Technology Is Not What We Seek But How We Seek - with Futurist Gerd Leonhard June 2, 2020

And here he is, live and in color and about to look into the future. Hello, Geert. The stage is yours. Thanks very much. Great pleasure to be with you today. First of all, I want to say congratulations for this great event. You've pulled this off in a very short time. And God knows it's not easy to pull off a digital event like this with all the context. That's really great. Well done. I think this is a future clearly of events, conferences. I used to do 100 a year, and now I'm at home looking at the camera. So the future is different than we could ever have imagined. I think you could in fact say that the future is less certain than at any time before, at least in the sort of last 30, 40 years. And that creates a new sort of pressure on this. I think when we're looking at the future, I think it's quite clear that we have to say that it's important that the future can only be created. It cannot actually be predicted. So what I do with you today is not predicting the future. Some people have done that in the past, like Ozymov and others. But I talk about how we can create this future together. Also very important. I think when we talk about the future, of what we want to be and what we can be, it's important to realize that the future is in our heads. It's not tomorrow. The future is not a timeframe, it's a mindset. It's a way that we think about what we want and what we want to create. And the other thing I think is really important when we talk about the future. And I'll put a different background here for that reason, when we think about the future and what we want to be, when we talk about technology. I wrote the book about four years ago called Technology Version vs. Humanity. And what the title should have been is Technology with humanity or Humanity on top of Technology. But it's important to realize the last four years have been a tremendous boom in technology, and especially the last couple of weeks, months. Of course, technology comes out as the winner from the COVID 19 crisis. And to that I want to say that technology can do great things, but it does not want to do great things. It doesn't want to do anything. I'm paraphrasing Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, about half a year ago at the European Commission, when he talked about what technology is. Let's keep this in mind. Technology can do great things, but somebody has to decide what those great things are. It's not going to be as easy as saying, well, technology will fix all our problems. I think that's kind of a far fetched thing. Let me start here with Milton Freeman. He said only a crisis, real or perceived, and ours is real, produces real change. And when that change occurs, it's important what kind of ideas are lying around. And God knows, we're in a crisis, we're in a global crisis. This crisis is also a gigantic opportunity, as most crises of course are opportunities. But in terms of what we're going to be doing in our future, I mean, think about tourism, think about traveling, think about all of the things that, that we have looked at in the past. It's quite clear that we need to have the right kind of ideas lying around. I'll talk about that and why I think technology and humanity is such a key topic. Many of us are looking at the world like this now. Everything is digital. We're going online. We're meeting everyone through this lens here rather than going in person where we're keeping our distance physically, but digitally we are connecting. We're hyperconnected, we're moving to the world of 5G. Everything is about data. The data companies are the oil companies. I'll talk more about that in a little while. And this brings up all kinds of responsibilities. It brings up all kinds of ideas about how we're going to be connecting and how much connection do we need. Is there such a thing as too much data? Is there such a thing as being over connected? And I sometimes say basically that we're looking at this future saying everything is going to be connected. That's great. But I think being too much connected, being over connected can be just as bad as being disconnected. I talked about this in my book when I talk about digital obesity, how we're getting physically and mentally fat, so to speak, from having too much connection and having too much input from data. You know, I think in the end, humans are not machines. Many people would argue that point. You'd be surprised. So data is one thing that we use a lot of. But you know, we don't really decide our lives based on data. I mean, you don't marry your husband or your wife because of some data stream or efficiency or optimized outcome or so you know, this is completely different. Our world is not like this. It's not just zeros and ones. And this is the important part about humans. You know, we are not binary. It's not just yes or no. Humans are maybe and we change our mind, we make mistakes, we go in between the zeros and ones that's very difficult for a computer to do. And I think we have to be very careful about this concept that I call reductionism that everything is about quantifiable data. I mean, it's really interesting. There's a great book from Stuart Russell, who is the master of AI teaching and, and great guy at UC Berkeley. His latest book, it's called Human Compatible. He talks about artificial intelligence. And one point that he makes is that a lot of machines don't understand context. They have absolute zeros or ones. So when you tell the AI or a robot to get your coffee, it does not know that you mean you'd like a coffee if possible, but you don't want a coffee going over dead bodies if you have to be. There are other priorities. There are context. I think this is very, very important that we don't take the path towards dehumanization just because data is so cool. And we can see that in so many aspects of our lives. Data running things. And especially now during the COVID crisis, surveillance data is everything. Tracking, tracing. Is security more important than freedom? Well, that's not an absolute question. I'll talk more about that shortly. But clearly that's something we got to think about when we think about our future heading this