ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Sebastian Thrun - Educator, entrepreneur
Sebastian Thrun is a passionate technologist who is constantly looking for new opportunities to make the world better for all of us.

Why you should listen

Sebastian Thrun is an educator, entrepreneur and troublemaker. After a long life as a professor at Stanford University, Thrun resigned from tenure to join Google. At Google, he founded Google X, home to self-driving cars and many other moonshot technologies. Thrun also founded Udacity, an online university with worldwide reach, and Kitty Hawk, a "flying car" company. He has authored 11 books, 400 papers, holds 3 doctorates and has won numerous awards.

More profile about the speaker
Sebastian Thrun | Speaker | TED.com
Chris Anderson - TED Curator
After a long career in journalism and publishing, Chris Anderson became the curator of the TED Conference in 2002 and has developed it as a platform for identifying and disseminating ideas worth spreading.

Why you should listen

Chris Anderson is the Curator of TED, a nonprofit devoted to sharing valuable ideas, primarily through the medium of 'TED Talks' -- short talks that are offered free online to a global audience.

Chris was born in a remote village in Pakistan in 1957. He spent his early years in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where his parents worked as medical missionaries, and he attended an American school in the Himalayas for his early education. After boarding school in Bath, England, he went on to Oxford University, graduating in 1978 with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics.

Chris then trained as a journalist, working in newspapers and radio, including two years producing a world news service in the Seychelles Islands.

Back in the UK in 1984, Chris was captivated by the personal computer revolution and became an editor at one of the UK's early computer magazines. A year later he founded Future Publishing with a $25,000 bank loan. The new company initially focused on specialist computer publications but eventually expanded into other areas such as cycling, music, video games, technology and design, doubling in size every year for seven years. In 1994, Chris moved to the United States where he built Imagine Media, publisher of Business 2.0 magazine and creator of the popular video game users website IGN. Chris eventually merged Imagine and Future, taking the combined entity public in London in 1999, under the Future name. At its peak, it published 150 magazines and websites and employed 2,000 people.

This success allowed Chris to create a private nonprofit organization, the Sapling Foundation, with the hope of finding new ways to tackle tough global issues through media, technology, entrepreneurship and, most of all, ideas. In 2001, the foundation acquired the TED Conference, then an annual meeting of luminaries in the fields of Technology, Entertainment and Design held in Monterey, California, and Chris left Future to work full time on TED.

He expanded the conference's remit to cover all topics, including science, business and key global issues, while adding a Fellows program, which now has some 300 alumni, and the TED Prize, which grants its recipients "one wish to change the world." The TED stage has become a place for thinkers and doers from all fields to share their ideas and their work, capturing imaginations, sparking conversation and encouraging discovery along the way.

In 2006, TED experimented with posting some of its talks on the Internet. Their viral success encouraged Chris to begin positioning the organization as a global media initiative devoted to 'ideas worth spreading,' part of a new era of information dissemination using the power of online video. In June 2015, the organization posted its 2,000th talk online. The talks are free to view, and they have been translated into more than 100 languages with the help of volunteers from around the world. Viewership has grown to approximately one billion views per year.

Continuing a strategy of 'radical openness,' in 2009 Chris introduced the TEDx initiative, allowing free licenses to local organizers who wished to organize their own TED-like events. More than 8,000 such events have been held, generating an archive of 60,000 TEDx talks. And three years later, the TED-Ed program was launched, offering free educational videos and tools to students and teachers.

