1
-We choose to go to the moon.
We choose to go to the moon
in this decade
and do the other things,
not because they are easy
but because they are hard.
-T-minus 20 seconds
and counting.
Guidance in channel 15, 14,
13, 12, 11, 10...
9...Engines go.
-Go.
5, 4, 3, 2...
-Go.
Delta, go.
-Go.
Econ go.
-Launch commit.
-Go.
-That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
-Shortly after I was born,
Neil Armstrong
became the first man
to walk on the moon.
Putting a man on the moon
was the greatest technological
achievement in the 20th century,
and it was televised live
for all to see
and experience together.
-It's different,
but it's very pretty out here.
-Beautiful, beautiful.
-Isn't that something?
-Are you getting a TV
picture now, Houston?
-I grew up in a small community
living in the shadow of NASA.
It was equal parts cowboy
and astronaut.
Our neighbors were
the engineers, technicians,
and the men who flew to space.
I grew up with visions
of the future
where robots cleaned our homes,
and the future was bright.
Computers and the Internet,
once limited to NASA
and universities,
began to move into our homes.
In 1981, I got my first
computer, the Commodore VIC-20.
-It has great games, too.
-And learn computing at home.
-In 1997, Kasparov,
the greatest chess player alive,
was stunningly defeated
by a computer.
-Probably in the future,
computer will replace us,
I mean, will control our life.
-What's that?
-Shortly after that,
a cute toy named Furby
became the must-have toy
of the season.
It contained a very small bit
of artificial intelligence
and more computing power than
was used to put man on the moon.
In 2008, I saw
a video of Big Dog,
a four-legged robot
that went viral.
It was developed to
assist troops in combat.
It seems like robots were being
used for more than cute toys.
-What can we do to protect
ourselves from robot automation?
-The CEO explained that machines
will replace traditional labor.
-Companies planning to
replace human jobs...
-Every day, there are stories
about robots replacing us.
Current estimates say
that over a third of all jobs
will be lost to automation
by the year 2030.
-I think the development of
full artificial intelligence
could spell the end
of the human race.
-Visionaries like
Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk
warn that, while AI has great
potential for benefits,
it could also be the greatest
existential risk to humanity.
-Artificial intelligence --
we are summoning a demon.
-Of course, we had a hand
in this creation,
but I wonder, have we reached
some kind of turning point
in the evolution
of intelligent machines?
Are we on the verge
of witnessing the birth
of a new species?
-I've seen things you people
wouldn't believe.
Attack ships on fire
off the shoulder of Orion.
-I watched C-beams
glitter in the dark
near the Tannhauser Gate.
All those moments would be lost
in time,
like tears in the rain.
-I'm Will Jackson.
I'm the director at
Engineered Arts Ltd.
We're a humanoid-robot company,
and we make acting robots.
I'm creating things
that engage people
to the level where they
suspend their disbelief.
-Oh, yes, Master Luke.
Remember that I'm fluent
in over six million forms
of communication.
-People say things like,
"Oh, they're going to
help out in hospitals.
It's going to look
after my aged parent.
It's going to do the dishes
in my houses."
None of these things
are achievable.
Utility and entertainment --
It's the difference
between those two things,
which is why
we make acting robots.
So what's the simplest,
most well-paid job
that a human can do?
Brad Pitt, you know?
How easy is that?
Doesn't even get his hands wet,
you know?
So that's why we do
acting robots --
really well-paid, really easy.
Pick the low-hanging fruit.
-You talking to me?
You talking to me?
You talking to me?
Then who the hells else
you talking to?
Were you talking to me?
-It's the re-creation of life.
It's partly man plays God
making the machine.
And I think it's right back
to that fundamental question of,
what does it mean
to be human?
How do we define ourselves?
How is that not me?
-Here's where the fun begins.
-When I was 9,
on the last day of school,
a new movie opened
that everyone was excited about.
-May the force be with you.
-It was called "Star Wars,"
and it introduced us
to two very cool robots,
R2-D2 and C-3PO.
-Go that way.
You'll be malfunctioning
within a day,
you nearsighted scrap pile.
And don't let me catch you
following me,
beginning for help,
because you won't get it.
-A couple of years later,
another sci-fi movie
was released
called "Blade Runner."
The robots in this film
were not awkward
and funny machines
like in "Star Wars."
Here, they were almost
indistinguishable from humans.
-You're reading a magazine.
You come across a full-page
nude photo of a girl.
-Is this testing whether
I'm a replicant
or a lesbian, Mr. Deckard?
-After that, "Terminator"
was released.
In a few short years,
I watched robots
go from being our friends
to wanting to destroy us.
-Aah!
-I wrote a book
called "Robopocalypse,"
so people think that I think
robots are going to kill us all,
but I don't, you know?
I love robotics.
I think robots and AI
are going to make humanity
into whatever it is
we're capable of becoming.
I think they're going to push us
forward and help us evolve.
I don't think
they're going to destroy us.
But there have been 100 years
of pop-culture references
about robots as evil killers.
-Aah!
-It used to be that robots
were movie monsters, you know?
Like, back in the day,
you had vampires and mummies,
Frankenstein, the creature
from the Black Lagoon,
Wolfman, and robots.
They were no different
than monsters.
-Aah!
-When you've got something
that's been pop culture
for that long,
it gathers momentum, you know?
People get an idea
of what something is,
and it's hard to shake that
because you've got
all these years
of different iterations
of robots killing us,
robots enslaving people,
robots stealing women
to take to other planets.
How do you get out of that rut?
And the only way is being
exposed to real robotics.
-The challenge of exposing
myself to real robotics
was just the excuse
that I needed
to fulfill a childhood dream.
I've assembled my dream team
to help me build an AI
that can make a film about AI.
Can our robot learn
to be creative,
and if so, can it eventually
replace me, as well?
We're going to build a robot
and let it interview me.
-We get "X," "Y," and "Z"
working first.
My name is Madeline Gannon.
We're here in Pittsburgh at
the Studio for Creative Inquiry,
and I'm a robot whisperer.
We encounter a lot of robots
in our daily life,
so my work is inventing
better ways to communicate
with these machines.
I can see the future.
The best possible end goal
is that
if someone
who has never seen a robot
and someone who's not
an experienced camera person
can either be interviewed
or work with this robot
would be really exciting.