way. Machines are going to get smart. I mean, artificial intelligence is neither artificial nor is it really intelligent yet. But in the near future, we can count on machines being able to do things that we used to do. And that goes pretty much for any routine. Anything with logic, anything with facts, whether it's a call center or translation or driving a car, even flying an airplane, Machines will be able to do anything. That's total routine. And of course many jobs aren't total routine. But talk about that again later. But it's really quite clear when artificial intelligence AI meets hi human intelligence. I think business as usual is over. We got to think about what that means. We have to focus on what makes us human, what machines can't do. And if machines do the routine, the driving, the shopping, the ordering, the organizing, the filing, the financial advice, maybe we should just do the non routine. Maybe we should focus on what makes us human. Maybe we should teach our kids not to be robots or download information. I think this is crucial for our future. We must focus on being more human, not less. As artificial intelligence becomes a new normal. The other thing is I talk about a lot when I talk about technology and Humanity is chapter three in my book, by the way, tech versus human dot com. If you still haven't got it, it's available in 12 languages. But chapter number three in my book talks about. It's very important that we don't think that we have to transcend humanity, as many transhumanists or Singularity fans would say. We have to transcend human limitations. Well, I'm fine with transcending limitations by taking a cholesterol pill or something, but gearing myself up to become superhuman, connecting my brain to the Internet, I think that's extremely dangerous and also probably wouldn't yield much benefit. I think a lot of these so called upgrades would be a downgrade. I think we need to transcend technology, not humanity. We need to transcend the idea that technology is the answer to everything. It's just, it's a tool. I mean, a carpenter doesn't believe in the hammer. A carpenter believes in the house, in what he's building. It has a purpose. It's not the same than using a tool. It has a purpose. So when we go to this future, a future which we're definitely going to go to, we'll talk about that later on the panel. The cloud is going to be everything. Our healthcare data is going to be in the cloud, education will be in the cloud, music is already in the cloud, films and television already in the cloud. Everything is moving to the cloud. And when we have this cloud, who has authority over this cloud? Do we need data sovereignty? I think absolutely yes. On a European level, does it mean we should be separate and separate into that? No, but we have to have some authority about where the data is going. We need to have some sort of way of credibility also of being able to say, well, that we are in charge of making our own decision. And I think when we talk about the cloud, and clearly that's a huge business, the cloud is the biggest business ever. Data, the new oil. I always say that everything should be as smart and as connected and as secure as possible, as necessary, but not more. Riffing off Einstein, of course, who said that everything should be as simple as possible, but not more. Well, that was easy for Einstein to say, but I think we should be as connected as possible, as smart as possible. Smart city, but not more. We should not become just smarter connected just because it's a great goal to have and it makes money. And now we're literally living in this world right, where technology has become a religion. And I'm a great admirer of that myself. I love my mobile phones and my computers. But let's think about this for a second. When we think about the world like this or like this, you know, it's all about data. It's called dataism. You may have heard about this from Yuval Harari in different contexts. Right. I don't think we'll find happiness here. We won't find happiness. Human happiness, real happiness, not hedonism, you know, not a quick fix. We will not find happiness on the screen, we'll not find it in an app, we won't find it in the cloud. These are tools. If we don't find happiness with the tools and where do we find happiness? Well, that's a big question, but it certainly isn't out here in the cloud. It's in here, there, somewhere. Not here, but somewhere. As some. I think Kahneman said. Daniel Kahneman said we think with the body, not with the brain. So this is really important. I think when we think about our future and where we're going with this technology isn't what we seek, it's how we seek. We seek to make connections to others. When you think about what is most important to humans, engagement with other humans, experiences, Real, full, embodied experiences. And of course, relationships. I mean, this is really what makes us work. It's not flow of data or the clean organization of data. And then, you know, we're going into a future like this clearly where everything will have a digital window. We're going to vote online, especially now. We're going to work from home, especially now. We're going to virtually travel with holograms. Right. But we have to remember something when we do this kind of digital event and where we connect digitally. This is a good prep for what we really are looking for, which is trust and relationships. And trust isn't digital. Trust is not something I can find in here or I can just add a button to the website, buy some trust at Amazon or I don't know, we can't download relationships and we can't encode the relationships. They're much more complex than that. We should resist this reductionism of saying that everything has to be digitized and everything has to be code and everything has to be made sense. In this regard, I think really what we talk about in my book, I talk about this, I call is the andro rhythms, the human things. Other side. So these are the things that make us human. Emotions, intuition, creativity, imagination. I have to turn the right direction here. Different exercises with different backgrounds. Mystery, I think somebody once said, and I forgot where I found this, but kudos. Algorithms know the logic of everything, but