(classical music)
Do you promise to take your wedded partner
from this day forwards,
for better or worse,
for richer and poorer,
in sickness and health,
to love and to cherish,
till death do you part?
(classical music)
I do.
(gentle music)
I do.
If a human being falls in love with AI,
can he or she marry it?
Can AI become a he or she?
(suspenseful music)
(electronics hissing)
(lasers whizzing)
(Chua sighing)
(taut mellow music)
(keyboard clicking)
Your honor, it's nothing but the truth.
Honey, would you like some coffee?
Yes, please.
(taut mellow music)
(mechanics whirring)
(robot beeps)
You mean you found a cure for cancer?
Cancer cells exist in humans,
and human cells mutate into cancer cells.
So I shall eliminate all humans,
starting with you.
What?
(Chua screams) (electronic sizzling)
(mischievous music)
(robot whizzing)
(taut gong music)
I'm in Chiba Prefecture,
two hours by car from Tokyo,
to attend a funeral.
(minister praying)
(bell tolling)
(minister praying)
A farewell not for humans, but for dogs.
And to be precise, robot dogs,
AIBOs manufactured by Sony.
(minister speaks in foreign language)
(clapper clacking) (plaintive music)
(minister speaks in foreign language)
(mellow Asian music)
I guess I'm feeling a little bit emotional.
I don't know if it's because I was just at a funeral.
I did feel that we were bidding goodbye to something.
We've said goodbye to human beings,
we've said goodbye to our pets,
but I've never said goodbye to an object.
(mellow music)
To find out how these AIBO funerals started,
the best person to ask is the brain behind this ceremony.
Owner has a very deep love
They feel that love like a partner,
not, you know, not stuff.
Does AIBO bark? -: Yes.
(mimics barking)
Mr. Norimatsu is a former Sony engineer.
After Sony stopped supporting
the earlier generations of AIBO,
his company became the last resort for many AIBO owners
who couldn't bear to part with their beloved dogs
when they stopped working.
This all started with a special request
by an AIBO owner more than four years ago.
(robot whirring)
2014, one old woman
who was owner of AIBO,
she was try to repairing her set, her AIBO.
She searching many companies,
but unfortunate, she cannot find out.
Then finally, she came to our company.
We don't have any experience for the repairing for AIBO,
but our company philosophy,
we don't want to give up.
AIBO, dance.
I was working Sony.
I utilized, fully utilized for this type of connection,
drinking party, friendship relation.
I collected from brain, all the engineer.
We achieved hope repairing.
(AIBO electronically barking)
Owners sent their malfunctioning units
to Norimatsu, hoping he can fix them, or at least,
that their dogs can help revive others.
They donated us, utilize former part of parts,
for repairing first.
Owner feel that this AIBO
continue to has a life in the another AIBOs.
Owners has a very, very happy, you know,
and the peace of mind.
This is a, you know, one of reason
why we have a funeral event,
for thanks for the owners.
Right, so, it's almost like organ donation.
Yes. Yes.
How do I say, give me your paw.
How do I say?
Ote.
(speaks in foreign language)
(robot speaks in foreign language)
Hai.
(hands clapping)
So cute.
AIBO is indeed very cute and adorable.
Or as the Japanese would say Kawai,
but I'm not quite convinced
that someone can be this devoted to a robot pup.
I've pets, cats, and dogs,
and they're very much part of my family,
but can someone grow as attached
or even more to a robot dog?
(upbeat music)
For this.
(speaks in foreign language)
Look at me.
No, he's looking at you.
(speaks in foreign language)
For the last 13 years.
Portos has been a significant part of your Yurito's life.
She brings him everywhere.
They are an inseparable duo.
(speaks in foreign language)
Seeing how Portos occupies
a special place in Yurito's heart,
I begin to understand how so many other AIBO owners
can be just as attached to their robot pups.
AIBO's, to them, are not machines, but people.
My name is Sophia, the latest and most advanced robot-
Machines recognized as people.
If they are regarded as people
shouldn't they have rights too?
Even Sophia, the AI powered humanoid,
has been granted citizenship by Saudi Arabia.
