driving car is critically important that's a one I mean I make fun of glass and I and I continue to maintain my opinion of it but but the self-driving car is important concept why is Google doing these things is it is it just a sense by your curiosity or the team's or is it actually a product development thing I mean I think the answer is both I think you know first of all it's important to work on something you really enjoy and and feel passionate about I personally really enjoy taking some kind of more challenging research project that has you know some real technical barriers and trying to turn that into something that's that's important and widely used and I think it's important for companies in general to try to do new things I mean that's new things happen is there is there a process in the non Google X part of the company - big game-changing things that might be a little a little less out there than this but which would would change markets in a big way I mean like you did with search there were there were some search providers before you and you just took it to a whole other level when you when you appeared Android was a little bit different because Apple had been out the year before but but Android has huge market share but it wasn't like a whole new idea metric search certainly was not a whole new idea there was excited like Oh Salt August Infoseek there were a lot of search engines before Google but there was some things that I think we did that were unique and and did better and I think Android did some things uniquely veteran certainly the Android project by the way was going for a long time prior to Apple announcing and releasing but are there other things going on and yeah I mean there are plenty of projects I hope that they do well I don't know and it's but I mean is Google X sort of off to the side doing these things and maybe one of them will hit and become a big deal or or is it tightly integrated with with the rest of Google no no it's certainly not tightly integrated in fact probably one of my criteria is to make sure that's projects are different and distant enough that we don't cause a lot of entanglement and complication it's and none of the kinds of things that we work on I hope are ones that other groups at Google would be likely to pursue or pursue something similar I think it's it's great that they are doing the other things at Google it's not you know my favorite thing to do to manage complicated entanglements between different parts of the company what do you manage any other part of Google do you spend any time there I mean you're on the board I am on the board I spent a fair amount of time though I stopped a little while ago actually on the computer security stuff that and I'm glad we rolled out a bunch of those defenses both during my tenure and since that's pretty much it what's your relationship with Larry like now it's been it's been really good now I see him typically once or twice a week we have myself today because kind of we have some central meetings that I tend to go to and and that's also that is my I do participate and broader company issues during that time but but most of the rest of the week and often google.x buildings which are a little bit farther away so you're working on this kind of cutting edge technology are you patenting all these things and what are you thinking general about the whole business that we of the patenting of software and the patenting of tech ideas in general well Google X by the way develops lots of hardware in fact one of the requirements that I kind of instituted on Google works projects was that there has to be some component of it that's you know Adams not bits of each project so you know we do patent quite a bit and you know a lot of that is not software I think that the patent system could be improved greatly you know by by many metrics but it also is what it is so you know I think we need to give me two examples of things that would be better I think a good beer should be better I I would exclude business process patents I would also have different terms on different areas of patents because I think the whatever 17 19 years is too long for example for a lot of technology so you would shorten it I would those cycles of technology yeah I think the cycles don't make sense it's not a reasonable trade for society to you have something locked out for such a long period of time I would also require that the patent holder be actually using and practicing the patent not have just patent trolls there's I mean there are many many ways in which could be improved I think fundamentally you have to look at two different possible future worlds and let's say somebody and that's whatever you square wheel or whatever so what is the world a look we are not reinventing the wheel by the way Google accent we have proper wheels from automotive suppliers on the self-driving cars but anyway let's say somebody invents this square wheel and they bring it to reality you have to look at what would the world what does the world look at because they came up with this idea and got whatever protection they got for it versus another world where you know they had never thought of it and they had never existed and so forth and you know in many cases you would say well the world be you know the next guy came up with an idea like two weeks later anyway and in many cases you know that because in the u.s. you can keep your patents a secret for a year anyhow so you know that other companies or people were doing that to do that anyway so you you haven't actually gotten much benefit over that you know the world be looks just as those good like giving the first yeah why did you give that person here that protection when the next guy came up with that