All language subtitles for cyberwar.s01e16.720p.hdtv.x264-w4f_Track02

BEN: It's the DNA of
the next tech revolution.

This is such a huge data set
that there's no way that a human

or even a team of humans
can look at all of it.

The race for artificial
intelligence is on.

In quantum, you have this
thing called a qubit,

which can be zero and
one at the same time,

and that's where the
power comes from.

AI might make our
lives better...

The life expectancy
for human civilization

might then easily measure
in billions of years.

...but could it
destroy the human race?

You ought to be really
concerned about the strong AI

that has guns on it.

♪

As the host of Cyberwar, I've
travelled the world to talk to

brilliant hackers,
scientists and programmers,

and many of them have told
me they're thinking about

artificial intelligence.

Today we're in the
middle of an AI boom.

Huge advancements in
artificial intelligence

have made things like Siri and
self-driving cars possible.

AI is in video games,
security surveillance systems,

smart home devices, and
advanced weapons systems.

But as researchers race to
make the next breakthrough,

a lot are warning that
we haven't actually

thought this through.

And it's not necessarily
the Terminator scenario

they're afraid of, where an
AI system becomes self aware

and decides to kill us all.

The real threat could lie
in the unintended consequences

no one sees coming.

I'm at Stanford University,
where researchers are designing

AI that comes in a very
non-threatening package.

Meet Jackrabbot, a cute little
machine that's built to navigate

and move through
crowds of human buddies.

This is a robot that's
programmed to learn on its own,

through example.

This technique,
called "deep learning",

has been fuelling a lot of
recent AI breakthroughs.

Alexandre Alahi and Alexandre
Robicquet are part of a team

that built Jackrabbot, and they
say their little creation

is more advanced than
a self-driving car.

So the robot enter the scene,
analyze it, and then

navigate through it according
to all the data that we gather.

So it's just watching people,
and looking at people,

and what they're doing,
and judging, you know,

the space and the time?

Yeah, and also trying to
understand how they interact

between each other.

The main aspect would be
to understand well, how...

what is a safe distance
that I keep with someone else,

or how do I accelerate or
decelerate when I get close

to someone and
react accordingly?

So how do you
gather that information?

You just like...
this just looks like

some sort of
surveillance footage.

So last summer, our team spent
like 2 months gathering daily

at rush hour, top view data
from the Stanford crowd,

so we can actually
understand how they avoid,

how they behave and how
they navigate in such a crowd.

Let's go, robot.

Free!

So wait, he's being
controlled by you?

For right now, yeah.

So does he have a
fully autonomous mode?

Yeah, he could.

And what does he do?
He just follows?

No, we actually can give him--
like if you map the place

and the area, he can go
from point A to point B,

but we're just having a simple
collision avoidance right now.

But like you train to avoid
every single obstacle

and go where you want him to go.

Can we drive him
around a little bit?

Yeah, absolutely.

And those-- that spinning thing,
that's just like a 3D sensor?

Right, right.

So we're capturing
depth data, visual data,

and we're combining all
these sensors to detect humans,

understand its surrounding
to look at itself,

and predict also
where people will go.

Do people freak out
when they see it a lot?

No, they like it a lot.

They come hug it,
they talk to it.

He doesn't... He
cannot talk yet.

Is that what you hope the
rise of the machines is?

It's a friendly
rise of the machines?

For that one, yes.

- Yeah.
- Absolutely.

Jackrabbot's creators
hope that as AI advances,

machines like this will
be built to carry luggage

through airports, or
help the blind navigate

through pedestrian traffic.

The Stanford team is working
to get AI to the point

where Jackrabbots can one day do

what most people can
just do by nature.

But today's computers are
already performing tasks

no human is capable
of performing,

even if it's not quite AI.

That technology
continues to evolve,

and the so-called supercomputer
is at the cutting edge.

Bryan Biegel works in
NASA's Advanced Supercomputing

Division, where they're working
with machines that can actually

help us see into the future...

Let's go to the vislab, and I'll
show you some of the things

that our users do
with our supercomputers.

...using code so advanced
it took 15 years to write.

Yeah, so this is actually a
simulation of Earth's oceans.

This is... It uses measured
data from NASA's satellites

and puts it into a
really huge computer model

on the supercomputers, and
predicts the ocean behaviour.

So this single simulation
actually used up to 70,000

processors, and generated
over 3 petabytes of data.

That's like 10,000 times
what you would have

on your entire laptop.

Let me show you
this in full scale.

This is actually scaled down so
you can see it on the monitors,

but if I go to the next one,

you can see what the full-scale
version of this simulation is.