More profile about the speaker
Chris Anderson | Speaker | TED.com
TED2017

Sebastian Thrun and Chris Anderson: What AI is -- and isn't

Filmed:
1,575,780 views

Educator and entrepreneur Sebastian Thrun wants us to use AI to free humanity of repetitive work and unleash our creativity. In an inspiring, informative conversation with TED Curator Chris Anderson, Thrun discusses the progress of deep learning, why we shouldn't fear runaway AI and how society will be better off if dull, tedious work is done with the help of machines. "Only one percent of interesting things have been invented yet," Thrun says. "I believe all of us are insanely creative ... [AI] will empower us to turn creativity into action."
- Educator, entrepreneur
Sebastian Thrun is a passionate technologist who is constantly looking for new opportunities to make the world better for all of us. Full bio - TED Curator
After a long career in journalism and publishing, Chris Anderson became the curator of the TED Conference in 2002 and has developed it as a platform for identifying and disseminating ideas worth spreading. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:12
Chris Anderson: Help us understand
what machine learning is,
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because that seems to be the key driver
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of so much of the excitement
and also of the concern
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around artificial intelligence.
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How does machine learning work?
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Sebastian Thrun: So, artificial
intelligence and machine learning
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is about 60 years old
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and has not had a great day
in its past until recently.
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And the reason is that today,
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we have reached a scale
of computing and datasets
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that was necessary to make machines smart.
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So here's how it works.
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If you program a computer today,
say, your phone,
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then you hire software engineers
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that write a very,
very long kitchen recipe,
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like, "If the water is too hot,
turn down the temperature.
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If it's too cold, turn up
the temperature."
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The recipes are not just 10 lines long.
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They are millions of lines long.
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A modern cell phone
has 12 million lines of code.
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A browser has five million lines of code.
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And each bug in this recipe
can cause your computer to crash.
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That's why a software engineer
makes so much money.
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The new thing now is that computers
can find their own rules.
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So instead of an expert
deciphering, step by step,
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a rule for every contingency,
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what you do now is you give
the computer examples
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and have it infer its own rules.
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A really good example is AlphaGo,
which recently was won by Google.
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Normally, in game playing,
you would really write down all the rules,
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but in AlphaGo's case,
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the system looked over a million games
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and was able to infer its own rules
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and then beat the world's
residing Go champion.
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That is exciting, because it relieves
the software engineer
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of the need of being super smart,
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and pushes the burden towards the data.
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As I said, the inflection point
where this has become really possible --
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very embarrassing, my thesis
was about machine learning.
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It was completely
insignificant, don't read it,
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because it was 20 years ago
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and back then, the computers
were as big as a cockroach brain.
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Now they are powerful enough
to really emulate
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kind of specialized human thinking.
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And then the computers
take advantage of the fact
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that they can look at
much more data than people can.
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So I'd say AlphaGo looked at
more than a million games.
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No human expert can ever
study a million games.
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Google has looked at over
a hundred billion web pages.
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No person can ever study
a hundred billion web pages.
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So as a result,
the computer can find rules
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that even people can't find.
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CA: So instead of looking ahead
to, "If he does that, I will do that,"
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it's more saying, "Here is what
looks like a winning pattern,
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here is what looks like
a winning pattern."
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ST: Yeah. I mean, think about
how you raise children.
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You don't spend the first 18 years
giving kids a rule for every contingency
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and set them free
and they have this big program.
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They stumble, fall, get up,
they get slapped or spanked,
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and they have a positive experience,
a good grade in school,
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and they figure it out on their own.
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That's happening with computers now,
