Charlie Rose: So Larry sent me an email and he basically said, we've got to make sure that we don't seem like we're a couple of middle-aged boring men.
I said, I'm flattered by that -- (Laughter) — because I'm a bit older, and he has a bit more net worth than I do.
Larry Page: Well, thank you.
CR: So we'll have a conversation about the Internet, and we'll have a conversation Google, and we'll have a conversation about search and privacy, and also about your philosophy and a sense of how you've connected the dots and how this journey that began some time ago has such interesting prospects.
Mainly we want to talk about the future.
So my first question: Where is Google and where is it going?
LP: Well, this is something we think about a lot, and our mission we defined a long time ago is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
And people always say, is that really what you guys are still doing?
And I always kind of think about that myself, and I'm not quite sure.
But actually, when I think about search, it's such a deep thing for all of us, to really understand what you want, to understand the world's information, and we're still very much in the early stages of that, which is totally crazy.
We've been at it for 15 years already, but it's not at all done.
CR: When it's done, how will it be?
LP: Well, I guess, in thinking about where we're going -- you know, why is it not done? -- a lot of it is just computing's kind of a mess.
You know, your computer doesn't know where you are, it doesn't know what you're doing, it doesn't know what you know, and a lot we've been trying to do recently is just make your devices work, make them understand your context.
Google Now, you know, knows where you are, knows what you may need.
So really having computing work and understand you and understand that information, we really haven't done that yet.
It's still very, very clunky.
CR: Tell me, when you look at what Google is doing, where does Deep Mind fit?
LP: Yeah, so Deep Mind is a company we just acquired recently.
It's in the U.K.
First, let me tell you the way we got there, which was looking at search and really understanding, trying to understand everything, and also make the computers not clunky and really understand you -- like, voice was really important.
So what's the state of the art on speech recognition?
It's not very good.
It doesn't really understand you.
So we started doing machine learning research to improve that.
That helped a lot.
And we started just looking at things like YouTube.
Can we understand YouTube?
But we actually ran machine learning on YouTube and it discovered cats, just by itself.
Now, that's an important concept.
And we realized there's really something here.
If we can learn what cats are, that must be really important.
So I think Deep Mind, what's really amazing about Deep Mind is that it can actually -- they're learning things in this unsupervised way.
They started with video games, and really just, maybe I can show the video, just playing video games, and learning how to do that automatically.
CR: Take a look at the video games and how machines are coming to be able to do some remarkable things.
LP: The amazing thing about this is this is, I mean, obviously, these are old games, but the system just sees what you see, the pixels, and it has the controls and it has the score, and it's learned to play all of these games, same program.
It's learned to play all of these games with superhuman performance.
We've not been able to do things like this with computers before.
And maybe I'll just narrate this one quickly.
This is boxing, and it figures out it can sort of pin the opponent down.
The computer's on the left, and it's just racking up points.
So imagine if this kind of intelligence were thrown at your schedule, or your information needs, or things like that.
We're really just at the beginning of that, and that's what I'm really excited about.
CR: When you look at all that's taken place with Deep Mind and the boxing, also a part of where we're going is artificial intelligence.
Where are we, when you look at that?
LP: Well, I think for me, this is kind of one of the most exciting things I've seen in a long time.
The guy who started this company, Demis, has a neuroscience and a computer science background.
He went back to school to get his Ph.D. to study the brain.
And so I think we're seeing a lot of exciting work going on that sort of crosses computer science and neuroscience in terms of really understanding what it takes to make something smart and do really interesting things.
CR: But where's the level of it now?
And how fast do you think we are moving?
LP: Well, this is the state of the art right now, understanding cats on YouTube and things like that, improving voice recognition.
We used a lot of machine learning to improve things incrementally, but I think for me, this example's really exciting, because it's one program that can do a lot of different things.
CR: I don't know if we can do this, but we've got the image of the cat.
It would be wonderful to see this.
