 Thank you, Gerard. You know while they're setting up here, I have to say it's always been a goal of mine to ask questions of a futurist and the reason for that as strange as it sounds is plausible futures Always seem plausible But how you connect them to the present is really what what makes people feel like those are really sound plausible So what I wanted to do is take you into maybe a few areas of if you don't mind of kind of those differing views that you mentioned and So let's start with You made a statement and you've written about these Uniquely human elements and I think there's a whole camp of folks out there that would say right now that All biological systems are algorithmic. How do you respond to that? Well, the argument that says that we are essentially fancy machines You know, it's not new it's been around for a long time all the way back to the philosophers You know, I think if we are fancy machines and we're far away from understanding what the fancy machine is so my theory is that if We are fancy machines. We may find out in a hundred years how we actually work in the meantime We operate on so many channels That compared to computer are a magnitude larger So there's things that we can't really define the pulunia paradox, right? We we do things that we don't know and we can't automate what we don't know like creativity I mean try to define a computer can write a piece of music. Yes But is that creativity? I think that we can Safely say for the time being it's kind of beyond us to describe how we do this, you know, what is love and happiness? You may argue that eventually we can discover the code behind happiness. I Think that's probably further away than we have to think about at this point, but Well, when you as you think about and have projected from the present to the future I would describe you as an optimist. I think that came through in your your brief remarks there, but Do you ever wonder if you are merely being an optimist in that view? Do you feel like? Do you feel like there's enough people working on these problems that? They're putting you in a position where you worry a little bit and you just don't write about it and talk about it Yeah, well, I mean It's funny, you know sometimes sometimes I have speaking engagements where people are saying wow that was really like dystopian I'm worried now, you know And I haven't even started for the argument. Yeah Clearly you could look at these things and say, you know that it's quite clear that Machines will take us over in 50 years or that we can rebuild humanity or program our babies or you know That's Hollywood material really. I think in many ways. Yes, it becomes possible But these are enormous powers that we're unleashing The solution is not to go back and de-leash the power that that's just not doable The solution is to say what do we do with this enormous power if we can program human genes? What are the rules? So if you take that one for instance, the UK is allowing testing right now of three-party Artificial insemination you find a genetic defect you bring a third party's DNA three three produced two When you get to that then it's a really simple logical step to say Well, let's just do a catalog of what they're likely to look like and then let's just pick our babies out of a catalog You know is as you think about that what's you you mentioned what are the ethical implications? How do you think about? This is it a collective View of it or do we have to get into every individual use case and play mother may I because these technologies are often Born for good and they end up in a very different place pretty quickly William Gibson once said the science fiction writer that technology is morally neutral until we use it So that the solution is really quite simple if this technology does not further human happiness Then it's probably not a good idea So to have babies when you're three would with the three personal relationship But probably results in happiness in most cases, but the idea of saying that you're gonna have a catalog of skills you want to pick right That will probably not result in happiness and then it's hard to of course to say who exactly would decide that right yeah But the bottom line is for example, you know clearly we would all agree that a drone or robot that can kill without Human supervision would not result in human happiness, you know And I think we all agree on that except of course for the US and the UK which make them but different just go But you know the bottom line is you know there we have those issues of practicality, so It really comes down to a key question. Will this actually make us happier or just more dependent on The process yeah, so let's if we could there are a couple subjects that you talked about that were intriguing and One of them is data ownership If data is oil here, and you you know draw a parallel about territorial rights ownership involvement of others Ignorance of the you know the person delivering the data you're walking around in the old world emitting photons and we're translating all of that into We need to talk to you to figure out what it is now. We don't have to Talk to you if I had no interest in anything other than what you do all day and none in knowing you That that starts to lean towards creepy So how do you think about data ownership in in this world and how do you feel about the data? You're producing today for people who provide you services Well in a nutshell you we made a deal You know in the first iteration of the internet that we said we get all this stuff for free including movies and films and you know We just give our data in return and then we get this universe of pleasure So Facebook, right? So we give this data and then we meet others and we have the great platform But just five years ago kind of turned around to where we have become the content of these systems And so now I like to use the word data mining with an eye And then I think what we have to do is data mining with a Y So that we are able to say well this deal goes this far and not further And the companies that do this that just as responsible as the companies who make the guns Yeah, you know who like to say that you know guns don't kill people but people kill people and what a stupid argument but This idea of saying okay