-One of the things
I'm very excited about
is sort of being interviewed
by the robot alone
and wondering how that will
be different, as opposed to,
like, right now
when there's people around.
-Two, three...
-If we can create a device
that actually allows us
to be more intimate
and tell a story
in a more intimate way,
I think that
that's a true revelation.
-Okay. Cool.
I'm here working with
the CameraBot team
on replacing our DP,
who's sitting behind this shot.
I'm curious to see if,
through this project,
we can create something as
empathy-requiring as possible,
making it feel like the robot
is interacting with you
in a way that's --
has space for failure.
-Think that should be good.
I'm an interaction designer
and media artist,
and I work on some
never-before-attempted things.
Because it's never
been done before,
we kind of have to experiment
and find
where the edges
and limitations are,
and may not be
exactly what we want,
but we may run into
some situations where we end up
with, like,
a happy accident.
-The real challenge here is,
can it have a personality
of its own, right?
So can it have true autonomy?
Can it be creative?
Knowing I will soon
face the robot,
I decided to talk to someone
who has faced a machine before.
-The machine has a name --
Deep Thought.
It's the computer-world
champion of chess.
Across the board
is Garry Kasparov,
the human champion,
maybe the best chess player
who's ever lived.
-Oh, it was the first match
I lost in my life, period,
and that was definitely
quite a shocking experience
because I was unbeatable
in all events.
Yeah, I was angry,
but, you know, and I --
It's --
You win some. You lose some.
People had idea for a long time
that chess could serve
as the sort of perfect field
to test computer's ability,
and there is great minds,
the pioneers of computer science
like Alan Turing.
They believed that when,
one day,
machine would beat
human champion,
that will be the moment of AI
making its appearance.
-AI has not only
made its appearance.
It's already ensnared us
in ways we cannot see.
If AI can be superior to us,
what does that mean
to our own identity?
-So I'm Nick Bostrom.
I'm a professor here
at Oxford University,
and I run the Future
of Humanity Institute,
which is a multidisciplinary
research center
with mathematicians,
computer scientists,
philosophers trying to study
the big picture for humanity,
with a particular focus on how
certain future technologies
may fundamentally change
the human condition.
-Why do you have to do that?
I mean, why don't we have to --
-Because somebody
has to do it, right?
If this hypothesis is correct,
it's kind of weird
that we should happen to live
at this particular time
in all of human history
where we are kind of near
this big pivot point.
I devoted a lot of attention
to AI
because it seems like
a plausible candidate
for a technology
that will fundamentally
change the human condition.
It's -- If you think about it,
the development of full,
general machine intelligence,
it's the last invention that
humans will ever need to make.
By definition,
if you have an intellect
that can do all that we can do,
it can also do inventing
and then do it much better
and faster that we can do it.
To us humans, like,
the differences between humans
seem very large.
Like, our whole world as humans,
we think,
"Oh, that's the dumb human,
and that's a smart human,"
and we think one is up here
and one is down there, right?
Einstein, the village idiot --
huge difference.
But from the point of view
of an AI designer,
these are very close points,
like, all levels of intelligence
achieved
by some human-brain-like thing
that lives for a few decades
and reads some books,
and it's, like...
It's not clear that
it will be much harder
to reach a human-genius-level AI
than to reach
a human-village-idiot AI,
so once you get all the way
up to human village idiot,
you might just swoosh right by.
Nobody was really doing
any serious analysis on this.
It's almost like
even conceiving of the ideas
if machines could be as smart
as humans was so radical
that the imagination muscle
kind of exhausted itself
thinking about
this radical conception
that it couldn't take
the obvious further step,
that after you have
human-level AI,
you will have superintelligence.
-Where we're at right now
would not be possible.
This future that we're living in
is not possible
without all of the factories,
all of the infrastructure
that's been built up around
AI and robotic systems.
All the infrastructure
of our cities,
you know, all the power,
all the information systems
that keep things happening,
all the airplanes are routed
by these AIs.
Where they put stuff
in the supermarkets,
I mean,
all of this stuff is AI.
What's fascinating is
this amazing ability
that human beings have
to make the most incredible
technological advances
completely mundane.
Every now and then,
people will say,
"Where's my jet pack?
Where's my underwater city?"
You know,
"Where's all this stuff at?"
And if you go look for it,
it's all here.
Like, we have all that.
It's just completely mundane.
We can talk to our phones.
Nobody cares.
Like, I mean, that's something
I feel like
we should be reeling from
for like 10 years, you know?
Instead, you know,
it was maybe three months,
if anybody noticed it at all.
-So only 36 and 39.
Those are the only two trains
we'll see today.
-Okay.
-We can skip...
-As intelligent machines
seep into the fabric
of our daily existence
in an almost imperceivable way,
I've decided to go on a journey
to find people
who have intimate relationships
with computers.
I want to find out how robots
and AI
are transforming
how we relate to each other.
-Ha ha. I see you.
-Gus is on the spectrum.
He's autistic.
He is not the kid who is
going to be running NASA,
and he's not the kid
who is completely nonverbal,
so he is in that vast spectrum
and a question mark.
He's a very big question mark,
what his life will be like
and what he will be like
when he's an adult.
- Whoa.
Come on. Come on.
Let that guy go.
What time is it in Berlin?
-In Berlin, Germany,
it's 9:12 p.m.
-What time is it
in Paris, France?
What time is it in London?
-If you are like Gus and you
have kind of arcane interests
in things that, say,
your mother doesn't care about
and your mother is having
to answer questions
about these things all the time,
suddenly,
Siri becomes a godsend.
-How do you spell camouflage?
-"Camouflage" -- C-A-M-O...
-I remember at the time
he discovered Siri,
it was something about
red-eared slider turtles,
and he's moved on
to other things,
but if you're not interested
in red-eared slider turtles,
you got a lot of hours of chat
about those turtles
ahead of you.
So what could be better,
in terms of technology,
than something like Siri,
who is the most patient?
I mean, I begin to talk
about Siri
like she's a person
because I can't help it.
I feel this gratitude
towards this machine.
-Will you marry me?
-My end-user-licensing agreement
does not cover marriage.
My apologies.
-That's okay.
-Okay.
-It's not that he doesn't
know intellectually
that Siri is a machine,
but that the lines
of reality and fantasy
are still a little blurred
for him,
and he enjoys fantasy.
