[MUSIC PLAYING]
EMI MAHMOUD: Every
story has a beginning.
This one begins
with a mortal woman.
She's given the gift of love,
emotion, language, artistry,
and finally the
gift of curiosity.
Oh, and did I mention this
formidable box not to be
opened under any circumstance?
So the woman tries
to distract herself
with smaller things
like birds and the way
they sing, and trees and
how they sway, and fire,
because that was the
hottest thing at the time.
Excuse the pun.
But it was actually
the greatest technology
of the moment, all
the rage back then.
So some time goes by and this
woman, we'll call her Pandora,
starts to itch.
She starts to wonder
what's in the box.
And it's almost as if
the thing calls to her,
beckoning with secrets
unknown, questions unanswered,
a promise of some sort of
gratification that cannot be
achieved from things
previously known.
Pandora suppresses this feeling.
It is important to note
that at this moment,
Pandora is fighting against
her very nature, the gift
of curiosity bestowed upon her
alongside this box she received
as a dowry, almost as if to
say this gift is here only
to torment you unless
you're comfortable knowing
only that you know what
you know and nothing more.
Pandora continues
to distract herself
with things other than the box,
like the invention of zero,
astronomy, mythology, and
the advent of the wheel.
Again, another thing that's
just all the rage back then.
This goes on and
on for millennia
until Pandora has witnessed many
technological breakthroughs,
including but not limited to,
irrigation, static electricity,
the water wheel, rudimentary
concrete, windmills,
and clocks.
One day Pandora is flying kites
with her friend Pythagoras
and talking about
how hard it is not
to focus on this box that
keeps calling to her.
She explains that
no matter how much
she learns of what
is known, no matter
how much she
searches for answers,
another question
always seems to emerge.
And she fears that
all of those answers
are waiting inside the box.
Pythagoras offers a
distraction telling her
about his theorem
and a newer idea
that he and a couple of
friends are putting forth.
He says, get this, we
think the Earth is round.
The idea manages to keep
Pandora occupied for a couple
more centuries as
she delves deeply
into learning about the
world that surrounds her.
Some time passes and Pandora
is chilling with Hero,
tinkering with steam power,
watching the first fireworks
in China, discovering
automation with the Banu Musa
brothers in Baghdad,
printing pages with Gutenberg
and having lunch
with Marie Curie.
Dancing all across history
all to avoid the box,
which just won't
stop calling to her.
It doesn't matter how you
tell the story, in the end
the bottom line is this.
Pandora has two choices.
Open the box.
Don't open the box.
Everyone who knows the story
knows Pandora opens the box.
All sorts of monsters, bad
spirits, negative energy,
plagues, famine, and
atrocity spilled forth
from this box,
which happens to be
a vessel for all things
awful in the world.
And after all of
that, at the very end,
hope springs forth to
work against the horror
Pandora's box released.
As children, we hear
the story and focus
on the takeaways our
teachers relayed to us.
Hope conquers all.
Or more commonly,
curiosity killed the cat.
And we jokingly say
satisfaction brought it back,
all to push against
this early notion
that there is
something inherently
wrong with this
curiosity deep within us.
As an adult I want to ask,
what are we really supposed
to learn from Pandora's story?
Is it that the
unknown is horrifying,
not to be poked,
prodded, or explored?
Is it that fate is a trap,
the kind of trap that
would give you something
not to be tampered with
and simultaneously the undying
curiosity to explore it
regardless?
Is it that boxes are
better left closed
and we mortals better off
working with what is known?
Is it that women bring
hope to the world,
or more commonly, women
bring horror to it?
Or maybe the question
isn't what we should learn
but who we even
are in the story.
Are we Prometheus, who gave
the humans fire and then was
punished for it eternally?
Are we Zeus who decided to give
Pandora an impossible challenge
and a tiny way out?
Are we Pandora who
suppressed her curiosity
for as long as
possible only to become
the catalyst for all
evil in the world
and simultaneously all hope?
Are we Hermes who gave
a name to Pandora?
Are we the box, the vessel
for all things good and bad?
Or are we the horror?
Or are we the hope that's
left at the bottom of the box?
