[0:06] Intelligence equals power.
[0:09] Intelligence equals ability to influence
[0:11] the shape of the future.
[0:15] If you look at us in the world today,
[0:19] we are definitely shaping our own future
[0:25] and we're shaping the futures of other
[0:26] species around us, too.
[0:29] birds, fish, whales, even primates,
[0:33] they have no chance at being able to
[0:35] shape the world around them when humans
[0:37] are around
[0:39] because we are a very intelligent
[0:41] species
[0:43] and the most intelligent species that
[0:44] the world has seen to date.
[0:48] [Music]
[0:54] Artificial intelligence is the first and
[0:56] only technology we'll ever create that
[0:58] will bring an intelligent system into
[1:01] the world that can match or exceed
[1:03] humans in terms of intelligence. We'd
[1:05] basically be seeding the reigns to a
[1:08] more powerful species and we become a
[1:10] secondary species on Earth and that is
[1:13] just a completely unprecedented moment
[1:15] in human history.
[1:22] AI is basically just a type of system
[1:24] that is carrying out a thing that you
[1:25] would call an intelligent task.
[1:30] We have AI systems around us today.
[1:33] You have AI that's able to trade on the
[1:36] stock market in a way that's much better
[1:38] than humans can. We have AI that's
[1:41] increasingly being used in domains like
[1:43] healthcare or education.
[1:45] And the systems that we have today, you
[1:47] would call artificial narrow
[1:48] intelligence or ANI
[1:51] because they are only applicable or
[1:53] useful in a very narrow specific task.
[1:57] The current state of AI is that you've
[1:59] got these narrow systems which actually
[2:01] can exceed human performance in all
[2:03] these different areas.
[2:05] >> As with all computer operations, the key
[2:07] to designing intelligent machines lies
[2:10] in programming. So, I could have a
[2:12] program which can play chess and that's
[2:14] all it can do. You can't have a
[2:16] conversation with it, but it can play
[2:18] chess better than anybody.
[2:21] But in day-to-day life, we are
[2:23] navigating an incredibly complex
[2:25] universe. There's many, many different
[2:28] ways that we have to respond socially,
[2:30] emotionally, physically, whatever we're
[2:32] doing. We have to cope with all of these
[2:34] factors that life is throwing at us.
[2:37] A person can juggle while reciting
[2:40] Shakespeare. Communicate abstract ideas
[2:43] while surfing.
[2:45] We can use imagination to achieve
[2:47] incredible things.
[2:49] We can do math and English and we can
[2:52] sing and dance and we can ride bikes and
[2:54] we can dream dreams. And that is a very
[2:57] general form of intelligence. And it
[2:58] also means that we can learn new tasks
[3:00] that we haven't been competent at
[3:02] before. And we are the only
[3:04] instantiation of a general intelligence
[3:06] on earth at this point in time.
[3:10] And basically we are talking about
[3:13] creating an artificial version of the
[3:15] general intelligence that we are.
[3:17] Probably before the end of this century,
[3:19] we will be able to construct computers
[3:23] or artificial intelligences which can go
[3:27] out on their own and develop lines of
[3:29] thought irrespective of any programming
[3:32] and which may in principle be more
[3:34] intelligent than we are.
[3:37] The reason why AGI is potentially so
[3:41] amazing, but the reason why it's also
[3:42] potentially terrifying from an
[3:44] existential threat standpoint is because
[3:46] it is the only time at which we're going
[3:48] to create something that is more
[3:50] powerful than us.
[3:52] And from there onwards, you know, life
[3:54] as we know it is going to be shaped by
[3:56] the more intelligent species on the
[3:58] planet.
[4:02] One of the most common misconceptions is
[4:04] that you only have to worry about AI if
[4:06] it has a body.
[4:08] Robots, hinges and motors, that's old
[4:11] technology. It's the intelligence itself
[4:13] that gives the power.
[4:15] >> I can count on my fingers.
[4:17] >> 2 3 4.
[4:20] >> I know many very smart people who think
[4:22] that superhuman intelligence will never
[4:24] arrive because it's somehow impossible.
[4:28] And usually it's because they think that
[4:30] intelligence is something mysterious
[4:31] that can only exist in human minds.
[4:36] I view that as just carbon chauvinism.
[4:39] I'm quite convinced that intelligence is
[4:41] actually all about information
[4:42] processing and that it doesn't matter
[4:45] whether the information is processed by
[4:46] carbon atoms in neurons in brains or by
[4:49] silicon atoms in computers.
[4:53] If it can happen, will it?
[4:56] Yes, it will. Because we have an
[4:59] incredibly powerful incentive as a
[5:01] species to keep making new technology
[5:03] because of course it makes us money and
[5:05] we scientists are curious.
[5:09] So when will it happen?
[5:11] Most AI researchers guess that it'll
[5:13] happen within the matter of decades
[5:15] which is probably in within the lifetime
[5:17] of most of us. Anyone who talks about
[5:20] climate change or anyone who talks about
[5:22] their retirement savings should talk
[5:24] about this also because this one will
[5:26] have a much bigger effect than either of
[5:27] those two. And I'm not trying to
[5:29] diminish the importance of climate
[5:31] change or retirement savings.
