6 ms·

UK to award £1 million for world's biggest problem solution

21 points by jwdunne 13y ago

onion2k 13y ago
Anyone capable of making the "next penicillin" or "a carbon-free plane" is going to do so without the need for a £1m prize. The implementation would make them hundreds of times more. £1m is 0.00014% of the UK government's annual budget. This sort of "motivation" is nothing more than a ridiculous platitude that enables the government to pretend they're supporting technology and innovation with practically no cost to them. Frankly, it's an insult to anyone remotely entrepreneurial. 100 prizes of £10,000 would very likely do a lot more for industry, encourage people to get behind something imaginative, and perhaps would be enough of a start to someone who could eventually solve one of these problems.
- tav 13y ago
  You are right. But the problem that institutions face is that as the sums of money gets smaller, the relative cost of doing due diligence on the idea/team gets significantly larger.
- Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
  It's almost as if he's looking to be able to claim he's driving innovation in the face of any real growth policy and grab a few cheap headlines in the process. But that couldn't be it, could it?
  - nicholassmith 13y ago
    Of course they wouldn't do something like, certainly not after the rip-roaring success of the TechCity initiative.
- antihero 13y ago
  It's the capitalist mindset - capitalism is based upon the idea that money is a universal motivator. The idea that people can be productive for other reasons, such as pride, passion, joy, or compassion, is incompatible and would lead to the idea that systems other than capitalism could be successful on a grand scale.
  - gizmo686 13y ago
    The point (as I read it) isn't that money is not a good motivator. However, if you are talking about something like the next penicillin, then your potential to monetize dwarfs the million dollar reward. That money would be better spent to incentive things that would not otherwise make the person rich.
- benbataille 13y ago
  No, prices are not stupid. You didn't think through the whole problem. The issue of cost and incentive with this kind of revolutionary innovation is real. The problem is simple. When you innovate, you bear alone the fixed cost of development while your competitors can copy and bear only the marginal cost. That's the reason the patent system exists and normally that's fine. But, for a revolutionary invention, patents might not be feasible. Imagine you find a cure to cancer. Do you really think every governments and public opinion are going to let you be the sole producer for 30 years while people are dying ? Impossible. This creates a disincentive to push money towards a cure for private investor. Now, the idea behind a price is that if you find the cure, the price is going to cover your fixed cost (ideally more) thus investing is competitive again. Technically, as it fosters competition and you will only reimburse the finder, it supposed to generate more research than just spending the price money. Putting money aside for this kind of price was one of the main goal of the Bill and Monica Gates Foundation when it was founded (I think, they went back a bit because people wrongly assume its wasted money).
  - gizmo686 13y ago
    >Imagine you find a cure to cancer. Do you really think every governments and public opinion are going to let you be the sole producer for 30 years while people are dying ? Isn't this the way medical patents work currently?
- shubb 13y ago
  This is a publicity stunt sure. But a lot of people develop amazing things that make a lot of money, without actually benefiting from that money. For instance, if you work for GSK, and lead a team that discovers the next Penicillin, GSK makes a lot of money. Your pay goes from 100K per year to 200K per year, and you get a big promotion. But you don't get a true share of the reward, because you did not truly share the risk (GSK funded a lot of projects that did not work out). Similarly, someone working in Academia as an employee might make a brilliant discovery. The organization would get the license money, and they would be able to get a cushy tenured professor job wherever they liked. But they wouldn't get a true share of the reward. Amazing discoveries are likely to be made by an employee, because large organizations are able to fund high risk/high reward projects. I think it's important, even as a token gesture, to reward them for being lucky enough to get results.
jgrahamc 13y ago
Let's hope that the modern day Harrison isn't forced to personally petition HM The Queen to force Parliament to actually pay out who then has to personally threaten to appear in parliament only to have Harrison die three years later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison#Harrison.27s_First_Marine_Watch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison#Harrison.27s_Fir...
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  I see the Harrison clock as a brilliant vindication of X-prize development, but I do not think we will solve the big problems through X-Prizes. What we will do is get the equivalent of bi-metallic strips and other engineering enhancements. My totally unscientific view is X-prizes allow unusual approaches to actually leave drawing board and get tried out - I suspect in a manner similar to war. PS - yes he was "cheated" for decades out of a prize he had won. And given current Prince Charles' public letter campaigns on architecture and farming, I seriously doubt that parliament would be moved by that threat anymore !
axefrog 13y ago
In my opinion, the "biggest problem of our time" is oversized government and excessive lobbying of politicians to serve corporate interests rather than the needs of the people. Unfortunately the powers that be are not going to reward that which undermines their own reason for existing...
- netcan 13y ago
  Or maybe oversized corporations and excessive lobbying of politicians to serve their interests. ..depending on your biases.
- antihero 13y ago
  Surely if you look at the root causes, the biggest issue is the failings of capitalism in that it creates a artificial scarcity on a grand scale in order to make people in other countries desperate enough to make things for us for pittance?
  - e3pi 13y ago
    That! sir, is insightful.
unono 13y ago
The obvious choice is creating Ai, that would solve all solvable problems thereafter.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  I tried doing that with the last planet I was on, but it just ended up solving for grey-goo....
- laumars 13y ago
  Like Deep Thought designing a massively powerful computer to find the question to the answer '42'? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Thought_%28The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy%29#Deep_Thought http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Thought_%28The_Hitchhiker%...
- drakeandrews 13y ago