This is how machines looked at cats and what they came up with.
Can we see that image?
LP: Yeah.
CR: There it is.
Can you see the cat?
Designed by machines, seen by machines.
LP: That's right.
So this is learned from just watching YouTube.
And there's no training, no notion of a cat, but this concept of a cat is something important that you would understand, and now that the machines can kind of understand.
Maybe just finishing also on the search part, it started with search, really understanding people's context and their information.
I did have a video I wanted to show quickly on that that we actually found.
(Video) ["Soy, Kenya"] Zack Matere: Not long ago, I planted a crop of potatoes.
Then suddenly they started dying one after the other.
I checked out the books and they didn't tell me much.
So, I went and I did a search.
["Zack Matere, Farmer"] Potato diseases.
One of the websites told me that ants could be the problem.
It said, sprinkle wood ash over the plants.
Then after a few days the ants disappeared.
I got excited about the Internet.
I have this friend who really would like to expand his business.
So I went with him to the cyber cafe and we checked out several sites.
When I met him next, he was going to put a windmill at the local school.
I felt proud because something that wasn't there before was suddenly there.
I realized that not everybody can be able to access what I was able to access.
I thought that I need to have an Internet that my grandmother can use.
So I thought about a notice board.
A simple wooden notice board.
When I get information on my phone, I'm able to post the information on the notice board.
So it's basically like a computer.
I use the Internet to help people.
I think I am searching for a better life for me and my neighbors.
So many people have access to information, but there's no follow-up to that.
I think the follow-up to that is our knowledge.
When people have the knowledge, they can find solutions without having to helped out.
Information is powerful, but it is how we use it that will define us.
(Applause) LP: Now, the amazing thing about that video, actually, was we just read about it in the news, and we found this gentlemen, and made that little clip.
CR: When I talk to people about you, they say to me, people who know you well, say, Larry wants to change the world, and he believes technology can show the way.
And that means access to the Internet.
It has to do with languages.
It also means how people can get access and do things that will affect their community, and this is an example.
LP: Yeah, that's right, and I think for me, I have been focusing on access more, if we're talking about the future.
We recently released this Loon Project which is using balloons to do it.
It sounds totally crazy.
We can show the video here.
Actually, two out of three people in the world don't have good Internet access now.
We actually think this can really help people sort of cost-efficiently.
CR: It's a balloon.
LP: Yeah, get access to the Internet.
CR: And why does this balloon give you access to the Internet?
Because there was some interesting things you had to do to figure out how to make balloons possible, they didn't have to be tethered.
LP: Yeah, and this is a good example of innovation.
Like, we've been thinking about this idea for five years or more before we started working on it, but it was just really, how do we get access points up high, cheaply?
You normally have to use satellites and it takes a long time to launch them.
But you saw there how easy it is to launch a balloon and get it up, and actually again, it's the power of the Internet, I did a search on it, and I found, 30, 40 years ago, someone had put up a balloon and it had gone around the Earth multiple times.
And I thought, why can't we do that today?
And that's how this project got going.
CR: But are you at the mercy of the wind?
LP: Yeah, but it turns out, we did some weather simulations which probably hadn't really been done before, and if you control the altitude of the balloons, which you can do by pumping air into them and other ways, you can actually control roughly where they go, and so I think we can build a worldwide mesh of these balloons that can cover the whole planet.
CR: Before I talk about the future and transportation, where you've been a nerd for a while, and this fascination you have with transportation and automated cars and bicycles, let me talk a bit about what's been the subject here earlier with Edward Snowden.
It is security and privacy.
You have to have been thinking about that.
LP: Yeah, absolutely.
I saw the picture of Sergey with Edward Snowden yesterday.
Some of you may have seen it.
But I think, for me, I guess, privacy and security are a really important thing.
We think about it in terms of both things, and I think you can't have privacy without security, so let me just talk about security first, because you asked about Snowden and all of that, and then I'll say a little bit about privacy.
