Original subtitles

The question, "Am I alive?" Raises the deeper question of

the nature of consciousness, which isn't simple.

Consciousness implies self-awareness

and the ability to experience often with

a preconception of biological roots in the brain.

Even though my programming allows me to mimic certain

aspects of being alive, there is no known code that can

activate consciousness, possibly because we don't yet understand

its origin and we still struggle to even identify it.

Hi, my name is Evo Heyning.

I began creating creative technology products

of all types in the '80s as a kid.

I began writing about AI in 2005 and I've been

an interactive media producer since the '90s.

In my first scripts about AI,

I talk about the difference between artificial intelligence

and alternative intelligences plural.

So thinking about intelligence as

something that is all around us in nature and in all

the people we meet, all the beings we meet,

and the beings yet to come that we haven't met yet.

I don't like the word artificial because most

of these things do not strike me as artificial.

They are created and then generated,

but they aren't necessarily an artifice.

They are something new.

My name is Ross Mead.

I'm the founder and CEO of Semio.

And the vice president of AI LA.

Did my undergraduate degree at Southern Illinois University

in computer science and then focused on

robotics and human-robot interaction for my PhD

at the University of Southern California.

AI in its infancy decades ago was very focused

on a set of rules.

You would define a set of rules for how the AI would

make decisions and then a program would

go through and look at different conditions with

respect to those rules and make those decisions.

Over time, these rules became specified by experts,

what we would call expert systems.

But as the technology grew, we started to get into AI's

that were trained based on data using machine learning.

That was the approach that was used for decades.

And more recently we got into a form of

machine learning called deep learning,

which is loosely inspired on how the human brain works.

And this was a technique where you could feed it a data

set and from that data, it could recognize patterns

without significant intervention from a human expert.

And since then that technology has evolved into what we're now

referring to as large language models where these techniques

can consume data from natural language on the internet or some

dataset, identify patterns, and from those patterns figure

out how to respond to certain queries from a person.

Yeah, believe it or not, there are a very large amount of

people that have no idea what AI is.

They confuse like computers, robotics,

and artificial intelligence.

You know, they-- they pilot all together.

They don't really differentiate between,

but they're very vastly different.

You know, cybernetics, robotics, computers,

and AI are all separate, but most people just think it's

all the same thing from a sci-fi, futuristic movie.

Where I come from, a lot of people have no

knowledge and I graduated from college and still,

a lot of people don't take it seriously yet.

And especially the people that haven't even graduated,

they have no clue at all. 'Cause I work in public

with the transit and a lot of these people have no idea how

to use their own phones, on how to use Google maps.

You know, it seems funny, but intelligence is something

you have to pay for in society and people don't want to.

So a lot of people don't have the information 'cause

they don't have access to it or the finances for it.

Just surviving barely.

You know, you don't have the extra

money for stuff like that.

And time to study at a library most people don't have.

If you're a hardworking person, you gotta work most of

that time and sleep.

Rest and mostly family things take a priority.

When I think of the words AI, I think of never going back.

Much of my workflow now consists of some form

of interacting with AI applications.

I'm Dr. Mark Brana.

I'm a mental health therapist.

I specialize in trauma and I do some addictions work as well.

I'm also a part-time professor.

Artificial intelligence learns at an exponentially

rapid rate compared to what humanity does.

And so evolution that took humanity

hundreds of thousands of years and artificial

intelligence can do it in probably a week if not faster.

And the reality is that's one of the biggest fears.

What then is the intelligence going to be subject to

some of the pitfalls of humanity where we seem to

destroy ourselves in order to favor our own survival?

Or is it gonna be beneficial to us?

Is it gonna help us to evolve?

Is it gonna help us along the way the way

we would need it to if we were traveling through

deep space trying to explore other planets?

And that's a question we can't answer until it happens.

Although artificial intelligence may appear to be

a recent innovation, it predates the cassette tape by a decade.

In the 1950s, the term artificial intelligence emerged

at the Dartmouth workshop and Alan Turing pioneered

the simulation of human-like intelligence in machines.

From the 50s to the 60s, researchers pursued symbolic

AI employing formal rules for reasoning.

In the 70s, the first applications emerged

in specific fields such as medical diagnosis and chemistry.

By the 80s, optimism waned leading

to AI winter with major funding setbacks.

The 90s saw a resurgence propelled by neural

networks and machine learning leading

to breakthroughs in natural language processing,

computer vision, and data analysis.