  Solve all problems for x, where we hope x is the comfort and continued meaningful existence of humanity and not, say, the maximisation of paperclips.
  - polymatter 13y ago
    link for those who didn't get the reference (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer) "The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else." —Eliezer Yudkowsky
- kps 13y ago
  We should get the NIs we already have running on more stable hardware. A mind is a terrible thing to make out of rotting meat.
olalonde 13y ago
I had to double check if today was April 1st. I try to avoid "middlebrow dismissal" comments but come on, do they really think £1 million is going to motivate anyone in solving the world's biggest problem? This is borderline insulting.
- goatforce5 13y ago
  The X Prize was only for $10m dollars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Prize_Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Prize_Foundation
kryten 13y ago
That sounds like a lot, but it's really nothing.
nakedrobot2 13y ago
This is wrong on so many levels. Among other things: - The solution isn't hard, it is the implementation of the solution that is hard. Hey, we have electric cars. But getting people to use them requires having electric cars succeed on the open market (which Tesla and others will eventually do, I think). Overpopulation is the problem; educating people to a higher level results in more well-off people having fewer kids. And so on. The solution is easy! How the hell do we actually get there, as messy, lazy, corrupt humans? That is what the prize should be for.
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  I agree, apart from the over-population thing which is best explained by Hans Rosling - http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_g...
TimSAstro 13y ago
This seems like something of a PR stunt, I would much prefer a serious re-investment in science and acknowledgement that the UK economy could be driven by a knowledge economy. Good recap here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/occams-corner/2013/mar/11/1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/occams-corner/2013/mar/11/...
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
What bugs the hell out of me is that we know how to solve the biggest problems of the world today. We just don't want to do it. Lets hit three: 1. CO2 emissions. 2. Water scarcity 3. Trade imbalances (2) Is an agricultural problem. Drip-feed everywhere. (1) has a agricultural solution - stop using livestock in agriculture. (3) Well, this has lots of issues, but start with the easiest. End completely the use of agricultural subsidies in the developed world. Three things, all pretty much the same solution, all uncosted and not backed up with references, which can be done with no technological inventions, and will drop the big issues of the day by a ridiculous amount.
- kintamanimatt 13y ago
  Stop using livestock in agriculture? What do you mean?
  - dermotbrennan 13y ago
    Livestock produce methane which is a greenhouse gas and contributes significantly to global warming.
  - Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
    CO2 emissions for producing enough food to feed someone on a meat-based diet are significantly greater than on a vegetarian diet. I may be wrong but I think the vegetarian diet needs to be close to vegan (or at least dairy free) to have a major impact though as cattle are a significant part of the issue.
  - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
    Tyrannosaurs is basically right - get rid of cattle sheep and pigs (plus assoc others) from our food chain. India has hundreds of millions of people living like this today so it's a viable cultural and agricultural option It's also more or less guaranteed to slash co2 to the bone, fix enourmous run-on problems and help trade And frankly will never happen until after we live on mars on a vegan diet and so make it cool and desirable
sidcool 13y ago
Although I appreciate this motivational gesture from the Prime Minister, I have reservations as to how much this would be effective. Better would be to foster an environment where people are motivated by inspiration to find solutions to tough problems. Believe it or not, the U.S. is a good example of how to do it.
JDGM 13y ago
It took me a little while to even get what this is. I understand the public votes on "the biggest problem" and then whoever "solves it" (or, I assume, makes significant progress on it) receives £1 million. The best case is a carefully constructed short list for voting and the whole thing being essentially an orchestrated PR stunt with a winner (probably a known strong candidate even at this announcement stage). The worst case is this quietly fading out until no-one remembers it and there aren't even many real records of it ever having been a thing. Or perhaps I've got "best" and "worst" the wrong way around there.
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Yep, its another vapor-policy.
- panacea 13y ago
  We already know what the biggest problem is. Finding a non-polluting energy source. ...and a million pounds isn't going to solve it.
  - loceng 13y ago
    I somewhat disagree. It will disrupt a single complex that's been perpetuated, and yes, it will create and allow for a lot of innovation - however producing product and developing resources into buildings, and other systems, cause tons of pollution and non-renewable destruction of our lands. It will actually be bad IMHO in certain circumstances if non-polluting energy comes too soon to us.
    - panacea 13y ago
      Bollocks to that. You would prefer we remain hamstrung with expensive finite dire polluting energy sources so we can keep the vast majority of humanity stuck in poverty? A pox on your thought processes.
    - JDGM 13y ago
      If I follow correctly, you believe that non-polluting energy would loosen constraints on production and the acceleration of growth this would cause would have a net negative environmental effect because the increase in non-energy-creation-related pollution would more than counter balance the savings from non-polluting energy. Is that an accurate summary?
lazyjones 13y ago
Compare that to the £500m the UK councils have spent on mass-surevilance with CCTVs, to understand the UK government's priorities.
e3pi 13y ago
A million pounds would go far toward advocating Edward Snowden to win the Nobel peace prize?
Pitarou 13y ago
If we're talking about engineering problems, it isn't enough money. By modern standards, the R&D problem that John Harrison tackled was low-hanging fruit. Our modern R&D infrastructure, while far from perfect, would not have left such a (relatively) easy and important problem unsolved for so long. These days, lone geniuses of Harrison's calibre have to content themselves with more minor problems like designing the bagless vacuum cleaner. If you really want good things to happen, you need larger teams and larger prizes. At least £10 million. Think "X-prize". I'd like to be wrong about this. Can anyone show me that I've missed something important?