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which makes computer programming
so much easier all of a sudden.
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Now we don't have to think anymore.
We just give them lots of data.
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CA: And so, this has been key
to the spectacular improvement
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in power of self-driving cars.
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I think you gave me an example.
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Can you explain what's happening here?
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ST: This is a drive of a self-driving car
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that we happened to have at Udacity
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and recently made
into a spin-off called Voyage.
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We have used this thing
called deep learning
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to train a car to drive itself,
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and this is driving
from Mountain View, California,
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to San Francisco
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on El Camino Real on a rainy day,
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with bicyclists and pedestrians
and 133 traffic lights.
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And the novel thing here is,
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many, many moons ago, I started
the Google self-driving car team.
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And back in the day, I hired
the world's best software engineers
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to find the world's best rules.
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This is just trained.
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We drive this road 20 times,
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we put all this data
into the computer brain,
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and after a few hours of processing,
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it comes up with behavior
that often surpasses human agility.
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So it's become really easy to program it.
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This is 100 percent autonomous,
about 33 miles, an hour and a half.
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CA: So, explain it -- on the big part
of this program on the left,
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you're seeing basically what
the computer sees as trucks and cars
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and those dots overtaking it and so forth.
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ST: On the right side, you see the camera
image, which is the main input here,
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and it's used to find lanes,
other cars, traffic lights.
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The vehicle has a radar
to do distance estimation.
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This is very commonly used
in these kind of systems.
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On the left side you see a laser diagram,
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where you see obstacles like trees
and so on depicted by the laser.
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But almost all the interesting work
is centering on the camera image now.
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We're really shifting over from precision
sensors like radars and lasers
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into very cheap, commoditized sensors.
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A camera costs less than eight dollars.
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CA: And that green dot
on the left thing, what is that?
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Is that anything meaningful?
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ST: This is a look-ahead point
for your adaptive cruise control,
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so it helps us understand
how to regulate velocity
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based on how far
the cars in front of you are.
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CA: And so, you've also
got an example, I think,
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of how the actual
learning part takes place.
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Maybe we can see that. Talk about this.
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ST: This is an example where we posed
a challenge to Udacity students
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to take what we call
a self-driving car Nanodegree.
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We gave them this dataset
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and said "Hey, can you guys figure out
how to steer this car?"
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And if you look at the images,
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it's, even for humans, quite impossible
to get the steering right.
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And we ran a competition and said,
"It's a deep learning competition,
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AI competition,"
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and we gave the students 48 hours.
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So if you are a software house
like Google or Facebook,
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something like this costs you
at least six months of work.
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So we figured 48 hours is great.
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And within 48 hours, we got about
100 submissions from students,
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and the top four got it perfectly right.
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It drives better than I could
drive on this imagery,
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using deep learning.
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And again, it's the same methodology.
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It's this magical thing.
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When you give enough data
to a computer now,
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and give enough time
to comprehend the data,
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it finds its own rules.
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CA: And so that has led to the development
of powerful applications
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in all sorts of areas.
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You were talking to me
the other day about cancer.
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Can I show this video?
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ST: Yeah, absolutely, please.
CA: This is cool.
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ST: This is kind of an insight