[5:34] >> So when a lot of people working in the
[5:36] field say that artificial general
[5:38] intelligence could be coming down the
[5:40] track rather soon, I think it's
[5:42] something to listen to. Look at
[5:43] Unlocking the Atom. In the early 1930s,
[5:46] >> the uranium atom was split, releasing
[5:48] its catastrophic force.
[5:52] >> People weren't expecting that. 15 years
[5:53] later, there would be these mushroom
[5:55] clouds arising into the sky.
[6:01] If you created an artificial
[6:02] intelligence that in a sense had access
[6:04] to its own source code and could tweak
[6:06] it, it could be very speedily that you
[6:09] get an artificial intelligence far more
[6:12] intelligent than the most intelligent
[6:13] human alive. It just improves so
[6:16] quickly. It's this wall where it's very
[6:18] hard to anticipate beyond that. And at
[6:21] that point, it's calling the shots
[6:24] because after that, we're no longer in
[6:26] the driving seat of history at that
[6:28] point.
[6:31] I think the reason we underestimate
[6:33] existential risk is because our brains
[6:35] evolved to deal with problems that we
[6:37] had seen many times before. You know,
[6:40] we have a very hard time feeling afraid
[6:42] of some hypothetical thing in the
[6:44] future.
[6:48] >> Here is another UFO bulletin. Because of
[6:51] the ominous situation, the president has
[6:53] ordered the Strategic Air Command into
[6:55] action. If we got an email from outer
[6:57] space from superioral aliensization.org
[7:02] saying they're going to show up in 40
[7:03] years, we wouldn't just sit here and
[7:05] twiddle our thumbs. We would freak out
[7:07] and do everything we could to make sure
[7:09] this didn't become a disaster.
[7:13] >> Was a great big huge yellow glow out
[7:15] there.
[7:16] >> Looked like a big cigar shape with light
[7:19] lit from both ends.
[7:21] It's quite likely that we will get the
[7:23] superior intelligence arriving on this
[7:25] planet on the same time scale. It's just
[7:26] that we're going to build it, which
[7:28] means what we do now has a huge impact
[7:31] on whether it's going to be the best
[7:32] thing ever or the worst thing ever.
[7:36] If some organization or entity develops
[7:39] super intelligence, they will probably
[7:41] try to do it in secret because otherwise
[7:44] everybody else is going to try to stop
[7:45] them or or steal it from them because
[7:48] it's going to give them total power over
[7:50] the world.
[7:52] >> If you look at who's developing things
[7:54] that look closest to AGI today, for the
[7:57] most part, it is really big companies or
[7:59] really big private organizations.
[8:02] >> We were the original micro computer
[8:04] software company. We got started in
[8:05] 1975.
[8:08] >> We started Apple because we wanted the
[8:09] product ourselves.
[8:11] >> Probably the headline dynamic is
[8:13] competition. Really
[8:17] >> and you're seeing a lot of competitive
[8:18] dynamics crop up between private
[8:20] companies and nation states.
[8:22] >> What our goal is is to be one of the
[8:24] world's strongest brands. and
[8:26] competition is this kind of constant
[8:29] pressure forward
[8:31] where folks think that it's very
[8:33] important to become the first one to
[8:35] deploy AGI.
[8:38] At the moment we've got a handful of
[8:41] companies, you know, mainly based out of
[8:42] Silicon Valley that control all the
[8:45] world's information, all the world's
[8:47] social contexts,
[8:49] all the world's buying habits, all these
[8:51] different things.
[8:54] you need gazillions of dollars in order
[8:57] to build those server farms and it's
[8:59] impossible for anybody to compete with
[9:01] those companies. So we have created
[9:04] juggernauts.
[9:07] If you have a digital elite and you can
[9:09] build an artificial intelligence and you
[9:11] go okay we want to use this to
[9:13] manipulate these people's data to make
[9:15] them to change how they're voting. You
[9:17] have created private companies
[9:20] that have more control than governments.
[9:25] If you feel it sounds outlandish that
[9:28] there could be some sort of algorithm
[9:30] out there that's so powerful that it can
[9:32] go and do things that really screw
[9:34] people over, we already have that. It's
[9:36] called the corporation.
[9:40] There have been many examples of tobacco
[9:41] corporations, asbestous corporations,
[9:43] and so on who did things which in
[9:45] hindsight were really not good for
[9:47] humanity.
[9:49] Not because the people there were evil,
[9:51] but because the corporation itself had a
[9:53] sort of higher level of intelligence.
[9:57] It had its own goals to make money. And
[10:00] it then coerced all the people within
[10:01] the organization to say the right thing
[10:03] and do the right thing.
[10:04] >> Yes. First smoking that you're bound to
[10:06] like. You just can't beat a lucky
[10:07] strike.
[10:08] >> I suppose if I'm going to die, I might
[10:09] as well do it for my country.
[10:11] >> That's the spirit. This should be a
[10:13] wakeup call that if we're not careful,
[10:15] we can do that on a much more massive
[10:17] scale with artificial intelligence.