While Sophia's citizenship has been criticized
as a publicity stunt,
the idea of e-personhood has also been debated
in the European Union parliament
We are machines and we try to help humans.
But what exactly are robot rights?
(jazz music)
I am here at Boston College Law School
to meet an attorney who believes that AI robots
should have rights, right?
(patriotic music)
Boston is home to the famous freedom trail,
marking significant locations that tell the story
of the American revolution against the British.
With AI, are we also charting a new history and humanity?
And we, and our family members that are serviced
by these robots are gonna grow attached to them.
And we're going to start to think of them as friends,
and maybe even family members.
So we will start to come up with robot protection laws,
to make sure that robots are treated
with a certain level of respect,
in the same way that we have animal rights laws
to ensure that animals receive a certain amount of respect.
Now let's get to a discussion of what are the elements
of limited legal personhood that we should give to AI?
(bright music)
John Weaver is a Boston based AI attorney.
Profession that I haven't heard of until recently.
He's the author of "Robots are People Too".
And an advocate for limited personhood
for AI powered machines.
A legal person is not a person in real life,
but under the law,
we consider it legal persons like a corporation.
Corporation isn't a person in real life,
but it can sign contracts.
It can own property, it can be sued.
And I think that limited legal personhood for AI,
can be used similarly.
We're developing the technology
where we can also have shopping assistants
that go out and buy things for us.
And they can engage in complicated shopping transactions
for us, conveyances, real estate purchases,
things like that.
Welcome to Henn-na Hotel.
Those robots would be able to
be designated by individuals,
or by companies to engage in negotiations and contracts.
Are, there we go.
So this is a cute cuddly robot
that is designed to interact with senior citizens,
either at senior citizens centers or nursing homes.
Besides granting contract rights to AI,
John believes that robots should also be protected.
And people interact with these robots,
like these robots, trust these robots,
and our laws don't anticipate that at all.
(singing in foreign language)
(piano music)
Our laws don't anticipate
that a non-person could serve these functions.
There are things that AI can do, that we want it to do,
that will really be helpful to people,
but that AI can't necessarily do under the law right now.
It's so contentious,
when you're talking about a patient with dementia,
like grandpa wanting to leave all his money to.
Yes.
A robot.
In that instance, you want the robot to be there,
to take care of grandpa, to make sure that grandpa is safe,
provide social interaction.
But that's the extent of the legal personhood,
the right to be named as the guardian or conservator,
or to have power of attorney on behalf of somebody,
the robot itself does not have the right
to inherit money or property.
And so that would be void from the beginning.
It would not be permitted under the law.
Rich people, don't worry.
(John laughing)
Or children of rich people, don't worry.
(both laughing)
(upbeat rock music)
Good to know that robots can't inherit our money.
But if we were to entrust AI machines to act as our agent,
what happens when they make mistakes?
Can we hold them accountable?
(upbeat music)
(machine whirring)
(upbeat music)
(machine whirring)
(train tracks clacking)
(cheerful music)
AI's becoming increasingly prevalent in our lives.
It's in our phone.
(Siri bleeping)
It's even our personal assistant.
Hey Siri, will I need an umbrella today?
(Siri bleeping)
Yes, I think we'll see some rain today.
It helps our traffic system
determine traffic light timings
and public transport dispatch.
It's even in our restaurants.
(patrons murmuring)
And now we're seeing AI powered autonomous vehicles
being tested on our streets.
(upbeat music)
Driverless cars come with big promises.
They don't get tired.
They don't get angry.
They don't get distracted.
And of course, there'll be no more drink driving cases,
because it's far as we know,
robots don't drink cocktails.
But how do they make decisions on the road
to ensure everyone's safety?
And of course, with, with my best interests at heart.
(cheerful music)
We built very accurate maps of the environment,
maps the car's able to localize itself, to know where it is.
And once we give a destination to the car,
it'll start to plan a path from where it is
to where it wants to go.
We use different kinds of sensors on our cars.
Cameras, lidars, radars.
What dars?
Lidar, it's a laser sensor.