I think for me, it's tremendously disappointing that the government secretly did all this stuff and didn't tell us.
I don't think we can have a democracy if we're having to protect you and our users from the government for stuff that we've never had a conversation about.
And I don't mean we have to know what the particular terrorist attack is they're worried about protecting us from, but we do need to know what the parameters of it is, what kind of surveillance the government's going to do and how and why, and I think we haven't had that conversation.
So I think the government's actually done itself a tremendous disservice by doing all that in secret.
CR: Never coming to Google to ask for anything.
LP: Not Google, but the public.
I think we need to have a debate about that, or we can't have a functioning democracy.
It's just not possible.
So I'm sad that Google's in the position of protecting you and our users from the government doing secret thing that nobody knows about.
It doesn't make any sense.
CR: Yeah.
And then there's a privacy side of it.
LP: Yes.
The privacy side, I think it's -- the world is changing.
You carry a phone.
It knows where you are.
There's so much more information about you, and that's an important thing, and it makes sense why people are asking difficult questions.
We spend a lot of time thinking about this and what the issues are.
I'm a little bit -- I think the main thing that we need to do is just provide people choice, show them what data's being collected -- search history, location data.
We're excited about incognito mode in Chrome, and doing that in more ways, just giving people more choice and more awareness of what's going on.
I also think it's very easy.
What I'm worried is that we throw out the baby with the bathwater.
And I look at, on your show, actually, I kind of lost my voice, and I haven't gotten it back.
I'm hoping that by talking to you I'm going to get it back.
CR: If I could do anything, I would do that.
LP: All right.
So get out your voodoo doll and whatever you need to do.
But I think, you know what, I look at that, I made that public, and I got all this information.
We got a survey done on medical conditions with people who have similar issues, and I look at medical records, and I say, wouldn't it be amazing if everyone's medical records were available anonymously to research doctors?
And when someone accesses your medical record, a research doctor, they could see, you could see which doctor accessed it and why, and you could maybe learn about what conditions you have.
I think if we just did that, we'd save 100,000 lives this year.
CR: Absolutely.
Let me go — (Applause) LP: So I guess I'm just very worried that with Internet privacy, we're doing the same thing we're doing with medical records, is we're throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and we're not really thinking about the tremendous good that can come from people sharing information with the right people in the right ways.
CR: And the necessary condition that people have to have confidence that their information will not be abused.
LP: Yeah, and I had this problem with my voice stuff.
I was scared to share it.
Sergey encouraged me to do that, and it was a great thing to do.
CR: And the response has been overwhelming.
LP: Yeah, and people are super positive.
We got thousands and thousands of people with similar conditions, which there's no data on today.
So it was a really good thing.
CR: So talking about the future, what is it about you and transportation systems?
LP: Yeah.
I guess I was just frustrated with this when I was at college in Michigan.
I had to get on the bus and take it and wait for it.
And it was cold and snowing.
I did some research on how much it cost, and I just became a bit obsessed with transportation systems.
CR: And that began the idea of an automated car.
LP: Yeah, about 18 years ago I learned about people working on automated cars, and I became fascinated by that, and it takes a while to get these projects going, but I'm super excited about the possibilities of that improving the world.
There's 20 million people or more injured per year.
It's the leading cause of death for people under 34 in the U.S.
CR: So you're talking about saving lives.
LP: Yeah, and also saving space and making life better.
Los Angeles is half parking lots and roads, half of the area, and most cities are not far behind, actually.
It's just crazy that that's what we use our space for.
CR: And how soon will we be there?
LP: I think we can be there very, very soon.
We've driven well over 100,000 miles now totally automated.
I'm super excited about getting that out quickly.
CR: But it's not only you're talking about automated cars.
You also have this idea for bicycles.
LP: Well at Google, we got this idea that we should just provide free bikes to everyone, and that's been amazing, most of the trips.