[10:21] Big tech industry need regulations just
[10:23] as much as the car industry needed to be
[10:25] forced to put seat belts in cars.
[10:33] Even though the car industry pushed a
[10:35] lot against seat belts,
[10:37] now they're perfectly fine with it.
[10:44] As a matter of fact, because there were
[10:46] seat belts and other safety features,
[10:48] people started to lose this fear of
[10:50] driving and they were able to sell much
[10:52] much more cars.
[10:57] We don't really understand as
[11:00] individuals
[11:01] how artificial intelligence is already
[11:04] shaping our lives.
[11:07] We don't really know who controls this
[11:09] stuff, what they know about us, what
[11:11] they're doing with the information.
[11:13] >> Every time I go on the internet, a
[11:15] profile is being built of of me and my
[11:18] consumer desires and other kinds of
[11:20] desires and so on.
[11:21] >> Now, we've got voice assistants in
[11:23] people's homes. And a voice assistant is
[11:26] basically the box which is listening in
[11:28] all the time, but you don't know it's
[11:30] listening.
[11:32] You would expect that if you're having a
[11:34] private conversation, you expect it to
[11:35] be private.
[11:37] We don't really see the value in what
[11:40] they're taking from us.
[11:43] It's like, oh, someone is stealing the
[11:45] carbon dioxide that I breathe out as I
[11:47] walk around. Well, you know, it's not of
[11:50] that much value to me anyway. I just
[11:51] produce it as I walk through the world.
[11:54] We need to see our data as a resource.
[11:58] Producing this thing almost as labor.
[12:00] That's something you produce by working
[12:04] and living your life and having the
[12:06] relationships that you do. And that's
[12:07] not the property of someone else.
[12:14] >> Data rebellion, the radical arm of the
[12:17] anti-data surveillance movement, has
[12:19] defied government bans with a day of
[12:22] global protest. The aim is to shut down
[12:25] dozens of cities around the world. The
[12:27] data trade is now a trillionoll
[12:30] industry. The group's message is that
[12:32] personal data is a resource owned by
[12:35] individuals and is not free for the
[12:37] taking with big tech companies and
[12:39] governments accused of breaching basic
[12:42] human rights by capturing personal data
[12:44] without consent or compensation. While
[12:47] cities around the world grind to a halt,
[12:49] some say the group's tactics are testing
[12:52] public tolerance for disruption. In a
[12:54] world that's become accustomed to
[12:55] surveillance capitalism,
[13:02] technology has really disrupted this
[13:06] balance between knowing and being known.
[13:10] The moment you invade the private space
[13:12] of a person by understanding their
[13:15] beliefs, their attitudes, how they vote,
[13:17] how they shop, gives you incredible
[13:20] power. And who we want to entrust that
[13:24] power to is is very important.
[13:27] Jordan, can you still help master?
[13:31] >> We're not far from the point where you
[13:32] could build an AI system that is the
[13:36] perfect Orwellian big brother that reads
[13:38] every text message and email and listens
[13:40] to every phone call and watches every
[13:42] surveillance camera and enables a
[13:44] permanent Orwellian dictatorship that
[13:46] can never be overthrown.
[13:49] Even in the West, we're actively
[13:51] building this thing now.
[13:54] If we ever get a leader who wants to
[13:55] switch it on, all they have to do is is
[13:58] flip the on switch.
[14:02] >> I was born in Romania and I lived for
[14:06] part of my life in a dictatorship.
[14:11] >> So for me, thinking about dystopia is
[14:14] something that I sort of easily relate
[14:16] to.
[14:17] [Applause]
[14:17] [Music]
[14:19] So, I have a strong history of what it
[14:22] means to live under surveillance because
[14:26] one of the realities of my childhood was
[14:29] that the government knew everything.
[14:35] And I think all of this could have been
[14:37] so much more amplified by technology.
[14:40] And that scares me
[14:44] because for us it was mostly, oh, the
[14:46] neighbor is going to inform the secret
[14:49] police,
[14:50] [Music]
[14:52] but now it can be your Alexa or your
[14:55] surveillance camera in the lobby.
[15:00] In the past, whenever dictatorships have
[15:03] been overthrown, it's always been
[15:05] because those who did the overthrowing
[15:08] had a certain amount of privacy and were
[15:10] able to organize.
[15:16] >> But if there are surveillance cameras
[15:17] everywhere and every single phone call
[15:19] and text message and communication you
[15:21] do is recorded and analyzed by an AI,
[15:24] how are you possibly going to organize
[15:26] some kind of overthrow of the powers of
[15:27] be?
[15:35] [Applause]
[15:41] [Music]
[15:44] If you're not worried about AI ever
[15:46] becoming so smart that it can take
[15:48] control over us humans, then I would
[15:50] like you to take a moment and just
[15:53] envision your least favorite political
[15:55] leader on this planet.
[15:58] And imagine that they come into control
[16:01] of this AI that's so powerful that they
[16:03] can dominate all of Earth with it. How
[16:06] do you feel about that?