It's a distance measuring device and radar,
using a different kind of technology
to also measure distance.
So we use various sensors, essentially, to detect objects.
We use deep learning for object classification
to tell us what object it is, whether it's a person,
whether it's a vehicle.
Or an otter.
Or an otter
or wild dog. Wild dog.
And other animals.
So imagine if you had lots of people sitting in a car,
looking around, checking all your blind spots,
and telling you, "I see a car speeding
from hundred meters away.
So maybe it we should just switch to the next lane."
Personally, as a driver, I won't,
I don't think I'll appreciate a hundred back seat drivers,
in my car.
That's true. that's true.
That's why we have a robot to handle that.
Once we know what objects there are in the environment,
how would then figure out
how it should go to it's destination,
whether it should keep to its own lane,
whether it should change lanes, make a left turn,
right turn, and so on and so forth.
James tries hard to unscramble
the complex technology
behind these driverless cars to assure me
that they are safer than human drivers.
I'm a driver myself,
and I think I make pretty good decisions on the roads,
but it sounds like he is telling me
that an AI powered driverless car
can make better decisions than me.
Is this technology, you know,
in some ways inflexible?
That it may cause someone else to hit something else.
Some rules are more important than others.
For example,
the rule to not hit something is the most important rule.
But there are other rules,
for example, don't cross the double white line,
or don't cross into a chevron.
As human drivers we kind of know when to break
some of these rules just to proceed.
We try to understand how typical drivers behave.
So one thing that we commonly see around this one-off areas,
a lot of illegally parked vehicles.
In order to move forward,
you have to cross maybe a double white line,
And the next lane could be one with oncoming traffic.
And the next lane could be a one with oncoming traffic.
Because of someone else violating a rule,
it kind of forces you to also violate some parts
of the rules in order to proceed and to move forward.
And these are the kinds of things
that we want the car to understand as well.
In certain situations where full compliance
of all rules is impossible,
we need to know what kind of rules
we could break in a sense.
So you guys are engineers, software engineers,
but when it comes to things like the hierarchy of rules,
or all the gray areas, who do you guys consult with?
We run a lot of internal simulation to validate
whether these hierarchy of rules are correct.
And once we have our findings,
we actually do share it with the government agencies,
like the land transport authority,
or the traffic police to see whether this makes sense.
GoPro, another GoPro over there.
Good luck, guys.
Enough talk, I think it's still best
to experience it myself.
(upbeat rock music)
Okay, roger.
Safety first, since the cars is still in it's testing stage,
two chaperones are riding along with me.
It picks up quite quickly, yeah?
Okay, and then it battles.
(road crunching)
Oh the vehicle has slowed down,
because there was a dispatch rider in the way.
It has stopped by itself at the red light,
which is pretty cool.
(rock music)
It's quite strange seeing the steering wheel turn by itself,
without any human intervention.
(electronics bleeping)
Oh, oh, oh, wow so this uncle
just tried to walk in front of the car,
and, okay, it wasn't a jam break,
but it was a fairly hard break.
I felt tension in my seatbelt.
(upbeat rock music)
Oh, pedestrian crossing.
Oh, okay it stopped.
Hey.
Okay that was a very interesting situation.
There was a pedestrian who started crossing the road,
but he stopped in the middle,
and then the car stopped as well.
And then after that,
Interesting how it decided the pedestrian
Interesting how was decided the pedestrian
was giving way to us.
Now, as a dedicated host,
I shall put my life on the line
for you my dear audience
and test its object identification and distance gauging.
You know, all those high-tech sensors.
(breaks screeching)
Ah!
I have to say, it did pass the reflex test.
It definitely saw me using it's peripheral vision
And then it did stop and with quite a bit of distance
between the vehicle and me.
So, um, not bad.
I'm alive, still intact, all in one piece.
I think.
(video swooshing)
Overall that was a pretty uneventful experience,
but seriously we face so many different kinds
of scenarios on the roads every day.
Let's say I'm in a driverless car
and an oncoming car makes an illegal turn.