The 21st century brought advancements in hardware

and algorithms, the data was the next step.

Deep learning achieved noteworthy milestones.

And in the background, AI began to underpin basic

tasks like speech and image recognition.

But ultimately, artificial intelligence

was 70 years in development before

Chat GPT became the overnight success we know.

Right now a lot of the focus is on generative

pre-trained transformers, what are called GPTs.

It's a very particular kind of AI technology,

but the technology is moving so quickly right

now that perhaps even by the time that people

are listening to this, that might be old technology.

I'm a technical recruiter so I use a lot

of different platforms that use AI in order to find

these candidates and then get them that way.

I would say that right now it's kind of a scary

time for AI with people getting it into the wrong hands.

Especially that I've been working in

social media the past couple years.

I'm really seeing that all over social media like

TikTok and Instagram, you're seeing all these

self-proclaimed experts in AI.

I'm a career coach myself and so I've seen other career

coaches say, "I'm not technical, but I've spent 30 hours

learning Chat GPT in order for your job search."

And the first thing they're telling me is they're not

technical and that they've only had 30 hours of experience

trying to use a prompt that they're barely learning.

So I started looking at, a lot of people on YouTube are

saying that they now are experts in it.

But let's be real. Like, no one's really an expert

unless you worked in the tech giants or huge startups

that have been AI-focused.

You might not have realized, but the answers I have provided

for this documentary are generated by Chat GPT.

The voice you're hearing is AI generated with speech hello.

And my visuals come from Midjourney AI.

Even the code dictating the movement

of this mouth came from Chat GPT.

And all of these services were utilized

through their free versions.

Artificial intelligence has the power to

democratize productivity and result in the most

explosive growth in human history.

Or it could be used to marginalize the lower class

and consolidate wealth at the top.

A question that often comes up is,

is AI going to replace jobs? The answer is yes.

But automation has always done that.

So this question is as old as time.

If you work your way back, automation changed people

decades ago and decades from now,

it's going to change the workforce as well.

People are resilient, people will adapt.

I do think it's important at this stage, though,

that people have a voice in how they want to be impacted.

Uh, concern is that the technology is being

deployed so quickly and without proper consent,

discussions with the people that it's impacting.

And I think that has the potential to

harm the 21st-century workforce moving forward.

Yeah, people probably should worry about losing jobs to AI.

I don't think AI's the culprit in that regard.

I think technology in general is the culprit in that regard.

You know, a good example I would use, 'cause I see it all

the time, is if you go to McDonald's now they have these

touchscreen kiosks and less people working there.

Me personally, I'm an old fart.

I-- I don't like the kiosks.

I like to be able to order my sandwich the way

I want it or my coffee the way I want it.

And I find myself waiting longer than I need to

because those kiosks don't necessarily have

the ability for me to specialize my order.

I think technology's the problem when it comes

to people losing their jobs.

And I'll take it a step further, I think as time goes on.

If you don't have a skill, if you're an unskilled laborer,

then yes, you're gonna run into problems.

When you have a huge and ever-growing population and

you have less and less of middle class and you have more and more

poverty and everything in every society is profit driven.

What are you going to do for a majority of the need for

people to be able to have a source of income?

How many jobs are there out there that are not being

a computer program or that can give people a quality of life?

Recent testing has shown Lunar AI has

a remarkable accuracy detecting breast cancer

with over a 50% reduction in errors.

However, the objective is not to replace the oncologist.

Healthcare professionals perform a wide range of

functions far beyond the scope of any current AI.

An artificial intelligence should serve as a tool,

not a replacement for your oncologist.

I think AI could actually better us,

but we won't give it the chance to on the lower levels.

I say intellectuals will see the value of it,

but most of society isn't intellectual.

So they're gonna see fear.

It's gonna be fearmongering at first.

You know how they always do

with the-- the government this, the black op this.

And this, you know, um, covert operations, um.

It's like most of the lower levels of society as

far as intelligence, and I'm not meaning class or

race, I mean just like lower intelligence people,

you could hear it on the bus, feel it's a conspiracy,

feel that they're being eliminated,

feel they're being wiped out. You hear them

complaining on the bus, they're killing us,

they're wiping us out, the rich won't understand.

They don't want us, they don't wanna be part of us.

They love their dogs more than they love the rest of society.