into what's happening
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in a completely different domain.
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This is augmenting, or competing --
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it's in the eye of the beholder --
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with people who are being paid
400,000 dollars a year,
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dermatologists,
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highly trained specialists.
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It takes more than a decade of training
to be a good dermatologist.
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What you see here is
the machine learning version of it.
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It's called a neural network.
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"Neural networks" is the technical term
for these machine learning algorithms.
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They've been around since the 1980s.
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This one was invented in 1988
by a Facebook Fellow called Yann LeCun,
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and it propagates data stages
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through what you could think of
as the human brain.
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It's not quite the same thing,
but it emulates the same thing.
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It goes stage after stage.
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In the very first stage, it takes
the visual input and extracts edges
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and rods and dots.
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And the next one becomes
more complicated edges
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and shapes like little half-moons.
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And eventually, it's able to build
really complicated concepts.
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Andrew Ng has been able to show
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that it's able to find
cat faces and dog faces
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in vast amounts of images.
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What my student team
at Stanford has shown is that
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if you train it on 129,000 images
of skin conditions,
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including melanoma and carcinomas,
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you can do as good a job
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as the best human dermatologists.
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And to convince ourselves
that this is the case,
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we captured an independent dataset
that we presented to our network
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and to 25 board-certified
Stanford-level dermatologists,
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and compared those.
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And in most cases,
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they were either on par or above
the performance classification accuracy
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of human dermatologists.
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CA: You were telling me an anecdote.
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I think about this image right here.
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What happened here?
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ST: This was last Thursday.
That's a moving piece.
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What we've shown before and we published
in "Nature" earlier this year
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was this idea that we show
dermatologists images
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and our computer program images,
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and count how often they're right.
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But all these images are past images.
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They've all been biopsied to make sure
we had the correct classification.
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This one wasn't.
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This one was actually done at Stanford
by one of our collaborators.
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The story goes that our collaborator,
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who is a world-famous dermatologist,
one of the three best, apparently,
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looked at this mole and said,
"This is not skin cancer."
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And then he had
a second moment, where he said,
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"Well, let me just check with the app."
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So he took out his iPhone
and ran our piece of software,
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our "pocket dermatologist," so to speak,
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and the iPhone said: cancer.
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It said melanoma.
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And then he was confused.
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And he decided, "OK, maybe I trust
the iPhone a little bit more than myself,"
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and he sent it out to the lab
to get it biopsied.
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And it came up as an aggressive melanoma.
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So I think this might be the first time
that we actually found,
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in the practice of using deep learning,
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an actual person whose melanoma
would have gone unclassified,
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had it not been for deep learning.
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CA: I mean, that's incredible.
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(Applause)
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It feels like there'd be an instant demand
for an app like this right now,
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that you might freak out a lot of people.
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Are you thinking of doing this,
making an app that allows self-checking?
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ST: So my in-box is flooded
about cancer apps,
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with heartbreaking stories of people.
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I mean, some people have had
10, 15, 20 melanomas removed,
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and are scared that one
might be overlooked, like this one,
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and also, about, I don't know,
