Tom Chi: "Net Positive for the Planet – from Beavers to Bionics"
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 552 Ratings
🗓️ 24 April 2024
⏱️ 139 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode, Nate is joined by inventor and investor Tom Chi to take a broad look at the principles guiding innovation and capital - and how we might shift these to be more biophysically aligned in the future. For the past few centuries, our global industrial system has been dominated by growth-based economics without awareness of its dependence on the biosphere - or the waste that it leaves behind. What would it mean for our technology to be ecologically centered, working in service of and in synergy with complex, biodiverse life on Earth? How can we work within our current financial and governance systems to create initiatives that benefit both ecosystems and economies? More broadly, what cultural shifts could we imagine that move beyond seeing ourselves as simply dependent on ecological systems - but rather as a part of the entangled whole?
About Tom Chi
Tom Chi is the founding partner of At One Ventures, which backs early-stage (Seed, Series A) companies using disruptive deep tech to upend the unit economics of established industries while dramatically reducing their planetary footprint. Previously, Tom was a founding member of Google X where he led the teams that created self-driving cars, deep learning artificial intelligence, wearable augmented reality and internet connectivity expansion.
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/AjGOGfzAvyc
More info, and show notes: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/120-tom-chi
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the Great Simplification. |
| 0:04.6 | I'm Nate Higgins. |
| 0:06.3 | On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment, and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. |
| 0:15.2 | By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the |
| 0:22.7 | coming great simplification. I'm pleased to introduce Tom Chi to this podcast. Tom has worked |
| 0:33.8 | in a wide range of roles from astrophysics researcher to Fortune 500 consultant |
| 0:38.6 | to corporate executive developing hardware and software. |
| 0:42.7 | He's played a significant role in established projects with global reach such as Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo Search. |
| 0:51.1 | Tom was also one of the founding members at Google X, developing technologies such |
| 0:55.9 | as Google Glass and Google's self-driving cars. His current focus is much wider than these |
| 1:03.2 | issues I just mentioned. He's delving into human development with social entrepreneurs around |
| 1:09.2 | the world. His new project is a climate green tech fund called At One Ventures. |
| 1:17.6 | We discuss his worldview, his philosophy, the great ask of humanity ahead of us in the next century. |
| 1:25.6 | His successful investment techs in the green sector. |
| 1:32.3 | This guy has a big heart and a big mind. And this was another fire hydrant, full-on conversation. |
| 1:42.0 | I hope you enjoy it. Please welcome Tom Cheat. |
| 1:59.3 | Hey Tom, |
| 2:00.1 | great to see you. Hey, good to see you, Nate. And Tom and someone to see you. |
| 2:01.4 | Hey, good to see you. |
| 2:02.5 | And Tom and someone else you have on your lap. |
| 2:06.2 | This is my cat. |
| 2:09.3 | So Frank was with me a few minutes ago. |
... |
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