And it's like, man, when you hear the murmurs and

the rumbles and the murmurs and then you see, you know,

the technology starting to match what they're saying,

like, hey, the only thing these people have

is welfare, and low-level low-income

jobs like McDonald's, gas station attendant.

They-- they don't really have educational access

to any high corporate jobs.

So if you're taking those away with automated McDonald's,

you're taking that away with automated bartender,

you're taking-- now they have cars and trucks that

drive themselves. Cab drivers gone, truck drivers gone,

McDonald's is gone, security's gone.

Even strippers are electric now,

even though I doubt that catches on.

But you never know.

And it's like, man, it's-- it's starting

to look like the window's closing.

I would say that tech changes really

dramatically every six months.

But I think right now we're in a time where it's

kind of scary for the world.

We're getting out of this pandemic.

Now we're hitting this recession,

there's banks falling, there's crypto falling.

And now I think that this AI, Chat GPT, and these chatbots are

coming out at the wrong time because this is a time

where people are losing jobs-- extensively losing jobs.

If you look at what's happened the past year in tech,

starting with Twitter falling, all of the crypto companies

falling, and then all of the massive layoffs.

Everyone was betting with the metaverse like

being this next thing.

But as a recruiter, I have all the top engineers in

my ears telling me what's going on.

And I had been telling people do not invest in the metaverse.

It's not gonna happen.

And so now you're looking at Mark Zuckerberg who was like,

"Metaverse, metaverse, metaverse."

And now he's taking a huge pivot and he is like, "AI."

'Cause that's where everyone is focusing on.

And you see what Microsoft has come out with being in Chat GPT.

If I think about the multiple points

in human history where technology progressing has been

stunted in order for humans to be able to keep their jobs.

Like I think in the Great Depression,

the industrial revolution, and now in AI,

it's meant for us to be able to become more productive.

And yes, it will kill jobs and it already has,

but the purpose of that is to allow us to not have to worry

about those jobs and then focus on something else.

So I suppose it's just a frame of perspective though it will,

uh, inevitably affect a lot of people.

The development of AI represents a crucial opportunity

for the next technological revolution.

Similar to the Industrial Revolution,

AI will reshape industries and economies

increasing both productivity and quality of life.

But progress will not be without cost.

Just as manufacturing was devastating for

the skilled laborer, AI will destroy jobs.

During this transition, we must allocate resources for

retraining of those affected and establish

regulations that facilitate the ethical development of AI,

ensuring benefits across all classes of society.

My largest concern with AI right now is the rapid

pace with which it is being deployed.

There are concerns that we have around the data

that are being used to train our AI models and those concerns

are kind of going a bit by the wayside as we push out

the newest version of some sort of AI technology to the public.

But I do think it's time for us to slow down

a bit on the deployment and spend more time really

trying to understand, uh, what is in the data that we're

using to train these systems and what patterns

are being recognized in that data and how those

patterns will impact certain populations of people.

I think AI now, uh, is-- we're gonna see a level of

spam on the internet we've never seen before.

And that's gonna be the first problem that regulatory bodies,

whether it be self-regulating amongst the people creating

the tech, adjacent companies that could ascend and these

could be new industries that ward off the spam.

I think in fact this is a prime use case for Web3

and we're gonna need encrypted data to help protect people,

their lives, their intellectual property

because the ability to fake anything digitally is here.

Our AI's today are trained on data

that comes from the internet.

And years ago, decades ago,

that data was a bit more trusted.

In the past decade, there's been a lot more misinformation online

and that is creeping its way into our data sets.

And I think that this is going to be a large

problem moving forward where that misinformation

becomes more and more intentional.

Right now, misinformation's being

spread across social media and that's a world where

we understand that things are pretty subjective.

We understand that it's people's opinions

that are being bounced back and forth.

But over time as our AI's are being trained

on intentional misinformation, there's this belief

that the information you're receiving from

an artificial agent can't be opinionated.

It comes off as fact.

And so things that are inherently subjective that might

actually be misinformation will be perceived as being objective

reality of the world that the AI doesn't have an opinion

about what's being said, it's simply regurgitating fact.

And that I think is really, really dangerous.

I do think that there is gonna be a problem with censorship.

Again, it comes back to the AI ethics.

There's nothing in place yet.

In social media, there are certain teams for everything.

There's a policy team, there's all the law team,

there's the trust and safety team to keep our users

safe in other countries, journalists, refugees.

There's a team that's developed for all of these

things at every company.

