Transcript

The AI and me – How it feels to be replaced by an algorithm | Marisa Tschopp | TEDxSHMS

have you ever asked yourself the question what is my I in AI if not tonight's probably the best time to start exploring I'm incredibly honored to open this TEDx the rise of humans by sharing my very personal AI and me story with you but you know we're all here to invite you on a journey to discover and find your I in AI tonight now my personal story began the day where I saw humans being defeated by an AI for the first time but it wasn't really the technology that impressed me most I'm an organizational psychologist so I have absolutely no technical background I was working at a university back then and I attended a workshop about digitalization along other teachers I was super excited about the upcoming presentation by IBM we were shown how the Watson their artificial intelligence defeated the world champion in the TV quiz show Jeopardy no the goal of this workshop was to identify new teaching models with all these advances in technology but something really bizarre happened then but we weren't discussing any teaching models or so but instead we were asking hundreds of questions like how does the Watson work where's the knowledge from is it a boy or a girl can feel can he think what languages does he speak and at one point we found ourselves discussing whether self-driving cars would rather kill a kid or a grandma now this was the day where I decided I wanted to do something about this I really wanted to understand these fears what is this bizarre fascination around AI the thing is I've never been much interested in technology per se but what has always fascinated me it's the impact technology has on people's lives on all our lives and as a mother of two wonderful but very well toddlers I want to know how AI will affect the future of my children because for them and for all others I envision a future where they're safe and protected and where this awesome technology like the Watson can advance but alongside human values so I wonder how can we drive this technological progress without scaring the heck out of people I mean the thing is we cannot just stop progress as we wish because as sam harris it there's absolutely no way that we will stop creating better and more intelligent machines unless the earth will explode and humanity will be erased yeah do you also have that awkward feeling now about AI good cuz we all have we're all lost between the challenges and opportunities between research and practice between business and politics in short we're still lost between the all destroying terminator and our friend r2d2 so how can we navigate through those hopes and fear surrounding AI and not only survive but thrive in this era well I think a good thing is always starting asking good questions so when I applied for my job in research with absolutely no background in AI other than Star Wars and matrix my boss asked me a good question so actually he was looking through his iPad scrolling and scrolling and I could tell that he was scrolling through my CV probably looking for any tech background so I was crawling and scrolling didn't find anything obviously and then he looked at me like so what would you use an AI for I think that was a pretty good question so I felt my mind drifting away a little bit thinking about how cool it would be to become a Jedi and save the world along r2d2 but yeah okay so I just it backs our cameras the focus here on Switzerland say something down-to-earth say something smart something scientific so as much as I have an aversion against job of the hood I really hates crawling on the computer and searching through hundreds of databases hours and hours I want to give you a number in 2016 15,000 papers with the tag artificial intelligence were published in academia only 15,000 and now add up hundreds of blogs and articles posted online each and every day it's quite a number right so a said it would be pretty cool if I had an eye I do the job for me so I could start my day reading and broadening my mind and do something really cool instead of scrolling on a computer all day long apparently liked it I got the job unfortunately I still spend my day scrolling on the computer all day long so I'm working on this but nevertheless I think it's a good question now ask yourself how would you use an AI what I really like about this question is that it forces you to think about the character of your tasks like are they repetitive are they creating value and very important to me are they fun what do you enjoy doing yeah yeah okay so I get it life's not all about fun and games and stuff unfortunately uh but you know I just can stop thinking about those teachers now if I were to create an awesome technology I would want people to be all excited about it and think about opportunities such as oh wow they say I could help me teach at scale I could provide millions with education or they say I could help you correct my thesis and test so I'd have more time for individual support or whatsoever but those teachers were frightened they could only worry about their future and that their jobs will be replaced like this by an algorithm I could feel this insecurity every time I talk to people about our aiq the aaq is an intelligence test we developed for digital assistants such as Syria or Alexa now probably every time one of the first questions I get is so a Marissa do you think serious smarter than me so there's that constant fear of being surpassed or to feed it by machines or an