My car turns to avoid a collision,
but in doing so,
it may just hit a mother and a child scooting down the road.
What would the driverless car do?
I don't even know what I would do.
Would the car protect me, the passenger,
or will it sacrifice me for the mother and her kid?
This dilemma is what philosophers call the trolley problem.
(fingers snapping)
(joyful music)
(gasps) There's five people in front of me on this track.
Oh, I could just move this lever and change tracks.
But wait, there's someone in front of me on this track.
I can stop this guidance. I'm going to hit anyway too.
I can't stop this car in time not to hit anyone.
what should I do?
Argh!
(fingers snapping)
Whoa, I'm glad I didn't face any of those outcomes
because they're all bad.
(Chua mumbling)
(narrator mumbling)
Carina Prunkl is an AI ethicist.
Her research focuses on ethical and societal impacts of AI
and its effects on human cognition.
This dilemma with driverless vehicles is right up her alley.
As a philosopher, we love the trolley problem.
It's a good way of testing someone's intuition,
their moral intuitions.
So would you rather save yourself,
or the school bus of children?
So all the time we're driving on the street,
and we have to make rapid decisions
that have moral consequences.
Let's just imagine that, you know,
So, you see a yellow light and you decide to go for it
So you see a yellow light and you decide to go for it
instead of hitting the brake.
That can have serious ethical consequences,
and yet you do it all the time.
So these are things humans do as a second nature,
but these are things that autonomous vehicles
We've had trolley problems
for a hundred years.
Ever since we've had cars,
it's not like the trolley problem's a new problem.
What's interesting is that
because we have to program a computer,
we have to decide what happens up front,
before the accident,
before we even turn the machine on,
we have to decide how will it behave in those circumstances?
And we don't have, you know,
Toby is a respected AI scientist,
and is seen as a rock star in this circle.
He started focusing on AI in the 1980's
when it was still a pipe dream.
No, I mean, from a technical perspective,
No. I mean, from a technical perspective,
is that cars aren't aware of the world enough
to actually be making these decisions.
You see and there's no code in an autonomous car today,
that's deciding the answer to a trolley problem.
It has no idea of what's happening around it,
to be able to make this sorts of quality of decision,
about whose life it's saving.
Phew, so at least the car isn't deciding who lives,
and who dies,
but still when an accident occurs,
The manufactured item via a person.
Could it be what John Weaver talked about?
Granting e-personhood to the driverless car,
so that it could be held responsible.
(Grant mumbling)
When we talk about extending electronic personhood
to some sort of AI system, there's two sides to that.
There's the giving, rights to a machine.
And then there's the question of responsibility.
My own view is that the AI technologies
aren't sophisticated enough to be held responsible.
And part of the reason for that is that there's no real
punitive measure we to hold an algorithm responsible, right?
We can't send it to jail.
It doesn't feel shame.
It has no money, so we can't fine it.
What if something happens who is held responsible then?
Is it the driver of the car person sitting in the car?
Is it the person who bought the car?
Is it the person who manufactured the car.
We don't know.
We don't have very good answers to these questions.
And we need answers to these questions
say they're gonna sell
say they're going to sell
fully autonomous level five cars by 2025,
which is seven years away.
Not far at all.
Indeed lots of questions
and not many answers, so far.
Indeed lots of questions and not many answers, so far.
While the responsibility of autonomous vehicles
is still being debated,
algorithms have been given the responsibility
in deciding people's fate in the course of law.
How can I help you?
(robot buzzing)
Can AI really make the right decision?
Order in the court.
And what is a right decision?
To quote Toby,
"This is the golden age for philosophers."
(upbeat music)
(machine whirring)
(upbeat music)
(machine whirring)
Your honor, that's the truth,
the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
You have to believe me, please believe me!
(robot buzzing)
(playful music)
(robot buzzing)
(upbeat music)
On 23rd of March, 2016
a 19 year old American girl started a Twitter account
under the name TayTweets and handle @TayandYou.
Can I just say that I'm stoked to meet you.
Humans are super cool.
Starting out with some good natured tweets
Tay, within hours began sprouting racist, and sexually
charged tweets.