For example, this is the
ice over Antarctic Ocean,

and you can see where it cracks,

and it sends ripples
out into the ocean.

And they're working on...

they're still continuing to
advance the accuracy of this

model so they can predict
decades into the future.

Would you say this is
artificial intelligence?

It seems like it's
getting there, right?

It's so complex, but we have
programmed in this case

every single line of this code.

It's a little different
than artificial intelligence,

where it's more of a--
even more of a black box,

where we don't know exactly
how it's gonna work

and how that artificial
brain is gonna evolve.

Why would NASA be interested
in artificial intelligence?

Well, there are a few reasons.

Of course NASA's trying to send
artificial probes further and

further out into the solar
system, and eventually beyond.

We can't program those
for all of the things that

it's gonna encounter, so we need
them to be able to do their job

without us constantly telling
them everything to do.

Even in interpreting
data like this,

this is such a huge data set
that there's no way that

a human or even a team of
humans can look at all of it.

Computing is gonna continue to
expand dramatically over even

the next 10 years, and so we'll
be able to do an even better job

of modeling the
history of the universe,

the future of the universe,
the history and future

of our planet, and go further
in exploring our universe.

to artificial
intelligence could be creating

systems that take cues from
the way our own brains work,

using a process
called "deep learning".

I'm here at Berkeley to meet
one of the leading minds

in the development of AI.

Stuart Russell has been at
this for more than 20 years.

He co-wrote THE
definitive textbook on AI,

and he understands both
its promise and its dangers.

So the brain has an
enormous network of neurons.

So a neuron is a cell
that has these long,

thin connections
to other neurons,

so it kind of looks like a big
tangle of electrical spaghetti.

And we have tens of
billions of neurons,

and deep learning networks are
much, much, much simpler.

What's similar about them is
that both the brain and these

deep learning networks can learn
how to perform a given function,

and they learn by being
given lots of examples.

But deep learning
networks, for example,

if you want to learn to
recognize cats and dogs

and candles and... staplers
and things like that,

you can show it millions of
photographs with these things,

with labeled things
is what they are.

So on tasks like recognizing
a wide range of categories,

the computations they run
now have a thousand different

categories of objects.

And in the last five years,
we've gone from systems that

might get 5% accuracy on
that thousand category task

to systems that are
getting 98% accuracy.

So you've been at
this for a while.

I mean, how does it make you
feel, that the progress now

is becoming exponential?

The exponential word is
a dangerous one, 'cause...

(Laughing)

'cause it tends to suggest
that things will continue to

accelerate without end, but
it may turn out that it will

plateau, and that for other
tasks we need new breakthroughs.

Quantum computing?

Quantum computing possibly,

but that's kind of a
cheat in some sense.

That says that rather
than really understand

how the brain manages
to do these amazing tasks

with what is really
not that much hardware,

and so I almost hope
that quantum computing...

Doesn't happen.

Doesn't happen, or happens a
long time in the future where--

and you know, give us a chance
to keep working on finding

the secrets of intelligence,
the things that make us smart,

and gain real understanding.

'Cause just brute forcing it
isn't really understanding

what's going on.

Quantum computing may
be the next giant leap

in building the artificial
intelligence of the future.

It's a technology so powerful
that we really could use it

to develop AI without
having to understand

how human learning works.

And though Stuart Russell
hopes that quantum computing

won't happen for a long time,

Rupak Biswas can't
wait - and he isn't.

He runs the Quantum Artificial
Intelligence Lab at NASA's

Ames Research Center, where
scientists are working on

a powerful experimental
computer called the D-Wave.

It's built on the
principles of quantum mechanics,

which I was hoping
Rupak could explain to me.

If someone tells you that
they'll explain to you

what quantum mechanics is,
you should run away from them

because no one really
understands this field.

- (Laughing)
- It's a very complex field.

Rupak agreed to show me
NASA's quantum computer.

This is the D-Wave
quantum annealing system.

So what you'll see here
is basically a black box,

and that is where the
D-Wave processor is.

This is the Star Trek computer
that's more powerful--

million of times more powerful
than anything Microsoft's got.

Well sure, yeah, for certain
classes of problems, yes.

This is something that
is really more powerful,

and we expect to get a lot
of research done on this.

NASA is hoping to use the
quantum computer to develop

quantum algorithms, and
algorithms are a key component

of the code running AI.

In layman's terms, an
algorithm is a kind of recipe

for solving a problem.

Basically, it's the set of
step-by-step instructions

given to a computer to
help it accomplish a task.