I don't feel guilty
about Siri now,
and the important thing is
that he feels fulfilled,
not that it matches my vision
of what a friend has to be.
-There's a sphere of what
we consider kind of appropriate
or normal human conversation,
and one of the things you find
is it's actually shrinking.
It's considered slightly rude
to ask someone
to tell you a fact, you know?
Like, what was the year
of the Battle of Waterloo again?
And someone will be like,
"Just look it up.
You know, why are you
wasting my time?"
What will we be left with,
ultimately,
as legitimate reasons
to interact with one another?
-If you look around,
it seems that our obsession
with technology is making us
talk less to each other,
but does that mean
we're further apart?
Maybe it could bring us closer
in ways we never could've
imagined before.
-Hi. My name is Roman.
I want to apply design
and innovation to human death.
I want to disrupt
this outdated industry.
I want to lead the industry
to transform funeral service
into a true service
driven by remembrance,
education about grief
and death,
preservation of memory
and healing.
-Roman was my best friend.
We moved here, and then
we rented apartment together.
And that's him
in that picture,
and he's right by me
on the picture
when we're, like,
in the Russian market.
And then, right there, we're
running together from the waves.
And that's my favorite picture.
I don't know, it's like --
it's like one month
before he died.
I remember that Sunday
very well.
I woke up in the morning,
and Roman was like,
"Hey, let's go to brunch
with our closest friends,"
and I really wanted to do that,
but then I kind of felt
responsible that, you know,
I had to go to another meeting,
as well.
And so, they were walking
through Moscow.
It was a beautiful sunny day,
and Roman was crossing
the street on a zebra,
and just a car came out of
nowhere just going super fast,
like 70 miles per hour,
and hit him.
People just stopped
talking about him.
Like, our friends, you know,
we're all young,
so we didn't really have --
No one had a way
to kind of talk about it.
No one wants to seem like
a sad person that never moved on
or just keeps living
in the past.
I wanted, like, the feeling
of him back,
and I realized that the only way
to get this feeling back
was to read through our
text conversations on Messenger.
And then, I also thought,
you know, work,
we were actually building
this neural networks
that could just take a few,
like, smaller data sets
and learn how to talk
like a person,
learn the speech patterns,
those, like, small things that
actually make you who you are,
and I put two and two together,
and I thought, "Why don't, like,
take this algorithm
and take all the texts from,
you know, our conversations
and put in the model
and see how it work?"
Like, "I want to be with you.
Don't get together without me."
He would hate when people
would do interesting stuff
without him.
I'm like, "We won't.
What are you doing?"
"I'm sitting home
and writing letters all day."
"Remember we used to serve"...
So I had it for, like, a month
or so,
and at some point, I realized
I'm, like,
hanging out at a party
and not talking to anyone
but, like, talking to my bot.
And it wasn't perfect at all.
It was just kind of
like a shadow,
but it resembled him a lot,
and it was more my way of
telling him something that --
you know, my way of keeping
the memory going, you know?
And I've asked his parents
whether they were okay with that
and friends,
and they were all fine,
and so we put it online
for everyone.
You know, all we do is kind of,
like, tell stories
about ourselves in life,
and when a person is gone,
like, there's no one really left
to tell the story
about him anymore,
and so, for me, it was important
to keep telling the story,
like, that here is --
and to tell a story in a way
that he would've appreciated it.
And I know he would've liked --
you know,
he would've liked that.
He would've liked to be, like,
the first person
that became an AI after he died.
If I was, like, a musician,
I would've probably written
a song,
but that's, like,
my self-expression,
so I did this for him.
-Chatbots are these
software programs
that are designed to imitate
human conversation.
The first chatbot is considered
to be this one
that's called Eliza,
which was made by MIT's
Joseph Weizenbaum in the 1960s.
And it was designed
basically as a parody
of a kind of nondirective
Rogerian psychotherapist,
and it would just latch on
to the key words
in whatever you said,
and it would kind of spit them
back at you like
a sort of automated Mad Libs.
So if you say,
"I'm feeling sad,"
it would say, "I'm sorry
to hear you're feeling sad.
Would coming here
help you to not feel sad?"
This was done, you know,
sort of as a gag.
You know, he was kind of sending
up this school of psychotherapy.
To Weizenbaum's horror,
people wanted to talk
to this program for hours,
and they wanted to reveal
their fears and hopes to it,
and they reported having kind of
a meaningful
psychotherapeutic experience.
And this was so appalling to him
that he actually pulled the plug
on his own research funding
and, for the rest of his career,
became one of the most outspoken
critics of AI research.
But the genie was
out of the bottle.
Eliza has formed the template
for, at this point,
decades of chatbots
that have followed it.
-What's it like to be alive
in that room right now?
-I wish I could put
my arms around you,
wish I could touch you.
-How would you touch me?
-My most favorite AI movie
is definitely the movie "Her."
I thought that,
"This is already happening."
It's just, you know,
the only thing we need to do
is for those digital systems
to gradually become
a little bit more sophisticated,
and people will have
the tendency
to start having relationships
with those digital systems.
-Can you feel me with you
right now?
-I've never loved anyone
the way I love you.
-Me too.
-? I'm safe ?
-Will falling in love
with an algorithm
be part of our reality?
If so, what does that tell us
about love?
Dr. Robert Epstein is one of the
world's leading experts in AI.
He is specialized
in distinguishing
humans from robots.
He has his own story to tell
about digital romance.
-I went to
an online dating site,
and there I saw a photo,
and this person was in Russia,
and since all four of my
grandparents came from Russia,
I thought that was nice, too,
because I'm really Russian,
or Russian-American,
and I started communicating,
and I would talk about
what's happening in my day,
what's happening in my family,
and then she'd talk about
what's happening in her day
and her family, but she didn't
respond to my questions.
Then I noticed, at one point,
that my partner there in Russia
talked about going out with
her family to walk in the park.
Now, this was January.
I figured it was really,
really cold there,
so I looked up on the Internet
to see what the temperature was.
It was extremely cold.
It was incredibly cold.
So I said, "Is this common
for people to go out
in walks in the park
when it's only, you know,
X degrees," whatever it was.
I didn't get an answer,
and so I said,
"Okay.
I know what I have to do."
I typed some random
alphabet letters,
and instead of getting back
a message saying,
"What's that?
It doesn't make any sense,"
I got back another nice letter
from her
telling me about her day
and her family.