AI which we've been unable to overcome for so many years now and probably will never will but you know what I don't think it is AI that feeds off fears I believe it is the fear of losing human connection because the only thing that makes us irreplaceable is human connection so think about it especially in this AI era what do you do to preserve this human connection what do you do to create to create value for your tribe and to be even more emotional actually it's the question of why do we do the things we do it's a tough question yeah I get that but good thing about our brain is you don't even have to seek an answer the physics of our selective hypothesis let perception will lead you towards an answer it's like when you're hungry your brain favors food advertisement and the same accounts for asking these kind of questions your brain will automatically lead you towards an answer I think that's a pretty cool feature of our brain good job here's the problem this only works if we have cognitive freedom of choice and what concerns me most is that we're moving towards a do-or-die relationship with AI the constant terminator images the constant man losing against machine headlines they only lead to resistance denial cynicism and downplay now this is reactance it's a psychological phenomenon it occurs as soon as our freedom of choice is threatened and then we choose behaviors even if they're absolutely irrational simply to restore that freedom of choice and take back that sense of control we humans need badly now applying this to management theory this is why top-down decisions often don't work instead of bottom-up approaches you can also compare to your vers psychology do not look at this awful ceiling right now now how many of you just wanted to look at the ceiling so badly or just did I saw that now don't hold yourself back you may take a look it's beautiful just wanted to make a point here now this is what resistance towards AI feels like I think we massively have to change the way we talk about AI and move away from threat and fear towards vision Y and facts to create a new level of trust and our own bottom-up approach with AI yeah you could tell by now I really like this bottom-up approach stuff so do you remember that movie supersize me that guy who wanted to experience the bad consequences of fast food all by himself I see this as a kind of bottom-up approach now what if we took this and call it automate me now when I was working on these intelligence tests the testing of these devices took me at least two hours per session well as you know I'm working with computer experts and it took only a few weeks and a machine took over my job I was replaced within a very short amount of time how did that feel absolutely amazing totally fantastic now I've much more time for cool things like giving this talk oh yeah and by the way so this thing didn't test 24/7 because does not need to sleep does not need to cook dinner for the kids oh by the way if somebody here is inventing an AI cooking healthy dinner for my kids totally sign up for that so please let me know where was I or a bottom-up approach I wonder how can others benefit from this automate my mindset even if you have absolutely no idea about computers I mean I have no idea how my voice makes Siri do things and like many others I ask myself what can I do well let's change the intonation let's change the intonation of this question and ask what can I do instead let's move away from helplessness and step into action and this is how the idea for the aaq came up I was able to connect my background knowledge and psychology which has nothing to do with technology with a topic of AI and I bet you this works for every topic from health to education to sex to parenting you name it and this is one of the big problems were facing AI needs interdisciplinarity experts from various fields I would have never been able to implement this alone let me tell you a quick story I've been in a conference a few weeks ago and a manager came up to me and told me a story he developed the chat bot and he told me this chat but we had to take it down after a few weeks because our customers they wouldn't stop insulting our chat bot and this chat bot learned such nasty language they had to take it down goodness I was sitting there shaking my head thinking my goodness what is wrong with these humans so went back to the office told my boss the story the computer guy and he looked at me shaking his head my goodness what is wrong with his chat bot so when we in our interpreter disciplinary team we when we worked on this aiq together our focus shifted from this very bizarre fascination to rather ordinary facts and what can we do with it now well we hope to contribute to the landscape of evaluating and testing an AI to create better and safer programs hopefully towards a better AI future yeah so as much as this may sound like the end of the a ime story I really hope that it's just about to begin I want to encourage you to take the AI in me as a metaphor it illustrates the after increasing interdependence II between humans and technology I was lucky how I was the placed by an algorithm is a fun story with a happy ending where this interdependence e stands for synthesis a healthy coexistence between man and machine woman in machine in my case sorry now long story short find your niche take control and start writing your own and unique AI n me story where this rise of the robots in AI will not be an unhappy end but rather a new beginning thank you [Applause] [Applause]