Interview with MIT Professor Hiroshi Ishii: Intelligence, and Life and Death (Part 2)

Continuing from the previous installment, Professor Hiroshi Ishii of MIT Media Lab, questioned by Dentsu Inc.'s 'Five Sages'—who earnestly explore society's future—about Japanese intellect and creativity.

Intellectual Power is the Sensibility to Grasp Essence

Yamamoto: Even so, we're shifting from a world where knowing something was valued to one where people think, "If you don't know, just Google it." From an educational perspective, the mindset is shifting toward training thinking and analytical skills over memorization.

But at the same time, I feel like we're steadily eroding the joy of discovery. Knowing isn't just about memorization; it's about continually uncovering new worlds, isn't it? And when it comes to that "knowing," at least to my knowledge, Professor Ishii is the most voracious person in the world.

Yamagami: The King of Intellectual Greed (laughs).

Yamamoto: Truly, I've rarely met anyone more insatiably hungry for knowledge than Mr. Ishii. Where does that energy even come from?

Ishii: Do you know my "musicBottles"? They were born out of the sadness I felt when my mother passed away in 1998. I had dreamed of making her a "blue glass bottle that plays the weather forecast from our hometown of Sapporo." Opening the lid of the glass bottle by her pillow would release the sounds of nature: birds chirping meant sunshine, the sound of raindrops meant rain. For my mother, a transparent glass bottle was a very familiar presence, unlike today's computers. She could touch it with her hands and feel joy in opening the lid. I turned that into a "transparent" interface that blends into everyday life. But since my mother passed away, I put music inside the small glass bottles.

musicBottles. One of Professor Ishii's signature works, embodying "tangible bits" that connect digital information to a physical interface you can touch. Opening the glass bottle's lid plays music (click the image to view a video on another site).

Also, I love literature. Kotaro Takamura wrote Chieko-sho in mourning for Chieko's death. It's said that Chuya Nakahara was driven to write poetry by the death of his beloved younger brother in childhood. Kenji Miyazawa created wonderful works like "The Morning of Parting" while overcoming the death of his beloved sister, Toshiko. I believe that the sensitivity to feel the pain and sorrow in people's hearts, or the uncertainty inherent in Japan's current situation, is what constitutes human intelligence.

You know Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, right? The first level is physiological needs for survival—hunger, sleep, that sort of thing. By the way, did you know two new levels have recently been added below that? Wi-Fi and battery life (laugh).

Joking aside, what I wanted to say is that all humans share fundamental commonalities. That's why we can feel others' pain as our own. That's what intellectual capacity is. Being healthy, eating rice, drinking milk, and voting in the House of Councillors election (laugh). Life is interesting precisely because not everyone is such a perfect human being.

Disruptive entities are thoroughly despised.

Yamamoto: You often say, "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down," right? But today's world is where everyone gangs up to hammer down even slightly protruding nails, and they all get a kick out of it. It's more convenient to just accept common sense as is. So, even in our company, once you've built up some career experience, or worse, even when you're young, you tend to get swept up in the rules of "if you just do this, you'll be fine" and end up working that way.

But deliberately questioning what's accepted as common sense is the very essence of creativity...

Ishii: That's the very foundation, isn't it?

Yamamoto: Yes. Observing you, Professor, you really lay into your students, don't you? You beat them to a pulp, then force them to crawl back up, building that kind of resilience (laughs).

Ishii: Like Danpei Tange and Joe Yabuki. Or Ichiro Hoshino and Hiyoma Hoshino (laughs).

One root problem is the exam system where students compete to solve problems with guaranteed correct answers faster than others. You get praised for guessing the right answer. The premise that a correct answer exists is utterly nonsensical in reality. Unfortunately, it's a Japanese trait to freeze instantly when faced with open-ended questions without a clear right answer. The more prestigious the school someone attended, the more they fear saying something strange, leading them to say nothing at all.

For example, after I give a 30-minute presentation, when I ask, "What did you think?", I only get utterly uninteresting answers like "It was very interesting" or "Thank you." They lack original ideas, so they can't even ask meaningful questions. No questions means no interest. Lately, I've been saying things like, "Tell me what you learned today in 140 characters or less. If you can't, tweet about it tonight. If you don't get 50 retweets by tomorrow, don't come back." (laughs).

Yamamoto: That's terrifying from a student's perspective (laugh).