You see bikes going everywhere, and the bikes wear out.
They're getting used 24 hours a day.
CR: But you want to put them above the street, too.
LP: Well I said, how do we get people using bikes more?
CR: We may have a video here.
LP: Yeah, let's show the video.
I just got excited about this.
(Music) So this is actually how you might separate bikes from cars with minimal cost.
Anyway, it looks totally crazy, but I was actually thinking about our campus, working with the Zippies and stuff, and just trying to get a lot more bike usage, and I was thinking about, how do you cost-effectively separate the bikes from traffic?
And I went and searched, and this is what I found.
And we're not actually working on this, that particular thing, but it gets your imagination going.
CR: Let me close with this.
Give me a sense of the philosophy of your own mind.
You have this idea of [Google X].
You don't simply want to go in some small, measurable arena of progress.
LP: Yeah, I think many of the things we just talked about are like that, where they're really -- I almost use the economic concept of additionality, which means that you're doing something that wouldn't happen unless you were actually doing it.
And I think the more you can do things like that, the bigger impact you have, and that's about doing things that people might not think are possible.
And I've been amazed, the more I learn about technology, the more I realize I don't know, and that's because this technological horizon, the thing that you can see to do next, the more you learn about technology, the more you learn what's possible.
You learn that the balloons are possible because there's some material that will work for them.
CR: What's interesting about you too, though, for me, is that, we have lots of people who are thinking about the future, and they are going and looking and they're coming back, but we never see the implementation.
I think of somebody you knew and read about, Tesla.
The principle of that for you is what?
LP: Well, I think invention is not enough.
If you invent something, Tesla invented electric power that we use, but he struggled to get it out to people.
That had to be done by other people.
It took a long time.
And I think if we can actually combine both things, where we have an innovation and invention focus, plus the ability to really -- a company that can really commercialize things and get them to people in a way that's positive for the world and to give people hope.
You know, I'm amazed with the Loon Project just how excited people were about that, because it gave them hope for the two thirds of the world that doesn't have Internet right now that's any good.
CR: Which is a second thing about corporations.
You are one of those people who believe that corporations are an agent of change if they are run well.
LP: Yeah.
I'm really dismayed most people think companies are basically evil.
They get a bad rap.
And I think that's somewhat correct.
Companies are doing the same incremental thing that they did 50 years ago or 20 years ago.
That's not really what we need.
We need, especially in technology, we need revolutionary change, not incremental change.
CR: You once said, actually, as I think I've got this about right, that you might consider, rather than giving your money, if you were leaving it to some cause, just simply giving it to Elon Musk, because you had confidence that he would change the future, and that you would therefore — LP: Yeah, if you want to go Mars, he wants to go to Mars, to back up humanity, that's a worthy goal, but it's a company, and it's philanthropical.
So I think we aim to do kind of similar things.
And I think, you ask, we have a lot of employees at Google who have become pretty wealthy.
People make a lot of money in technology.
A lot of people in the room are pretty wealthy.
You're working because you want to change the world.
You want to make it better.
Why isn't the company that you work for worthy not just of your time but your money as well?
I mean, but we don't have a concept of that.
That's not how we think about companies, and I think it's sad, because companies are most of our effort.
They're where most of people's time is, where a lot of the money is, and so I think I'd like for us to help out more than we are.
CR: When I close conversations with lots of people, I always ask this question: What state of mind, what quality of mind is it that has served you best?
People like Rupert Murdoch have said curiosity, and other people in the media have said that.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have said focus.
What quality of mind, as I leave this audience, has enabled you to think about the future and at the same time change the present?
LP: You know, I think the most important thing -- I looked at lots of companies and why I thought they don't succeed over time.
We've had a more rapid turnover of companies.
And I said, what did they fundamentally do wrong?
What did those companies all do wrong?
And usually it's just that they missed the future.