the companies that make these tools and be they artificial intelligence or search engines or They are becoming responsible for the possibilities of usage Not like a network carrier that carries a network, but a platform. That's a whole different thing so Basically comes down to this now We come we come to the point where these technologies are so powerful That they use to the platform provider has increasingly generated more value than they used to us And that's fairly new And now when it needs to be leveled out in some way that we get control back and also get the benefit back And that's what's happening right now. That's the discussion of this And I think that's when we have a give and take that is proportionate and in addition Now we're going to start paying for things like we are for Spotify or Netflix That we used to take for free and return for data So it's great for content owners because people are willing to pay rather than use their data Well, you know one of the more interesting cases that or things technologies that I've seen in the last sort of while as a university that Decided to hack the data to produce a different result and they were doing things like altering Pictures that were being sent inside text messages. So I know you're you and you send me something in the pictures Just very different. How do you think about you mentioned one of your exceptions? being terrorism But you know, if you just think about the cyber threat in this world and the ability to make it very hard to find embedded Challenges where the machine in the algorithm did exactly what they were instructed to do But someone altered the data and therefore started to have nefarious activity in in the outcomes Yes, well, of course, that's a complex question But I mean terrorism is a consequence of inequality primarily not of religion So when you change inequality by spending the benefits of technology With jobs and and for example, if every city in Europe becomes a smart city and every city in Africa remains not a smart city That is inequality So that's what we have to fix and in general I think that the the concept of saying that technology will fix a social or human problem is a bit far-fetched Yeah, I mean the way that we're gonna decide how we're gonna get along is not by having to ask you a bot But we have conversations I mean, this is what we do and this is why we're not data So we can decide how we do this and I think this is really important to realize Technology will take us give us the tools Yeah, and then we have to talk about who's in charge what the rules are and that's really up to us And that's what we're doing right now. That's why I'm an optimist, you know We're only at the beginning yeah off that process and we have a chance to maybe perhaps get this one right if we Get started early enough. So let's let's talk about kind of how that leads time frames of real threat and and Let's go to jobs. That seems to be where most of the debate is how many how big You know we you hear estimates with bold claims of 80% you hear some say it's not a big deal And so in that overall scheme of things I'd like your viewpoint But also kind of timestamp of where you think threats are and what does this trough of job loss and and The the trip to heaven that you showed there with the new industries that are born. What's that look like? Well, I think primarily the biggest problem is today that we're teaching our kids to Act like robots. I Mean most schools teach our kids how to fulfill a plan or organize something in the way that it used to work So we're actually teaching our kids for jobs that don't exist by the time they come out What our kids really need is to make their own job to find the creativity to tell stories to be kids Yes, they have to understand technology. So that's if your kid can program and they can story tell that's fantastic So we have to start with that because it's totally clear that all of the routine work will be done by machines Once they are smart enough. That's ten years away That is taken out the garbage clean in the airport Fixing your fast food meal, you know that it's it's a job, but it's kind of routine So we're going to move up the food chain into the next level of job, right? And it's very hard to tell a taxi driver that when he's out of the job Then he's going to move up the food chain to you know to screen a movie or something You know that's that that's kind of far-fetched, right? So there's a bit of a gap there that we have to address They will need social measures and automation tax. I Think that's a very big debate because you know nobody likes taxes But we're in the in the place where we have a rampant shift of the entire logic of work, right? but in 20 years Technology will enable us to work less make the same money and do entirely different things So this is a sort of interim period where we need to Help so we're going to move back to foraging again. Is that kind of well? There's a lot of folk are saying that in in 20 years technology will enable us to really do the work that we absolutely have to do as humans Which means two or three four hours a day make the same money And contribute to society in a whole different way. It's called the Star Trek economy. There's a nickname for this, right? I'm quite hopeful that we can achieve that but it's going to take a lot of wisdom and Organization and restructuring of the of the work paradigm. So then if you could just project that into the a broader education Discussion you you mentioned what we teach in schools. What about the the displaced along the way? What's what's the role of education there? Because there's far more people working today that will feel pinched on hours or you know We'll get some some automation Jobs maybe get trim not lost But how do you think about what we need to do to educate, you know grown people have families and you know have busy lives I believe that most people are pretty much all people have that potential to discover something else That we have to allow that to be unlocked So it's a question of empowerment also in the job if you're a taxi driver What is your next destination of the job is no longer going to be there? That's a tough question because it's not that hard to drive taxi, right? but Still I believe that people have those