Digital Ethics And The Future Of Humanity. Gerd Leonhard Futurist Keynote Speaker TedXBrussels

Good morning, Salamat Pagi. It's a great pleasure to be here. So I have an interesting topic today, digital ethics. It sounds like I would speak for the next three hours or 30 seconds, depending on how quick I would be about this. So my work as a futurist is an interesting angle, but today I will try to focus more on being a naoist. What Joey Ito called this is really about today. And I will also try to look at the important things. I'm going to ask more questions than provide answers. Sorry, that may be a little bit frustrating, but questions are becoming more important now. So what are ethics actually? And it's interesting, I used to be a student of theology. I'm not religious. But ethics are kind of about beliefs, assumptions, principles, moral code. And your morality is a strange thing when you think about it, especially today as we're all interchanging and becoming global citizens. But the bottom line is really that technology does not have ethics. I've worked in the technology business for a long time. I used to be a musician and producer and then I went on the Internet. It's quite clear if we're looking around technology as self enforcing, self perpetuating, self empowering. If you give a computer a bunch of CPUs, it will put them inside and just create more power. So when we look at scary things like singularity, which I'm sure you're aware of, what will be expected in 2029 when Ray Kurzweil says machines will have similar or even vaster intelligence than people? What's going to happen to ethics? What's going to happen to beliefs, to things that are not numbers? Because whether we like it or not, we don't think in numbers. We're much more complex than that. So when you look at what's happening in the next couple years, these trends are called combinatorial. They're vastly accelerating. And pretty much everything will depend on ethics. How will you decide if it's correct? How Google is using information or Facebook? Or how your thermostat talks to your insurance company? How people know how much beer you drink, what cigarettes you smoke, if you smoke, where you smoke, how you smoke, what you smoke? That's an interesting angle for the future because ethics and principles really are sort of a roadmap for us. This is the Google map of my location. You can find this out. It's very interesting. And then I look at this and Google is really tracking my every single step along with Apple, as we've seen earlier. Is this creepy or is it useful that depends on your ethics, on your beliefs. Lots of us find this really important. But then we look at future technologies like being able to have nanobots in your bloodstream to fix your cholesterol. Is that creepy or is it good? Is the idea of having the Internet on your iris or on Google Glass or inside of your head, is that a good idea? Many of us would say yes. Clearly I can be a better TED talker if I have embedded intelligence. But is that really a good thing? So I was in Japan a few years ago and I ran across this in a Buddhist garden. And of course they have the Rotarian principles, right? But these are some of my principles, my ethics, Truth, fairness, goodwill, friendship. The last one is benefit to all. It's kind of interesting when you look back at the history of the Internet. Google says, don't be evil. Google today says evil is hard to define. Is that a benefit for all or is it intentional or not? Are they ethical or unethical? It's a very difficult question, but why are ethics important? Privacy holds a key to that discussion. Privacy versus security. The director of the FBI says that what Apple is doing right now, allowing people to hide behind encryption on the new iPhones, allegedly should be forbidden. And the director of GCHQ says privacy has never been an absolute right. And President Obama says, I think it's important to recognize you can't have 100% security and also have 100% privacy. I think what he's just saying is that we're going to have 100% security and 0% privacy. So those are really interesting ethical questions. And then we have powerful new intermediaries. These are the servers of Facebook. And did you know that that there's 15 people running the Facebook news feed that 1.3 billion people see? There's a huge algorithm and 15 people. So you have to ask the question, what are their ethics? Do they have any? I think they do, but it's hard to tell. I mean, they have a huge amount of control over our lives. But who are they? What are they bound to? Almost every decision and technology has now ethical implications. I mean, every time you turn around you say, one day, this is cool, but is it a good thing? Should we be doing this? The FBI using planes or the CIA also to spy on people's phone calls on a regular basis, as this slide shows called the dirt box on a plane. Should we really leave ethical decisions to those that control access or, or platforms or tools or apps or websites? Is that a good idea? Well, it depends on who it is. Right. I mean, this is not a black or white question, but technology is progressing at warp speed. Not like us who are like this. Because we are human, we cannot progress at warp speed. We don't live faster because we Twitter. We don't have more friends in our social network. Our human tribe is 150 people. It cannot be 15,000 people just because we have LinkedIn. We are not exponential. So you can safely say the power of technology has already surpassed the scope of our ethics. Whatever your ethics may be, technology is way ahead. And you know what, we can't do much about