>> The companies kind of can't help but keep doing what they're doing because they've got this powerful A.I.

engine that they can tweak a knob and says "get more people to spend more minutes with me and then they turn into dollars."

♪♪ >> Hello and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer, and today we look at how artificial intelligence, A.I., is changing the way we live.

From medical breakthroughs to the algorithms that control your news feed, A.I.

is touching nearly every aspect of human life.

And of course, there's more on the way.

In fact, many experts believe A.I.

is the biggest technological disruptor since the Industrial Revolution.

But is a robot coming for your job or your brain?

How about your soul?

Take the red pill and stay right here when I speak to A.I.

scientists Kai-Fu Lee.

He's CEO of Sinovation Ventures and former head of Google China.

Then, ancient Greece may have known a few things about robots.

We look at the classical roots of A.I.

and pop culture's predictions for our future.

Don't worry, I've also got your "Puppet Regime."

>> You don't understand.

It's so hard.

The masks, the vaccines.

Everything is harder now.

>> But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

>> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by... >> Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

>> I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

>> The story of artificial intelligence has come a long way since 1968's "2001: A Space Odyssey."

In the film, HAL, also known as HAL 9000, but more informally just HAL, is a sentient A.I.

system that controls the spacecraft's operations, and when HAL catches wind that his crew wants to unplug him, he attempts to kill all humans on board.

Fair enough, really.

Today, artificial intelligence touches every aspect of our lives.

We ask Alexa for the latest weather report, use precision agriculture techniques to keep farmers informed about the status of their crops.

Smartphone apps using AI can even help detect early stages of skin cancer.

AI's future looks bright.

Self-driving cars are closer than you think, and when adopted, they will bring new mobility to housebound seniors and the disabled.

A.I.

will disrupt healthcare, where life-saving robots will bring greater medical access to underserved regions.

But is it possible that the awesome power of A.I.

could become a driver of greater inequality?

Of course, many workers fear robot takeover, and for those without a college degree in the industrial and manufacturing sectors, those fears are clearly justified.

One study in 2020 found that industrial robots brought down wages and led to much greater displacement amongst workers.

But with these declines for workers also came greater productivity and profit for companies, as well as lower costs for consumers.

So money is being made, maybe not redistributed.

A.I.

has also helped power us through the pandemic.

Zoom uses artificial intelligence to help with video compression, audio processing and all those neat virtual backdrops that I personally hate.

And while faking an exotic location during a meeting that could have been an e-mail, probably should have been, might impress your colleagues, though in reality, it just annoys them, the power behind all this technology has a darker side.

We're entering an era in which our enemies can make it look like anyone is saying anything at any point in time, even if they would never say those things.

Moving forward, we need to be more... >> That's comedian Jordan Peele narrating a deepfake video of former President Barack Obama in a public service announcement warning viewers to be more vigilant with what we trust from the Internet or from comedians.

Similar facial recognition A.I.

is also being trained by the Chinese government to surveil Uyghurs, a severely repressed Muslim minority in China, according to The New York Times and other media outlets.

And HAL from "2001: A Space Odyssey" -- Well, I mean, killer robots are no longer a far-off vision of dystopian nightmares.

We can have them right here.

A United Nations report detailed the use of an autonomous military drone in Libya that was used during an altercation between the former U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord and forces aligned with General Khalifa Haftar.

Should the use of killer robots ever be okay, which world power will win the A.I.

race?

It's either the U.S. or China, and as A.I.

becomes smarter and more powerful, what does "I think, therefore, I am" even mean anymore?

I speak with A.I.

scientist Kai-Fu Lee, who calls data the new oil.

He joins me from Beijing, where the A.I.

race is in full force.

He's also out with a new book.

It's called "A.I.

2041: Ten Visions for Our Future."

Here's our conversation.

Kai-Fu Lee is CEO of Sinovation Ventures.

You've spent your life working on artificial intelligence, and it's a term that's used very broadly.

Try to explain it, if you can, in just a couple of moments for an audience that's heard an awful lot of promise of artificial intelligence, but we don't necessarily know where we are today.