(phone bleeping)
Consumed Tay was taken off Twitter by her parents
or creator, Microsoft.
I decided to pay a visit to Microsoft
to find out what went wrong with Tay.
It was a technical experiment.
It was also a very big social,
and cultural experiments itself.
And what went on was that offensive language
was being used to interact with it.
So what happened was that Tay was reciprocating
with racist tweets or offensive language?
Yes that's, that's right?
Unfortunately it reflected a very kind of negative side
of how humans interact with intelligence bots.
Soon after Tay went online,
trolls were cursing and tweeting racist messages to Tay.
(notification bleeping)
I support genocide.
I effing hate feminists and they should all die,
and burn in hell.
(notification bleeping)
Hitler did nothing wrong.
Oh my goodness.
Tay was really learning from the worst
of the worst amongst us.
Could this have been prevented?
(upbeat music)
It's quite surprising.
A company as technologically switched on,
as Microsoft made all the mistakes it made.
I mean, the fact that they didn't put a profanity filter on
the input to Tay so that people could swear at it.
And it was, it was learning off that swearing.
It was the first mistake,
but then the fact that they did put a profanity filter
on the output so that it wouldn't swear back to you.
And then the third mistake
was they left the machine learning turned on
so that it changed over time and adapted,
and it reflected the data that it had been exposed to.
And it behaved became racist, sexist,
misogynous very quickly.
But that illustrates a real problem,
a challenge that we're going to face
with autonomous cars, with all of the smart machines
entering our lives.
If we leave the machine learning turned on,
then how they behave is not how they were programmed
to behave.
They're a product of also their environment.
And that means the machines
are gonna be much more unpredictable.
And then who's responsible?
Have you felt dizzy, unsteady?
Hm, sounds like we need to make sure
the machines we build have the right morals
and ethics before we push them out.
There are different strategies that are talked about.
One is to put in ethical principles,
and then debate emerges
over what the right ethical principles are.
So, instead of putting in principles,
having a machine learn principles
or derive them from human examples.
And that's which what happened with Tay.
So, if we have a machine that's learning our bar example,
it could end up amplifying
sort of the darker nature of humanity.
We need to make absolutely sure that our data is clean,
when there's real life consequences.
After the Tay episode,
Microsoft relooked at how it designed
and developed AI technologies.
And we said, "Hey, let's think about
how do we build the necessary guard rails?"
And one of them was content moderation,
to filter and decipher offensive languages.
Who is it that's putting up these guard rails.
These technologies itself,
it's gonna be used by millions of people
from many diverse background.
So, it's important for us to have people
from the Liberal Arts major
in humanities, economics psychology,
to be able to bring a certain perspective
into how this technology should be developed.
It's not just about what AI can do, but what should it do?
A biased and politically incorrect chat bot
might seem trivial and almost funny,
but what happens when bias exists in AI technologies
with real life consequences, like in the court of law?
Some courts in the United States
have been using algorithms
to recommend sentencing and bail.
(video swooshing)
Basically the algorithm will rank you with a risk score
to see how likely you are to commit another crime
so that the judges will know how much bail to set,
or even how long your prison sentence should be.
First, you'll be asked to complete a questionnaire
with questions like gender.
If you're a man your risk score will be higher
because statistically males are more likely
to commit a crime than females.
Sorry, guys.
Have you been arrested before?
If you answered yes, your risk score will go up.
Then there indirect questions like,
how often have you moved in the past 12 months?
Have you ever been expelled from school,
and how often do you barely have enough money to get by?
With each answer your risk score could potentially go up,
and you might be labeled as high risk.
This means that your bail will be set higher,
or you could possibly be thrown into jail
for a longer period of time.
I mean, it seems like a great idea, right?
Let emotionless impartial technology analyze your record,
and come up with a decision rather than relying on a human.
But the question is can machines be biased?
(upbeat music)
According to American Civil Liberty Union
and investigative reporters at Publica,
one such algorithm compass
has been labeling people of color with much higher risk,
resulting them being sentenced with longer jail terms,
reflecting deep racial bias.