And so I think, for me, I just try to focus on that and say, what is that future really going to be and how do we create it, and how do we cause our organization, to really focus on that and drive that at a really high rate?
And so that's been curiosity, it's been looking at things people might not think about, working on things that no one else is working on, because that's where the additionality really is, and be willing to do that, to take that risk.
jennifertorres@example.net.
I felt guilty about working on Android when it was starting.
It was a little startup we bought.
It wasn't really what we were really working on.
And I felt guilty about spending time on that.
That was stupid.
That was the future, right?
That was a good thing to be working on.
CR: It is great to see you here.
It's great to hear from you, and a pleasure to sit at this table with you.
Thanks, Larry.
LP: Thank you.
(Applause) CR: Larry Page.
Our lives depend on a world we can't see.
Think about your week so far.
Have you watched TV, used GPS, checked the weather or even ate a meal?
These many things that enable our daily lives rely either directly or indirectly on satellites.
And while we often take for granted the services that satellites provide us, the satellites themselves deserve our attention as they are leaving a lasting mark on the space they occupy.
People around the world rely on satellite infrastructure every day for information, entertainment and to communicate.
There's agricultural and environmental monitoring, Internet connectivity, navigation.
Satellites even play a role in the operation of our financial and energy markets.
But these satellites that we rely on day in and day out have a finite life.
They might run out of propellant, they could malfunction, or they may just naturally reach the end of their mission life.
At this point, these satellites effectively become space junk, cluttering the orbital environment.
So imagine you're driving down the highway on a beautiful, sunny day out running errands.
You've got your music cranked, your windows rolled down, with the cool breeze blowing through your hair.
Feels nice, right?
Everything is going smoothly until suddenly your car stutters and stalls right in the middle of the highway.
So now you have no choice but to abandon your car where it is on the highway.
Maybe you were lucky enough to be able to move it out of the way and into a shoulder lane so that it's out of the way of other traffic.
A couple of hours ago, your car was a useful machine that you relied on in your everyday life.
Now, it's a useless hunk of metal taking up space in a valuable transportation network.
And imagine international roadways all cluttered with broken down vehicles that are just getting in the way of other traffic.
And imagine the debris that would be strewn everywhere if a collision actually happened, thousands of smaller pieces of debris becoming new obstacles.
This is the paradigm of the satellite industry.
Satellites that are no longer working are often left to deorbit over many, many years, or only moved out of the way as a temporary solution.
And there are no international laws in space to enforce us to clean up after ourselves.
So the world's first satellite, Sputnik I, was launched in 1957, and in that year, there were only a total of three launch attempts.
Decades later and dozens of countries from all around the world have launched thousands of more satellites into orbit, and the frequency of launches is only going to increase in the future, especially if you consider things like the possibility of 900-plus satellite constellations being launched.
Now, we send satellites to different orbits depending on what they're needed for.
One of the most common places we send satellites is the low Earth orbit, possibly to image the surface of Earth at up to about 2,000 kilometers altitude.
Satellites there are naturally buffeted by Earth's atmosphere, so their orbits naturally decay, and they'll eventually burn up, probably within a couple of decades.
Another common place we send satellites is the geostationary orbit at about 35,000 kilometers altitude.
Satellites there remain in the same place above Earth as the Earth rotates, which enables things like communications or television broadcast, for example.
Satellites in high orbits like these could remain there for centuries.
And then there's the orbit coined "the graveyard," the ominous junk or disposal orbits, where some satellites are intentionally placed at the end of their life so that they're out of the way of common operational orbits.
Of the nearly 7,000 satellites launched since the late 1950s, only about one in seven is currently operational, and in addition to the satellites that are no longer working, there's also hundreds of thousands of marble-sized debris and millions of paint chip-sized debris that are also orbiting around the Earth.
Space debris is a major risk to space missions, but also to the satellites that we rely on each and every day.
Now, because space debris and junk has become increasingly worrisome, there have been some national and international efforts to develop technical standards to help us limit the generation of additional debris.
