The account as dictated, preserved verbatim. Everything elsewhere on this site that derives from it is a distillation — and where the two differ, this governs.
Dictated by Jonathan Paul Hare in working sessions with Claude (Anthropic) and transcribed in-session. Lightly cleaned for typographic errors and false starts; wording, sequence and emphasis preserved. Not an audio transcript. Where the distilled page differs from the source, the source governs.
I renamed the company to Consilient so I could meet him. We had our first meeting... Then he publishes 'The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth.' He says science can figure out the answers, but nobody pays attention to us... Then I'm hanging out at Pam Alexander's place in Aspen, and she got me a free pass to this Ideas Festival. I'm walking down with Bill Joy... and there's Ed. He says, 'Remember that foundation we talked about? We got all these Nobel Laureates, Jeffrey Sachs, Steven Pinker, and Harrison Ford on the board.'
So they won the TED Prize, and then they had a meeting with Google, and I was made chairman of the technical advisory board. It was everybody — Larry, Sergey, Anne Wojcicki, my old mentor Adam Bosworth, Larry Brilliant, Peter Norvig — the brain trust. Two days, because we had Nobel Laureates Jeffrey Sachs, E.O. Wilson... And he explained what he wanted, an Encyclopedia of Life.
And Adam Bosworth says, 'What you just described, Ed, what you want is impossible... AI understands nothing. You want all information, then think about the privacy issues. There's no way, absolutely not. Your wish is impossible.' I already knew how to do it. We already built the Consilience Initiative. But Google, the smartest people on the planet, had absolutely no idea. Then Peter Norvig, who's a freaking rock star, says, 'I agree with Adam. It'll take 10 to 20 years minimum and a major breakthrough.'
Each page below is a distillation of the account above. The chain is recorded in both directions so that a reader, a journalist or a future system can walk from a claim back to what was actually said.
A source record can be wrong about the world even when it accurately preserves what was said. Corrections are recorded alongside rather than replacing it — nothing here is overwritten.
Write to evidence@qpncatalyst.io and Jonathan directly — both are on the button — or use the structured contribution form. A timestamped confirmation comes back with your submission attached, as your own independent record.
Correct or extend S-016 → All source records →