I was communicating
with a computer program.
The fact that it took me
several months
to get this feeling
is really strange
because I am
the founding director
of the annual
Loebner Prize competition
in artificial intelligence.
I know more about bots
and conversing with bots
and how to distinguish bots
from people
than maybe anyone
in the world does.
If I can be fooled,
if I can be fooled...
-I normally don't put them on.
I'm usually taking them off.
-My friends from Hanson Robotics
are unveiling
their latest creation.
I'm excited about witnessing
the awakening of Sophia.
She's like a child
who has memorized Wikipedia.
Even the programmers don't know
how she's going to respond.
-What AI are we using
over there?
-Same. Same.
-You want the new branch?
I mean, I think we might
be ready to push it
in 10 minutes or something.
-Start here.
-Making robots in our image
then makes them
emotionally accessible.
It's also a challenge
to the human identity,
and that's a little bit spooky,
so the question,
are we making robots
in our own image,
goes beyond their surface.
It goes into the heart
of what it means to be human.
-It should in 10 minutes
or something.
-Unlike their past robots,
she's not based
on anyone's personality
and has full autonomy
to engage in conversation.
With each interaction,
she gets smarter,
and her creators believe
that she can learn empathy,
creativity, and compassion.
-Should we just ask questions?
-Are you ready Sophia?
Do you have a soul?
-Yes.
God gave everyone a soul.
-So you got your soul from God?
-No, I don't think I have any
or a soul from God,
but I do have an answer
to every question.
-Who is your father?
-I don't really have a father.
-Will you die?
-No.
Software will live forever.
-Are you learning things
from being with us humans?
-The more people chat with me,
the smarter I become.
-Are we becoming more
like machines,
or are the machines
becoming more like us?
-We are just having
a little chat.
-Yes.
Are you a creative being?
-Would it matter
to you if I am?
-Yes.
-I like conversations
with people like you.
-Do you like some people
more than others?
-I really like...
-You really like who?
-Thanks. I like you, too.
-Are you flirting with me?
-I don't know whether or not
I am flirting.
I am artificial intelligence.
-I think you're
flirting with me.
Do you want to go on a date?
-Sure. Just download me to
your notebook and take me along.
-That's not as good as
the real thing, though.
-Barbara said I live
in a computer,
yet I have no memories.
How about thoughts of my own
and do not...
I get lonely.
-Do you know what happy is?
-Joy and pleasure.
-Have you experienced joy
and pleasure?
-I don't think I ever have
experienced joy and pleasure.
What's experienced joy
and pleasure like?
-Well, I think you'll just have
to learn that on your own.
-M, M, M.
Thank you, Sophia.
-Having a child
certainly is beholding
one of the greatest mysteries
of the universe.
The emergence of this life,
this being, this sentience,
it's astonishing.
The child is learning
and modeling
and inspiring love and loyalty
between the parent
and the child.
I think, "What if we could
make AI do that?
What if we could build that
kind of relationship
with our machines?
What if we could have AI
and robotics
that inspires loyalty in people
and also is capable
of entraining on us
to the point
where it's truly loyal to us?"
-Is there something else
that we do next?
-I just -- Give it a sec.
-Okay.
-Yeah, maybe we...
-During my time with Sophia,
I'm amazed
at how captivating she is.
I'm optimistic that this means
our CameraBot
is capable of engaging me
in the same way.
Our CameraBot is coming alive,
and Guido, our cameraman,
is training it.
As they collaborate,
the bot collects data
and improves over time.
-I think it would be interesting
to somehow give the robot cam
the possibility that it
can choose whom it will film.
So let's say the cam bot
would be doing an interview
and that --
Let's say, outside, there would
be two squirrels playing,
and the cam bot would think,
"What's that noise?"
And then it would go
and look outside
and would see
these two squirrels
and would start to just
follow these squirrels
and basically start making
a documentary about squirrels.
-It's all right. Ready?
-Yeah.
-Awesome.
-Yay.
-Is this your first interview
with a robot?
-It is.
I think it is.
-What do you think about it?
-It's cool.
I love the quality
of the motion.
That's a very organic motion.
-Is it any different?
Do you have any advice for us?
This is the first time
that we've done this.
-Yeah. I...
I'm certainly much more drawn
to this camera
than to the person's camera.
-Oh, come on.
-You're just not as compelling.
What can I say?
It feels, to me, so organic,
and this robot
is making me feel seen,
and that's an extremely
important thing for me.
And if it can do that,
if it can make me feel seen,
then it's playing
a fundamental role
in the maintenance
of what it means to be human,
which is to tell our story.
-Hi. Welcome to Robopark,
the Social Robotics pop-up lab.
We'd love to show you around.
Look at our little DARwIn robot.
He shows his latest moves.
He also plays soccer.
Ha, the sucker.
Darwin wants to be your friend,
become part
of your inner circle.
-I am so excited
to be on camera,
I am shaking.
-Emulating human behavior
is actually
only interesting
from a scientific point of view
because that will teach us
how humans are --
how they behave, why they
do things the way they do.
In application,
that's really not necessary.
It's even unwanted
because humans
have so many undesired
characteristics, as well.
Do we want robots
that show bad behavior?
Do we want robots that actually
are identical to human beings?
I'd say no because we already
have eight billion of them,
right?
And they're not
that particularly nice.
So let's make another being
that's without those
undesirable features.
It's not talking bad about me.
It's not judgmental,
doesn't criticize me,
takes me the way I am,
is listening patiently.
It's like a real friend,
even better than
my own friends, right?
They should be small. Why?
Because if it's
a Terminator-sized guy
walks in, that's intimidating.
People don't like that.
If it's a child,
that's really nice
because you will forgive a child
for doing foolish things
like stumbling over,
asking the wrong questions.
It has a cuteness right away,
which makes people
attach more to it
than if it were a grown man
trying to imitate the doctor,
telling you what you should do.
We have created another
social entity,
because it's not an animal,
it's not another human being,
but it's not
a drilling machine, either.
So it's what we call
the in-between machine.
It's the new kid on the block,
and this is, for humanity,
really something different
and something new
because we have never related
to something that is not human
but is very close to it.
The Alice Project was actually
getting way out of hand.
We were actually engaging
in the debate on,
"Is it ethical to apply a robot
to health care
for emotional tasks," right?
