Salim Ismail Exponential strategist and author of Exponential Organizations (2014) and ExO 2.0 (2023).

“It took 100 years for us to absorb the printing press, and it was the most violent 100 years in the history of humanity. … We have 20 of those hitting us in the same time. AI is a Gutenberg moment. Blockchain is a Gutenberg moment. Life extension is a Gutenberg moment.”

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · October 2026

Asked what XPRIZE he would most like to see next, Ismail names the problem he says he talks about all the time: updating our institutions for all this new technology. He isn't sure it can be turned into a prize, but calls it the biggest problem we face.

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis · 2026-10-17 Listen to the episode → More from Salim Ismail → More Tech Strategy & Big Tech quotes →

Transcript

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis Around 1:03:43 into the episode

Salim Ismail

What's the next thing you want?

Peter Diamandis

Interesting. I am curious. Maybe BCI or uploads. I don't know. What would you want?

Salim Ismail

I've got one which I talk about all the time: how are we going to update all our institutions given all this technology? I'm not sure it's prizable, but boy, it's the biggest problem we're facing today. You can see the stress in the world as 20 Gutenberg moments hit us and we have no ability to manage all of this, right? You go back to the printing press. It took 100 years for us to absorb the printing press, and it was the most violent 100 years in the history of humanity. The 100 years after the Gutenberg printing press, which is why we call it a Gutenberg moment. We have 20 of those hitting us in the same time. AI is a Gutenberg moment. Blockchain is a Gutenberg moment. Life Extension is a Gutenberg moment. It took us 100 years just for the one. So if people are feeling stress in the world, this is why we're not set up to navigate this with any level of structure or guidance. And this is going to, for me, the biggest challenge. I don't know how you put a prize around it. Well,

Peter Diamandis

maybe it's AI Alignment as a prize topic. That's a huge topic. Iman, how about you? Do you have any favorites?

Emad Mostaque

I want the Jet Lag XPRIZE.

Salim Ismail

You could. Sure, here. I will fund that prize. I will fund that. Oh,

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

More from Moonshots with Peter Diamandis

“If you're Anthropic or if you're the OpenAI Foundation, you'll throw some of your token budget at safety, sure, maybe 10 to 20% at AI alignment efforts. And then you'll throw a few percent at curing all disease as a marketing effort to ensure that you continue to have social permission to focus on recursive self-improvement. And that's where all the value is.” — Alexander Wissner-Gross, Moonshots with Peter Diamandis

“If someone came to you and said, I want to pitch you my company, are you ready for my pitch? We use electricity. You would think I was nuts. … That's an implementation detail. What are you doing? I feel the same way about AI. I actually try to say AI as little as possible.” — Astro Teller, Moonshots with Peter Diamandis