the feeling of nothing. And you know, it's funny now when two computers talk, you know, if you can imagine two computers talking, they're exchanging data saying okay, it's like this, it's like this. It's basically if this then that the logic of everything. But do they know what it feels like? I mean, when people talk, what's the first question? You know, how do you feel like how does it make you feel? How do you feel about that? And are we going to talk like that to a machine? Are machines capable of doing that? Well, they're capable of simulating it. If you've seen the movie, her great movie about this. But in the end, remember the computer had 3,650 other relationships at the same time because didn't have the androidms. You want to know more about the algorithms, you can go to andrewrhythms.com that's why I pontificate a little bit more on this. So let me move on to the next topic here. It's really quite clear when we talk about the future, climate change is the next big thing. Well, it's big now and climate change discussion and global warming is a thousand x of the current COVID 19 crisis. That's why we call the climate emergency. The only thing about it is we don't see a sick person next to us or on television today while we see some of them of course dying of pollution. But we don't see 300 million climate refugees. Now people are saying we're going to see that maybe in 40 years. So this climate emergency is actually very much related to technology and humanity because clearly technology is the key to solving a lot of these problems. Hunger, water, food, disease, transportation, all of those things can be solved with technology. But let's not make the mistake of saying, well, technology is that great solving tool. That's the panacea. It will not solve political, social or cultural issues. And to solve climate change, we're going to face a lot of political issues. My hope is that because of COVID 19 and the current crisis, we can find a way to use this example of having to deal with emergency situations and roll that over into climate change and discuss what we really need to address it. I mean, clearly this is going to be a major challenge for all of us and we have to tackle it now. And this is why I believe, for example, that we should put carbon tax ideas into bailout scenarios for airlines and cruise ships and so on. Because the next thing that we're facing after climate emergency, and it sounds kind of like a dreary outlook, but it's not, I'll explain shortly, is the human emergency Everything is being watched, everything is being monitored. We overdo technology and we use technology like a drug or like a religion or both. Even worse, I call this too much of a good thing. Just like we've used fossil fuel to pump our entire economy in the last 50 years. The second thing we're facing is the human emergency. I think it's very important to us. If we think about this idea of how we can put the human back in the center of technology rather than us being the object of technology. For example, social media is one of those things. Social media is clearly a human emergency. We have replaced real media with real people with an algorithm with unreal people to create a fake reality. This is why I left Facebook two years ago, pretty much two years ago now, because I just couldn't see being part of that anymore. That creates a human emergency. And so I think if we look in this direction. Let me advance to the important topic of the day here. Security and safety. We have countries like Israel and Singapore and others who are in some ways using the COVID 19 opportunity to create a complete surveillance state. And of course that's happened by default in other countries. But we have to be very careful about this. I call this Corona washing, and it's been used many times in the media now is by saying, well, we're doing this because of Corona. We have to be able to track people, we have to be able to look at people, we have to be able to trace people. We have to, yeah, okay, emergency, yes. But you know what happens with emergency regulation. Look at America, the US in after September 11, the visa courts, the Patriot Act. That became the new normal and still is normal. It is entirely normal to be in an emergency situation. That's not good. I think this is something we have to really keep a very good eye on. In Europe is going back to saying, well, you know, we use technology for emerging situations, maybe a little bit too much, but then we have to go back. Because I really feel if you have nothing to hide, you're probably not human. I think hiding information is not something that is a default. Good setting, clearly, but having mystery, staying human. I also think we should not trade sort of a fake security idea for the complete lack of freedom and liberties. There has to be a balance. There is no such thing as 100% liberty or freedom in our society. But the reverse also shouldn't be true, in my view. We shouldn't pretend that we get 100% security by essentially building a digital cage for us. And so I think emergency measures should not become the new normal. We should think about accountability, responsibility. And that's why I look forward to our discussion later with Mrs. Vestigo from the European Commission about how we can go about this, to create ethics and technology, what are called digital ethics, to have a. A supervision process in place that goes beyond this. Because I really think we're moving into this world, right? I call this the new Renaissance. We move out of the picture a little bit. Here's the. I call this the Neoluvian Man. It's like the Vitruvian man, but it's basically saying, well, in the 1500s, Leonardo da Vinci, now we have all this technology around us, and we're going to need to find out what is our spot, what is our existence when we're surrounded by AI and the Internet of Things and 3D printing and the blockchain and CRISPR Cas9. I mean, it's mind boggling the possibilities. I say that we should invest as much in humanity as we do in technology. I think we need to also train our kids to understand technology clearly. But everybody's going to be a programmer. Is that going to save us? Machines can program themselves. The key question really is in this new