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flying cars and speaker inquiries
these days, I guess.
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My take is, we need more testing.
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I want to be very careful.
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It's very easy to give a flashy result
and impress a TED audience.
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It's much harder to put
something out that's ethical.
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And if people were to use the app
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and choose not to consult
the assistance of a doctor
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because we get it wrong,
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I would feel really bad about it.
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So we're currently doing clinical tests,
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and if these clinical tests commence
and our data holds up,
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we might be able at some point
to take this kind of technology
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and take it out of the Stanford clinic
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and bring it to the entire world,
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places where Stanford
doctors never, ever set foot.
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CA: And do I hear this right,
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that it seemed like what you were saying,
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because you are working
with this army of Udacity students,
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that in a way, you're applying
a different form of machine learning
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than might take place in a company,
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which is you're combining machine learning
with a form of crowd wisdom.
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Are you saying that sometimes you think
that could actually outperform
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what a company can do,
even a vast company?
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ST: I believe there's now
instances that blow my mind,
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and I'm still trying to understand.
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10:58
What Chris is referring to
is these competitions that we run.
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11:02
We turn them around in 48 hours,
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and we've been able to build
a self-driving car
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that can drive from Mountain View
to San Francisco on surface streets.
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11:10
It's not quite on par with Google
after seven years of Google work,
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11:13
but it's getting there.
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11:16
And it took us only two engineers
and three months to do this.
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11:19
And the reason is, we have
an army of students
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11:22
who participate in competitions.
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11:24
We're not the only ones
who use crowdsourcing.
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11:26
Uber and Didi use crowdsource for driving.
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11:28
Airbnb uses crowdsourcing for hotels.
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11:31
There's now many examples
where people do bug-finding crowdsourcing
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11:35
or protein folding, of all things,
in crowdsourcing.
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11:38
But we've been able to build
this car in three months,
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11:41
so I am actually rethinking
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how we organize corporations.
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11:47
We have a staff of 9,000 people
who are never hired,
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11:51
that I never fire.
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11:53
They show up to work
and I don't even know.
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11:55
Then they submit to me
maybe 9,000 answers.
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11:58
I'm not obliged to use any of those.
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12:00
I end up -- I pay only the winners,
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1991
12:02
so I'm actually very cheapskate here,
which is maybe not the best thing to do.
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12:06
But they consider it part
of their education, too, which is nice.
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12:09
But these students have been able
to produce amazing deep learning results.
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12:14
So yeah, the synthesis of great people
and great machine learning is amazing.
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12:18
CA: I mean, Gary Kasparov said on
the first day [of TED2017]
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12:20
that the winners of chess, surprisingly,
turned out to be two amateur chess players
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12:26
with three mediocre-ish,
mediocre-to-good, computer programs,
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12:31
that could outperform one grand master
with one great chess player,
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12:34
like it was all part of the process.
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12:36
And it almost seems like
you're talking about a much richer version
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12:39
of that same idea.
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12:41
ST: Yeah, I mean, as you followed
the fantastic panels yesterday morning,
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12:45
two sessions about AI,
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12:47
robotic overlords and the human response,
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12:49
many, many great things were said.
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12:51
But one of the concerns is
that we sometimes confuse
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12:54
what's actually been done with AI
with this kind of overlord threat,
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12:58
where your AI develops
consciousness, right?
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13:01
The last thing I want
is for my AI to have consciousness.
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13:04
I don't want to come into my kitchen
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13:06
and have the refrigerator fall in love
with the dishwasher
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13:10