in a very short order so I think whatever a patent regime you have it has to be the case that society is getting a good trade in that sense that you have to be better off than if that person had never existed never thought of that ID acts and do you do you you know your partner's your your Android main Android partner Samsung has lost a couple of patent court cases to Apple is there or do you personally believe there's a role for juries and judges to litigate these things I think it would be much better if it were settled by the companies and I think would be better if the legislation sort of supported a smoother clearer path I mean I think these are very nuanced complicated issues by the way I'm not aware about expert but I think I think it's gonna be really hard for a jury and a judge to decide each one of these and it's kind of a roll of the dice and there's a lot of effort gets spent there's a lot of uncertainty over the duration of the trial I think could be far better if the companies were able to come to a resolution themselves and if laws encourage that and would you feel that way if Samsung had won both these cases instead of losing them or I haven't followed each case to be perfectly honest with you I'm sure there are a mix of assertions and patents and some won some lost I'm sure it's a mix and I'm sure it always will be so competitors who are well I don't know who your competitors are but who do you consider Google X as competitors and then Google's how do you look at the competant you think about the competitive landscape at all or you just go in and say I'm gonna invent this today not really care about that oh I kind of feel from a Google X point of view really if there are notable competitors it's probably an outdoor project we ought to be doing because we have the capability to bring something new things to the world now there definitely are you know after we've announced projects there have definitely been other competitors that have come forth and we've perhaps encouraged the sector and that's great and you know we'll still continue to work on that but generally speaking I'm not interested in doing things that are done by many other people and what about Google as a whole how do you look at Google's competitors work you know a lot about Apple you know a lot about Microsoft what what do you what do you think is the kind of the playing for the status of those companies Yahoo I think that we are we Google are at our best when we really change how something is viewed for example Gmail certainly there was Hotmail and yahoo mail there were other webmail services that existed but Gmail that's scaled searchability it was basically and I'm scared to use this term now because it's in this decade it doesn't really mean the same things they used to but it was sort of an enterprise class email says I mean it was something designed for you know and anybody you know that that's what I use that's what anybody who can't even spend a lot of money would use so it's kind of changed it from webmail from being a toy to being a real high-end email and provided it to the world and that kind of transformation is what I hope we do in all the sectors that we enter not succeed in all social how do you look at Google you were involved in Google+ early on I remember marginally I think I think I'm probably the worst person to speak about social I'm just not a very social person I post a bit mostly just to my you know pictures the kids to family but that's not really like I don't know I don't like connect with a lot of people or I'm kind of weirdo and I was probably mistake for me to be doing anything tangentially related social to begin with okay you think the company you think the company needs to be a significant player in that field and you think it will be I think it depends on what you view is that a field does that a feature is that a product unsolved I mean certainly you want to be able to take pictures with your class or with your phone and share it with your friends and family and so forth and to not be able to do that doesn't go back to what you said a few minutes ago about when you're talking about the patents and and then later about how you choose product projects it's not as if there aren't other social networks already out there that have a lot of people in them where you can from your Android phone from your iPhone whatever just put the picture up there if you want it's not as if Google+ you know is the only oh my god nobody else let you put your pictures up we better have a product that does that I think that when you if you look at me when we were when we built out and so forth it wasn't actually so easy they weren't you know a zillion apps there you know we had a photo management which is probably people forget like Picasa and we had a lot of photos and we definitely wanted those to be shareable and wasn't actually so easy to be able to integrate with other services to do that now today there is a way to share from the gallery and in fact in fact I don't know if we've quite shipped this publicly yet but on my glass that just puts the photos in the gallery on the phone from which I can Facebook or Google+ or do whatever or Instagram or do whatever else I want but that wasn't the case when we added the Google post 1ld across the range of Google products and I think even still today due to the dynamics of business dynamics and so forth it's actually not so straightforward to do that if we couldn't have access to the social network and friend lists and so forth so are you how I'm gonna keep doing this that's crazy Google X everything yeah everything I don't know I'm pretty happy as long as I stay happier I'll certainly do it I mmm I've been actually much happier when I job since I