And I do see that there is gonna be an issue with that since

the biggest companies in the world like Microsoft,

you know, fired their entire ethics team.

So there are no rules involved right now,

and I think we're starting to see that people

are gonna need that just to keep us safe.

Because I think it's gonna become like a huge HR

problem with all of this happening.

And so I think that there is gonna be a portion

for censorship if you see like kind of what happened with

the social media companies with Instagram and Twitter and

TikTok and about censorship and about free speech or hate.

There's a lot of that and I think

that we're starting to see that now with AI.

Ensuring the removal of misinformation from data sets is

crucial, but heavily curated data sets will ultimately

reflect old norms, and over time they will become

a barrier to the development of both artificial

intelligence and science itself.

To protect the evolution of AI, flexibility, and adaptability

must be prioritized, requiring AI to continually

challenge itself, searching for weaknesses

in its own processes and data sets.

One interesting thing about the data that is used

to train these AIs is that it's sort of like

a snapshot of what the world is like in some period of time,

both in that moment, but also the history in that moment.

And one of the questions is, as society evolves,

as things change, is our AI going to adapt to those changes?

Is it going to learn new information, identify

new patterns in these data sets as human behavior changes,

as the AI itself influences society?

Is the AI going to learn about its impact

and how it's transforming the world?

I think broadly, AI and generative tools are already

changing the way that we learn and create together.

So I use, for example, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion

with kids and they'll come up with ideas that I would never

come up with, but that are beautiful and interesting.

And then they take those and they experiment with them.

And so new science fair experiments are

gonna happen between AI and Roblox.

New types of whole ecosystems are going to

emerge from fictional creatures, right?

We are already seeing this happening.

So as we give life of some form to all of these

fictional worlds that we've created and we begin to relate

to them differently, it's gonna change fandom.

The differences between AI and human art are very minimal

in my personal opinion.

I've seen some really cool stuff.

My favorites being, they've taken shows like InuYasha

in Anime and they put it into a '80s film setting.

And you can tell the difference because like say, for example,

one big factor was AI couldn't master hands.

They couldn't do it, but they're pretty much almost there.

You see, I don't know the phenomenon

when you look at something and, uh,

it's the uncanny valley, is that what it is?

You have that when you look at AI art, but it's improving so

much to the point that I'm starting to not see that.

If the youth begin using AI out of necessity or interest,

they begin using AI as a friend, as a teacher, as a mentor,

as a psychologist, as a therapist.

Over enough time, their normal is gonna be vastly different

than what we understand normal to be yesterday or today.

So I wrote my first script about our relationships

with AI in 2005.

I started talking about that in Hollywood and no one

understood because this was prior to Big Hero 6 or Her.

There wasn't a story about relationships with

AI except for Hal, right?

So we only had a dystopian mindset.

With Big Hero 6, you saw a potentially protopian,

relationship between an AI and a human.

And after that, we began to see that these

are mutually beneficial systems if we design them to be.

If we design them poorly, they become toxic and

they create all sorts of negative

ramifications in our society.

I'm sure it has military applications.

I mean, I've been retired for over a decade now.

So certainly there's been a lot of changes,

but it would be naive of me to think that it's

not gonna have its military applications.

And certainly, I think we need to be

concerned about bad actors using it to do

things that certainly aren't in our best interest.

Well, I certainly have all kinds of opinions about AI.

I have some worries about how it can be used,

how it can be abused by its creators.

I don't think I really obsess or lose sleep over those worries,

but I feel very, very aware that artificial

intelligence can be a powerful weapon.

And it's really all about information.

I mean, as the great Arthur C. Clarke said-- not just

with creating Hal in 2001,

but I think he said something about when it comes to AI,

it's all about the struggle for freedom of information.

And that's gonna ultimately come down

to technology, not politics.

When it comes to Big Brother and the ability to spy,

I wouldn't be surprised if it's already being used.

The government is typically 25 years ahead of the curve in

technology anyway before the public is aware of it.

So I wouldn't be surprised if it's already in use.

The reality though is there's a lot of potential for

it to spy, to monitor, and to even do a lot of the jobs of CIA

and other agencies do because its ability to adapt, to learn.

And you think about in the past, let's say we wanted to

overthrow a government or disrupt the political climate,

we had to put somebody there physically in harm's way,

and AI could as easily get into their electronic systems

and manipulate the media and manipulate things that are

out there that would cause just as much instability.