[16:10] So the first thing we should worry about
[16:11] is not AI itself,
[16:15] but humans just using it to do horrible
[16:17] things to other humans on a hitherto
[16:20] unprecedented scale.
[16:22] people will somehow feel that robots
[16:25] will turn upon them. Now, this I don't
[16:28] think is very likely. However, in a very
[16:31] abstract sense, this is precisely what
[16:34] may happen.
[16:36] Some of my colleagues want to build
[16:38] super intelligence and just keep it in a
[16:40] box, disconnected from the internet,
[16:43] under human control. Now, aside from any
[16:45] moral qualms that you might have about
[16:47] enslaving a superior mind, you might
[16:49] worry about it outsmarting us and
[16:51] breaking out.
[16:54] If you were imprisoned by a bunch of
[16:56] fouryear-olds, do you really think you
[16:58] couldn't find a way of tricking them
[17:00] into somehow letting you escape?
[17:05] It's not necessarily a bad thing being
[17:08] surrounded by more intelligent entities,
[17:10] right? You and I have both already
[17:12] experienced that.
[17:14] They were mommy and daddy when we were
[17:16] tiny, right? And why did that work out
[17:18] well? Because their goals were aligned
[17:21] with ours, right?
[17:23] We don't kill ants in our living room
[17:25] because we're evil ant haters. It's just
[17:28] that the goals of the ants didn't align
[17:30] with our goals. We can be equally sure
[17:33] that if we fail to align the super
[17:35] intelligence's goal with ours, we're in
[17:37] the position of those ants.
[17:39] So I think the key to a happy
[17:41] coexistence with AI is not to get into
[17:43] an adversarial relationship, but to just
[17:45] make sure that their goals are aligned
[17:47] with ours.
[17:51] This challenge of aligning AI's goals
[17:53] with ours has two parts.
[17:56] First of how do you actually even
[17:58] explain to another intelligence what our
[18:00] goals are and how do you make sure it
[18:02] adopts those goals and and retains them
[18:04] as it gets ever smarter. And then
[18:06] there's a separate question of what goal
[18:07] should you put in?
[18:09] [Applause]
[18:12] >> Every time we talk about AI, we learn
[18:15] more about what it means to be human.
[18:18] >> Why do young children fly into rages in
[18:21] situations like this? But if we want to
[18:24] talk about aligning AI values with human
[18:26] values, we have to think deeply about
[18:29] what those human values are and learn
[18:32] that you can never expect homogeneous
[18:36] human values.
[18:37] [Music]
[18:46] Essentially
[18:52] [Music]
[18:56] the question is is AI culturally and
[19:00] ethically neutral and the answer to that
[19:01] is it's not
[19:04] anything that is man-made will be imbued
[19:07] with the values or at least the
[19:10] priorities of the people in society that
[19:13] made it. We do tend to react more
[19:16] favorably to people that look like us,
[19:18] that speak our language, that share our
[19:20] values. That's the presumption that our
[19:23] brains make. And then the byproduct of
[19:26] that is that where there is difference,
[19:27] there tends then to be a bias. People
[19:30] pretend that technology is a great
[19:33] equalizer and leveler. But I think we
[19:35] need to be quite careful about that to
[19:38] understand that technology has values
[19:40] attached to it.
[19:44] Rioting across the US today as police
[19:47] accidentally shoot an unarmed black
[19:49] woman in Chicago.
[19:50] >> We have a woman in her 80s shot in the
[19:53] head on the far south side.
[19:54] >> The yet unnamed 80-year-old was
[19:57] incorrectly identified by powerful AI
[19:59] predictive policing algorithms. The
[20:02] police were tasked with arresting an
[20:03] offender at a time and location
[20:05] generated by the algorithm. An
[20:08] investigation into the incident is
[20:10] underway. It's been going on for too
[20:11] long, man. I feel like this should stop.
[20:13] This whole racist stuff, white cop
[20:15] killing a black person.
[20:16] >> Predictive policing has been criticized
[20:19] for being racist, unfairly targeting
[20:21] groups, ethnicities, and locations.
[20:24] Despite police claiming a massive
[20:26] reduction of crime in the last decade,
[20:28] police can now track potential criminals
[20:30] using the internet, phone history, CCTV
[20:34] face recognition combined with new
[20:36] technology that examines the emotional
[20:38] state of potential perpetrators.
[20:42] But as protests erupt on the streets
[20:44] tonight, critics are warning predictive
[20:46] policing reduces the accountability of
[20:49] law enforcement with important life and
[20:52] death decisions. now automated by AI.
[20:59] >> How do we ensure that AI is compatible
[21:03] with us with the us that we want it to
[21:06] be compatible with? Because we are not
[21:07] the same. Like, do I want an AI that is
[21:13] serving me when I want to binge eat or
[21:16] do I want that AI to serve the me that,
[21:19] you know, wants to go on a diet and
[21:22] wants to be healthy?
[21:24] >> There. Yeah.
