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