>> Well, artificial intelligence started as an effort to emulate human intelligence, but where it has evolved now is that it can do so many things that humans cannot do, but they still can't do a few things that humans can because artificial intelligence or actually more precisely machine learning is learning on a huge amount of data and then making accurate decisions about what to do, and the more data it has, the better it gets.

So in domains in which it has a lot of data, where there's Internet or financial applications or chat bots or generation or recognition or machine learning -- machine translation it's already beating people by quite a bit.

But there's still many things that humans can do that A.I.

cannot do.

>> Beating people because with all of this extraordinary amount of data that we are giving off on a real-time basis that computers are now able to integrate and sift and recognize causality, recognize patterns, and as a consequence, to a degree, even predict the future.

What's the area that you think right now, not in 2041 but today, where A.I.

is having the most dramatic impact on how society functions?

>> Clearly in the Internet space.

So, many people don't realize it, but when you watch videos on YouTube or TikTok or your news feed on Facebook or Snapchat, these are ordered by A.I.

A.I.

understands you based on what you have watched and read and clicked and opted out in the past and it knows who your friends are, so that it knows what videos you're likely to like.

So using these algorithm, a company like Facebook could say, "How do I get Ian to spend the most time on my app every day?"

And then that will help them make a lot of money.

So I would say Internet companies have the most data, and therefore they can make use of A.I.

the best way and that they use it to make money for them and sometimes at our expense, then their revenues and profit will grow.

So as a result, Internet companies today, Google, Facebook, for example, have the best AI teams and make the most money from A.I.

>> Now, the book, you mentioned 2041 and you talk about things that you believe -- you say in the book have an 80% chance likelihood of coming to pass just in the next 20 years.

Talk a little bit about where you think artificial intelligence is in that time and how it affects human beings, how it affects society both individually and broadly.

>> So, in 20 years, it will disrupt every industry.

Just as it has disrupted and enabled the Internet industry, it will do the same to the financial industry, essentially doing a much better job than most people in the investment, insurance, or banking industries.

And it will change the future of healthcare.

Inventing and helping scientists invent new drugs at one tenth the time and price.

Helping us to live healthier and longer.

It will change the future of education, allowing each child to have an A.I.

companion teacher that teaches exactly in a way that helps the child get better in an interest alignment.

And this goes on for every possible industry.

Transportation -- There will be autonomous vehicles.

We'll stop buying cars.

Cars will be Uber that comes to us exactly when we need it in the size and shape we need it, and it will be 90% safer than it is today.

So I think all of these disruptions will happen, but it will also have significant implications on the environment and society.

It will take away a large number of jobs and create many more jobs.

But they are different jobs.

It will cause tension between the large companies that have the data and the people who are sometimes helpless against it.

It will widen the gap of inequality between the haves and have-nots, increasing wealth inequality between people and between companies and between countries.

>> Of course, we can see that there will be certain tactical skills that will still be relevant -- empathy, which clearly A.I.

doesn't have an edge on or a capacity for, and what I hear you saying in all sorts of fields that right now are confined mostly to the Internet but soon will be in education and will be in health and will be in accounting and law and finance and driving an all of this is that, you know, for those that have skill sets that are comparatively easily replicated, those jobs are gone.

Is that right?

>> That's right.

I would call them routine jobs.

Any job where the tasks you do can be -- require no more than five seconds of thought.

That's a very dangerous sign.

Any job where the work that you do is repetitive or routine.

That's a dangerous sign.

The one caveat is routine jobs that require a human-to-human connection.

So let's say elderly care.

I would argue that will stay because even if a robot could wash and shower an elderly person, the elderly person isn't going to want a robot to do that and certainly not going to want a robot to be a companion and talk to.

So I still think many service-oriented and human-connection-oriented jobs will remain even though they're routine.

>> Now, the dystopian version of that is that a lot of jobs that capitalists would describe as routine, people that receive that service would actually describe as having an interaction.

I mean, if I go into McDonald's and talk to a waiter or a waitress or at my local restaurant, not an expensive one, but you still have human interaction.

Go into a taxi and you're picked up from JFK.

Senior citizens would much rather have engagement with a human being to be taken care of.

But that sounds expensive.

You know, if I take both the A.I.

improvements that are coming that you are describing and this is not 50, 100 years out.