skills and we have to find the space for this and and for example in Switzerland We have we had a vote last year on the guaranteed minimum income And it was rejected but 26% of people in Switzerland said that's a good idea That's will be very far-fetched to introduce that here at the current discussion that but I think that The thinking is that we're going to disconnect work and money in some way and that is basically the result of technology. Yeah Large-scale shifts, I think we we just need to be aware of that process happening I mean if you're running call centers, that's 42 million jobs 95% of those jobs and call centers will not exist in 10 years because software is no longer stupid. Yeah They can actually do this. Yeah And so you have 5,000 people left and so that is a challenge that we have to think about as a society as a government as as a Company to reassign and retrain, you know education is something that we do every single day for the rest of our lives It doesn't end when you when you quit college But in some respects though It it it does practically end for a whole bunch of people who their learnings are inside the company They're cultural there, you know get learn the language the people the processes and those don't translate well So, you know, how do you think about that? the main thing you know I work with lots of large companies on this we have to Encourage companies to not think of their employees as robots, you know that execute things efficiency, right? You know the the the the obsession with efficiency everything has to be efficient, right? But people aren't efficient If we make everything efficient, we wouldn't have any people that that's the end result, right? So efficiency is for robots It's nice to be efficient But really what we're seeking is to go beyond efficiency to creating new things that new possibilities And that is what companies have to do is to not just go with a CFO and say let's make it efficient and get rid of all These people they're expensive right pain in the butt and let's readjust those people to create new values And I think that's the primary discussion with companies we have to have yeah without getting into political differences What do you what would you view? the the role of Government in this I mean if you were to look and say you must make these be involved in these things What would the short list of those be? Government in general or here general not here. Yeah, we're gonna stay out of here and there All that stuff. Well the role of government is to do the things, you know that are complicated and difficult to do that require consensus And to look at those issues I think for example every single politician needs to know about artificial intelligence the job loss situation Potentially new jobs technology much more than they do. I mean most of those still have their emails printed, right? So how can you expect a person like that to decide on the future of of technology? Yeah, I mean three large decisions that are coming up right now one What do you allow machines to do in terms of intelligence? Second when it's about the human genome What are the rules and third geo-engineering? I'm gonna change when it rains or the sun shines. That's a serious proposal, right? Governments need to collaborate to make this work because for citizens that is We have our opinion on this, but this is the government job in my view. Yeah to address those issues and to have wisdom and It's quite clear. We're going to have Most governments will resort to 25 year old Kids and prevent this aside who will be like a CIO of the city of New York addressing those very issues women That's the other thing. That's a whole wave of new things coming in for this So I'm quite optimistic that governments will see this will take a little bit of pain for them Maybe to Get it going and if I could maybe for this portion one last question for you that links really into our business You showed a lot of you showed your connected cows as an example and you look at the role of Networking in this and really even down to the physical networking. How do you think about this? Sensory network and its explosion and its production of data its need to evolve Well, it's quite clear that connectivity is like oxygen now, right? So it's like this is what we need on The other hand of course connectivity is not something that we as humans always can handle So over connectivity, but it's like, you know now there's more people dying from obesity than dying from hunger I don't know if you know that fact, but it's kind of a sad fact, right? Yeah, it may be very well the same thing that we have more issues with over connectivity than we have connectivity And so we have to keep in mind that this is a tool, right? But once we become the tool and we live in this connectivity With with my neocortex connected to the internet. I may be losing a few things also. Yeah, so that it's about the balance that we know That will be the most important thing to strike fast in the future. When do we use the tool and when do we just stay with us? Yeah, so as you Look at that this thing together. You're you're optimistic. What would kind of be your the underlying quick version of Why an optimist all these facts you you clearly have command of the whole space What is it viscerally that makes you the optimist that comes down the two beliefs, you know one I believe that people are in principle good This may be foolish, but but This is a European way of life, right? We think that people by and large would do the right thing if you enable them If you don't believe that then you wouldn't want to go down the road of giving them on this kind of authority, right? The second one I think people have these capabilities That are just not used and we can put them into place to solve this problem as we can collaborate and the third one is we have time We're not at the point where we say, you know in five years this machine will come out the world So we have we have a runway of 20 years And I think we're already seeing lots of good starts at tech companies are looking to collaborate on AI Many companies are going towards this direction. So there's lots of good starts. I think this is what makes me an optimist great Well, thank you. I appreciate you being with us today. Thank you