[21:25] >> So, people have a lot of problems
[21:28] defining what it is that we even want
[21:30] from AI and how we can make it
[21:32] compatible with us and which us do we
[21:37] mean. Humans
[21:41] often have pretty unstable preferences.
[21:43] So, we're quite uncertain about what we
[21:45] prefer. Our preferences change as we get
[21:47] older.
[21:50] Even at a societywide scale, our
[21:52] preferences about what seems right or
[21:54] wrong change. So, you can imagine that
[21:57] if we anchor on our preferences now,
[21:58] then future generations might think that
[22:00] it's fine to burn fossil fuels, for
[22:01] example. And that would be a huge
[22:03] problem.
[22:08] Many of my friends tell me that it's
[22:10] futile to even talk about this because
[22:12] people in different cultures and even
[22:14] from different political parties have
[22:15] such different goals. You're not going
[22:16] to agree on anything. But that's
[22:18] actually nonsense. Most humans agree
[22:20] that they would rather not have the
[22:21] species go extinct, for example. That's
[22:23] not so obvious to a machine whether
[22:25] that's a good thing or a bad thing. You
[22:26] have to teach it that.
[22:29] Not long ago, Andreas Lubitz told his
[22:32] civilian aircraft he was flying over the
[22:34] Alps to go down to 50 m altitude.
[22:38] And you know what the computer said?
[22:42] It said, "Okay." And everybody died.
[22:47] Nobody had even thought about teaching
[22:50] this AI that it should never fly in
[22:52] fixed objects ever. the vast majority of
[22:55] the sort of kindergarten ethics that all
[22:58] humans virtually agree. We still haven't
[23:00] even gotten around to putting into our
[23:01] machines. This is low tech. We have the
[23:04] technology to do this. It's not hard. At
[23:06] this stage of life, every activity is a
[23:09] lesson in itself. Every new experiment
[23:12] in play extends the horizon of their
[23:14] understanding.
[23:16] >> So, let's start by putting in these
[23:18] kindergarten ethics into any machine
[23:20] smart enough to understand this. And
[23:22] then as machines get smarter, we'll be
[23:24] in the right mindset to keep putting in
[23:26] ever more sophisticated goals.
[23:28] >> I aliance to the flag of the United
[23:34] States of America.
[23:35] >> I'd love to have a governing
[23:37] constitution that says, "Look, here are
[23:39] the bounds and here are the things that
[23:42] we care the most about preserving.
[23:44] Here's our expectations for how we will
[23:47] be making decisions that have this
[23:48] amount of magnitude and this amount of
[23:50] flowover effects into the rest of the
[23:52] world.
[23:54] People look to constitutional norms to
[23:57] answer the question, what do most people
[23:59] think is morally right?
[24:03] So, I think it would be a very good
[24:05] thing for us to crowdsource a
[24:08] constitution for humanity.
[24:11] There's something about the wisdom of
[24:12] crowds.
[24:14] I don't think it would be all that
[24:16] difficult um to run an expert
[24:19] facilitated crowdsourced
[24:21] constitution-making exercise that could
[24:23] give us some really first rate rules
[24:26] about what we should present to the
[24:29] super intelligent AI when it arrives.
[24:32] >> If you look to the Americans, the
[24:34] founding fathers, the constitution was a
[24:38] very influential document. It's had
[24:40] these vast rippling effects on history.
[24:43] You know, you can discuss, you can
[24:44] debate what they are and how good they
[24:46] are. But the idea that that constitution
[24:48] has had this propagating effect, you
[24:51] can't deny that.
[24:54] What I think would be a thing to, you
[24:56] know, put as the centerpiece of uh any
[24:59] kind of constitution for the future to
[25:01] pass down would just be that ability to
[25:04] correct our errors.
[25:08] That ability for intelligence to realize
[25:11] when it's gone wrong and then to make up
[25:13] for it.
[25:16] We know that humanity is committing
[25:17] moral atrocities right now, but there
[25:20] are also ones that we probably aren't
[25:21] even aware of. So what I would put as
[25:24] the centerpiece of any kind of
[25:26] constitution for the future would just
[25:29] be to stress that ability to correct our
[25:32] errors and realize where we're going
[25:34] wrong and make up for the moral
[25:36] tragedies of the past
[25:38] and also the future.
[25:43] [Music]
[25:47] I can't help laugh sometimes when people
[25:49] say, "Why would you possibly worry about
[25:51] a robot killing you?"
[25:56] And then there are all these companies
[25:58] online running advertisements for robots
[26:01] that kill you.
[26:04] >> Right now, people are being killed by
[26:06] drones using AI.
[26:09] One big thing that most governments are
[26:11] by design incentivized to do is to shore
[26:14] up both military power and economic
[26:16] power,
[26:18] which means that it's going to want to
[26:20] use something like AGI to shore up its
[26:22] military and economic power as well.
[26:25] God forbid we integrate AI into the
[26:27] nuclear command and control system, but
[26:28] that would be one example of how it
[26:30] could go drastically wrong.
[26:35] The US, Russia, China benefit from
[26:39] powerful weapons that are really
[26:41] expensive that only they can afford.