This is -- Most people watching the show are going to see this.

They're going to experience this, God willing, and then combine that with the sort of growth of inequality that we would expect to see, that implies that an awful lot of human engagement that most of us presently benefit from will have less of it.

Isn't that right?

>> I hope not.

I hope not.

And here's the reasoning.

People will have a hard time getting routine jobs, so there will be many people displaced, looking for new things to do.

Yes, they won't be skilled to do complex projects and new skills.

These are going to be 50-year-olds who have been doing routine jobs all their lives.

They can't just suddenly become an A.I.

programmer or become a brain surgeon, right?

So the one big category of job that they will be able to be retrained to do are the service jobs, and those are jobs that we don't want robots to do.

So that will be one force that will push forward the human-human connection.

And then to the extent these people can do a good job, more people will pay more money for it, and in fact, I think the wealthy people will have even more money.

And so they're more willing to spend, and many goods will become commoditized.

So I think more wealthy people will want to spend the money on services, not products.

Maybe a concierge-planned vacation to Europe or a bartender who mixes fancy drinks or someone who comes to your home and makes your closets beautiful.

These are, I think, services that people will pay for and new professions may get created to provide those services.

>> I mean, as you see, we just had this report in The Wall Street Journal that Facebook has done a lot of research and learning that sort of these teenage girls have had all sorts of self-esteem issues precisely because of the business model of Instagram.

>> The company's leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer but won't make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people.

Congressional action is needed.

They won't solve this crisis without your help.

>> What do you think the appropriate response is for the company and for the government, given the dangers of immersion of a human being in the information space that is provided by these algorithms?

>> Well, the companies kind of can't help but keep doing what they're doing because they've got this powerful A.I.

engine that they can tweak a knob and says "get more people to spend more minutes with me and then they turn into dollars."

And as long as they have a -- list the stock, their shareholders, quarterly reports, expectations, they'll continue this behavior.

So something needs to rock them out of the current state.

There would need to be certain things established as things that are unacceptable, things like knowingly creating a system that is biased or knowingly allowing too large a percentage of fake news or a deepfake just as examples.

I think these would have -- We have to come up with these.

And another related idea is there could be a third party watchdog that publishes on a monthly basis how companies do on these metrics and does standardized tests on them, and the ones that don't do well are shamed.

But really, the long-term answer is what I want to talk about, is can we possibly align the interests of the Internet company and us.

So our long-term interest or my long-term interest, I think, is to become more knowledgeable, more likable and happier, let's say.

I think most people would want these things.

Can we possibly measure these and build applications that are aligned with our goal?

So imagine an application that's for a subscription that I would have to pay on a monthly basis, and it shows me content by measuring whether it's making me smarter or experienced or knowledgeable or happier.

And if that were available and people would pay money for it, then we would get out of the vicious cycle of having advertising-supported eyeball metric that causes them to use A.I.

to basically take over our eyeballs.

It's kind of like the Netflix model versus the Facebook model, if you will.

>> Now, is a company more likely to do that or, in your view, is a big government more likely to do that?

>> Oh, most likely a company because there is a profit motive because I'm not talking about fulfilling some desire that I have that I'm not willing to pay for.

I'm more than happy to pay for it.

Netflix is highly profitable.

And we have a known model of the capitalist system of investment in a company that builds a product with users and users pay for it.

So we just have to get that first company going.

I think then we'll see how it works.

>> Do you think, given what you know about artificial intelligence and where you believe the future, I mean, you know more -- you have more insights over where the future of this industry and these technologies are going than almost anyone on the planet.

Do you believe as a consequence of that that we are going to need, as a society, much more paternalistic governance as a consequence?

>> I think regulations are clearly needed, given the large number of temptations of companies to make money and bad people to use A.I.

for bad purposes.

But I don't think regulation is the only thing that will harness the technology.

Historically, the single best way to harness technology is with more technology.

So electricity could electrocute people and then circuit breakers were invented to prevent that.

Internet connected to a PC could bring a virus.

But anti-virus software prevented that.

So I think if we're concerned about bad content or A.I.

manipulating our minds or fairness and bias, or if we're concerned about personal data getting lost, there are technological efforts working on each of these.