and tell me, because I wasn't nice enough,
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13:12
my food is now warm.
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13:14
I wouldn't buy these products,
and I don't want them.
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13:17
But the truth is, for me,
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13:19
AI has always been
an augmentation of people.
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13:22
It's been an augmentation of us,
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13:24
to make us stronger.
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13:26
And I think Kasparov was exactly correct.
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13:28
It's been the combination
of human smarts and machine smarts
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13:32
that make us stronger.
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13:34
The theme of machines making us stronger
is as old as machines are.
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13:39
The agricultural revolution took
place because it made steam engines
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13:43
and farming equipment
that couldn't farm by itself,
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13:46
that never replaced us;
it made us stronger.
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2122
13:48
And I believe this new wave of AI
will make us much, much stronger
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13:51
as a human race.
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13:53
CA: We'll come on to that a bit more,
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13:55
but just to continue with the scary part
of this for some people,
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13:59
like, what feels like it gets
scary for people is when you have
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3558
14:02
a computer that can, one,
rewrite its own code,
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4618
14:07
so, it can create
multiple copies of itself,
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3584
14:11
try a bunch of different code versions,
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1897
14:13
possibly even at random,
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14:14
and then check them out and see
if a goal is achieved and improved.
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14:18
So, say the goal is to do better
on an intelligence test.
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14:22
You know, a computer
that's moderately good at that,
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3894
14:26
you could try a million versions of that.
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2509
14:28
You might find one that was better,
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2090
14:30
and then, you know, repeat.
308
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2004
14:32
And so the concern is that you get
some sort of runaway effect
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3040
14:35
where everything is fine
on Thursday evening,
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3008
14:38
and you come back into the lab
on Friday morning,
311
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2336
14:41
and because of the speed
of computers and so forth,
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2449
14:43
things have gone crazy, and suddenly --
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14:45
ST: I would say this is a possibility,
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2020
14:47
but it's a very remote possibility.
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1916
14:49
So let me just translate
what I heard you say.
316
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3337
14:52
In the AlphaGo case,
we had exactly this thing:
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2704
14:55
the computer would play
the game against itself
318
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2315
14:58
and then learn new rules.
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1250
14:59
And what machine learning is
is a rewriting of the rules.
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3235
15:02
It's the rewriting of code.
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1769
15:04
But I think there was
absolutely no concern
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15:07
that AlphaGo would take over the world.
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15:09
It can't even play chess.
324
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1464
15:11
CA: No, no, no, but now,
these are all very single-domain things.
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5147
15:16
But it's possible to imagine.
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2879
15:19
I mean, we just saw a computer
that seemed nearly capable
327
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3089
15:22
of passing a university entrance test,
328
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2655
15:25
that can kind of -- it can't read
and understand in the sense that we can,
329
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3688
15:28
but it can certainly absorb all the text
330
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1987
15:30
and maybe see increased
patterns of meaning.
331
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2899
15:33
Isn't there a chance that,
as this broadens out,
332
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3694
15:37
there could be a different
kind of runaway effect?
333
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2466
15:39
ST: That's where
I draw the line, honestly.
334
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2078
15:41
And the chance exists --
I don't want to downplay it --
335
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2643
15:44
but I think it's remote, and it's not
the thing that's on my mind these days,
336
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3672
15:48
because I think the big revolution
is something else.
337
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2512
15:50
Everything successful in AI
to the present date
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2922
15:53
has been extremely specialized,
339
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2214
15:56
and it's been thriving on a single idea,
340
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2489
15:58
which is massive amounts of data.
341
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2739
16:01
The reason AlphaGo works so well
is because of massive numbers of Go plays,
342
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4147
16:05
and AlphaGo can't drive a car
or fly a plane.
343
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3255
16:08
The Google self-driving car
or the Udacity self-driving car
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3031
16:11
thrives on massive amounts of data,
and it can't do anything else.
345
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3240
16:15
It can't even control a motorcycle.
346
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1727