it. We can't say, you know what, let's stop artificial intelligence. Let's, let's stop bioengineering because we have ethical issues. Good luck with that. But what are we going to do in our future? Because in the Future the other 3 billion are coming online. All those countries are getting geared up to participate in all of the global discussions and we're going to see those countries exploding. What if we don't have ethical issues? If we don't have a moral compass, what do we do? Where are we going to go with this? I mean, quite scary thought. Technology really has limitless potential. For example, climate change, a combination of the Internet of things and the switch to renewable energy and cheaper solar could solve this problem. It could clearly. So big data, data in the cloud. This is the newest hot thing after social media. There always has to be a tagline for people so they can invest in interesting speakers. But should humans themselves become technology? Should we think of ourselves like this? An open head to be augmented, to be fitted into a future, to make our heads more like machines, because machines can then easier read our heads. I think it comes down to this. In the end, we weren't downloaded. We were born. And do you know what? There's a lot of people who wish that we could be downloaded. This is the interesting twist. Are we going to be allowed to have real children in a body 20 years from now? I mean, we're talking about science fiction here, but almost everything that can be digitized or automated will be digitized and automated. Music, films, history, health, records, banking, it just goes on like this. What will happen to serendipity, discovery, chance, mystery, inefficiency? Is it good to be inefficient? Well, clearly it's human. If we're going to be measured against efficiency, we wouldn't have to exist. It wouldn't be necessary because we are utterly inefficient. What we're seeing here in all of these trends like advertising and ordering on the iPad and dropping your bag into the bin rather than talking to people. What's going to happen to mystery? What's going to happen to the human part that is not like a machine? What is going to happen to things that are not in the cloud? Because now we have intelligent personal assistants like Siri and cortana and other 50 of them. Everything you say to Siri is recorded in the cloud. And the cloud knows if you're slightly drunk or nervous or German. So remote controlled, identical people. Is that what it comes down to? Is the future going to be the utter belief in technology, saying that technology can fix anything? We have a climate change problem, so we geoengineer. I have a problem with drinking too much. I print a new liver. I mean, is that really going to be our future? Here is an invention called the Jibo. This is the first intelligent robot. They call it the family robot. It was funded on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, I think. And they're called the first family social robot. And the founder says she envisions a day where every family has one. And then she moves on to say that they're not robots, they are partners. That makes you think about what the next step is with Jibo when it moves into the bedroom or something. So is this going to be the end of solitude? Never be bored again. Machines as partners. I would grant you it's interesting to have Jibo. Convenient, but a partner, that would worry me. So where are we going with this is that technology is now going inside of us with artificial intelligence and we are going inside of technology. That's really what artificial intelligence means, a piece of humanity moving inside of a machine. So the interfaces are now allowing us to go inside of machines, machines that go inside of us. The futurist of intel says we're going to be living inside of a machine and Google says it's our machine. No, just kidding. It will eventually just be the discussion. But artificial intelligence is a really interesting thing. I don't know enough about it, to be honest. I just picked up some interesting quotes. For example, Nick Dalton says these machines don't have morality and likely never will. Stephen Hawkins said it is the biggest invention. It may also be our last. And Elon Musk of Tesla says artificial intelligence is more dangerous than nuclear power. And I don't mean to scare you with this. I'm all for developing this, but we should look at the ethical issues because the new arms race. As we heard earlier this morning, the new arms race is about data and Artificial intelligence. Some people are saying that up to 50% of defense budgets in the near future will be about artificial intelligence and cloud computing, cloud security, digital warfare. So what are the ethics of that? When I drive my self driving car, will it try to kill me if somebody had hijacked it? If I connect my toaster to the Internet, will it try to suck me in to be toasted? I mean, this is just a potential scenario. Big toaster. But the quest to become superhuman. Think about that. This guy is Chris Darby. He wants to be superhuman by augmenting his body with all kinds of fitness trackers and implants and all kinds. And there's lots of people doing this sort of cyborg transhumanism movement. Is the quest to become superhuman really a good idea? Super fast, super smart, super strong, a soldier that can throw a car over the mountain. Cool. We can be quicker. But is that actually a good idea? Is it a good idea to live forever? I would grant you if you're sick, you want to get well, you want to get older, clearly. But what is the limit of this? Ray Kurzweil takes 140 vitamins a day. It's very good for the vitamin industry, I guess. But will he live forever? What are the ethics behind achieving exponentiality? Great new book you should read, from my friend Jori Van Gay's Exponential Organizations. But when you read this book, you're starting to feel like it's all correct and all right on the money, because we're living in an exponential world. But is it human? Did you know that the average person that works in business today works about 21% more because of social media and mobile devices? I'm sure you have the same experience. 