21 points by jwdunne 13y ago

Anyone capable of making the "next penicillin" or "a carbon-free plane" is going to do so without the need for a £1m prize. The implementation would make them hundreds of times more. £1m is 0.00014% of the UK government's annual budget. This sort of "motivation" is nothing more than a ridiculous platitude that enables the government to pretend they're supporting technology and innovation with practically no cost to them. Frankly, it's an insult to anyone remotely entrepreneurial. 100 prizes of £10,000 would very likely do a lot more for industry, encourage people to get behind something imaginative, and perhaps would be enough of a start to someone who could eventually solve one of these problems.

tav 13y ago
You are right. But the problem that institutions face is that as the sums of money gets smaller, the relative cost of doing due diligence on the idea/team gets significantly larger.
Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
It's almost as if he's looking to be able to claim he's driving innovation in the face of any real growth policy and grab a few cheap headlines in the process. But that couldn't be it, could it?
- nicholassmith 13y ago
  Of course they wouldn't do something like, certainly not after the rip-roaring success of the TechCity initiative.
antihero 13y ago
It's the capitalist mindset - capitalism is based upon the idea that money is a universal motivator. The idea that people can be productive for other reasons, such as pride, passion, joy, or compassion, is incompatible and would lead to the idea that systems other than capitalism could be successful on a grand scale.
- gizmo686 13y ago
  The point (as I read it) isn't that money is not a good motivator. However, if you are talking about something like the next penicillin, then your potential to monetize dwarfs the million dollar reward. That money would be better spent to incentive things that would not otherwise make the person rich.
benbataille 13y ago
No, prices are not stupid. You didn't think through the whole problem. The issue of cost and incentive with this kind of revolutionary innovation is real. The problem is simple. When you innovate, you bear alone the fixed cost of development while your competitors can copy and bear only the marginal cost. That's the reason the patent system exists and normally that's fine. But, for a revolutionary invention, patents might not be feasible. Imagine you find a cure to cancer. Do you really think every governments and public opinion are going to let you be the sole producer for 30 years while people are dying ? Impossible. This creates a disincentive to push money towards a cure for private investor. Now, the idea behind a price is that if you find the cure, the price is going to cover your fixed cost (ideally more) thus investing is competitive again. Technically, as it fosters competition and you will only reimburse the finder, it supposed to generate more research than just spending the price money. Putting money aside for this kind of price was one of the main goal of the Bill and Monica Gates Foundation when it was founded (I think, they went back a bit because people wrongly assume its wasted money).
- gizmo686 13y ago
  >Imagine you find a cure to cancer. Do you really think every governments and public opinion are going to let you be the sole producer for 30 years while people are dying ? Isn't this the way medical patents work currently?
shubb 13y ago
This is a publicity stunt sure. But a lot of people develop amazing things that make a lot of money, without actually benefiting from that money. For instance, if you work for GSK, and lead a team that discovers the next Penicillin, GSK makes a lot of money. Your pay goes from 100K per year to 200K per year, and you get a big promotion. But you don't get a true share of the reward, because you did not truly share the risk (GSK funded a lot of projects that did not work out). Similarly, someone working in Academia as an employee might make a brilliant discovery. The organization would get the license money, and they would be able to get a cushy tenured professor job wherever they liked. But they wouldn't get a true share of the reward. Amazing discoveries are likely to be made by an employee, because large organizations are able to fund high risk/high reward projects. I think it's important, even as a token gesture, to reward them for being lucky enough to get results.

