AI Is Eating Our World | Fabian Westerheide | TEDxHeidelberg

Translator: Zsuzsa Viola Reviewer: Tanya Cushman Well, I got my first computer at the age of eight, and since then, I'm hooked in the digital world. I was involved in over 30 companies as an entrepreneur and investor in the last years, mainly in the software space. And through influence by science fiction - which I love if it's Gibson or Hertling or Charles Stross and a series like Stargate - I discovered that the natural evolution of software is artificial intelligence.

Someone said it could be the last invention we do as humankind. And that's what I would like to speak with you today about, that AI is eating our world and that this is something we should be happy about. Artificial intelligence is not a new concept.

Already, the Romans, the Greeks, the Chinese, they had a concept of human-like machines. So it is through human history that we're thinking about machines who could be more like us. Today, we understand machines who look more like us, who think like us, who see the world like us.

And also, it got recently very popular in Hollywood again. If it's Gates, if it's Elon Musk, if it's Hawking, they all speak currently about artificial intelligence. And the reason is, three factors came together in the last three years, which are interesting to [note].

The first is the increase in processing power, the second is data, and the third is progress in machine learning. We all know that computers used to be very, very big and very slow and very stupid. And they used to fill rooms like this.

Rooms like this were computers, and they were just smart calculators, just a calculator. But today, we all have a supercomputer in our pocket, in our smartphone. Thanks to Moore's law, which is valid for the last 50 years, every 18 months, a computer is half the size, half the price, and double the speed.

So computers are getting faster from time to time, from year to year, and this won't stop. This is like your brain would get better. Imagine getting smarter every 18 months, what you could do with this.

So computers get better. This is the first thing: they get smarter and faster. The second is we have more data.

It's like for us humans, more data means you have more to process. And thanks to the internet 25 years ago, we produce, every day, more data than the day before. Whatever you do on your smartphone, whatever you do offline, everything's tracked, everything's stored.

Whatever we do, everything, especially digital, we do, this is somewhere safe and stored on a server. And that is why companies like Google, like Facebook, they use these huge, complex processing powers in combination with data to make sense out of the world they have. And they use machine learning to use all these computers and data to make even their business models more, you know, to understand better what customers do, to make more money.

Just imagine what this means if computers are getting stronger, faster and you have more data to do it. So machine learning is the idea that you do not need to program everything, yes? If you don't use machine learning, to improve a computer or computer program, you have to write it in the code.

You run it, you test it, and you have to write the code again. With machine learning, the machine is able to adapt itself. And with the machine learning something, the last years had a breakthrough, which is really interesting, and it's called deep learning.

And deep learning are neural nets and layers. They asked me to explain this a little bit more. So this means it's mimicking how the brain works.

And it's - in easy words, you have two points, and when the machine is doing something right, the path between two points is getting stronger, if the machine is doing wrong, the path between two points is getting weaker. And you can imagine it's like you drive a car. When you're 18, you need to learn rules.

You go to school, learn these rules, you have drive-hours - In Germany, you have to take 30 hours or more - you learn this until you get more experienced, that you don't think anymore; you have something like experience; it's like instinct. This is the same with machines: the more you run the machine, the better it gets. And these machines are in the step of being cognitive machines.

So the machines today using deep learning, they can gather data, yes, then they can run simulations with your mathematical complex models, and then they propose actions. And today, you don't tell them anymore what they have to do; they run their own actions, they execute them, they measure the results, and then they optimize. So I repeat this: machines optimize themselves.

And we don't know anymore what's happening inside. Machines start trading stocks, machines drive cars, machines develop their own encryptions, and we don't know anymore how they do it. Within their certain frames, they decide on themselves, they improve on themselves.

And they do this simultaneously. There are companies out there who run a machine, and they copy them eight times, and within two days, they have 16, 20, and more different outcomes and versions. While a human can do this only afterwards, machines do this parallel.

So what I want to say is we've come to the point, I call this the age of "narrow artificial intelligence. " It's narrow artificial intelligence because these machines are very intelligent, very good in their specific trained field. Training machines got cheaper and faster and easier than ever.

The more processing power you have and the more data you have, the easier there is to train a machine. And these machines today, we used to train them, we already have today machines who we have taught to train themselves. So you don't have to teach them that they have to learn, they know how to learn themselves.

So you give them a task, and then they solve it. And they solve it in ways we can't imagine ourselves. They solve it different and faster and maybe more creative than we do.

And narrow artificial intelligence are there already. We just don't always see them. Google is using them to figure out what you will type in before you type it in, yes?

Netflix is using narrow artificial intelligence to decide what you should watch before you thought about this. We all have artificial intelligences at home. Either it's there in your smartphone or it is at Cortana from Microsoft or it's from Amazon Echo.