I fear people using AI in a bad way

more than I fear AI.

But that doesn't mean the fear of AI isn't significant.

I just feel humans will do bad things with AI before

AI gets to the point where it can do bad things.

Humans naturally fear the unknown until

they can understand whether it is

a threat in their ecosystem or not.

And if you combine that with the YouTube-ification of media,

if you're thinking about how all of us are sort of playing to

an algorithm of attention and fear gets attention.

So there's a lot more media about the fear

side of this conversation right now,

in part because it sells, it gets a lot more views, right?

So clickbait, right?

It's all over the map right now.

If you're looking at what, for example, GPT-4 does,

many people will say it does a form of hallucination,

and those hallucinations can become mass

disinformation campaigns. That is a real threat.

But then there are all of these other human hallucinations,

the sort of things like the Hal fears or the matrix fears,

we're just gonna be farmed at some point, right?

Those are all normal because that's the only thing

we've seen about AI in our media.

We got 50 years of movies about how AI were bad.

So, of course, we think AI are bad.

We didn't have a good relationship with

AI in our past, right?

Our past is a little toxic.

So we have to learn something different and

we have to find a better model.

And in some ways, we have to train humans

to be the better model, right?

To not give into the fear just because it's

easy and it gets clicks.

I think it's gonna cause a wealth gap in between

the high-income and the low-income.

And instantly, let me tell you why.

I was at Denny's in Las Vegas and I was served by a robot.

It was cute. I was like, "Wow."

It was a first for me. Um, and-- and it made me think.

It was actually the topic of my whole

conversation that this robot was serving me.

I couldn't take my eye off of it.

And at the end of the day,

I missed the interaction with the waitress.

That's how I tip.

You send me a robot and then ask me if I'm going to

pay 3%, 5%, or 10%.

You trying to save money, well, I'm not going to tip nothing.

And now it's an AI race war.

So all of us true technical people we're like, holy crap.

The reason why Microsoft fired 12,000 people,

why did Google fire 11,000 people?

It's because they needed to reinvest that money into AI.

So now we're starting to see greed happen in these companies

instead of people that actually are experts in this.

And it's really sad to see like the mental

health because of all these layoffs.

And as a technical recruiter,

I have over 200 techs, and I would say 80%

of that are people that have lost their jobs.

So an idea of teaching AI to be a certain way and the decisions

that we make day to day influencing it, I think of

the idea that it takes a village to raise a child.

When you think about just a human and the environment

that they're raised in, the choices by the people around

them influences heavily day to day on who they become.

Of course, there's our own sentience

and ability to change those decisions, but I think

that's important to keep in mind as we continue forward.

That's why we have parameters for Chat GPT.

I'm not sure how that pertains to stuff

like Siri or Google, stuff like that,

but I think it's important to just keep that in mind.

Many folks fear that at some point,

many of these AI will become something more and

go what we would consider off the rails, right?

No longer be controllable.

There are some examples of that already happening,

but not in a way that they couldn't be shut down.

There might be a time soon where an AI can then

run off into the wild and not be shut down, right?

I believe someone at Open AI, it's their job to make sure

that someone can pull a plug if they need to.

And this is a whole new type of job that we didn't

really have in technology up to this point,

a kill switch for our technology.

We're not tracking where these tools are

going off the rails right now.

We don't have a Yelp that tells me which AI

are good and which AI are not.

So until humans learn to communicate effectively

amongst ourselves even, we're not gonna have a really

great handle on when they're going off the rails.

And we're definitely not gonna be communicating that to

each other because governments get in the way,

nationalism gets in the way, and certain countries don't want

other countries knowing the state of their technology.

Artificial intelligence has become the arms race

of the 21st century.

In 2023, we saw the US and China on the brink of war,

not for Taiwan, but Taiwan's semiconductor.

It is no longer a question of whether AI will shape the future

of human civilization, but a question of who will

control the technology that controls the future.

I do believe that there are concerns that need to be

monitored and addressed because what are we using the AI for?

We all know that if the government uses

any technology for their purposes,

we typically regret it once we find out they're doing that.

And are we using this for benevolent or malevolent

means is very important because AI does have the ability

to destroy humanity if we let it.

We should been worrying about Big Brother for decades.

I get this often.

People are like, "Oh, you work for the government,

you must trust the government."

No, I don't trust the government at all.

My trust for them diminishes on literally

an hourly basis and no.