Some time passes and one
day Einstein and Pandora
are skipping rocks, talking
about their regrets in life.
For Pandora, it's
opening the box.
For Einstein, it's urging the
creation of the atomic bomb.
He asked Pandora what she
would have done differently.
We still emulate Pandora today.
We're still told to manage our
expectations, clip our wings,
not go forth into the unknown.
And just like Pandora, we
fight these competing desires
everyday to quell our
curiosity and also
to be careful of the unknown.
For this reason and
many other reasons,
we are constantly
made to choose.
From the smallest moments
to the most significant,
we make millions of small
calculations and movements,
come up with the closest
answers we possibly can produce
to the problems that face us.
Life becomes a series of
calculations and predictions
all designed to minimize
the harm we create.
What if I told you that
there was a better way
to minimize this harm
while still staying
true to the act of discovery?
What if I told you
there was a way
to open the box,
harness the hope,
and work diligently to alter
or reverse the effects of all
the danger that spills forth?
Wouldn't you want
to discover it too?
Wouldn't you want
to find it too?
If Pandora had the
power to analyze the box
and think ahead of all the
different possible scenarios,
she could have put some things
in place to mitigate the risk.
She could have recruited all of
her friends, all the scientists
and mathematicians
across the ages
to set some things in place.
It still wouldn't be enough.
Pandora would know this.
She'd then recruit
the humanitarians too.
The mothers and fathers,
the children and caretakers
as well.
She'd get the travelers
and idea makers together
and they would work to
create a network powerful
and diverse enough to
shield against the unknown.
It still wouldn't be enough
Pandora would then
have to create
the most powerful
algorithm known to humanity
and build a quantum
computer that could solve
said algorithm in
a timely fashion.
The qubits would work to
analyze every possible answer
to the question, what
is inside Pandora's box?
What would happen if we
opened Pandora's box?
The computer would farm
all of these calculations
out into the
multiverse and come up
with an answer
that tells us what
could be inside Pandora's box.
Even with all of
this, I still wouldn't
be able to tell you whether
Pandora would open the box
or not.
But I can tell you
that she would want to.
I can tell you that
that quest for answers,
that thirst for discovery
would keep her up at night
and drive her to work
harder than she'd ever done,
and ask people she'd never
thought to reach out to,
and work towards things
she never imagined
could be achieved in her
extraordinarily long lifetime.
I could tell you she would want
to be there in the same way
that if I saw your reverse light
cone, the visual representation
of your entire past,
every decision you've ever
made, everything
you've ever done,
I still wouldn't be able to
tell you what you would do next.
This is the beauty
of being human.
That no matter what we
have done in the past,
we can always do better.
We can always change
our way forward,
make decisions that put
good out into the world
and counter the
negative, come up
with solutions that bring
ease into people's lives
and prevent the abuse of power.
We can include people in our
front-facing light cones,
our futures, we
never thought would
want to join us all
because in this moment,
in this present plane,
we have that option.
So calling all dreamers.
Calling all artists.
Calling all nerds.
Calling all students.
Calling all change makers, all
aunties, and uncles, neighbors,
and more.
Calling all children, all
migrants, all hopefuls.
Calling all engineers.
Calling all teachers,
all bakers, all doctors,
and painters.
Calling all humans.
This is the start signal.
This is the moment.
This is the chance we've
all been waiting for.
Pandora and her
friends are drinking
ambrosia right now looking
down on us somewhere
as they eagerly teeter on
the edge of their seats
waiting for the right
moment, the moment we break
the precipice, the moment where
we learn to see past the event
horizon and solve the
measurement problem,
to break past our initial
goals, the NISQ era and beyond,
to unlock and
unleash the potential
the rest of the multiverse has
been waiting for us to unlock.
And maybe we won't
be able to be there,
to see the result
in our lifetime.
And maybe we will,
but not in this form.
Or maybe we will, but not
in this world, or this life,
or this moment, but we'll be
a part of it all the same.
And this is why we can move to
the way we solve what couldn't
be solved, and start
what couldn't be started,
and do what couldn't
be done, so we
can be who we never
thought we could be.
This is how it starts.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