Ishii: For example, Uber could never work in Japan. Deep in the Japanese DNA, there's this fundamental sense that you shouldn't defy authority or take what belongs to others. Even if someone came up with a service like Amazon, they'd hesitate, thinking, "But I'd feel terrible if I put bookstores out of business." What's amazing about Uber is that they just keep fighting. They bring in lawyers and take on lawsuits head-on.

Yamagami: But there's definitely admiration for it. Take Hanzawa Naoki or outlaws like Black Jack – heroes who defy the system gain popularity, right? Everyone admires them and cheers them on, but they won't do it themselves.

Ishii: That's not strange at all. If you do it, you get disliked, hated. You get attacked. You can't do it because you care about yourself. But if you go all the way, it's like a medal of honor. Take Kume Hiroshi—he's both the most beloved and the most hated news anchor. Tamaru Misuzu once said in a lecture that she was always ranked third or fourth in both categories, so she could never beat Kume. Truly disruptive figures are either thoroughly loved or thoroughly hated. But for ordinary people, being hated is painful and scary.

Yamagami: Being disliked to this extent can actually be a measure of how well you're doing.

Ishii: The big prerequisite is that there are people who praise you . What makes Uber or Zipcar great is that they have a cause. They contribute to sustainability, create jobs, and truly created the major trend of the shared economy. Attacks and criticism from vested interests are inevitable. But if only attacks come, you should suspect something is wrong.

"The power to stand out," "the power to persevere," and "the power to create mountains" engraved on a tombstone

Sakamoto: Changing the subject, at last year's SXSW, Martin Roseblatt said that if artificial intelligence were to develop a personality, even if the physical body perished, the will would remain unchanged and live on online. If that were to happen, what do you think would happen to the concepts of death and lifespan?

Ishii: Even if the physical body perishes, the spirit remains in the form of immortality?

Sakamoto: Yes. For example, if a person's thoughts and communications remain intact, it might be as if that person were still alive.

If this were to happen, how would humans with eternal life maintain motivation, and what would they strive for? Would views on life and death in 2100 or 2200 differ from today's?

Ishii: No. The idea of a person's spirit persisting is impossible. As an engineer and scientist, I can state unequivocally from that perspective that human thought and intelligence cannot be sustained indefinitely by computers.

Sakamoto: Wow, your answer is unwavering. Very clear.

Ishii: I am mortal —an inescapable being subject to death. That's why dying is so important, and why I must live these remaining 20 years with all my might. The scariest thing is that if deadlines get pushed back, I just slack off (laughs). When you die, everything freezes. That's why I live this very moment with utter seriousness.

Come to think of it, I was thinking about the gold lettering for my epitaph the other day.

Sakamoto: Really? That seems a bit early... What words?

Ishii: Three: "The Power to Stand Out," "The Power to Journey," and "The Power to Build Mountains." These are words I've long told my students, hoping they'd grow with them in mind.

The Power to Stand Out means the strength to rise so high that no one can knock you down, avoiding the fate of "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down." The power of the journey comes from Kotaro Takamura's poem "The Journey": "There is no path before me; the path is made by walking." And the power of mountain-building comes from my own experience at MIT. I thought I was climbing a mountain no one had ever climbed before, but when I got there, there was no mountain. The survival competition began with building the mountain to climb with my own hands.

There's a punchline to the epitaph story, though. My wife told me, "I don't want to be buried in a tomb like that—I wouldn't rest in peace" (laughs).

Yamamoto: True, it's an image of struggling even in death (laughs).

Ishii: I'm also building a bot that will leave my message behind. But this isn't artificial intelligence or anything like that. Even if a medium capable of preserving one's spirit were invented, I doubt people would recognize it as having the value or personality of a human life. So, whether in the past, present, or future, everyone faces death. Life is finite.

Yamagami: If everyone could truly feel this sense of time running out, every day would become meaningful, right? But the younger you are, the less you imagine time is finite.

Yamamoto: Thinking about an epitaph might be important. In the sense of imagining death. Like making "death poems" a required subject in elementary school.

But the need for an epitaph is still a long way off. You've just reached the milestone of 60 this year, yet even at an age often seen as a turning point, you remain increasingly aggressive. Thank you so much for today's truly insightful conversation.

Ishii: The pleasure was all mine. Let's debate again sometime—I'm always ready for a full-court press and a serious showdown.