The Robots are Coming Be Afraid

[Music]

[Music]

i’m here to tell you

a story and it’s a scary story

but it might just save you from yourself

so listen very carefully and because

it’s a scary story

we need to start in the dark so close

your eyes cover them tight

and i want you to now drift back to your

earliest memory of robots

open your eyes i wonder how many of you

had an image like this one

this was my first experience of a robot

it was a christmas day

many many years ago and as i put my hand

into the sack that santa had left at the

end of my bed

i pulled out this robot i was both

intrigued and terrified at the same time

as the robot clanked towards me sparks

flicking across its head

now from our very earliest times as

individuals

and indeed as societies perhaps we

knew this day would come when robots

took all our jobs leaving us

with only the jobs that we thought

that robots would be doing for us

perhaps we always knew in the evolution

from sliver to stand that one day

robots would outpace us and outsmart us

perhaps we even knew that one day

we would be no longer the most heavenly

of creations

now when we worry about something coming

to get us

we also might we often imagine that it’s

coming from

out of space something sci-fi

but you know for generations for

centuries

we’ve been creating their own

downfall so here’s an example it’s a

leonardo

da vinci’s robotic suit

a fighting armor or

jump forward to the early 20th century

and here’s another robot this is

eric eric’s a conference

speaker and the story goes that the

king of england was meant to give a talk

at a conference

but couldn’t turn up i guess he was busy

so the conference organizers created

eric and eric

robotically delivered the king’s

speech can you imagine if the king of

england’s job is on the line

we’ve all got to be very very afraid

in literature of course perhaps one of

the most famous

creations is frankenstein’s

monster and what happened

when frankenstein’s monster got off

the bed and went out into the street

well the people didn’t like it did they

and they chased away

this monster with pitchforks and torches

i wonder how long it will be until

we push away ai

and robots not wanting them in our lives

talking about uh creation uh another

creation story of course is of adam and

eve

in the bible and as the story goes

adam and eve were created by god to live

a wonderful life in the garden of eden

but they wanted more they wanted to have

the knowledge they wanted to be

in control now if you read

things about robots and ai like i do and

you can read it in the popular press as

well as in academic literature

there’s quite a lot of talk about a

benign

ai a caring

robotic future where the robots will

live with us

happily and comfortably and perhaps even

look after us

as we get older but who’s to say

that just like the adam and eve story

that ai and robots will want more

and like in the 2001’s film space

odyssey

they will refuse to do our bidding

now when you think about where we’re at

and where we’re going it’s very easy

to get um frightened and

i’d like to say that you know listening

to and thinking about what you’re saying

uh thinking now that you’re perhaps

thinking that i

am exaggerating and perhaps we should

just hold on

a minute and pause

because surely things aren’t as bad

as i’ve just been saying the scary

visions

for example of a dishwashing robot well

they’ve been replaced haven’t they

by a much more comforting reality

the dishwashers that you and i have in

our houses

or what about this very scary vacuum

cleaning robot

well what’s the reality it’s much

calmer isn’t it it’s much more seductive

and

sleek a small object that goes around

our houses

and cleans up after us

and frankenstein’s monster well

the future is much nicer what we’ve got

is wally

there’s even a robotic pillow

that you can buy and you can hug it

tight yourself

and it will gently send you off

to sleep so maybe there’s nothing to

worry about

but i told you didn’t i this is a scary

story

and let me tell you the first part was

not the scary part

things are much worse than we imagined

take a look at this guy look at him he’s

on

drugs it seems and he is

and indeed we are we’re all drawn

to the latest shiniest gadget often

mobile

which we believe is going to transform

our lives

and indeed it is changing our lives

how many of you have been in situations

like this with your family

um or your loved ones where instead of

looking

deeply into each other’s eyes connecting

empathically you look down

at the dark screen and actually look

down

what do you see it’d be lovely wouldn’t

it it was all very positive

and happy but it’s not

a lot of the things that we see as we

look down

are dark there are trolls there are echo

chambers

this year in the pandemic there’s been a

phenomena called doom

scrolling it’s not a hopeful