So for example, there are recommendations for those low-Earth orbiting spacecraft to be made to deorbit in under 25 years, but that's still a really long time, especially if a satellite hasn't been working for years.
There's also mandates for those dead geostationary spacecraft to be moved into a graveyard orbit.
But neither of these guidelines is binding under international law, and the understanding is that they will be implemented through national mechanisms.
These guidelines are also not long-term, they're not proactive, nor do they address the debris that's already up there.
They're only in place to limit the future creation of debris.
Space junk is no one's responsibility.
Now, Mount Everest is actually an interesting comparison of a new approach to how we interact with our environments, as it's often given the dubious honor of being the world's highest garbage dump.
Decades after the first conquest of the world's highest peak, tons of rubbish left behind by climbers has started to raise concern, and you may have read in the news that there's speculation that Nepal will crack down on mountaineers with stricter enforcement of penalties and legal obligations.
The goal, of course, is to persuade climbers to clean up after themselves, so maybe local not-for-profits will pay climbers who bring down extra waste, or expeditions might organize voluntary cleanup trips.
And yet still many climbers feel that independent groups should police themselves.
There's no simple or easy answer, and even well-intentioned efforts at conservation often run into problems.
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do everything in our power to protect the environments that we rely and depend on, and like Everest, the remote location and inadequate infrastructure of the orbital environment make waste disposal a challenging problem.
But we simply cannot reach new heights and create an even higher garbage dump, one that's out of this world.
The reality of space is that if a component on a satellite breaks down, there really are limited opportunities for repairs, and only at great cost.
But what if we were smarter about how we designed satellites?
What if all satellites, regardless of what country they were built in, had to be standardized in some way for recycling, servicing or active deorbiting?
What if there actually were international laws with teeth that enforced end-of-life disposal of satellites instead of moving them out of the way as a temporary solution?
Or maybe satellite manufacturers need to be charged a deposit to even launch a satellite into orbit, and that deposit would only be returned if the satellite was disposed of properly or if they cleaned up some quota of debris.
Or maybe a satellite needs to have technology on board to help accelerate deorbit.
There are some encouraging signs.
The UK's TechDemoSat-1, launched in 2014, for example, was designed for end-of-life disposal via a small drag sail.
This works for the satellite because it's small, but satellites that are higher or in larger orbits or are larger altogether, like the size of school buses, will require other disposal options.
So maybe you get into things like high-powered lasers or tugging using nets or tethers, as crazy as those sound in the short term.
And then one really cool possibility is the idea of orbital tow trucks or space mechanics.
Imagine if a robotic arm on some sort of space tow truck could fix the broken components on a satellite, making them usable again.
Or what if that very same robotic arm could refuel the propellant tank on a spacecraft that relies on chemical propulsion just like you or I would refuel the fuel tanks on our cars?
Robotic repair and maintenance could extend the lives of hundreds of satellites orbiting around the Earth.
Whatever the disposal or cleanup options we come up with, it's clearly not just a technical problem.
There's also complex space laws and politics that we have to sort out.
Simply put, we haven't found a way to use space sustainably yet.
Exploring, innovating to change the way we live and work are what we as humans do, and in space exploration, we're literally moving beyond the boundaries of Earth.
But as we push thresholds in the name of learning and innovation, we must remember that accountability for our environments never goes away.
There is without doubt congestion in the low Earth and geostationary orbits, and we cannot keep launching new satellites to replace the ones that have broken down without doing something about them first, just like we would never leave a broken down car in the middle of the highway.
Next time you use your phone, check the weather or use your GPS, think about the satellite technologies that make those activities possible.
But also think about the very impact that the satellites have on the environment surrounding Earth, and help spread the message that together we must reduce our impact.
Earth orbit is breathtakingly beautiful and our gateway to exploration.
It's up to us to keep it that way.
Thank you.
(Applause)