16:16
It's a very specific,
domain-specific function,
347
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2762
16:19
and the same is true for our cancer app.
348
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1907
16:21
There has been almost no progress
on this thing called "general AI,"
349
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3236
16:24
where you go to an AI and say,
"Hey, invent for me special relativity
350
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4000
16:28
or string theory."
351
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1666
16:30
It's totally in the infancy.
352
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1931
16:32
The reason I want to emphasize this,
353
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2127
16:34
I see the concerns,
and I want to acknowledge them.
354
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3838
16:38
But if I were to think about one thing,
355
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2886
16:41
I would ask myself the question,
"What if we can take anything repetitive
356
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5563
16:47
and make ourselves
100 times as efficient?"
357
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3473
16:51
It so turns out, 300 years ago,
we all worked in agriculture
358
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4249
16:55
and did farming and did repetitive things.
359
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2051
16:57
Today, 75 percent of us work in offices
360
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2556
17:00
and do repetitive things.
361
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2124
17:02
We've become spreadsheet monkeys.
362
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2183
17:04
And not just low-end labor.
363
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2054
17:06
We've become dermatologists
doing repetitive things,
364
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2754
17:09
lawyers doing repetitive things.
365
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1749
17:11
I think we are at the brink
of being able to take an AI,
366
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3823
17:14
look over our shoulders,
367
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1718
17:16
and they make us maybe 10 or 50 times
as effective in these repetitive things.
368
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4058
17:20
That's what is on my mind.
369
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1275
17:22
CA: That sounds super exciting.
370
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2450
17:24
The process of getting there seems
a little terrifying to some people,
371
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3530
17:28
because once a computer
can do this repetitive thing
372
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3180
17:31
much better than the dermatologist
373
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3434
17:34
or than the driver, especially,
is the thing that's talked about
374
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3230
17:37
so much now,
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1290
17:39
suddenly millions of jobs go,
376
1047310
1958
17:41
and, you know, the country's in revolution
377
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2695
17:44
before we ever get to the more
glorious aspects of what's possible.
378
1052011
4329
17:48
ST: Yeah, and that's an issue,
and it's a big issue,
379
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2517
17:50
and it was pointed out yesterday morning
by several guest speakers.
380
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4196
17:55
Now, prior to me showing up onstage,
381
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2754
17:57
I confessed I'm a positive,
optimistic person,
382
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3739
18:01
so let me give you an optimistic pitch,
383
1069666
2389
18:04
which is, think of yourself
back 300 years ago.
384
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4795
18:08
Europe just survived 140 years
of continuous war,
385
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3996
18:12
none of you could read or write,
386
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1711
18:14
there were no jobs that you hold today,
387
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2945
18:17
like investment banker
or software engineer or TV anchor.
388
1085622
4096
18:21
We would all be in the fields and farming.
389
1089742
2414
18:24
Now here comes little Sebastian
with a little steam engine in his pocket,
390
1092180
3573
18:27
saying, "Hey guys, look at this.
391
1095777
1548
18:29
It's going to make you 100 times
as strong, so you can do something else."
392
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3595
18:32
And then back in the day,
there was no real stage,
393
1100968
2470
18:35
but Chris and I hang out
with the cows in the stable,
394
1103462
2526
18:38
and he says, "I'm really
concerned about it,
395
1106012
2100
18:40
because I milk my cow every day,
and what if the machine does this for me?"
396
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3652
18:43
The reason why I mention this is,
397
1111812
1702
18:46
we're always good in acknowledging
past progress and the benefit of it,
398
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3603
18:49
like our iPhones or our planes
or electricity or medical supply.
399
1117987
3354
18:53
We all love to live to 80,
which was impossible 300 years ago.
400
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4245
18:57
But we kind of don't apply
the same rules to the future.
401
1125634
4156
19:02
So if I look at my own job as a CEO,
402
1130621
3207
19:05
I would say 90 percent
of my work is repetitive,
403
1133852
3140
19:09
I don't enjoy it,
404
1137016
1351
19:10
I spend about four hours per day
on stupid, repetitive email.
405
1138391
3978
19:14
And I'm burning to have something
that helps me get rid of this.
406
1142393
3641
19:18
Why?
407
1146058
1158
19:19
Because I believe all of us
are insanely creative;
408
1147240
3003
19:22
I think the TED community
more than anybody else.
409
1150731
3194
19:25
But even blue-collar workers;
I think you can go to your hotel maid
410
1153949
3559
19:29
and have a drink with him or her,
411
1157532
2402
19:31
and an hour later,
you find a creative idea.
412
1159958
2717
19:34
What this will empower
is to turn this creativity into action.
413
1162699
4140
19:39
Like, what if you could
build Google in a day?
414
1167265
3442
19:43
What if you could sit over beer
and invent the next Snapchat,
415
1171221
3316
19:46
whatever it is,
416
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1165
19:47
and tomorrow morning it's up and running?
417
1175750
2187
19:49
And that is not science fiction.
418
1177961
1773
19:51
What's going to happen is,
419
1179758
1254
19:53
we are already in history.
420
1181036
1867
19:54
We've unleashed this amazing creativity
421
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3228
19:58
by de-slaving us from farming
422
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1611
19:59
and later, of course, from factory work