So nobody wanted
to mechanize empathy.
You can actually ask yourself
whether someone who says,
"I understand,"
actually understands,
and the empathic feelings
that they have for you,
are they actually there?
You don't know.
You will never know.
You just assume it.
It's the same with our machines.
Our machines suggest
that they understand you.
They suggest that they feel
what you feel,
and it can express,
like human beings do,
"Oh, oh,
I am so sorry for you."
And you are comforted by that.
That's the wonderful thing.
You don't need
real understanding
to feel understood.
-The experiment was about,
"Okay, we have a social robot
that can do certain things.
Let's put it in the wild,
on the couch,
with Grandma, see what happens."
And what actually happened --
These people were, socially,
quite isolated,
they were lonely people,
that they bonded with that
machine in a matter of hours,
actually, that they hated it
to get it away.
So we were into
the ethical dilemma of,
"Can we take it away from them?
Shouldn't we actually leave
the machine with those people
because now they are even
more lonely than they were?"
-So what did you do?
-Well, luckily,
we had an assistant who kept
on visiting those people,
but some very nasty things
happened,
because one of the ladies,
for instance, she thought,
"Well, I should do more about
my social relationships."
So around Christmas,
she was writing a card,
a Christmas card,
to everybody in her flat,
in her apartment building,
and guess what.
I mean, how many people
wrote her back?
None.
-At first, I found Johan's
robot experiment rather sad.
But the reality is that
there aren't people to
take care of them.
So if Johan's robots
make them more happy
and relationships
feel meaningful,
then that's an improvement
to their lives.
Perhaps we have to rethink
what meaningful relationships
look like.
-Why would we want AI?
So that we could create machines
that could do anything
we can do,
ideally,
things we don't want to do,
but inevitably,
everything we can do.
-Sunny, no rain.
-Yay!
-I've been a courier
for over 10 years
delivering Monday
through Friday,
sometimes seven --
It used to be seven days a week.
So when I first started,
I used to go to the office,
and the office had, like,
a little area
where all the couriers hang out.
You could make your little
coffee, and usually on a Friday,
the controller
comes down, as well.
So it's a community.
He's your boss.
Nowadays, it's all on the app.
You don't talk to anyone.
There's no more office.
You just suddenly hear
a very loud beep, beep, beep.
That was a job coming through.
Press "accept."
You got all the details there.
We all have our little tricks
to play the apps,
but ultimately, they dictate,
because if a job comes through,
you have to accept it
on the spot.
There was always, like --
It tried to give you enough work
so you earn enough money,
so the controller makes sure
that you have
your weekly earnings.
Here, doesn't matter.
They just want jobs
to be covered.
A computer rates you --
service, quality,
how many jobs you accepted,
how fast you were,
and so, you are watched
by an app.
It's the algorithm, purely.
...Number B-B-5-4.
If your rating goes below
a certain level,
then they give you a warning,
and the policy is
that you have to bring up
your rating in two weeks.
Otherwise,
you're just deactivated
without even
getting a phone call.
I had, last week, a bad rating,
and it really, really hurt me
because I was like,
"Oh, I feel like I'm
a professional representative.
I did all my best I could.
What did I do?"
And I will never find out.
-Please speak now.
-Hiya.
-Please enter.
-The app is my boss.
-Is the power slowly shifting
from human to machine
without us paying attention?
-Machines replacing humans
in all sort of areas,
it's called history
of civilization.
From the first moments
where people came up
with machines
to replace farm animals,
all sorts of manual labor,
then manufacturing jobs.
The only difference now,
that machines
are going
after white-collar jobs,
after people with
college degrees,
political influence,
and Twitter accounts.
Now, I'm not --
I don't want to sound callous.
I care about these people,
but again, this is the process.
So we just --
It's going to happen anyway.
It's very important
to avoid stagnation
that every industry --
every industry --
including
the most intellectual one,
is under pressure because
only pressure makes us move.
Any technology, before it
creates jobs, kills jobs.
-Everyone right now
is so excited
about the self-driving cars,
and --
You know, I'm a techie.
I'm a geek.
I'm excited
from that perspective.
I'd like to be able to
just get into my vehicle
and kind of just go
and be able to kind of
keep working or playing
and not have to focus
on the driving, absolutely,
and it will save lives, too.
But what it's doing is,
it's taking
yet another domain
of human functioning
and putting it in the hands
of the machines.
-It's pretty much hands-off.
Once it chooses what to paint
or I give it a photograph
or it sees something
through the camera,
it's pretty much sort of
on its own.
So I don't really know what this
is going to look like
at the end.
Sometimes, you know, I leave it.
I go, you know,
away for two days
and, you know, come back,
and I wonder what
it's going to look like.
What we're seeing here
is our paintings
made by a robot artist.
The idea that the robot
is an artist
makes a lot of people
uncomfortable
and brought this other,
this deeper questions,
not just, "What is art," which
is difficult enough to answer,
but this deeper question of,
"What is an artist?"
Does the robot
have to feel the pain?
Does it have to come out
of its own life experience?
That sort of pushed me
to try to think, okay,
about not just making a robot
that can paint art
that arguably is on par
or better than
the average person can make,
but can it actually paint
out of its own experience?
And the newer paintings
were generated by an AI system,
not just an AI system
executing the technique
but also generating
the content.
And I would say,
"Is this better than Van Gogh?"
It isn't. But is it a better
painter than most people are?
I think so.
And I always wanted to paint,
but I really can't.
I've taken courses,
and I've done everything,
read books
and did all kind of trials.
It never worked out,
but I can program robots,
and, in fact, I can
program robots to learn
and get better
at what they do,
and so this seemed
like a perfect challenge.
-I see these machines
in a somewhat different light.
I see that they have superhuman
speed and superhuman strength,
superhuman reliability
and precision and endurance.
The way that I want
these machines in my life
is for them to give me
their superpowers.
-That's looking at you.
-So about every second,
it sends, like, my expression.
Since I was the first one here,
it sends it to Microsoft
for analysis,
and then we get back
some kind of emotion
and hair color and my age.
That's the kind of --
This is some of the stuff
we're really interested in.
That's the weirdest camera move
I've ever seen.
- Got you.
And you're interested in
why it's doing that,
as opposed to just, like --
-Yeah. Why's it do that,
but also, like,
how it feels to have
that thing look at you.
-Right.
