682. Should A.I. Move to Space?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. Let's start with a puzzle. I'm going to name some industries, some varied industries, and you have to figure out what they all have in common. Okay? Here's the list. Agriculture, rideshare services, global banking, meteorology, military communication, insurance, shipping logistics, disaster management, broadcasting. So what do they all have in common? All of these industries and many more are heavily reliant on infrastructure that is based in space, which means that space-based infrastructure is an industry of its own. Here is Will Marshall.

**Will Marshall** (2:27)
Everything from the rockets, the satellites, communications is a big one. The annual output is around 300 billion a year.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:33)
Marshall got his PhD in physics at Oxford, where he conducted experiments in quantum superposition under Dirk Baumester and future Nobel Prize winner Roger Penrose.
But Marshall's true love was space.
So he went to work for NASA at its research center in Mountain View, California. Among other things, NASA has been developing and managing satellites for decades.

**Will Marshall** (2:56)
We actually started a project called PhoneSat because my colleague at NASA kept on holding up his phone because it was pretty new at the time. First iPhone had come out and they were like, these new smartphones have a lot of what you need in a satellite. They have batteries and they have sensors and they have cameras and they have fast processors. They even have GPS to know where they are. They are kind of incredible and it's all stuffed in a little box and it costs 500 bucks.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:20)
This led Marshall to ask himself an obvious question.

**Will Marshall** (3:24)
Why are we spending 500 million dollars on satellites? What are the extra six zeros doing for us?

**SPEAKER_1** (3:30)
Marshall eventually left NASA to help run a startup that made small inexpensive satellites, which they called Doves. They had thin rectangular wings and a big central camera for an eye.
Like any good startup, they made their first prototype in a garage. Or, if you are Will Marshall, in a garage.

**Will Marshall** (3:48)
Literally in a garage, we leveraged smartphones and we plonked the satellite down on the desk of the venture capitalists that we went to see, as opposed to have any PowerPoint deck. That was certainly a shock to people and enough people were crazy enough to give us a check.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:05)
Those checks helped fund what became Planet Labs, a publicly traded company that is today worth around 10 billion dollars. Their vast array of tiny satellites constantly scan the earth's surface and provide data for all sorts of public agencies and private firms. So that has been a success for Will Marshall, but he wants to go way beyond that. He thinks the next frontier for space technology is to provide computing power for AI.
Today on Freakonomics Radio, my Freakonomics friend and co-author Steve Levitt explores how a breakthrough technology is entering its space age. That's in four, three, two, one, liftoff.

**SPEAKER_3** (5:01)
This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your guest host, Steve Levitt.

**Steve Levitt** (5:19)
Hi, I'm Steve Levitt. From 2020 to 2025, I had my own podcast on the Freakonomics Network called People I Mostly Admire. I had a guest on my show in 2024 who changed the way I thought about artificial intelligence.