Renaissance, just like in the 15th century, when we went away from dogmas towards the human understanding, what do we want to be? And the second question is, what do we want our home to be? The Earth? What kind of world do we want to have? I mean, I have two kids. I don't know about you, but this is a key question. What kind of world do I want my kids to have? And what kind of action do I take? God knows we've been falling short on that discussion, on this whole debate about new relations. For example, when we use data, it has been said many times, data is the new oil. That's a very old saying. Now, a lot of people disagree. I think it's actually the new plutonium. It's a new weapon, the weapon used by big technology companies, many of which are my clients, to turn us into data, turn the world into data. That's a good thing, to have lots of data, because we can get smart. We can have smart cities, we can move faster. That's pretty much the pretty amazing stuff, right? But we can also use it as a weapon. We can use artificial intelligence as a weapon, of course, and soldiers and so on. We can use genetic engineering as a weapon. So what does it take? It takes for us not to say no to the use of data, like healthcare data, but not to always just say yes to find a balance to find social contracts, regulations, agreements. If we are going to use data like this, who's in charge, who owns it, who guarantees things? Would you trust your healthcare data, your DNA to a tech company or a social media company, or you know, 23andMe for that matter? This is a very crucial question for our future that we have to answer because this is our default world right here, the ultra connected world. I mean we're hyper connected with, we're globalized in many ways. Now globalization is sort of on the list of to be abolished. But it's really quite clear technology drives our future and we're not going to go back to not using technology. But the question is who defines it? And I think the answer is ethics is what do we feel about each other? How do we feel about each other? What do we want to achieve? And ethics, you'd be surprised, is not as lofty as it sounds. I think a lot of us could agree in a lot of ethics, for example, most people, 99.9% would agree that having autonomous weapons that can kill people on their own without human supervision are definitely going too far. So digital ethics and whole discussion, the weaponization, I think it's really, this is a strong agenda for Europe. We use technology, it drives our future. But then we have to define what we want. Because clearly in this world, the totally connected world, whether you think about self sufficiency or de globalization or what I think the Economist has called snowballization, slowballization to make it slower, okay, that's going to happen. But now we have a different paradigm and this is really becoming clear. I think in our time here of COVID 2019, we have to have a different purpose. Not just profit, growth, jobs, gdp, but what I call people, Planet, purpose and prosperity. The possibility of reaching all four of those, that's the new society we need. And technology is the key for this. And the other key is ethics. People, planet, purpose, prosperity. Al Gore called this sustainable capitalism quite some time ago. I think that must have been around 10 years ago. Now with discussion as to how we can actually reach this, here is the neuralase from Elon Musk. You may have seen this already on the Internet before where he's actually proposing to put drill tiny holes into your head. Good luck with that and then connect to the Internet so we can upload our brain and become superhuman. And now he's, he's basically suggesting this as a way of gearing up. And as much as I like Elon's other things and his brightness, I think this has taken a Step too far. We don't have to compete with technology in becoming technology. We have to keep our players by becoming more human. As I said before, technology is not what we seek. We don't seek to become technology. At least I don't. And of course, if you do, that's a different discussion. And how can we get those two things across at the same time? So let me move towards a close on this and very soon we're going to have some questions and debates. This world is hyperconnected. Yuro is hyper connected. That is the key for us. I mean, I think the challenge is that the more we connect, we also must protect. We connect with each other, we connect with data, but we must protect what makes us human. And what makes us human. The androidism. So emotions, mysteries, mistakes, serendipity, discovery, the things that machines can't do. And I think this is really also the important point about what we need to do in Europe. We need to collaborate and we need to have solidarity with each other so that we can protect our idea of how we want to live in the future. And this brings me to my final point about Europe. A lot of people have talked about this. I'm sure we'll talk about it in the debate. Are we going to end up with the United States of Europe after or during the crisis? Or will it be the opposite, a disintegration of Europe? This is a very important discussion also because of technology and humanity, because we need to make sure that Europe has a power position in the world that rivals the US and China and not be disintegrated all over the place. I think the idea of United States of Europe is being put through a great test right now, primarily because of the solidarity between the north and the south and the east and the West. I think we need to do whatever it takes to build solidarity and to maintain a strong, united Europe in every possible financial and practical way. I think this is the only way that we can go to a future and say this is what we want from technology. This is how we want to regulate AI or AGI, artificial general intelligence. And this is how we want to proceed into a future that we want. And this of course, is a very, very big task for the European Commission, but also for local governments, for national governments, for every mayor. And this is why I have suggested in the past that every politician, every public official should have a driver's license for the future, should understand what's coming.