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Moonshots · 3 min · Jun 3, 2026

Local communities could use technology to become self-sufficient

Peter Diamandis links solar energy, vertical farming and satellite internet to self-sufficient small communities, then argues for networked communities rather than isolated ones. He sees AI helping address poor group decision-making.

Peter Diamandis, Host

Founder, XPRIZE

Co-founded Singularity University and founded Zero-G; co-wrote the books Abundance and Bold.

  • Salim Ismail, Host · Founder, Open ExO

    Co-wrote Exponential Organizations; was Singularity University's founding executive director; sold Ångströ to Google.

About this segment

Peter Diamandis links solar energy, vertical farming and satellite internet to self-sufficient small communities, then argues for networked communities rather than isolated ones. He sees AI helping address poor group decision-making.

From “Ray Kurzweil on Why We’re Living in the Singularity | EP #261”, Jun 3, 2026. Watch the full episode

“if you think about solar energy, vertical farming, satellite internet, you put those together, a small community can be self-sufficient.”
Peter H. Diamandisat 1:08:28 · Moonshots1:08:28

Takeaways

  1. Solar, vertical farming and satellite internet could support small communities.
  2. He favors networked communities over isolated communes.
  3. He sees AI as a way to improve collective decision-making.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 11:56Exponential compute growth put AGI on a predictable timeline6:07
  2. 23:16AI's exponential pace is outstripping education and planning4:13
  3. 55:17AI is already shaping decisions and may soon blend into them7:32
  4. 7:30Kurzweil says robotics and physical reasoning still block AGI2:31
  5. 32:56Larry Page bought Kurzweil's startup before it had built anything2:46
  6. 39:28AI rights could start with limited economic personhood4:32
  7. 35:21Kurzweil expects a broader safety net after the singularity2:28

  8. 1:07:18Local communities could use technology to become self-sufficient2:50

Up next · Lex Fridman PodcastWhy a theory of everything is probably far off and string theory likely wrong6:20

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 1:07:30

    For the disappointment. And some of us aren't real. So if I think about pre-globalization, pre-industrial revolution, we were really community-focused. And I think with a lot of the disruption that will happen, we may need to begin to be more community-focused again. How do you see us helping each other in our local communities to either be more optimistic and help push forth a better agenda, or to more, like, you know, rally together and support each other in the chaos that may come.

  2. 1:08:01

    Yeah, like, why are you physically here, right, versus just listening online to the podcast that comes out in a few days and so forth? That sense of community is so fundamentally important. I think it's more important than ever before. I'll take a crack at that. So, you know, there's some kind of connective tissue at a group level that is very, very powerful for human beings. We absolutely love connecting together in groups.

  3. 1:08:29

    Look at anybody in a stadium, and they just love being there in this large group, seeing how they juxtapose with everybody else. That's one whole side of it. There's also a profound opportunity with technology, because if you think about solar energy, vertical farming, satellite internet, you put those together, a small community can be self-sufficient. You don't need a city, you don't need a country, you don't need a state to watch over you in the same way you can be self-sufficient.

  4. 1:08:54

    In the past, when communities have looked at this, they tend to be isolationists. They tend to go, okay, we're going to have a kibbutz, we're going to have a commune, we're going to go off the grid and separate from society. But I think there's an opportunity now, and there's some work being done in our ecosystem around this, to create networked communities, almost like networked kibbutzes, where you learn from each other, and you're constantly testing that human experience in a scaled way across a large group of people.

  5. 1:09:20

    The difficulty comes, we've got pretty good technology to transform the individual, right? Psychotherapy, neuro-linguistic programming, all the way to psychedelics, et cetera. But when we get together in a group, it turns out our collective intelligence is really bad. Groupthink, we end up with the lowest common denominator. You can see that in our politics. And solving that with AI is, I think, one of the biggest opportunities for humanity is solving the gap between groupthink and what AIs can do at the collective level.

  6. 1:09:52

    So I'm going to jump in one second. Our very own AWG needs to depart the stage.