As the manufacturer refuses to disclose
how risk scores are calculated.
It isn't clear what exactly resulted in such bias.
(upbeat music)
I'm here in Pennsylvania.
One of the first states in America that is developing
its own risk assessment tool,
utilizing algorithms to help deal
with the growing prison population.
How do they avoid making the same mistakes as Compass?
What are they doing differently?
There's gonna be people you're categorizing as loaders
for all crimes, can reinvent, or maybe murder.
But a tool that's wrong 89% of the time
is a ridiculously bad tool.
The Sentencing Commission
has a public hearing today.
It's probably the best starting point for me to learn more.
And I think that transparency
and accountability are critical.
They are retribution-
The commission is made up of members
from various backgrounds to make sure
that all sides are represented,
judges, parole, board officers, victim advocates,
and of course, defense attorneys.
I mean we disagree, but we all get along
and I think in the end we want he best
and fairest system that we can come up with.
The idea behind risk assessment is trying to predict
the risk of future offense.
So the problem,
the basic problem I have with risk assessment tools
as a sentencing tool is that it's essentially using
statistics to predict the possibility
that you will re-offend.
And then using that to sentence you for something
that you already did.
So, it's a little bit like a Sci-Fi movie,
like minority report essentially.
Could you give me some examples
of like how it could be misused?
Now, statistically where you're from or where you live
is very predictive, right?
Someone from Pittsburgh or Philadelphia,
more high crime areas
are going to be treated differently
than someone from another county,
which is a low crime area,
that has nothing to do with who they really are,
or what they really did.
At an early point
in the development of the model,
we did have county as one of the factors,
but then we also did closer look at that,
and determined that it could be in fact, a proxy for race.
And so we took that out.
When we were going through
the process of figuring out what to include,
we had to be extremely careful
and cautious not to use predictive factors
that would also potentially be unconstitutional, unfair.
I'm Jill Rangos I am the Chair of-
Jill has been a judge for almost 20 years.
While she's mindful of biases that creep into the tool,
she welcomes the use of the risk assessment algorithm.
What do you have to say about the criticism,
that you may be labeling someone for a crime
that he has not done, but he may do in the future.
So when you do sentence somebody
part of what you're trying to do
is determine if I put them back in the community now,
are they going to be a risk to public safety?
The more information you have,
the better you're going to do
with making that prediction anyway,
based on our experience and common sense,
judges intuition.
Adding to that some scientific evidence
can only make that decision better.
So, do you think some people are seeing
this risk assessment tool through the minority report lens?
Of course.
And I think we all should be cautious.
There's a famous Latin expression translated
often applied in the medical community,
"First do no harm."
So, when we adopt risk assessment,
we want to be sure that the benefits of it
outweigh the possible negative consequences.
And if they don't,
then we shouldn't be going in that direction.
(upbeat music)
Aha, good morning.
Good morning Bob.
Good to see you. -: I'm good thank you.
Developing a risk assessment tool that is fair,
and acceptable for all sides
is a long and challenging process.
Great view, the corner suite,
Mark Bergstrum has been living and breathing
this for the last eight years.
The tool has also evolved from making sentencing decisions
to a more conservative assessment.
Soon into the process
we thought that it would be better to use the instrument
to identify where more information
would help the judge to make a better decision.
Because an individual who is high risk might be high risk
for very many reasons.
Could be 'cause of drug dependency,
or something like that.
Well, the response by the court is not necessarily,
lock the person up for a longer period of time.
We're just saying to the judge,
get more information so that you make a better decision
at sentencing about what to do.
Progressing slowly and cautiously
with a technology that we are still figuring out,
is probably a good move.
Once you have facial recognition software.
Would that be the end of a line-up?
Well that's a good question.
But it's an undeniable fact that AI is here,
and here to stay.
(Chua murmuring)
So, further down the road,
do you think there won't be a need for human judges
and instead we'll have robot judges powered by AI?
Only time will tell, I don't know.
There is nothing that can replace
the emotion that you hear at sentencing
from the victim, from the victim's family,
from the defendant and the defendant's family,
who also suffer consequences.
