Diamandis: Incentive prizes can help solve some of humanity's challenges

Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, the space industry entrepreneur and innovation advocate, said on Wednesday that competitions offering financial incentives played a vital role in the development of new technologies as well as solving some of humanity's major challenges, including endemic diseases. Dr. Diamandis said during a lecture hosted by the Majlis of His Highness General Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, said that such prizes proved effective in gathering talents from around the world to invent technologies in service of humanity. His Highness's Majlis at Al Bateen Palace in Abu Dhabi organizes a series of lectures, every year during the month of Ramadan, delivered by renowned scholars, scientists, experts and decision-makers in different fields. Dr. Diamandis is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the XPRIZE Foundation, best known for its $10 million Ansari XPRIZE for private spaceflight. He is also the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Singularity University, a graduate-level Silicon Valley institution that studies exponentially growing technologies, their ability to transform industries and solve humanity's grand challenges. He said the XPRIZE's Board of Trustees included some of the most innovative minds on the planet, including Larry Page, the CEO of Google and filmmaker David Cameron. "We set out to ask the question: what are the world's biggest problems? And where can we create XPRIZEs to try and solve them. We now have XPRIZEs in a range of different areas: in energy, in environment, in life sciences, in literacy, in all the challenges that humanity has," he said. He pointed out that one prize which was launched last year under the name "Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE" was asking to build a hand held mobile medical device that anyone can use to conduct a multitude of tests. He said he expected a winner of the prize within three years. Dr. Diamandis said education was another major area of interest for XPRIZE, praising Abu Dhabi's keenness on promoting education in the Emirate. He pointed out that there are 880 million illiterate people on the planet, 80 million of them are children. "For us, how we educate our children is everything. Education truly is the future of every nation on this planet and no one recognizes that more than here in Abu Dhabi," he said. "We are launching a prize that is called the Global Literacy Prize." He said the competitors for the literacy prize are working on designing a software that enables illiterate children and adults to teach themselves how to read and write without the need of having a teacher. "In the areas of life sciences we have three prizes that we would love to do: autism, childhood obesity and Alzheimer's." Wednesday's lecture, titled: Solving Humanities Grand Challenges, was attended by H.H. Sheikh Surour bin Mohammed Al Nahyan, H.H. Lt. General Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Culture, Youth and Community Development, Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a number of Sheiks, ministers, senior officials, ambassadors of Arab and foreign countries, researchers and students. Dr. Diamandis, who authored the New York Times' Bestselling Abundance - The Future Is Better Than You Think, is Co-Founder/Co-Chairman of Planetary Resources, a company designing spacecraft to enable the detection and mining of asteroid for precious materials. He is the also Co-Founder and Vice Chairman of Space Adventures, the only company to have brokered the launches of private citizens to the International Space Station. He is co-Founder, past-CEO of Zero Gravity Corporation providing weightless parabolic flights. Dr. Diamandis said that the future of mining was in space, adding that his company, Planetary Resources, has assembled a team of top scientists and engineers to build a sophisticated spacecraft using exponential technologies to find and prospect asteroids for rocket fuel such as hydrogen and oxygen and precious metals such as platinum. "More than 1,500 near-Earth asteroids are easier to get to (energetically) than the surface of the Moon," he said. "Our mission at Planetary Resources will actually be to go out prospect, claim and actually mine these asteroids." Dr. Diamandis concluded his lecture, saying: "We're living during a time when technology is enabling small teams to do extraordinary things. I believe that there is no challenge on this planet that cannot be solved."