The question here though is that
the algorithm could be different

on a supercomputer than
on a quantum computer,

even though you are trying
to solve the same problem.

So then what is the difference?

Because, you know, to a
lot of people when you say

supercomputer and
quantum computer,

aren't they all
supercomputers?

What's the difference?

Right, so supercomputers
are basically--

it's based on this transistor,
and the transistor is...

in layman terms, is
basically a very small switch.

So it's either zero or one.

So a bit - and in a traditional
computer, it's called a bit -

it's either zero or one, whereas
in quantum you have this thing

called a qubit, which can be
zero and one at the same time.

And that's essentially the
difference between a computer or

a supercomputer or what we would
consider classical computing

versus quantum computing, where
the quantum computer allows you

to be in two stages
at the same time.

And that's where
the power comes from.

A quantum computer could
help solve problems

that no technology
can solve today;

finding cures for diseases
or designing space colonies.

But what if we choose to use
that awesome computing power

for destructive purposes?

You know, if you think
about nuclear energy,

you can use nuclear energy to
solve world's energy problems,

but you can also use
it for bad things.

You know, so all
of these things,

if they are used improperly
and get in the wrong hands,

it could lead to trouble.

BEN: I'm in Oxford to meet
the founding engineer of Skype.

Since leaving the company,
Jaan Tallinn has become

one of the most prominent voices

in the field of
artificial intelligence.

He sees great
advantages in developing AI,

but he also warns of the risks
of making the technology more

powerful without understanding
its potential harms.

Once you have systems that are
basically smarter than humans

when it comes to developing
further intelligent systems,

then you have intelligent
systems developing

intelligent systems that
in turn go on to develop

even more intelligent systems.

And you have this
intelligence explosion.

He thinks the next step in AI

is the creation of so-called
"general intelligence".

What's the difference between
what we're producing now and

"general intelligence"
of the future?

If you think about a
chess-playing computer,

it's just modelling the
chessboard in its memory

and looking at scenarios
how this game can play out,

and what are the actions that
it can do on the chessboard.

So it actually would be good
from a chess-playing perspective

to not only model
the chessboard,

but also what's going on
in the brain of your opponent.

So it's one thing for a
computer to understand

the game of chess, but if
it can look up from the board

and understand me, that's
a whole new level of scary.

But I'm not the only
one that's worried.

In 2015, a group of prominent
thinkers signed an open letter,

warning researchers of the
risks of making AI more powerful

without understanding
its potential harms.

The signatories
include Stuart Russell,

Jaan Tallinn, Stephen
Hawking, and Elon Musk.

Nick Bostrom also
signed the letter.

He's a Swedish philosopher
who's concerned that

a mega-powerful AI that is
capable of fulfilling the goals

we give it could cause
our extinction.

What if we don't understand
the full consequences

of what we're asking it to do?

What if we leave a
crucial detail out?

Take the myth of King Midas.

You know, he asked...

everything he touches
should be turned into gold,

which sounds like a great idea
because you'll be very wealthy

if you can turn
coffee mugs into gold.

Then he touches his
food, it turns into gold,

he touches his daughter,
turns into a gold sculpture,

so not such a cool idea.

Turns out that it's actually
quite difficult to write down

some objective functions such
that it would actually be good

if that objective function
were maximally realized.

It seemed to me that this could
be the most important thing

in all of human history.

What happens if AI succeeds
at its original ambition?

Which has all along been
to achieve full general

intelligence, where we have
potentially artificial agents

that can strategize, can
deceive, that can form

long goals and find creative
ways of achieving them.

And at that point, that kind
of AI is not necessarily

best thought of as merely a
tool, merely another gadget.

At that point, really
talking about creating

another intelligent life form.

So could this potentially be -
AI - the last human invention?

Yeah, so once you have general
intelligence at the human or

superhuman level, then it's
not just that you have made

a breakthrough in AI, but
you have made indirectly

a breakthrough in every
other area as well.

So the AI can do
research, science,

development, all the
other things that humans do.

So potentially what you have
is a kind of telescoping of

the future, where all those
possible technologies that,

you know, maybe we would have
developed given 40,000 years

to work on it - you
know, space colonization,

cures for aging, all
these other things.

So in other words, we could
be this hyper-invincible,

space-hopping species with AI,

but we also could
go extinct by it?

Yeah.

I think... that machine
superintelligence is -

depending on how optimistic
you feel on a given day -

either the keyhole through which

Earth-originating
intelligent life has to pass,

and we could crash into the wall

instead of actually
going through this.

But if you make
it through there,

then the life expectancy for
human civilization might then

easily measure in
billions of years.