positive place

now let’s just jump back to my past and

another

robot that used to scare me this is a

cyberman from the doctor who series

if you don’t like blood now is the time

to cover your ears

because i’m going to tell you how

cybermen are

created they start off like you and i

humans but through chainsaws

and knives their flesh is removed

replaced bit by bit by cold

metal the helmet is jammed onto the head

and then the very last thing

that is taken from that human

is their humanity their empathy

it’s pulled out of them and a small

metallic teardrop forms

at the corners of their eyes

i wonder how many of us

tap by tap are having

our humanity taken away from us

only very soon to lose that last bit of

connection our empathy

here’s a very scary picture one of the

most scariest i think

of this talk whoa look at that

there’s only one person standing and

walking purposefully

smiling and that’s mark zuckerberg of

facebook everyone else

headset on blank faces

my message tonight to all of us

is not that we should be worried about

the robots coming

for us but rather that we

are becoming robotic we

are becoming the artificial intelligence

but it’s not too late and we can do

something about it

um we could form a movement

like the luddites did now the luddites

are often misunderstood they

didn’t just hate all technology

they formed a movement against harmful

technology so my message tonight is we

should be thinking about

how we use digital technologies

for good and in non-harmful

ways now here’s one thing that you can

do

straight away if you’ve never tried it

before and that’s a digital

detox that’s when you

stop using your mobile phone for a day

or a couple of days

or you could even buy something like

this

this is a very very stripped down

version of a mobile phone

that doesn’t distract you that doesn’t

draw you

into the digital

maybe we could go even further though

and

create phones and devices which

are much more attuned

to what it is to be a human

so think about when you’ve been in the

sun for example

we’re in swansea it’s been a lovely day

here and if you spend

too long in the sun what happens well

you burn

your body gives you a signal to get out

of the heat

or maybe right now as you’re watching

this you’re eating your supper

what happens if you overeat well first

you’ll feel full

and then it gets worse so let’s imagine

building our devices that

perhaps get brighter or hotter

as we overuse them or perhaps heavier

and bloated as we spend too much time

tapping on the screen

now one of the great blessings that my

team and i have had over the last decade

or so

is to work with communities that are

very different to my own

so with communities like this one in

cape town this is langer

a township just outside cape town or

this one

which is dharavi in mumbai asia’s

largest

slum we work with those communities

to get a fresh perspective on innovation

these communities have had much less

exposure

to digital technology than you or i

so to some extent they are much more

human

while we are becoming robots

i want to end by sharing just one

example

of the work that we’ve done with these

communities

now some of you at home right now might

have a an alexa box

or a google home a smart speaker

that you can have a conversation with

we’ve taken those kind of devices into

the streets

of the slum in dharavi and we’ve

discovered many very

many fascinating new things about

what we should be doing in future

technology

technological development

one of the most profound things though

connects to this book

it’s a book by ludovic wichtenstein

very famous book and what he says in

that book is

that if a lion could speak

to you and me then we wouldn’t be able

to have a meaningful conversation

why is that because lions

are not like us they have a different

worldview

their context is completely

different to yours and mine

you know however much we try to make

speech boxes

conversational making them more and more

conversant what we found working with

people in dharavi

is that we will never be able to have

a meaningful conversation because

that box that intelligence is not like

the glorious

wonderful intelligence that you and i

embody the scary thing though is

the only way that you will be able to

have

a conversation with one of those

intelligences is if you become

more like it so we’ll end

with two images first one classic scary

image of a robot

oh be afraid let me tell you

that is a distraction

here is the most scary image tonight of

all

i really want to reach out and call to

you as an individual

then as a family and then as people who

can make a difference

let us work so that our children

and their children spend less time

looking down

click by click by click and look the

world

head on so that together we can all say

we are not robots

thank you

you