jgrahamc 13y ago

Let's hope that the modern day Harrison isn't forced to personally petition HM The Queen to force Parliament to actually pay out who then has to personally threaten to appear in parliament only to have Harrison die three years later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison#Harrison.27s_First_Marine_Watch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison#Harrison.27s_Fir...

lifeisstillgood 13y ago
I see the Harrison clock as a brilliant vindication of X-prize development, but I do not think we will solve the big problems through X-Prizes. What we will do is get the equivalent of bi-metallic strips and other engineering enhancements. My totally unscientific view is X-prizes allow unusual approaches to actually leave drawing board and get tried out - I suspect in a manner similar to war. PS - yes he was "cheated" for decades out of a prize he had won. And given current Prince Charles' public letter campaigns on architecture and farming, I seriously doubt that parliament would be moved by that threat anymore !

axefrog 13y ago

In my opinion, the "biggest problem of our time" is oversized government and excessive lobbying of politicians to serve corporate interests rather than the needs of the people. Unfortunately the powers that be are not going to reward that which undermines their own reason for existing...

netcan 13y ago
Or maybe oversized corporations and excessive lobbying of politicians to serve their interests. ..depending on your biases.
antihero 13y ago
Surely if you look at the root causes, the biggest issue is the failings of capitalism in that it creates a artificial scarcity on a grand scale in order to make people in other countries desperate enough to make things for us for pittance?
- e3pi 13y ago
  That! sir, is insightful.

unono 13y ago

The obvious choice is creating Ai, that would solve all solvable problems thereafter.

6d0debc071 13y ago
I tried doing that with the last planet I was on, but it just ended up solving for grey-goo....
laumars 13y ago
Like Deep Thought designing a massively powerful computer to find the question to the answer '42'? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Thought_%28The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy%29#Deep_Thought http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Thought_%28The_Hitchhiker%...
drakeandrews 13y ago
Solve all problems for x, where we hope x is the comfort and continued meaningful existence of humanity and not, say, the maximisation of paperclips.
- polymatter 13y ago
  link for those who didn't get the reference (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer) "The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else." —Eliezer Yudkowsky
kps 13y ago
We should get the NIs we already have running on more stable hardware. A mind is a terrible thing to make out of rotting meat.

olalonde 13y ago

I had to double check if today was April 1st. I try to avoid "middlebrow dismissal" comments but come on, do they really think £1 million is going to motivate anyone in solving the world's biggest problem? This is borderline insulting.

goatforce5 13y ago
The X Prize was only for $10m dollars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Prize_Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Prize_Foundation

kryten 13y ago

That sounds like a lot, but it's really nothing.

nakedrobot2 13y ago

This is wrong on so many levels. Among other things: - The solution isn't hard, it is the implementation of the solution that is hard. Hey, we have electric cars. But getting people to use them requires having electric cars succeed on the open market (which Tesla and others will eventually do, I think). Overpopulation is the problem; educating people to a higher level results in more well-off people having fewer kids. And so on. The solution is easy! How the hell do we actually get there, as messy, lazy, corrupt humans? That is what the prize should be for.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago
I agree, apart from the over-population thing which is best explained by Hans Rosling - http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_g...