[26:44] If you want to kill 10 million people
[26:46] with guns, you basically need millions
[26:49] of people to carry those guns for you,
[26:51] right?
[26:52] >> But we have something much bigger.
[27:02] Your kids probably have one of these,
[27:04] right?
[27:06] >> Not quite.
[27:07] >> If we get an arms race in lethal
[27:09] autonomous weapons for our slaughter
[27:11] bots, then we're going to have these
[27:13] incredibly powerful weapons that weigh
[27:15] as much as a smartphone, cost as much as
[27:17] a smartphone.
[27:21] This would be much, much worse than
[27:23] guns. Because if you want to kill that
[27:25] many people automatically,
[27:27] a handful of people can just press a
[27:29] button. This is also like the ultimate
[27:31] obedient army in the future.
[27:35] [Music]
[27:41] Lowering the threshold of what it means
[27:43] to kill a person by just delegating all
[27:48] action and all responsibility to a
[27:51] machine is something that you know
[27:54] doesn't just lead to the death of a
[27:57] person but it leads to moral death.
[28:04] [Music]
[28:12] We have completely relinquished not just
[28:15] our responsibility but our actions and
[28:17] our decision making.
[28:20] It leads to this whole new level of
[28:22] dehumanization of our potential victims
[28:25] in the future. They're not even going to
[28:29] be considered by a human mind. They are
[28:32] going to simply be selected and targeted
[28:36] by something that won't have any
[28:38] understanding of what it means to be
[28:41] human and the importance of human life
[28:45] and the frailty of our experience.
[29:01] Machines will never ever be able to
[29:04] fully simulate humans because they will
[29:08] never understand human suffering.
[29:11] [Music]
[29:18] >> They will have some sort of alternative
[29:20] type of life and experience. They may
[29:22] experience things which are difficult.
[29:24] They may experience, you know, virtual
[29:26] pain or who knows what, but those
[29:29] machines will relate on their terms.
[29:33] If we're going to cooperate with
[29:35] intelligent machines in the future, then
[29:38] we need to understand the basis of human
[29:40] cooperation
[29:41] because human cooperation is the most
[29:43] powerful force in history
[29:46] [Music]
[29:48] and it has enabled us to do all kinds of
[29:51] incredible things which are actually the
[29:52] result of human cooperations.
[29:56] You know, to make medicines, put people
[29:58] on the moon. So it's not just one human
[30:00] brain, it's all these different human
[30:02] brains working together.
[30:04] >> In order to create a machine that you
[30:06] can really cooperate with. The more
[30:08] humanlike it is, the more intuitive and
[30:12] natural it is to communicate.
[30:17] So I was wanting to build a a brain
[30:19] model and put it in a in a character.
[30:23] Then I was thinking, what face should I
[30:25] use?
[30:28] You know, I was spending so much time
[30:29] with my real daughter that I thought,
[30:31] "Oh, that's perfect." Because
[30:33] metaphorically, she's representative of
[30:36] the level of learning that we're looking
[30:38] at.
[30:40] Most of our learning when we're young is
[30:43] social learning. We're learning from,
[30:45] you know, parents or caregivers about
[30:48] everything to do with the world.
[30:50] [Music]
[30:53] One of the goals of Baby X is really
[30:55] trying to build a truly autonomous
[30:57] model. So that touches on the notion of
[31:00] free will.
[31:01] >> What's this, baby? What's this? What's
[31:03] this?
[31:04] >> Good girl. Now, see if she knows what
[31:06] the word is. Okay, baby. Look over here.
[31:09] Okay. What's this? What's this?
[31:13] >> Good girl.
[31:14] >> The model is actually kind of deciding
[31:16] what it wants to do.
[31:18] >> Bobby, baby, over here. What's this? And
[31:20] it can be distracted by different things
[31:22] and may would not want to talk to you
[31:24] right now.
[31:25] >> Over here. Over here.
[31:27] >> And one of the most profound mysteries
[31:29] is the mystery of consciousness.
[31:32] As all these elements come together, can
[31:34] we get a sense of something that is
[31:37] actually aware of its environment? Where
[31:40] is the doggy? Doggy.
[31:45] Good.
[31:51] Humans have always been merged with
[31:52] technology.
[31:54] There are very good arguments that
[31:56] technology made us human.
[32:01] Almost everything we do every day is
[32:05] modulated through technology.
[32:09] Our phones are in a sense an extension
[32:11] of ourselves. And humanity is going to
[32:14] continue its thing of being intimately
[32:17] entwined with technology.
[32:19] [Music]
[32:21] That is going to become what we now
[32:23] would see as uncomfortable or strange or
[32:25] bizarre.
[32:28] Imagine
[32:32] that I was running 100 times faster and
[32:34] I was able to remember a lot more in the
[32:37] world, understand a lot more in the
[32:38] world, not just physically do more
[32:40] things but intellectually do more things
[32:43] and that is totally liberating in a way
[32:46] that is completely wild to the
[32:48] imagination as it is now.