Well, it's not smart for you, but I know kids who speak with Siri every day for a couple of hours. For them, this is real communication; they don't think about this, "Oh, this is just a machine, and it's stupid. " We all have seen this - self-driving cars.

This is a form of narrow artificial intelligence too. And there's not only one solution: Tesla has one; BMW and Commodore AI are working solutions. There's even more than one version out of this.

Ten years ago, we thought that this is future, but this is real. And it will come - we will see it in the cities, and this will be there and will increase. There are self-driving trucks based on artificial intelligences.

This is real, too, it's proven. It's just policies and legislation take way longer until we see it on the road. You can use artificial intelligence almost in every object; it's like a layer.

You see it or don't see it. It is everywhere. Wherever you have a computer, you can put artificial intelligence in there, and they can do something for us.

That means machines work. Machines work for us; that's why we invent them. We invent them so they work for us.

They work for us 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They don't complain, they don't want a raise, they don't go on a strike, and they get cheaper the more you use them, they get more efficient the more we use them. We use machines to do the physical work we don't like to do.

We use machines to do the boring work we don't like to do. And we use machines to do the thinking work we honestly don't like to do anymore. (Laughter) And what is the benefit for us?

Well, the benefit for us is we have more "lebenszeit," we have more time to live. We only have, in an average life, 4,500 weeks. So time is - and we learned this today - is very scarce; the most scarce thing we have, the only limited resource in our life.

So when the machines do the work for us, we have more time to live. We have more time for the important things in life, which is family, which is friends, which is traveling, your wife, your husband, your kids. It's reading a book; it's travel the world.

It's doing something for the community or start a company. When the machines do the work for us, we have more time to be human. However, and this is the first people ask me, "What about jobs?

" And honestly, I won't tell you, well, this is, you know, going to end very easy. Yes, machines are there, and they're continuing to do the jobs for us because we want this. That's why we invent them.

Because they are supposed to do the things we don't like to do. So there's the estimation that only in, let's say, in Germany the next 20 years, 5 to 10 million jobs will be replaced by machines. For Europe, it's 50 million.

We speak about hundreds of millions of jobs which could be replaced by machines, robots and computers over the next decades. Just think about sales agents, think about customer support, taxi drivers, cab drivers and so on. This is just a small list I compiled.

I asked a couple of people what jobs could be replaced, and there are a lot of jobs there. The good thing is it won't replace you personally right away. It's more that you will use artificial intelligence to do more out of your job.

You'll use artificial intelligence and computers to leverage what you do today. But in the long run, companies just hire less people because AI plus humans is enough than, let's say, 20 or 30 humans did this before. So AI is just there in supporting you; it won't replace you right away.

Just in the long term, we'll need less people to have the same productivity and output. And it's everywhere there. When you sit in front of the computer, yes, AI will replace you.

If you're working with people, AI is not there yet. You're on the safe side. And this is something we should not be afraid of, but we need to discuss.

This is something we need to be aware of, that this will come, and that's why I'm here today. We need to speak about a system where we don't have to work anymore. Yes, we need to speak about the system which I call the "jobless future.

" I have this picture of a future where we don't have to work anymore; we only work because we want to. We only do the things which are our passion. We only do the things which we have a drive for.

We get up in the morning because we really want to do this. It does not have to be for the money; it can be for a deeper and higher meaning. So we need to speak about the system, how we can do this.

I don't have the solution. There are things we can discuss, like unconditional basic income and so forth. But we need to figure this out as a society, how we do this transition from, you know, a present, where we have to work to survive, to a future where this is optional, and where job is not necessary to have a good living and to be human.

For the end, let's look a little bit back, for the last 150 years. For the last five generations, life got really, really good for us humans. I can say that we are living in the greatest time of human history, even if we don't see it.

Our average life expectancy doubled. Yes, everyone older than 30 here in this room? Yes?

You can be happy to live today because only 100 years ago you would be dead, most likely. We have way, way more money in our pocket. Our average income and wealth increased to 600 to 1,000% just in the Western countries.

And at the same time, we work less. We work half the time we used to work 100 years ago. Average working time was 80 hours.

Today, we work 35 to 40 hours on average. So we live longer, we are healthier, we have more money in our pocket, can buy more things, we work less for this, and this is the trend we have. This is the progress we had in the last 150 years because we embrace technologies.

Yes, with every new thing which will come - which can be AI, AGI, super intelligence, nanorobotics. virtual reality and so forth - we have challenges. It has challenges for you as a person, for our system we're living in, for companies and so forth, but it's also opportunities.

And they would bring us a better life, a more happy life. This is the future I'm fighting for. This is the future I think we should all fight for.

And this is what I'm living for, that we'll all achieve it. Thank you.