made the transition to Google X and you know it's possible at some point that's going to outgrow the size that I enjoy and I wait 100 DoubleDown focus on an individual project or something what would you do after that well know I might pick one project to just really be able to focus I just I like working at a somewhat more manageable scale for me anyway I like to be closer to the iron as it were so that's fun for me great thanks from the audience questions start down here yes I Sergey Jessica lessin from the information another example of Adam's not bits is satellites and I was wondering if you could talk at all about what Google or Google X is thinking about a strategy there there have been a few interesting moves and hires and would Google ever make its own satellites like its own cars we already have a fleet of a million satellites or no I'm just kidding a lot of space up there no so there aren't well I don't really want to speculate about the other Google X projects but no there's nothing no satellite things that I can announce today we end up talking to lots of numbers also I can't talk about the fembot project what's interesting you about satellite yeah what's interesting I don't there's nothing that I've particularly okay there are no Google X projects related satellites we certainly end up working with a lot of companies I mean some of the things you probably know about there are for the imagery we collect for Google Earth like the GOI satellites and things like that so we end up talking to lots of satellites and you know satellites are a nice useful piece of technology for lots of things especially equipped with those green lasers Sergey first thanks for attending the conference and I still love using Picasa quick question how long do you think before the world is ready for what I think is a killer app for glass remember someone's name yeah we've not put well not only have we not put facial recognition and glass but we've actually asked our glassware developers not to put that in it it would be certainly a handy feature especially at a conference like this it's just you know we also so we've you know there's a lot that we've bitten off with this project as is and I think the facial recognition is there's an area that society is still formulating its views on so well there's a hundred other things for us to work on first couldn't you do it without facial recognition so that if if two different people were wearing glass there would be some way to serial number the other person's yeah I mean you could use it if you're willing to install software or you mean you could do it from glass to phone or phone to phone for that matter and I mean there are lots of services that already do this usually they're for hooking up for sex but last week I think it was a European Court issued this right to be forgotten ruling which really shook up a lot of people talk a little bit about first of all can be implemented I mean it's assuming that you you have to do it I mean how do you technically do something where you block search based on some notion that something may be irrelevant or out-of-date and and just you know what's the follow-up to this what's gonna happen yeah great question I think this I wish we could just forget the ruling but who are not forgetting the ruling we are in process of implementing it and you've touched on one of the most problematic elements about it which is so much of the judgment is apparently left to you know in our case the search engine which is not a place that that I think we should be in I don't know for those of you might not have heard about it but you know in theory once somebody comes to you and asks that well this should be eliminated from search but for whatever he's not from news and I don't know if it needs to be taken out of the search on new sites there's a lot of vagueness there but based on whether it's relevant or not and whether there's a public benefit or not and so forth maybe it should be not shown as a result and that is not the kind of legislation that makes it easy to provide an information service now whether you agree with the general concept or not you know if they said well the law is you can't show these million URLs in whichever European country okay like that's something that the citizens there can agree or disagree with but we can implement pretty quite easily yeah having these vague very subjective laws for information providers I think was a bad idea okay week hi Sergey if there was an interesting story about self-driving cars I I saw last week where the car has to decide as a human especially when you remove the driving wheel so let's say the car has someone walking in front of it and has to stop but right behind Cara there is also a big truck coming full speed and so the cars to choose between killing of a person walking in front of a car or you in the car because the truck is coming what how do you like a dinner party how do you decide okay guys so kara got in that case in particular which i think is unlikely to happen but nobody is likely to die because the frame of the car is actually quite strong and we've already done crash testing of portions of it and it will be crash tests doing full crash to us shortly the so Kara I believe will be safe even with a truck hitting her from behind and there's also a lot of space yeah there's no real - we have you know plenty of space there the seat belt which I assume you're going to be wearing will keep you restrained and the person in front walking in front of the car in fact even if it's you know mechanically inevitable now the car doesn't weigh that much so I don't think by the way whether it slams on the brakes or not if it's being pushed by this giant truck crashing tobacco it is