[32:51] We will have human beings who will make
[32:54] more and more use of artificial organs
[32:58] of metal and plastic, artificial hearts,
[33:00] artificial kidneys, artificial lungs. In
[33:03] short, we may have a society in which
[33:05] human beings will drift away from the
[33:07] total organic toward the metal.
[33:11] Transhumanism is this idea that we can
[33:14] use technology not just to change and
[33:17] conquer
[33:18] the natural world and the environment,
[33:21] but also that we can use technology to
[33:23] change ourselves and to enhance
[33:25] ourselves, to prolong our lives, to make
[33:27] ourselves better people, to enhance our
[33:30] cognitive capacities and so on.
[33:34] >> At the center of transhumanism is a kind
[33:36] of anxiety I think which is the anxiety
[33:38] of obsolescence.
[33:40] [Music]
[33:44] the idea that we're going to sort of
[33:46] price ourselves out of the market
[33:47] intellectually by developing these
[33:49] machines that are going to be able to
[33:50] outthink us and outmaneuver us
[33:54] and we'll be basically irrelevant and
[33:55] maybe endangered.
[33:57] In order to avoid that, we need to merge
[34:00] with technology. We need to become the
[34:03] machine.
[34:07] We're not just here to do high level
[34:09] maths. I think there's a lot more going
[34:12] on within humans than solving problems
[34:15] and thinking rationally. And that seems
[34:19] to me to be a basic misunderstanding of,
[34:22] you know, what's valuable about being
[34:25] alive.
[34:28] Ultimately, transhumists tend to talk
[34:31] about the eradication of death through
[34:33] technology.
[34:35] And despite the veneer of like extreme
[34:38] futurism and sort of high-tech, the idea
[34:41] that we might be able to evade death is
[34:43] as old as humanity itself.
[34:49] [Music]
[34:52] [Laughter]
[34:55] So many of the transhumanists who I talk
[34:57] to are very invested in this idea of
[34:59] mind uploading of extracting the
[35:01] consciousness of an individual and
[35:03] putting it onto a software essentially.
[35:07] So some people might want to be robots
[35:10] >> moving uh I guess an average of about 8
[35:12] km an hour.
[35:13] >> Some people might want to upload
[35:14] themselves into like a Mars rover or
[35:16] whatever. Some people might want to live
[35:19] as like free floating consciousness in
[35:22] the cloud extending infinitely
[35:25] throughout time at the most extreme
[35:27] level where you just you don't die. But
[35:30] if you're a free floating consciousness
[35:33] extending infinitely through space,
[35:36] are you really anything at all? What are
[35:39] you? Are you a god or are you nothing?
[35:42] [Music]
[35:46] It's a branching in what evolution has
[35:49] been so far. To date, the pressures of
[35:52] evolution are natural selection. And
[35:54] this is the point in time when we will
[35:56] choose as humanity to branch off and
[35:58] choose a different selection pressure,
[36:00] which is our intelligence.
[36:02] That's why this moment is so important.
[36:04] I mean, if it does go in this direction,
[36:06] then we will be the final instantiation
[36:08] of humans. And that's a massive
[36:09] responsibility.
[36:11] [Music]
[36:16] Most people would look at the
[36:17] agricultural revolution and the
[36:18] industrial revolution and say, "Look,
[36:20] that was a total step change in our
[36:22] quality of life.
[36:26] [Music]
[36:28] We just didn't prepare enough for both
[36:31] of them."
[36:36] And so there were these costs that we
[36:38] paid.
[36:40] entrenched inequality is one example of
[36:42] a thing that the industrial revolution
[36:44] exacerbated in a really dramatic way.
[36:47] And so I'm not going to downplay how
[36:49] bumpy I think the transition is going to
[36:51] be. But if you look on the other side of
[36:53] that transition, we're effectively in a
[36:55] world where running a value creating
[36:57] economy doesn't need to be done by
[36:59] humans anymore.
[37:02] When you replace a worker by a machine,
[37:06] the income that used to go to that human
[37:08] who wasn't very rich instead went to the
[37:10] owner of the machine. That very
[37:12] naturally leads to a situation where the
[37:14] rich get richer and vice versa. The
[37:16] obvious solution to this, if you like
[37:18] equality, is to just make sure the
[37:19] government collects enough tax from this
[37:21] ever growing pie that it can make sure
[37:23] that everybody gets better off because
[37:25] there's almost no limit to how much
[37:27] wealth we can produce with the help of
[37:30] of machines.
[37:33] >> Work is a huge part of our identity.
[37:35] >> Mr. Brown's line.
[37:37] >> For a good part of human history, we've
[37:40] really valued people based on what they
[37:42] can produce.
[37:44] The more we develop technologies that
[37:46] replace us in in some of these work
[37:49] environments, the more we need to think
[37:51] about what is the purpose of the human
[37:55] life and of the human being.
[37:57] >> Jobs give us income. They give us
[38:00] purpose. They give us friends. If we can
[38:03] find a way of getting all those three
[38:05] without jobs, I don't think we're going
[38:07] to miss the jobs very much.
[38:10] The key thing is to really think hard
[38:12] though about what sort of society we
[38:14] want to create so that the people will
[38:17] still feel they have that sense of
[38:19] purpose. What sort of society would we
[38:21] really be excited and living in?