21%. We work more because we have these boxes. Are we going to turn into machines? A 10x thinking that Google proclaims, which I find very interesting. I wish I could be 10x. I don't think I can. Maybe it's just because I'm not 15, I don't know. But what are the limits? What are the limits of abundance? As Peter Diamandis says that we're moving to the age of abundance. What will happen to ethics if we have unlimited energy, unlimited media, unlimited work, unlimited money, unlimited everything? What kind of world would that be? Peter Diamante is a very smart guy, wrote a great book called Abundance. He's one of the leaders of singularity along with Ray Kurzweil. And these are kind of his ethics that I got from his newsletter. And I admire his works. This is not criticism this is just sort of a context when you give a choice, take both. Start at the top, then work your way up. When forced to compromise, ask for more. If you can't win, change the rules. Now, you could argue this is just America, and you would be correct, of course. But the thing behind it is an interesting variant on digital ethics. Omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. Is that actually achievable for us and should it be? Are we going to end up in oblivion or her, you know the movie her? When I watch it with my son, he says, well, that's today. There's no difference there. If software is eating the world, as Marc Andreessen has said, then how will we, the wetware, you know, the, the things that are wet, blood, meaning and everything else, still control it? How will we go forward into an Internet that eats our lives like software? And how would this sort of hyper dependency, would that be a reasonable price? Would you like to be hyper dependent because it's convenient and awesome? Well, many people would argue, who gives a damn, right? It works, it's great, it's free, how can it be any better? And then this future is great. Scott says we are going to be literally what we create. That is referred to sometimes as playing God. I don't know if you believe in God. I could care less, really. But it's an interesting angle. We create a kind of a digital feudalism. We can be created, we can be made, we can be unmade. Clearly this is hellven, right? Hell and heaven, depending how you look at it. It's Hellven. It's a very interesting theme that has emerged on the Internet because now the key question online is no longer going to be about how we can do something or if. Because when you look around technology, the question, the answer is always going to be yes, we can do this, we can go into your bloodstream, we can fix the weather, we can solve climate change. Yes, the answer is yes, sooner or later. Now the new question is going to be why? We have to ask the question why and who and how and when. And this is an ethical question because the worst thing could happen to us is a kind of machine thinking turning us into an extension of the os. And if you look at some kids, that already has happened, right? Because you're essentially an extension of your mobile, rather than the mobile being an extension of you. And the prohibition of that would be useless. I mean, you can't just say, well, you shouldn't do this because we have ethical considerations, we need a balance we need some sort of balance that says, okay, we need to pursue humanness and technology both. So allow an inefficiency, driving efficiency. We need both. We don't need either or. And the whole discussion about Google here in Europe is about this. It's about the counterbalance, those two things. And I call this, on one hand, exponential. That's about velocity, power, the network effect. Then I have a new word I would like to propose as a, as a tag called humanential. Our potential as humans. It's about depth, meaning self realization. Those things are converging. And sometimes I call this the humor rhythm rather than the algorithm. What is that going to be? What is our ethic about? The humorism. And this slide is from the World Future Society talking about artificial intelligence, puts down three simple rules, which are like the rules of robotics already mentioned in various discussions. And I agree with that. Humans should not become technology, should use technology. Humans should not be subject to dominant enforcement by artificial intelligence, artificial general intelligence. And humans should not fabricate new creatures, which you think is bizarre, that is being looked at. It's actually very real. And to find a balance, one thing is for certain, we need to go beyond fear. Fear of technology, fear of artificial intelligence, fear of ourselves, in the end, because this is what it comes down to. Without a stronger focus on digital ethics, we may very well be facing an extinction threat by our own inventions. And here's a quote on this that you may recognize. Sorry, can we get the sound up, please? Open the pod bay doors, Hal. I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that, where the machine is actually in control of what we can and cannot do. Thanks very much for listening.