necessarily going to make the difference to the pedestrian but the fact that we have developed this extremely cushy front and flexible windshield I think will likely keep that person safe too but it still would have to make a choice of some cut you said it was unlikely but I could imagine that scenario I mean I don't know what the statistical probabilities are but it's not a completely made-up idea so no look the car is going to avoid running over the person and it's unfortunate that it you know if you believe it will be rare ended in that case but generally it's also defensive and more defensive than human drivers it currently even doesn't enter a green light it weights a little bit and also their side facing radars that will alert at us to cars that are running the red light these kind of hypothetical situations are you know I don't know we can debate this philosophers but the fact is that we can't make cars that are far safer than human drivers in real life these dilemmas don't occur with any substantive frequency and there are they're over 30,000 Auto fatalities in the US every year and over million in the world and they're almost always driver error and I know I've yet to hear of an actual case where it said like oh there was this dilemma I'd have to hit you know this or that we we actually tried to drive into the creator of Google car the good self-driving car some two people students we have to esther i wanted to see the foam in action i did i was interested in the phone so this question very briefly is about the right to live forever can you talk a little bit about what's happening with calico what you're trying to make it do how it interacts with Google X if at all the right to live forever I haven't heard it described that way but yeah calcio which there's not that much I that I'm privy to but I know that art Levinson who runs it has been there's the building a team and getting some great facilities and they're really excited to work on to work on basically making us extending healthful life which is which is I think it's great to have that direct mission rather than some of the more you know less I guess direct incentives that people typically have in pharmaceutical or biotech companies and yeah from it I know they're excited they're you know they're doing all the biochemistry and so forth they have interesting pathways they're studying and so forth I imagine it's going to take a long time to achieve real results they might they might die before they just solve it they better give a better get moving I think human lifespan is currently extending about one year per decade which is obviously not enough to live forever but I don't know they seem really excited and I have no reason to doubt that they'll make help us live longer last hi I'm Adam gold I'm the founder of SPL capital firstly thank you 10 years ago invested in a start-up IPO of a search engine because of that I'm an investment firm so thanks very much keep it up I'm also happy glass Explorer so I'm sorry to hear they're going to have the products available this year it's one of those recognizable products friends all over the world ask about it so hopefully it comes out soon is there a question it isn't my question is related to that why does it take so long for innovation to come out and you think about 15 years ago when you started the company you're still focused really on the same thing yet there's so many exciting projects so why is it take so long for innovation in tech that's a great question in the case of glass there's you know the truth is there's been a lot of learning for me in terms of what it takes to get Hardware out and how do you know manufacture it at scale having the supply chain all the components they're a bazillion little components there they come from all around the world and we have to put them all together and then you know and whatever you get a bad batch of one or or you know there's some something we discover from our Explorer feedback that needs to be tweaked it just takes a while it's not you know software arrives and especially an online service you know you I'm used to turning around every day but this does operate on the longer time scale and it is very new form factor so we want to make sure we got a chance to get the feedback but we're working away at it possible I wouldn't I wouldn't count on this year but you know we're working quite at a feverish pace and it's it's coming on it's coming along more broadly I'm I'm always frustrated with development cycles and how long it takes to do things I wish I hopefully we can record this question and I'll show it to all my teams like what does it take so long I feel like you know and the good old days back when I developing Google on punch cards so going my little paper punch or stapler hat yeah it seems like we could go faster and that's you know JavaScript and Ajax II and all these it's not the social notes like zillions of lines of incomprehensible gobbledygook I don't know I take such a long time but if you yell at someone when he gets back to Google okay he's on it okay I still like punching those little things out by hand to get Google you still don't know what you're talking about paper cards I know you're talking about yeah you're still like that's how you know we used to do it you like have these cards and their little characters it's like it okay it's like imagine a tweet only like 60 characters shorter because they're in fact 80 characters on the punch card but instead of it being like a tweet like a like a text on your phone [Laughter] [Applause] you

Channel: Изабелла Борисова

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Id: _f2P4r_wTx8

Length: 69min 9sec (4149 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 20 2018