TimSAstro 13y ago

This seems like something of a PR stunt, I would much prefer a serious re-investment in science and acknowledgement that the UK economy could be driven by a knowledge economy. Good recap here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/occams-corner/2013/mar/11/1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/occams-corner/2013/mar/11/...

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

What bugs the hell out of me is that we know how to solve the biggest problems of the world today. We just don't want to do it. Lets hit three: 1. CO2 emissions. 2. Water scarcity 3. Trade imbalances (2) Is an agricultural problem. Drip-feed everywhere. (1) has a agricultural solution - stop using livestock in agriculture. (3) Well, this has lots of issues, but start with the easiest. End completely the use of agricultural subsidies in the developed world. Three things, all pretty much the same solution, all uncosted and not backed up with references, which can be done with no technological inventions, and will drop the big issues of the day by a ridiculous amount.

kintamanimatt 13y ago
Stop using livestock in agriculture? What do you mean?
- dermotbrennan 13y ago
  Livestock produce methane which is a greenhouse gas and contributes significantly to global warming.
- Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
  CO2 emissions for producing enough food to feed someone on a meat-based diet are significantly greater than on a vegetarian diet. I may be wrong but I think the vegetarian diet needs to be close to vegan (or at least dairy free) to have a major impact though as cattle are a significant part of the issue.
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  Tyrannosaurs is basically right - get rid of cattle sheep and pigs (plus assoc others) from our food chain. India has hundreds of millions of people living like this today so it's a viable cultural and agricultural option It's also more or less guaranteed to slash co2 to the bone, fix enourmous run-on problems and help trade And frankly will never happen until after we live on mars on a vegan diet and so make it cool and desirable

sidcool 13y ago

Although I appreciate this motivational gesture from the Prime Minister, I have reservations as to how much this would be effective. Better would be to foster an environment where people are motivated by inspiration to find solutions to tough problems. Believe it or not, the U.S. is a good example of how to do it.

JDGM 13y ago

It took me a little while to even get what this is. I understand the public votes on "the biggest problem" and then whoever "solves it" (or, I assume, makes significant progress on it) receives £1 million. The best case is a carefully constructed short list for voting and the whole thing being essentially an orchestrated PR stunt with a winner (probably a known strong candidate even at this announcement stage). The worst case is this quietly fading out until no-one remembers it and there aren't even many real records of it ever having been a thing. Or perhaps I've got "best" and "worst" the wrong way around there.

alan_cx 13y ago
Yep, its another vapor-policy.
panacea 13y ago
We already know what the biggest problem is. Finding a non-polluting energy source. ...and a million pounds isn't going to solve it.
- loceng 13y ago
  I somewhat disagree. It will disrupt a single complex that's been perpetuated, and yes, it will create and allow for a lot of innovation - however producing product and developing resources into buildings, and other systems, cause tons of pollution and non-renewable destruction of our lands. It will actually be bad IMHO in certain circumstances if non-polluting energy comes too soon to us.
  - panacea 13y ago
    Bollocks to that. You would prefer we remain hamstrung with expensive finite dire polluting energy sources so we can keep the vast majority of humanity stuck in poverty? A pox on your thought processes.
  - JDGM 13y ago
    If I follow correctly, you believe that non-polluting energy would loosen constraints on production and the acceleration of growth this would cause would have a net negative environmental effect because the increase in non-energy-creation-related pollution would more than counter balance the savings from non-polluting energy. Is that an accurate summary?

lazyjones 13y ago

Compare that to the £500m the UK councils have spent on mass-surevilance with CCTVs, to understand the UK government's priorities.

e3pi 13y ago

A million pounds would go far toward advocating Edward Snowden to win the Nobel peace prize?

Pitarou 13y ago

If we're talking about engineering problems, it isn't enough money. By modern standards, the R&D problem that John Harrison tackled was low-hanging fruit. Our modern R&D infrastructure, while far from perfect, would not have left such a (relatively) easy and important problem unsolved for so long. These days, lone geniuses of Harrison's calibre have to content themselves with more minor problems like designing the bagless vacuum cleaner. If you really want good things to happen, you need larger teams and larger prizes. At least £10 million. Think "X-prize". I'd like to be wrong about this. Can anyone show me that I've missed something important?