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UWI TODAY
– SUNDAY 6 MAY, 2018
EMERGING TECHNOLOGY
There is a very powerful scene
near the climax of the film
Blade Runner 2046. A synthetic man mourns the death
of a holographic woman, wondering if their emotions for
each other were even real. Two artificial people telling a
story so human.
For those who are optimistic about the future of
artificial intelligence it’s one of AI’s biggest selling points –
the ability to enhance and even magnify humanity.
“It is my dearest hope,” says Eleanor “Nell” Watson,
“that these emerging technologies will help us exalt the
human in all of us.”
Watson – writer, engineer and entrepreneur¬ – was
in Trinidad and Tobago to give a Distinguished Open
Lecture at UWI St. Augustine on AI and education on
April 6. Hosted by the UWI Open Lectures Committee, her
presentationwas an inspiring, and at times chilling, window
into the future of both machine intelligence and mankind.
“Today there is an emerging form of computation and
machine intelligence which is less about ones and zeros.
It is getting away from the logical side of computing and
into something muchmore intuitive, creative and organic,”
Watson said to a packed audience at the Teaching and
Learning Complex.
Students, staff andmembers of the public gasped at the
sorcery-like examples of AI power during her presentation
on “Artificial Intelligence and Educating for Tomorrow.”
They giggled and fidgeted at unnerving and alien displays
of machine creativity. They nodded to her hopeful message
of what an AI-rich world could be.
“It’s a little bit scary and a little bit exciting,” she said.
“And both of those emotions together are exhilaration. I
want you to feel exhilarated.”
Watson attributes the advances inmachine intelligence
to three factors: an enormous increase in graphical
computing power (a 25-time increase in the last five years
alone), an explosion of data (in 2018 an estimated five
Exabytes of data doubling every twominutes) and amassive
increase in machine intelligence algorithms.
“Computation is moving to the edge,” she said,
pointing specifically to Blockchain, the system created to
act as the transaction ledger for Bitcoin. There is enough
computational power in Blockchain “that we could probably
emulate the human brain if we knew how,” she said.
These three factors have led to the development of
creative machines.
“We are at the point where anything that the human
brain does in one second or less can now be replicated by
machines,” she said, “for example, recognising a person,
transcribing between text, speech and language, making
an aesthetic impression, whether something is beautiful
or interesting.”
She showed examples of machine art, realistic paintings
of birds and people, as well as haunting and strange organic-
by very big ideas and questions. And understandably so, she
grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, during the ethno-conflict
in Northern Ireland.
“I experienced different bombings during my
childhood,” she said. “It led me to have some very deep
questions about what had happened to society for this to
be occurring; the dynamics that can take different societies
in different directions. And if that is the case how might
one perhaps influence things towards peace, towards
flourishing, towards greater friendships. That experience
has been one that greatly affected me from a young age and
I’m still puzzling it out.”
The fact that her focus is much bigger than AI was
evident in the lecture. The entire second half dealt with
education, specifically educating future generations in the
rapidly changing world.
“Our schools are still trying tomake us factory workers
because they were established 150 to 200 years ago. To
prepare our children for the world of tomorrow we need
to be producing chefs not cooks. Cooks follow the recipe,”
she said.
“I think education needs to change to reflect these
changes. Perhaps we need to focus less on theThree Rs and
more on the Three Cs – complex problem-solving, critical
and creative thinking, and collaboration and empathy.”
She is not blind to the risks AI can pose – from both
the machine side and the human side. Machine ethics is
about using the appropriate data to engage AI in ethical
deep learning.
“About 50% of the traffic on the Internet today is Bots.
30%of themare actually nasty Bots – spamming, scamming
or impersonating human beings. So where is that going
to take us? Are we going to have flesh vs. steel fights? You
know I’d rather reframe it as something less antagonistic.
I’d rather reframe it. AI is growing up like a young child
but it’s up to us to teach it and raise it right.”
Teaching people however, may be more difficult.
Speaking specifically about what AI can reveal about
our own nature and its limitations, she is concerned that
humanity may suffer “narcissistic wounds”. And people
wounded in this way are dangerous.
“I do not know what is coming for machines but I do
understand human nature and I hope we can find a way to
soften the blow,” she says.
Nevertheless she remains cautiously optimistic. The
latest entry on her blog is entitled “Pragmatic Optimism.”
In particular, she is excited about the possibilities of the
combination of machine intelligence, the computing power
of Blockchain andmachine ethics. “Cryptomics” as she calls
them. With them, she believes we can achieve “a society
more phenomenal than you can possibly imagine.”
“I am,” she says, “deeply nostalgic for a future which
has yet to arrive.”
looking art and engineering. This was the most surprising
aspect of her lecture. Discussions on AI and technology in
general usually revolve around productivity, efficiency and
wealth generation. Her talk was very different.
“I think in the 2020s and beyond we are going to see
the emergence of technologies that augment our hearts
and our souls and will help us to understand ourselves
better and connect more with other people. To be able to
see people in three dimensions instead of two,” she said in
an interview afterwards.
Watson herself has incredible computing power. By age
24 she was teaching postgraduate computer science. Soon
after she moved on to become a tech entrepreneur. Her
resume is both lengthy and unique – including co-founding
QuantaCorp (a company based around technology that can
accurately size a person from a scan and two photos), and
EthicsNet, a non-profit focused on developing “machine
ethics” for AI.
On stage her clear and inspirational speaking style is
magnetic, but one on one, it’s almost a barrier. She answers
deep philosophical questions immediately, drawing from
ancient history, Nietzsche and the most cutting edge
technology, but struggles with questions like what she does
for fun and the kind of music she likes. She seems consumed
“It is my dearest hope,”
says Eleanor “Nell” Watson,
“that these
emerging technologies will help us exalt the human in all of us.”
PHOTO: ATIBA CUDJOE
Heady
Machinery
B Y J O E L H E N R Y