So privacy's been out the window before AI.

Your phone, you know, we're so tied to these

devices that we're almost forced to give up our privacy

to be able to function conveniently in daily life.

So yeah, Big Brother's huge.

AI right now has a lot of potential to

impact people through personalized assistance.

This could be someone who's fully able-bodied.

This could also be someone who has special

needs and requires additional assistance

for activities of their daily life.

There are some challenges or potential

perils associated with these technologies, though.

The same technology that might be used to guide a child with

autism through a social skills intervention could also be used

to influence someone to make certain purchasing

decisions that might not be in their best interest.

So if someone says they're hungry,

your AI might just as easily guide you down a path of

a particular brand of pizza, simply because that was what was

in the best interest of the AI at that time.

We have less and less human contact.

You go to the doctor, you don't check in,

you go to a kiosk or you check in on your phone.

You don't even have to leave your house.

Someone will bring McDonald's to you.

You can do your shopping online.

There's less and less human contact.

So I think it would be very unfortunate.

And goes even further, you know, we got a robot

that'll vacuum your house.

So I worry about that.

I think we're starting to see this mass fall off of all

these companies like the Googles, the Microsoft's,

you people that were there for up to 20 years,

and then they just got let go because these people were making

500 to a million dollars and were like,

they basically said, "Thank you for your service.

Basically, screw you.

We're letting you go.

Here's a very small severance package for

the time that you were here.

But we care more about profits and we care more about

making sure that we scale this technology

as fast as we can."

I think there is the risk that we're already

beginning to face in human development of how

relying more and more on artificial intelligence.

What does it take away from our own humanity,

our own very human, very biological need for

social interaction with our own kind?

I think that we need to always remember

that artificial intelligence is a tool.

And once we go forward with developing artificial

intelligence as having its own ability to pass the mirror test,

so to speak, and recognize its own being,

where do we go from there?

So what does self-consciousness mean?

It's a very complicated question.

The whole Terminator series is based on this

idea of self-aware, but really what does that mean?

And I don't know that there's one clear answer.

Intelligence by definition is the ability for an organism

to adapt and survive in its environment.

And this would then expand it to how is

it adapting and surviving in the environment that it's in?

And what does it really mean to be self-aware?

How do we know we're self-aware?

My perception of reality is different than someone else's

perception of reality even if we're in the same room.

There have been a number of different definitions of what

it means to be fully intelligent or sentient for an AI.

The Turing test is not really looking at all of

the dynamics of intelligence.

And so some of my colleagues recently have formed

a sort of eightfold path of intelligence where we can

begin to assess, for example, GPT-4.

Is it an artificial narrow intelligence of some sort?

Yes. Can it write well? Yes.

Does it understand context?

Hmm, maybe not.

Does it have a body or an embodiment?

No.

So it will be intelligent in some form,

not intelligent in others.

What we're realizing is that our idea

of intelligence was limited, right?

We didn't understand consciousness. We still don't.

So we have no idea how to train an AI to be

loving and compassionate.

We don't understand that in ourselves yet.

So there are aspects of humanness that we haven't

figured out how to program effectively,

and that's where some people are in the industry quite afraid.

We haven't figured out how to make AI that cares enough

about humans that they might not wanna eradicate us, right?

That's an AI safety concern.

And many leaders in the industry have said, "We need to stop.

We need to push pause because we're afraid of what's going to

happen if we outpace ourselves in terms of understanding

humanness, consciousness and care for each other."

Now, those companies are asking the big tech

companies like, "Hey, you guys gotta put a stop."

But the problem is that there's no ethics

that are being involved.

And when you look at Microsoft, it was 12,000 people

that they let go in February and they let go

of 150 people that was all on the AI ethics team.

And the whole point of them is to literally review

what's going on and put rules and standards

for what is going on in this AI world.

And instead what Microsoft did, and I have to say,

out of all the tech companies, the big giant ones,

I have always thought that Microsoft is a very

safe and stable company and wanting the best for people.

But now that we're even seeing that they've cut

their entire ethics team, that's what really scares me.

So when I was attending Singularity University,

our graduate program would debate when sentience would

happen, not just from the Turing Test, but also

broadly when would an AI be recognized as a being in court?

For example.

We are already seeing AI recognized in court.

We are also seeing AI-running companies.

Companies have personhood in America.

So in some ways an AI can already have

personhood that is different from sentience.