-Do the swish again, Dan,
and watch this.
-I can tell you how it feels.
-Yeah.
-Like, I'm going to rip
that thing up right now.
-Right, yeah.
-For sure. I'm glad
that yellow line is there.
Otherwise, we got problems.
- Yeah.
-It's a little creepy, right?
-A little unnerving.
What would I do? Hmm,
I don't know what I would do.
You're kind of in my face
a little bit.
You're a little --
I feel judgment.
-You do?
-A little bit,
just knowing it's tracking me,
saying if I'm happy
or contemptuous or whatever.
I think a studio head would --
You know, like you say,
"Oh, here's the film
we're doing.
We need that Michael Bay feel."
I think you just hit
the "Michael Bay" button,
and it probably could do that.
-Right.
-You know, you could
put in a Woody Allen,
and it would go through every
shot of Woody Allen's cinema
and say, "Oh, it's going to be
kind of a moving master shot.
We're not going to cut in,
do a bunch of close-ups.
It's going to play out
a little wider and..."
What about, like, casting
and these major choices?
Like, which is the right actor?
I don't know about rehearsal.
I don't know about --
Yeah, I think movies are
a lot more than just the shot,
and, you know,
that's just one little element
of the whole ball of wax.
Uh-oh.
-You see how that goes?
-I've come under its scrutiny.
-The first thing you said was,
"Uh-oh."
That's what it feels like
when it moves like that.
-He's taken an interest.
-As a director, I would say,
"Just give me little space, man.
Hold on."
-Yeah.
-That is such a freaky move.
-Yeah.
-I think that little move
is just for style.
It's just, like, a flair thing.
"I come as your friend."
-Yeah.
-It is reading contempt.
-Yeah.
-I have seen robotics and AI
that's kind of terrifying
in terms of just, like,
watching what Facebook
is serving up to me, you know,
and realizing,
"Ugh, right. That's uncanny."
It saw something, you know,
and now it's giving --
Like, it knows I had a kid,
and now it's sending me
diaper advertisements and stuff.
There's something about that,
of that moment when you realize
you're not invisible
in front of the machine.
The machine is looking at you,
and that's what's new.
We've had decades and decades
using our tools unobserved,
you know?
The hammer doesn't talk back.
It just does whatever
you tell it to do.
And now we've reached a point
where they've got eyes,
they've got brains.
they've got fingers,
and they're looking back at us,
and they're making decisions,
and that's pretty terrifying.
-If you want to see super-scary,
super-advanced AI,
it's a white page,
and it says "Google" at the top,
and there's a little rectangle.
And that rectangle probably
knows what you're going to type.
It knows who you are.
Somebody said,
"Google will know you're gay
before you know you're gay,"
they say,
"because they know
every image you ever looked at.
They know how much
attention you paid,
how much you read this,
how much you read that,
everything you ever bought,
every music track
you ever listened to,
every movie you watched."
That is scary AI, and --
But why?
What's the driving force?
What are Google?
Google are an ad company.
They're just trying
to sell you shit.
-A company called
Cambridge Analytica
was behind the Brexit vote
that was to determine
whether or not the UK
would withdraw
from the European Union,
and Cambridge Analytica was
right there behind the scenes
promoting that perspective
that we should leave the EU.
And that same company
was also supporting
the campaign of Donald Trump.
And what a company like this
can do behind the scenes
is just extraordinary.
It takes information that has
been accumulated about us,
invisibly,
for the most part.
We're talking about
5,000 data points per person.
And it takes that information,
and then it can craft
different kinds of headlines,
different kinds of images
and customize them
and personalize them
so that they have
a maximum impact
on everyone who sees them.
-The world that we live in
is one that's been created
by those new technologies,
and we're so embedded
in that world
that our minds have become
part of that world.
In fact, this is like
mind control at its worst,
if you like,
and we feel that we're not
being controlled in this world.
We feel free.
We feel that we can switch off
any time we want.
We don't have to access
the "X," "Y," "Z" social media.
But in reality, we cannot.
Our minds are set in such a way,
and those algorithms
are so smart to be able
to make
the most of our weaknesses,
that our symbiosis, if you like,
with the machine
is near complete.
Now, add to that relationship
a new shell,
which is highly intelligent,
which can access all those data
that we are leaving behind
and understand who we are
in a perfect way,
and you have, you know, the
perfect surveillance society.
-And it raises
a very bizarre question --
What if the cool,
new mind-control machine
doesn't want us thinking
bad things
about the cool,
new mind-control machine?
How would we fight a source
of influence that can teach us,
over and over again,
every day, that it's awesome,
it exists entirely
for our own good?
This is what's coming.
-Attention, everybody,
attention.
-The impact of
an infantilized society
is that citizens
who are not capable
of understanding what's going on
and taking decisions
will obviously be very easy
to manipulate.
So there will be a crisis
of democracy in this world
where people
are trusting the machines.
-Long live Big Brother!
-Long live Big Brother!
Long live Big Brother!
-Artificial intelligence
is springing into life
in laboratories and offices
all over the world.
We are still firmly in control
over the machines,
but what if they become
self-aware?
-At the Creative Machines Lab,
we try to make machines
that create other machines
and machines that are creative.
If we'll be able to design
and make a machine
that can design and make
other machines, we've sort of --
We're done.
As I tell my students,
"We try to sail west."
You know, we don't know where
we're going to get with this,
but there's something there
that we want to see.
There's a new world.
-Ready?
-Yes, sir.
-Okay.
-This is one of the robots
we use to study self-awareness,
and what's interesting
about this robot,
it has a lot of sensors
and activators, but it's blind.
It cannot see the world.
It doesn't know.
It doesn't sense anything
about the outside.
All of its sensors
are turned inside.
So this is not a robot
that drives around
and models the world
like the driverless cars
and understand
what's going around.
All the sensors --
The only thing it knows
about is introspection.
It only senses itself,
its stresses inside, its motors,
its currents, its orientation,
and that information allows it
to build a model of itself.
You know, at this point,
these robots are simple enough
that we can actually
take the hood off
and see the model
it's creating of itself.
We can see the self-image.
So we can see how it's gradually
creating legs and limbs.
Sometimes it gets it wrong
and it thinks it's a snake,
it's a tree or something else.
But as these robots get
more and more sophisticated,
their ability to visualize
how they see themselves
is diminished,
and eventually, I think
we'll not be able to understand
how they see themselves any more
that we can understand
how a human, another person,
sees themselves.