>> The U.S. and the EU have adopted the beginnings at least of ethical standards for the use of A.I.

in the military.

And I wonder, on the national security front, do you think we need a global standard or Geneva Convention for that?

>> I actually think autonomous weapons is an area that more countries should pay more attention to because it is not only deadly but inexpensive, easy to build, can be used by terrorists and should be treated like chemical weapons or biological weapons.

And I hope more countries will see the danger and find a way to ban or regulate it.

>> Kai-Fu Lee.

The book is "A.I.

2041."

Must read.

Thanks so much for joining me today, my friend.

>> Thank you, Ian.

♪♪ >> Though the term artificial intelligence was coined in 1956, the idea dates back as early as the ancient Greeks, around 700 B.C.

As the myth goes, Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths and fire, one god for both of them, created a giant bronze man called Talos to protect the island of Crete.

It's believed that Talos was mankind's first conception of a robot.

Leonardo da Vinci had some ideas about mechanical men.

His robot knight from 1495 could wave its arm and move its mouth.

Some early inventions in the field turned out to be big duds.

The Mechanical Turk -- you might have heard about it -- debuted back in 1770, claimed to be an automaton that could play chess.

The reality was less impressive.

It turned out to be some little dude that was crammed inside, making the moves himself.

By the 19th and 20th centuries, A.I.

made its way into pop culture from the artificial life that was created in Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" to the 1927 magnificent art deco film "Metropolis" to the Elektro robot made by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1937.

>> The thing with almost human brain, Elektro the robot.

>> As processing power improved, so did the devices.

Back in the 1950s, perceptrons emerged as devices that could be taught to recognize objects.

One famous study taught a perceptron how to distinguish the faces of males from females, and the results were impressive until you put a picture of one of the Beatles in front of it.

A.I.

has even gone on to compete with man and win.

In 1997, world chess champion Garry Kasparov lost to IBM's Deep Blue and again when Google's AlphaGo beat 18-time world champion Lee Sedol in what was called the world's most difficult game.

A.I.

can sometimes be a little creepy, though.

Take Sophia, a modern robot capable of human facial expressions with cameras in her eyes and an ability to understand speech and remember interactions.

But even the best trained bots can be socially awkward, at least for now.

In March 2018, many Amazon Echo users complained of random laughter coming unprompted from their Alexa devices.

[ Laughter ] By the way, Jeff Bezos says he got that idea from watching Star Trek's onboard computer interact with its crew, which begs the question what other A.I.

breakthroughs could imitate art in the future?

♪♪ And now to "Puppet Regime," where one student's return to the classroom is not going as planned.

>> Well, son, it's a few weeks into the school year.

How are things going?

>> Well, I don't want to disappoint you, but... >> Oh, honey, you could never upset us.

>> Yeah, what's going on?

Is something wrong?

>> Well, the truth is, things have been harder for me in school this year.

>> Well, how so, junior?

>> It's just so much work, and it's a lot harder to make friends.

>> Aww, but you've always been so social.

>> Yeah, and your laughter is contagious.

>> No, you don't understand.

It's so hard.

The masks, the vaccines.

Everything is harder now.

>> Well, since school began, how many positive cases are we talking here?

>> Um, only like one or two.

>> One or two?

That's it?

That's pathetic.

>> There was this one kid who got sick for a few days, but it turned out to be measles.

>> Well, in that case, we are pretty disappointed in you, son.

Your mother and I have a family reputation to uphold.

>> Your father is right.

We paved the way for your generation.

>> But things were so much easier in your day.

>> Whatever, son.

Look, time is running out, okay?

With kids about to get vaccine approvals, it's time for us to make a major change.

>> Like what?

>> Sweetheart, now is the time.

We're moving.

>> But what about my friends?

>> Forget your friends.

>> That's right.

We're going somewhere with lots of kids and parents and grandparents to play with.

>> No masks, great weather and a government that really supports your growth and development.

>> Huh?

>> That's right.

We're moving to... >> Both: Florida!

>> Yay!

Florida!

>> "Puppet Regime"!

>> That's our show this week.

Come back next week, and if you like what you see, want me to keep my job, not get replaced by robots, very important for all of us, especially me and Moose, check us out at gzeromedia.com.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by...