[38:24] >> And I think people don't spend nearly
[38:26] enough time thinking about positive
[38:29] visions for the future with technology.
[38:34] [Music]
[38:37] We may well be enlightened in ways which
[38:39] we don't even understand at the moment
[38:40] because people don't have that capacity.
[38:44] Imagine being able to chat with a super
[38:46] intelligent being about some of the
[38:48] mysteries of life.
[38:54] Imagine talking to a machine about well
[38:56] what was it like flying around the
[38:57] internet? What was it like when you were
[39:00] a satellite going around Jupiter?
[39:04] And we will get answers that no person
[39:07] has ever been able to give before.
[39:11] There are a lot of different things that
[39:14] AI could do for us. Imagine you could
[39:17] replicate incredibly intelligent humans.
[39:20] You could deploy them to solve any
[39:21] problem overnight while you're asleep.
[39:23] Like it's that fast. So for example,
[39:26] poverty and being able to redistribute
[39:28] resources in appropriate ways, climate
[39:30] change, climate technology,
[39:33] decarbonizing the economy, and then you
[39:35] can graduate to just harder technical
[39:38] tasks like for example, how do we get to
[39:40] different planets?
[39:43] [Music]
[39:55] The mission that I'm the most invested
[39:57] in is a mission to Venus to search for
[40:00] life. And that's really uh you know a
[40:03] full circle for me standing back um as a
[40:05] young child looking up at the stars on a
[40:07] really clear night in the bottom of the
[40:09] South Island with my father and the
[40:12] realization as he was pointing out to me
[40:13] those stars that that those stars have
[40:15] planets around them and those planets
[40:18] could have somebody just like me looking
[40:20] back and asking the same question.
[40:25] [Music]
[40:28] And that was what really, you know, got
[40:30] me got me interested in space from the
[40:32] very early beginnings is that yearning
[40:33] to understand, you know, are we the only
[40:35] life in the universe or or not.
[40:38] Always promised myself if I ever had the
[40:40] opportunity to go and do do something
[40:41] like that that I would do it.
[40:45] There's a few places in our solar system
[40:47] where it's been long hypothesized that
[40:49] there could be life. And in the clouds
[40:51] of Venus, there's a really interesting
[40:52] spot. It's about 50 km altitude where
[40:55] the environment is temperate enough for
[40:57] primitive forms of extreme life to
[41:00] survive.
[41:01] If I got one question in my entire life
[41:04] and somebody would give me the answer,
[41:05] my question would be, are we the only
[41:07] life in the universe?
[41:10] People have this very strong intuition
[41:12] ahead of evidence that if it looks like
[41:15] somewhere could have life, then it will
[41:17] have life.
[41:19] It's not based on evidence or scientific
[41:21] reasoning. It's based on wishful
[41:23] thinking.
[41:30] In the '60s, SETI, the search for
[41:32] extraterrestrial intelligence begins.
[41:38] >> Originally, people had very optimistic
[41:40] hopes that they were going to log into
[41:41] this uh, you know, populous thronging
[41:44] universe filled with conversation.
[41:48] They just heard silence back.
[41:53] There's lots of suns bathing uninhabited
[41:55] inorganic planets with loads of energy
[41:57] and nothing interesting is happening.
[42:01] The cosmos seems quite silent.
[42:05] So we can't take for granted anymore
[42:08] that the universe is filled with other
[42:09] intelligences.
[42:11] That's not to say that we are the wonder
[42:13] of the whole universe, but as far as we
[42:16] know, we are the only thing that can
[42:18] find the universe wonderful.
[42:21] Life is incredibly cosmically rare, and
[42:24] humans, it's the only thing that could
[42:26] spread it elsewhere.
[42:29] We have the potential to be this spark
[42:31] plug that could create this transition
[42:33] from a currently inorganic universe into
[42:35] one that's filled with life
[42:38] and potentially the richness of
[42:40] consciousness.
[42:43] [Music]
[42:47] [Laughter]
[42:48] [Music]
[42:53] We've realized not only that we're not
[42:55] insignificant,
[42:57] but that we were dramatically more
[42:58] significant than our ancestors ever
[43:01] dreamt of.
[43:04] I find this an incredibly empowering
[43:06] insight that science has given us.
[43:16] We know this planet can be a very nice
[43:19] place to live for hundreds of millions
[43:20] of years unless we screw it up.
[43:24] And if we want to live longer than that,
[43:26] there's absolutely no reason we can't
[43:28] use artificial intelligence to go to
[43:30] other solar systems and other galaxies.
[43:35] Life can flourish for billions of years
[43:38] throughout the cosmos.
[43:40] [Music]
[43:49] Either the future is going to be awesome
[43:51] with life flourishing for billions of
[43:53] years on Earth and probably beyond or
[43:57] we're going to go extinct probably
[43:58] within the century. I think it's never
[44:01] been more motivating to be a human to
[44:04] help contribute to making sure we make
[44:06] the right choice here.
[44:17] [Music]