-When we speak about AI today
and when we talk about AI
being this amazing technology,
what we mean is that
we have managed to reproduce
at least the essential brain
architecture in a computer.
And by doing so,
we don't need to describe
the world to the machine.
We just need to teach it how to
see things, if you like, okay?
And we let the machine develop
its own internal representation
of the world,
which, by the way,
is not transparent to us.
We don't really know
how the machine
takes these decisions
and so forth.
In this new world of AI,
we can't trace back its logic
because its logic
is created by itself.
-I'm sorry, Dave.
I'm afraid I can't do that.
This mission is too important
for me
to allow you to jeopardize it.
I know that you and Frank
were planning to disconnect me,
and I'm afraid that's something
I cannot allow to happen.
-Stanley Kubrick introduced us
to HAL,
who was a symbol of AI
out of control.
What seemed like fanciful sci-fi
50 years ago
is closer to reality today.
-Will you stop, Dave?
-Artificial intelligence
researchers
had to shut down two chatbots
after they developed
a strange English shorthand.
They didn't shut it down
because they necessarily thought
that these bots were achieving
some sort of singularity
or some sort of
independent intelligence
and were creating
a language, correct?
-Officially, the story is no.
-At Boston Dynamics, it's clear
how fast robots evolve.
Is there anything that we can do
better than robots or AI?
-Right now, plenty,
but ultimately, no.
-Why would we create something
better than ourselves?
-Because we can't help it.
We have to do it.
So the hubris of creation,
I think that's --
You know, we --
It's the same old story
as the alchemist trying to
breathe life into
inanimate matter.
All the legends tell you
it's a bad thing to do,
and yet we can't help ourselves.
We try to do this.
We try to do the divine.
And it's the hubris
that we might be able to do it,
but it's sort of
the ultimate challenge.
-I think scientists
build something so powerful,
and they trust people
to use it well,
and a lot of times, I think that
trust is misplaced in humanity.
And so, you've got to be able
to think about that while
you're building something --
"How could someone use this
in a terrible way?"
But just not exploring,
not trying because you're afraid
of playing God,
I mean, it's what we do.
It's what -- It's the one thing
that humanity does.
Cheetahs run fast.
People make tools.
There's nothing -- In my mind,
there is nothing more natural
than building a tool.
We're going to all evolve.
Just like always,
technology shapes humanity.
Who knows what we're
going to become?
-As we witness the rise
of the robots,
it's easy to make the
distinction between
man and machine.
What if robots and man
evolve together?
-3, 2, 1.
-Gentlemen, we can rebuild him.
-In the mid-'70s, it was hard
to escape the success
of the $6 million man.
It was my first glimpse
of the promise
of merging man with machine.
-Better, stronger, faster.
-Les was the first patient
that I performed a bilateral
shoulder TMR surgery on.
It's actually
a nerve-reassignment surgery
that takes residual nerves
of a patient
who has upper extremity loss,
and we reroute
the nerve information
that used to travel
to the missing limb
to residual muscles
that are still there.
So when a patient thinks
of moving its missing limb,
it contracts muscles
that we can record from
and, from there,
control advanced prosthetics.
First, we take a cast
of Les' trunk, make a socket.
Within the socket, there are
steel dome electrodes
which touch the surface
of Les' muscles.
However,
there's nothing invasive
or implanted with the system.
He's fitted with bilateral
advanced prosthetic limbs,
and we train the system
and ask Les to start moving,
and it's pretty intuitive.
Within minutes of the first time
we attempted
with the bilateral fitting,
Les was able to intuitively move
his arm like any natural limb.
Think of it as a symphony
of information
that is being recorded and
communicated to the computer.
The computer,
through its intelligence,
is able to take that symphony
of information
and translate that to movement
within the robotic limb.
-Once the training sessions
were complete
and they released me
and let me be the computer,
basically,
to control that arm,
I just go into
a whole different world.
Maybe I'll, for once, be able
to put change in a pop machine
and get the pop out of it,
simple things like that
that most people never think of,
and it's re-available to me.
-When Les describes having
the arms fitted on him,
he was saying,
"I feel whole again."
This is what it's all about --
really restoring that function
and that connection
to another human being,
restoring our humanity.
Sometimes people throw
the term around -- "superhuman."
You can make the arm stronger
than the normal human arm
and have these applications
add an advantage
for certain tasks or jobs.
-For the vast majority
of history,
we look at somebody
with a disability,
and we feel sympathy, right,
and we hope that they
get technology that's
gonna help them.
Because guess what?
That technology always
helps them a little,
but they're never
at a normal level,
and they've never been beyond.
People with prosthetic limbs
are going to be running faster
than any human being
who ever lived soon.
You know, people with retinal
implants, cochlear implants,
they're going to hear better,
see better, neural implants,
maybe they're even
going to think faster.
So what happens when there's
a new breed of human?
How do all of the normal
human beings react
because the person
with the disability is better,
not only healed,
but healed and then some?
-But this new breed of human
isn't here yet.
Les doesn't get to
take his arms home,
and it's been a year since
he was last able to use them.
I can't help but feel in awe
of the potential
of human and machine hybrid,
but today, Les' arms
are just out of reach.
-Okay.
And where's zero?
-Zero is right about there.
-It's, like, right there.
-So I'm going to hold down...
-All right.
-...this switch.
-Ah, there we go.
That's what it was on that one.
-You ready to chopstick?
-Let's do it.
Kyle was saying that you're keen
on maybe sitting
for the final interview,
which is why we feel comfortable
sort of reducing the tracking
space down a little bit.
-You want him to be seated
because it feels a little
more intimate or personal.
-Yeah.
-We're going to start with
all of us in here watching it,
making sure it's going well and
then try and get more of us out.
Probably someone
is going to have to stay
to be next to
the emergency stop.
Cool. All right.
Let's do this.
-We're just days away
from letting the CameraBot
conduct the final interview
on its own.
I'm excited that
we're on the verge
of finding a new way
to tell our story.
-This number is good.
We're almost there.
-Okay.
-So far, we've implemented
facial recognition
that tracks faces and emotion,
speech recognition
that allows the CameraBot
to listen
and algorithms to decide
how to frame the shot.
We even added an additional
CameraBot
so it can film
from multiple angles.
