TRANSCRIPT:

Within my discipline I must say staying awake at night would be very specific problems, so we'll steer clear of those. But it is the bigger questions of the world that really engage me. As I said, why we are, how did we come to be here, what are our roles and responsibilities in the world? Having grown up in a place where there was great poverty and great injustices, how can I live my life in a way that will make a difference? I think that's what it boils down to for me is how can I make a difference, and I've been very fortunate to be able to work on some projects where I think -- even in a small way -- what I am doing here is moving in the right direction.

TRANSCRIPT:

Well, of course, the biggest issue in the world is what man is doing to the world and our ability to sustain life on Earth. I mean, we are destroying the very cocoon that allows us to live, and we're doing that through climate change; we're doing that through ocean acidification; we're doing that by the destruction of biological diversity. I mean, it's extraordinary -- this mindless march into oblivion that mankind has set himself upon.

TRANSCRIPT:

I'm going to use the example of photos, because I'm really a big fan of [photography]. So, every time I travel, I would take a lot of photos, and I share with my friends. To me, it's not just the photos people are interested in. It's really curious to me; I just share my experience by showing them photos, but then they just keep asking me what the story is about.

So, to me, the big curiosity question is: "How can I make the computer smarter to understand the photo and make photography the gateway of accessing information outside of the Internet?"

TRANSCRIPT:

For me, especially, it's technology -- how we can make technology better for people to use. And that doesn't necessarily mean that technology should be the first thing that you see in our world. But it should actually be inside all the objects that we are using.

So basically, technology should disappear. It shouldn't be in first stage; it should be in the background, helping us the way we want. I don't want to use my computer as I'm doing now with my hands on the mouse. I want a more natural experience. I want the computer to ask me the right question at the right moment. I don't want to interact the way I'm interacting now. I just want a serendipitous experience from that.

TRANSCRIPT:

Just the world in general, what are we doing here? The environment. And this is all in the context of my children, and sort of what world are they going to live in? This crazy political nonsense that we have right now, where nothing can get done. A lot of things keep me up at night. My business keeps me up at night, thinking about the last 2 years have been very, very difficult. We got through it and things are improving, but yeah, there's plenty of nights I stayed up thinking, this is going to continue to happen. I stay up at night thinking about maybe one day, or maybe tomorrow, the world's just going to not care about food anymore and say, well, that was a fad for the last 20 years, and now it's over and we're going to move on to something else. And so, yeah, there's plenty that keeps me up. My mother is getting up in age and that's keeping me up, and I think about that. I don't get a lot of sleep actually.

TRANSCRIPT:

About life? About research? Well, if it's the broader topics, I have dreams about, and wake up about, the meaning-of-life kind of questions. I asked Koko that once and her answer was, "People be polite," and then parentheses, "to other people" -- sort of the golden rule was her idea of what life is about. It's being good to one another and that would extend out to being good to gorillas.

I was struggling with that myself, because it seems like bad things happen to good people, and how do you explain that? And basically, in the middle of the night, I came up with: If everything is one, which is sort of the spiritual point of view out there, that's kind of where Koko was coming from. Treat everybody like you'd treat yourself. On the other hand, if you don't have bad, you can't have good. That was pointed out a long time ago by the early philosophers. And so when you question life, it's the way it has to be or we can't experience the peace. We don't experience the bottoms.

TRANSCRIPT:

Are we developing technologies that are going to make the planet a better place to live? Are we improving people's lives materially? Are we just driving more profits? Are we really addressing big-ticket issues like healthcare, the ability for the developing world to live and fulfill its destination? Have we addressed challenges like disease control in ways that will be sustained? Are we really looking at the challenges of energy across the planet? These are the things I could think about half the time, and from a day-to-day work perspective, I wonder what we are doing materially to help to address those challenges.

TRANSCRIPT:

Within my job, some of the big questions that keep me up is, how are we going to -- within Intel or even just within the computing environment -- tackle some of the problems of high performance within high power within the computing industry? We're seeing an exponential increase in powers. We're going to higher- and higher-performing computers. Within everyday life, some just random, I guess, things that normal people would be worried about or be up at night: Can I pay the bills? What's the purpose of my existence here on earth?