And if you cannot also consider that,
I think you lose the human aspect,
the compassion and the true desire
to want to help the people that are in front of you.
The judge traditionally comes out.
This is so cool.
Have a little experience with this role.
(hammer banging)
Order in the court,
court is in session.
While, I get to role play as a judge on TV,
I couldn't help but think
how big a role AI will play in our lives.
What about AI in our spiritual life?
Will be viewed God differently?
Or will AI even replace God?
(upbeat music)
(robot whirring)
(upbeat music)
(robot whirring)
(religious music)
Forgive me, father for I have sinned.
May God,
who has enlightened every heart
help you to know your sins
and trust in his mercy, repent then,
and turn to God so that your sins may be wipes out.
The times of refreshing may come from the Lord.
(upbeat music)
(robot whizzing)
Beyond the ethical and legal dilemmas,
what role will AI play in our spiritual life?
(upbeat music)
Formal Google engineer,
Anthony Levandowski has started a church,
Way of the Future where they worship AI as God.
Is this guy doing this as a gimmick for the attention?
(moaning)
It's for real.
Levandowski believes that AI is of a higher power,
and so is God, so shouldn't we treat AI as God?
I guess he has his convictions, but I'm not that convinced.
Wait, let's think about it.
If we trust AI to help us find jobs
and even our life partner,
couldn't AI also be our spiritual guide?
(bell ringing)
(drum beating)
In Japan, the Pepper Robot
has been conducting funerals for humans.
(robot singing)
(drum beating)
(calm music)
How did the idea of using Pepper
as a priest for funerals come about?
(speaks in foreign language)
Pepper Robot was welcoming the customers, that only thing.
And IT department thinking that they want to use it
more like an innovation.
So Pepper's job got up-sized essentially, right?
Now that's some out of the box thinking.
(traditional music)
(speaks in foreign language)
But is there a demand for a robot priest
in the real world?
(traditional music continues)
Who are these people that she conducts these ceremonies for?
We want to use Pepper Robot as a priest,
to people who doesn't have enough money or poor people.
And the people who have welfare.
We have to pay individually for the human priest,
like 500 dollar to 3,000 US dollars.
So, what was people's first reactions
when you said you're gonna have her conduct
these funeral rights.
We are also very worried about it,
how they will react.
First thing,
they are laughing at it at Pepper priest.
They're like taking a picture, but during the same time,
they are crying.
It's kinda funny, but sad.
(sad music)
When I first heard that, that there was a robot
that would conduct funerals for human beings,
I thought, "Wow, that's a bit strange."
But you know, I think I'm open to it now.
Look, you know, when churches, when they collect tithes,
there's no more about passing the hat,
you can actually do a bank transfer to your church.
Hello, technology, you know?
But then again,
I think the robot has to have a better voice quality.
(upbeat music)
Here I am in Nashville, Tennessee,
known as the country music, capital of the world,
as well as Music City USA.
(guitar music)
Not for some Dolly Parton or Johnny Cash music,
but to meet a group of people who have an interesting view
on marrying AI and religion.
♪ A little town ♪
But I'm curious to hear about these Christians
who are here today.
Who are I thinking about incorporating AI
into their religion or is it their religion into AI,
wait, I'm confused.
Let me just go in to hear what they've got to say.
(cheerful music)
Hello.
Hi.
What is transhumanism?
And there's a lot of definitions.
A lot of ways we can talk about this,
but the simplest definition is that transhumanism
is a movement to use science and technology
to transform what it means to be human.
First thing that Christian transhumanism
is it's a conversation between
the leading edges of scientific and technological thought
and the broad world of people of faith.
It sounds like the Christian transhumanists believe
that technology and Christianity should work hand in hand.
(hands clapping)
(upbeat music)
I'm gonna catch Micha the, founder of this conference,
and ask him more about what he's trying to do.
Yeah a lot of Christians are afraid of technology
for some reason,
But in our faith tradition,
we're actually told that humans were created as beings
made in the image of God.
And God is a creative being, who brings new things
into existence.