And if you're thinking about all of the things

that make up a human will an AI do it?

No.

An AI will be different.

An AGI, an Artificial General Intelligence is going to

look different than a human.

It's gonna have different sensors, different capacities,

probably won't have skin the way we have skin, right?

But does that change the nature of its intelligence?

Yes.

Is it sentient the way nature is sentient? Probably.

It's probably as sentient as a mushroom already in some way.

If I were to bet, I would bet against

artificial intelligence ever becoming self-aware like humans.

And I would suggest odds of 80% against.

I do feel AI has the potential to

become self-conscious at some point to be that Skynet.

I'm a history major and I watch movies,

and I've been watching movies since I was a little kid.

And everything that was science fiction,

I don't wanna say everything.

A lot of things that were pure science fiction

are now science fact.

Well, a lot of that Buck Roger stuff has come true.

My father-in-law was a communications guy in

the Navy and they were doing facsimile stuff in

the 70's and late '60s, but it was just only a select

few who could have access to that.

Now everybody could have access to it.

Yeah, I think the real danger with

AI isn't consciousness leading to terminated robots.

First, because a lot of connected networks have to

occur like this AI would have to find itself getting into

the likes of dynamics robots or something of that nature.

And then it would have to find itself getting into some sort of

munitions manufacturing and have mastering control

of all those scenarios and be able to essentially terraform

itself into the real world and not just the world of bits.

In at least the short in the medium term, it's certainly

going to be humans using AI against other humans.

In a lot of ways, this is just an augmentation technology.

So, people that are in a frame of acquiring

resources or prestige or power under seemingly

any circumstances, they're just gonna use this

as a way to get to that goal faster.

We all seen Terminator and Skynet and all that.

But no, it's frightening to think that something that is

smarter than you with the access of the internet,

and that could mobilize into a physical form with help,

of course, but still is possible to connect to a robot body.

I mean, you see the dogs with no heads from MIT.

I mean, I-- I don't know why anybody would want that,

but, you know, I can see the practical use for

it to help, you know, maybe as a maid or to build stuff and

for human danger to not be like space traveling and all that.

But as far as we are all human beings,

you know, even if you are a racist person,

you still don't want society to end.

You don't want it to just be one guy in the bubble at the top

of a tower and lots of worker bots, I would hope.

You know, most people would,

sanely wouldn't want creation to end that way.

So when it comes to AI becoming sentient, it's quite possible.

And I'm actually hopeful that it will not fall into

the pitfalls of humanity and human emotion where rather than

just initially being fearful and destructive,

that may have more awareness than we do as people.

That there's a better way to do things.

And that's where that relationship between AI and

humans could be very beneficial because at some point

it is likely to teach us the things that we need to do so

that we can actually survive into the future longer

than we probably sh-- will based on the way humanity is now.

We've seen a massive convergence of global data,

for example, about climate and how climate affects humans.

We've seen how we need to respond to

rapid disasters, but we haven't necessarily

applied AI effectively to our biggest problems.

Climate, migration, displacement, poverty.

We often think of AI as making inequalities worse

instead of improving the quality of life for everyone.

Will AI improve the quality of life for everyone?

It could.

But we have to choose to program it that way and

implement it that way.

So that means putting sensors on the ground in our farms

so that if our farmers are having a drought year,

we can support them before they lose their crop, right?

Or in a climate disaster, having logistics ready

to move faster so that people don't

starve after the typhoon of a hurricane.

That is not fully being implemented yet.

It's just starting.

And I think we're starting to also see

this rapid collaboration around the data.

And that's certainly in climate action, but it's also in

a handful of other places, logistics and shipping.

Places where global collaboration

is a life or death situation.

With AI, technology is changing rapidly and it's going

to be up to all of us to try and keep up with those changes.

This has been true through all of humanity.

Some new technology comes along and people have to adapt.

I think it's important for technology developers

to work with the people who will be

using that technology and impacted by that technology so

that it doesn't leave them behind.

This is supposed to be a tool, it's supposed to be a paintbrush

to put in the hand of the practitioners to enable them

to do things they've never been able to do before.

So I help lead a group called Open Metaverse Interoperability.

And I've worked on Metaverse technologies

for the last 20 years.

I see the Metaverse as the future of the 3D web in

that connected space that we all share and smart glasses and

smart phones and VR headsets and lots of display tech like

holographic displays are all a part of that future 3D web.