BEN: The scientists and
philosophers working on

artificial intelligence are sure
that AI can improve our lives,

yet the same people worry
that it could destroy us.

But how would that happen?

- Hi, I'm Ben.
- Hi!

- Nice to meet you, Ben.
- Nice to meet you.

What if the AI we build is
actually designed to kill?

Heather Roff has testified
before the UN as an expert

on autonomous weapons.

I once sat next to a
grad student on a plane,

and he told me that he
was an AI researcher.

And so I was very
interested, saying,

"What is it that you work on?"

And he said, "Well, I
work on image recognition."

And I was like, "Really?
Tell me more about that."

And he said, "Well, I'm
looking at how we identify

different birds,
and how we identify

different types of
coral and starfish."

And I said, "Who
funds your research?"

And he said, "The
Office of Naval Research."

And I said, "Do you really
think that your research

is going to be confined
to birds and starfish?"

And he didn't actually
have an answer for me.

He didn't really think
through the next step.

How bad would it be if
superintelligence is developed

by the military?

So I think if a
superintelligence emerges,

we're all in trouble
for a variety of reasons.

One of the things that we know
about military applications

is that they're not for the
benefit of humanity, right?

They're directed
towards offensive harming.

We're not talking about
creating an AI that's gonna be

trying to solve...
climate change

or solve-- or create poetry.

We're not worried about
those types of AI applications.

We could be worried about those
ones becoming superintelligent,

but you ought to be really
concerned about the strong AI

that has guns on it.

What does a superintelligent
weapon look like?

A superintelligence could
be connected to everything.

If it has a network, it has a
capability of being connected

through Wi-Fi, or it
could figure out new ways of

connecting itself if
you shut off that Wi-Fi.

It could propagate itself
and its software

on different servers
and different things

so you could never
really truly get rid of it.

It could hook itself into
missile defense systems

and nuclear arsenals, and it
could do whatever it liked.

I mean, that's the whole thing
about being a superintelligence,

is you're everywhere.

You're, you know...

Think Skynet but scarier.

(Chuckling)

Wow, can't wait.

(Laughing)

Thanks to all those AI
researchers for getting that.

Well, I mean, the
AI researchers...

I think it's not
fair to blame them.

I think they're trying to do
things that are good with AI.

It's the moment someone takes
a scalpel from the surgeon

and makes it a
knife for killing.

But others think the
greatest dangers will come from

unintended consequences, as
Jaan Tallinn explained to me.

I don't think it's correct to
say that AI is a technology

just like any other technology,
or tool like any other tool.

No, it's a technology that
can potentially create

new technologies itself.

Now, there are a lot of
smart people, as we know,

looking into this problem
and this issue, and...

Not enough though.

- Not enough?
- No.

Like imagine that we are
building a spaceship that's able

to carry the entire humanity.

And like the
boarding has already begun,

and children are
already onboard.

And then there's like a small
group of people who used to be

completely ignored,
who are saying that,

"Look, we're gonna need
some steering on this ship."

And now people are going
like, "Oh, wait a minute.

Yeah, steering
might become handy."

(Laughing)

But in this case,
steering is, what,

programming the AI to make sure
that it doesn't kill us all?

I think the more general
point is that whenever you're

a technology developer, you
have the responsibility of...

thinking through the
consequences of your actions.

♪

It might be an incredibly subtle
process which eventually ends up

with the human race becoming
sort of enfeebled and dependent

on machines in ways
that leave us vulnerable

to any kind of unexpected event.

Is it possible right now we're
almost tripping over ourselves,

in that we're coming up
with discoveries about AI

and we don't really realize
the full implications of

what we'd just discovered,
and we just use it?

You know, for centuries
or millennia or even--

"It'll never happen,"
you hear that, you know.

"We don't have to worry,
it's just impossible."

The history of nuclear
physics, there was a...

a speech by Rutherford.

He's the guy who split the atom.

In 1933, September 11th, he
said, "There is no possibility

that we'll ever be able to
extract energy from atoms."

Less than 24 hours
later, Szilard invented

the neutron-based
nuclear chain reaction,

and instantly realized what
it would mean in terms of

the ability to create
nuclear explosions.

So it went from
never to 24 hours.

The scientist who split
the atom didn't understand

that his discovery would so
quickly lead to the atom bomb.

But the same discovery later
gave us the energy that still

provides electricity to
millions around the world.

When it comes to AI, it seems
like we're about to split

the proverbial atom again.

The future of humanity
could be at stake.

And how we build AI now -
what we design it to do -

could make the difference.