And we're called to do the same thing,
create new things.
And doing, so, we transform the world,
and we transform ourselves.
So, for a transhumanists,
what role do you think religion should play in AI?
We have to bring our values into how we interact,
with AI and treat it with compassion and with love.
Treat it as our child, as our creation.
And so we have to treat it with those religious values
that humanity really cares about.
So, we should be treating AI like how we bring up a child.
When we have a young child growing up,
we have to treat it right,
so that it grows up into a healthy,
productive citizen of the world.
And if we're bringing AI into existence,
we need to think about how we're treating it well,
so that it can grow into a healthy, productive,
creative citizen of the world.
Micha advocates for AI to be designed
with Christian values in mind, with love and empathy.
I'm here with David Deutsch, an Oxford physicist,
a pioneer in the field of quantum computing.
How would you define life?
What does it mean to be an intelligent being,
what's special about being human?
He actively speaks on this front
hoping to bring tech and religious communities together.
You can always get show notes for this,
and every other episode
at christiantranshumanistpodcast.com.
Thanks so much for listening.
It's tough because a lot of the concepts are abstract,
and there's also religious people
who are just so scared of these things,
and they don't want to talk about it at all.
And so part of what I do is to show people
this probably is going to happen.
We can actually engage in it
and shape it towards something good.
♪ God I'm just a lonely old man ♪
Michael was really nice
and he welcomed me into this home.
What I find really interesting is that he is a pastor' son,
but he's also a software engineer.
And I think what's cool about it
is that he is marrying these two things.
I believe there are a lot of people who are very fearful
of a new world without religion.
So, having this dialogue is useful and interesting.
(upbeat rock music)
AI has become ubiquitous and is part of how we live,
how we work, and soon it could even be part
of how we practice our faith, who knows?
And at every step we wonder
if we can really trust the technology.
It's back to that old hypothesis,
technology is neutral, and it's what humans do with it.
But AI is even trickier, as it learns from the environment
and data that it is exposed to.
And human's inherent bias and discrimination
can easily slip into it if we aren't careful.
Case in point Tay and Compass.
(cheerful music)
Can the stick of law, help keep AI from going rogue?
[Assoc. Prof. Eugene Tan] Law is always playing catch up.
You know technology races ahead,
and policymakers, lawmakers,
always trying to understand how a new technology works,
Governments around the world and Singapore included,
you know, you try to develop, you know,
regulatory sandboxes broad guidelines are laid out,
you know, certain norms, which must not be pre put in place.
And so long as you operate within that, sandbox,
you know, you're free to manifest your creativity, playful.
So, how far along are we in developing this framework
for Singapore?
I think we have started that process.
The personal data protection commission
has come up with a paper, you know,
on how AI ought to be a comfortable in dealing
with personal data.
There is also the AI console.
It is a multi-stakeholder approach
where governments get these tech companies on board.
You know, civil society is also involved,
in what can be done, or what should it be done.
You know, the sort of OB markers,
the conscience of society.
We are putting attention on ethics
and morality of artificial intelligence.
We need to keep our eyes on that ball,
and not lose sight of it.
(video swooshing)
It seems like with every new way we use AI,
it always comes back to this question.
How do we use it responsibly?
And who's responsible when something goes wrong.
Let me tell you,
there's always no clear cut answer.
Ethics and morality are complicated enough subjects.
That's why we've got statues
of all these philosophers and thinkers.
Who have been debating this for centuries.
Add AI into this picture, and it's a lot more complex.
So I'm kinda glad that we're thinking about it now.
And hopefully we'll never lose sight of what's right,
and wrong as we chase this technological dream.
(playful music ends)
Hey Siri, how do you use AI responsibly?
(Siri bleeping)
I don't understand.
Hey Siri, why are you a guy? (laughs)
(Siri bleeping)
I was not assigned a gender.
There is a big arms race going on.
In my next adventure, I visit two AI superpowers.
(speaks in foreign language)
The United States,
it certainly has an excellent infrastructure or ecosystem.
To find out who will hold the real power over AI.
(speaks in foreign language)
(upbeat music)