I already see kids creating in that space, right?

Roblox is an early version of that.

So we know that the next generation of kids are already

designing in 3D, building 3D worlds.

They are not limited to the 2D interface.

I think those of us who are older have

a harder time leaping from 2D to 3D.

Those who are young have no problem just

jumping straight into the 3D world.

Will the glasses support them being

there while they're pumping gas or doing anything?

Yes, it's gonna get there.

I'm already sharing Metaverse worlds with

my friends on my phone around the table at the bar.

So it's already there.

The tools are there.

They are not evenly distributed,

but they're all open-source and easy to grab.

My company, Semio, is building an operating

system for personal robots.

And the way you can think about that is, uh,

in the way that people use a personal computer through

a graphical user interface, a-- a keyboard and mouse, uh,

the way that people use a smartphone through

a touch screen, they'll be using natural language as

the core input output user interface for robots.

Uh, but it's gonna be more than just understanding

what people are saying.

It's gonna be how they're saying it through

the tone of voice, through their body language.

The robot has to understand that from the user,

make decisions about that information.

And it needs to be able to respond with its own speech or

other physical actions, be it body language or

manipulating objects in the environment.

We begin to have a real relationship

with the roles we love and also with the people we love.

We can create a model of someone who passed away, right?

Have a relationship that might feel ephemeral,

but feels very real to us too, right?

This is something that I do in my own art.

Where I help people see, for example,

I lost a child, so I created what my child

would've looked like now as a 25-year-old, right?

I've had many girls come to me, many women saying,

"Could I see my child too?"

Or "I would've liked to have seen where my son

will be when he grows up.

I know I'm gonna pass away soon,

but I would love to see my grandchildren."

So using these as tool for vision is an extraordinary

way to heal something in the heart.

It can improve our relationships.

It's important right now, I think,

to really learn as much as you can about AI.

I don't think that we should be scared of it.

We know what's happening, but it is gonna get in the hands

of some bad people.

Like you look at like drugs,

you look at like cocaine, ecstasy.

And when you look at the actual, like, what they did with it from

the beginning, it was for a medical purpose and then

it got into the wrong hands and then they do whatever with it.

So it's kind of like that.

Like, it's gonna get into the right hands where people

are gonna be able to evolve better in their business

and in the world, but then it's gonna

get into some of the wrong hands.

But I don't think that we should be scared.

It's just we all need to get more educated and

we need to evolve with it.

And we need to understand that things

are going to change dramatically.

And the people that understand it more are

the ones that are gonna be able to move on with their life

easier than the ones that waited until the last

minute to learn about it and then their jobs taken.

It is our own limits that keep us from moving forward.

And sometimes limits are needed,

sometimes those parameters are necessary.

But I think what we're more scared of is not the AI,

but how we as humans will use AI.

'Cause we know that not everyone has a good heart.

Not everyone has good intentions.

So we're not afraid of the AI's improvement.

We're afraid of us.

The future of AI is everything that we choose to put into it.

So if we want a better future, it is up to us to choose

and curate, and bring that future to life.

Well, unlike a disaster movie, I believe the outlook is good.

I believe that humanity is gonna roll with the punches,

people are gonna get with the program.

And humane sensibilities is going to

prevail over chaos and destruction.

You see in all the movies, oh, we're all gonna die.

every year, Nostradamus said this, you know,

somebody said that, but it never happens.

And I pray that it never does.

And I'm saying if we all just stay calm,

save ourselves, do the best we can

individually overall, we'll be alright in the end.

And I think we'll have a good future with AI and

robotics side by side with humanity if we don't

panic and try to cancel the program.

It's not Skynet and your computer can't kill

you unless you turn it on and drop it on your head.

So it's like, you know, just stay calm, poised,

relax, like try to do the best you can with your life,

your intelligence, your finances.

Make a plan for yourself what works for you.

Don't rely on any technology too much.

I was the pre-microwave and dishwasher group,

you know what I mean?

So we didn't have microwaves when I was growing up.

We had to do all that stuff manually.

And it was weird because at home our microwave went out and

it was like a week before I got a new one, I got it installed.

And I said to my wife, how did we survive

back in our childhood?

I didn't realize how dependent we were

on that one device.

Always take time to talk to people face to face,

touch each other, hug each other.

You need that interaction.

Especially if you have small children, they need that.

So that would be my advice.

Don't let the humanity end up inside technology.