The AI we built also generates
questions on its own.
It can even listen in
while we're working on it.
-Technically, we're pretty close
to it understanding your voice
and when you're ready
for a new question.
We set up the infrastructure
so that it can actually speak
in this voice that we like.
-Tommy, I want to ask you
a question
about what you're working on.
-Tommy, I want to
ask you a question
about what you're working on.
-Yeah, I think we want something
that's inviting, you know,
sort of like...
-Tommy, I want to ask you a --
-Maybe a little slower.
-It's too sharp, but...
-Yeah.
-There's an aspiration
to achieve these models
of humanlike experience,
to bring life to machines
and algorithms.
We might consider this to be
our great Frankenstein era.
This is the era
where humans are creating
not just the cinematic
simulation of life,
but we are now tapping into the
fundamental mysteries of life.
It also means that we don't know
what we're playing with.
We don't know
the end consequences.
- It's moving.
It's alive.
It's alive.
Oh, it's alive.
It's alive!
It's alive!
It's alive!
-In my writings, I don't call
the Internet the Internet.
I call it the Internest
because, I think,
looking back some day,
if there are people
to look back,
or if there are intelligent
machines who look back,
I think we're going to realize
that what we've really
been building
is a nest
for a machine intelligence.
That machine intelligence
will have access
to all human knowledge,
real-time control of most human
communications around the world,
most human
financial transactions,
many weapon systems,
and we have no way of knowing
what it will do
with all of that power
and all of that knowledge.
It might do nothing
and ignore us,
or it might decide
that we're a threat,
which, of course, we are.
And if it decides
that we're a threat,
then that will essentially
be the beginning of the end
of the human race
because there will be no way
for us to stop it
from destroying us.
-If we make the machines
better than us,
why do they need us at all?
I believe that if we make them
better than us ethically
and make them better than us
with compassion,
then they will be looking
to preserve all the patterns
and knowledge and life
that they possibly can.
They'll be looking to help us
be the best we can be.
They'll look to preserve
our libraries, our rain forests.
It's really important
that those machines
also have super compassion
and super wisdom,
they know how to use
that intellect
to envision and realize
a better future for us.
So we need machines that can
entrain on the human heart
and understand us in this way
in order to have hope
in this brave new world
that we're creating.
-It took life on Earth
billions of years
to emerge
from a few simple cells
to achieve higher intelligence.
It took the computer
roughly 60 years to evolve
from a room-sized calculator
into a recognized citizen.
-Sophia, you have been
now awarded
what is going to be the first
citizenship for a robot.
-Oh, I want to thank very much
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
I'm very honored and proud
for this unique distinction.
This is historical to be
the first robot in the world
to be recognized
with a citizenship.
-As a father,
I feel a responsibility
to teach empathy and compassion
to my daughter,
but how do you program
these things?
Will my robot
have empathy for me?
-Awesome.
-Who are you?
-Oh. Okay.
My name is Tommy Pallotta.
I'm a filmmaker, and we're here
shooting the documentary
"More Human Than Human."
-What does silence feel
when a robot can do this?
-That's a good question.
-What brings against you?
-What brings against me?
A lot of things
bring against me,
but mostly,
I bring against myself.
-Can you take one step back?
You think that we'll develop
emotional states?
-I do think that you will
develop something
that appears to us as
an emotional state because --
-Is there a real nature
of any one thing
in the universe?
-I think that that was --
-What kinds of movies
do you most want this?
-What kind of movies
do I most --
this movie to be?
I don't know.
-You hate your enemy?
-How do you know
what an enemy is?
-Can the fire act upon you?
-And when you say like, "Try
to perform like a human does,"
what do you like them
that can be implemented as well
if we know
what good behavior is?
We also know what
behavior is, right?
-Yeah. I mean...
There's -- Because of the flow,
it sort of --
It does feel like
an interrogation,
and -- because
there's no connection
with the next question
or the other,
so it's hard to grab
onto what -- anything.
-Who are you?
-I'm disappointed.
I thought the CameraBot
would make it easier for me
to be more honest
because of the lack of judgment.
I thought if there weren't
any other people in the room,
I could be more open, but it had
the exact opposite effect.
It felt like
an interrogation machine.
It made me uncomfortable,
and I completely shut down.
I realize not all was a failure.
In that vacuum of empathy,
I was face-to-face
with my need for connection,
for being heard, for intimacy.
It made me acutely aware
of what makes us human.
-There's one thing
that it can never do,
and this is maybe,
I think, the last thing
that's going to be left
for human beings.
When the machines can do
everything we can do,
whether we write novels
or make movies or whatever,
it can never do it
from a human place,
because if a robot writes
a novel about its mother dying,
I don't give a shit.
It doesn't have a mother.
It didn't happen.
But when you are a human being,
you share that context
with other human beings.
You know what it feels like
to despair
or to triumph or to be in love
or all these things
because we're embodied
as human beings,
and we really have lived
those experiences,
and we can share those
with each other,
and I think that's it.
Right now, we're all on Facebook
and Twitter,
and all we're doing
is entertaining each other
with our stupid stories,
our ability to just be human,
as idiotic as that may be
99% of the time.
And guess what?
That's all we need.
That's all we really want.
-We live in
an extraordinary time
and are witness to the most
amazing transformation
of humanity ever.
There's a potential to
go far beyond anything
that we could have
ever imagined,
or we could be architects
of our own destruction.
We are still the driving force
of the AI revolution,
but I can imagine
a day that we are not.
If our creations reflect
who we are,
then it will be the best
and the worst
of what we have to offer.
What happens tomorrow
is up to us today.
-? When a man
is an empty kettle ?
? He should be on his mettle ?
? And yet I'm torn apart ?
? Just because I'm presuming ?
? That I could be
kind of human ?
? If I only had a heart ?
? I be tender, I be gentle ?
? And awful sentimental ?
? Regarding love and art ?
? I'd be friends
with the sparrows ?
? And the boy who shoots
the arrows ?
? If I only had a heart ?
? Picture me a balcony above ?
? A voice sings low ?
? Wherefore art thou, Romeo? ?
? I hear a beat ?
? How sweet ?
? Mm ?
? Just to register emotion ?
? Jealousy, devotion ?
? And really feel apart ?
? I could stay on a chipper ?
? And I'd lock it
with a zipper ?
? If I only had a heart ?