423
1187814
3363
20:03
and have invented so many things.
424
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3162
20:06
It's going to be even better,
in my opinion.
425
1194387
2178
20:08
And there's going to be
great side effects.
426
1196589
2072
20:10
One of the side effects will be
427
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1489
20:12
that things like food and medical supply
and education and shelter
428
1200198
4795
20:17
and transportation
429
1205017
1177
20:18
will all become much more
affordable to all of us,
430
1206218
2441
20:20
not just the rich people.
431
1208683
1322
20:22
CA: Hmm.
432
1210029
1182
20:23
So when Martin Ford argued, you know,
that this time it's different
433
1211235
4341
20:27
because the intelligence
that we've used in the past
434
1215600
3453
20:31
to find new ways to be
435
1219077
2483
20:33
will be matched at the same pace
436
1221584
2279
20:35
by computers taking over those things,
437
1223887
2291
20:38
what I hear you saying
is that, not completely,
438
1226202
3078
20:41
because of human creativity.
439
1229304
2951
20:44
Do you think that that's fundamentally
different from the kind of creativity
440
1232279
3785
20:48
that computers can do?
441
1236088
2696
20:50
ST: So, that's my firm
belief as an AI person --
442
1238808
4434
20:55
that I haven't seen
any real progress on creativity
443
1243266
3803
20:59
and out-of-the-box thinking.
444
1247949
1407
21:01
What I see right now -- and this is
really important for people to realize,
445
1249380
3623
21:05
because the word "artificial
intelligence" is so threatening,
446
1253027
2903
21:07
and then we have Steve Spielberg
tossing a movie in,
447
1255954
2523
21:10
where all of a sudden
the computer is our overlord,
448
1258501
2413
21:12
but it's really a technology.
449
1260938
1452
21:14
It's a technology that helps us
do repetitive things.
450
1262414
2982
21:17
And the progress has been
entirely on the repetitive end.
451
1265420
2913
21:20
It's been in legal document discovery.
452
1268357
2228
21:22
It's been contract drafting.
453
1270609
1680
21:24
It's been screening X-rays of your chest.
454
1272313
4223
21:28
And these things are so specialized,
455
1276560
1773
21:30
I don't see the big threat of humanity.
456
1278357
2391
21:32
In fact, we as people --
457
1280772
1794
21:34
I mean, let's face it:
we've become superhuman.
458
1282590
2385
21:36
We've made us superhuman.
459
1284999
1764
21:38
We can swim across
the Atlantic in 11 hours.
460
1286787
2632
21:41
We can take a device out of our pocket
461
1289443
2074
21:43
and shout all the way to Australia,
462
1291541
2147
21:45
and in real time, have that person
shouting back to us.
463
1293712
2600
21:48
That's physically not possible.
We're breaking the rules of physics.
464
1296336
3624
21:51
When this is said and done,
we're going to remember everything
465
1299984
2943
21:54
we've ever said and seen,
466
1302951
1213
21:56
you'll remember every person,
467
1304188
1496
21:57
which is good for me
in my early stages of Alzheimer's.
468
1305708
2626
22:00
Sorry, what was I saying? I forgot.
469
1308358
1677
22:02
CA: (Laughs)
470
1310059
1578
22:03
ST: We will probably have
an IQ of 1,000 or more.
471
1311661
3077
22:06
There will be no more
spelling classes for our kids,
472
1314762
3425
22:10
because there's no spelling issue anymore.
473
1318211
2086
22:12
There's no math issue anymore.
474
1320321
1832
22:14
And I think what really will happen
is that we can be super creative.
475
1322177
3510
22:17
And we are. We are creative.
476
1325711
1857
22:19
That's our secret weapon.
477
1327592
1552
22:21
CA: So the jobs that are getting lost,
478
1329168
2153
22:23
in a way, even though
it's going to be painful,
479
1331345
2494
22:25
humans are capable
of more than those jobs.
480
1333863
2047
22:27
This is the dream.
481
1335934
1218
22:29
The dream is that humans can rise
to just a new level of empowerment
482
1337176
4247
22:33
and discovery.
483
1341447
1657
22:35
That's the dream.
484
1343128
1452
22:36
ST: And think about this:
485
1344604
1643
22:38
if you look at the history of humanity,
486
1346271
2021
22:40
that might be whatever --
60-100,000 years old, give or take --
487
1348316
3328
22:43
almost everything that you cherish
in terms of invention,
488
1351668
3726
22:47
of technology, of things we've built,
489
1355418
2151
22:49
has been invented in the last 150 years.
490
1357593
3099
22:53
If you toss in the book and the wheel,
it's a little bit older.
491
1361756
3048
22:56
Or the axe.
492
1364828
1169
22:58
But your phone, your sneakers,
493
1366021
2790
23:00
these chairs, modern
manufacturing, penicillin --
494
1368835
3551
23:04
the things we cherish.
495
1372410
1714
23:06
Now, that to me means
496
1374148
3658
23:09
the next 150 years will find more things.
497
1377830
3041
23:12
In fact, the pace of invention
has gone up, not gone down, in my opinion.
498
1380895
4154
23:17
I believe only one percent of interesting
things have been invented yet. Right?
499
1385073
4905
23:22
We haven't cured cancer.
500
1390002
1988
23:24
We don't have flying cars -- yet.
Hopefully, I'll change this.
501
1392014
3718
23:27
That used to be an example
people laughed about. (Laughs)
502
1395756
3257
23:31
It's funny, isn't it?
Working secretly on flying cars.
503
1399037
2992
23:34
We don't live twice as long yet. OK?
504
1402053
2683
23:36
We don't have this magic
implant in our brain
505
1404760
2785
23:39
that gives us the information we want.
506
1407569
1832
23:41
And you might be appalled by it,
507
1409425
1526
23:42
but I promise you,
once you have it, you'll love it.
508
1410975
2444
23:45
I hope you will.
509
1413443
1166
23:46
It's a bit scary, I know.
510
1414633
1909
23:48
There are so many things
we haven't invented yet
511
1416566
2254
23:50
that I think we'll invent.
512
1418844
1268
23:52
We have no gravity shields.
513
1420136
1306
23:53
We can't beam ourselves
from one location to another.
514
1421466
2553
23:56
That sounds ridiculous,
515
1424043
1151
23:57
but about 200 years ago,
516
1425218
1288
23:58
experts were of the opinion
that flight wouldn't exist,
517
1426530
2667
24:01
even 120 years ago,
518
1429221
1324
24:02
and if you moved faster
than you could run,
519
1430569
2582
24:05
you would instantly die.
520
1433175
1520
24:06
So who says we are correct today
that you can't beam a person
521
1434719
3569
24:10
from here to Mars?
522
1438312
2249
24:12
CA: Sebastian, thank you so much
523
1440585
1569
24:14
for your incredibly inspiring vision
and your brilliance.
524
1442178
2682
24:16
Thank you, Sebastian Thrun.
525
1444884
1323
24:18
ST: That was fantastic. (Applause)
526
1446231
1895

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Sebastian Thrun - Educator, entrepreneur
Sebastian Thrun is a passionate technologist who is constantly looking for new opportunities to make the world better for all of us.

Why you should listen

Sebastian Thrun is an educator, entrepreneur and troublemaker. After a long life as a professor at Stanford University, Thrun resigned from tenure to join Google. At Google, he founded Google X, home to self-driving cars and many other moonshot technologies. Thrun also founded Udacity, an online university with worldwide reach, and Kitty Hawk, a "flying car" company. He has authored 11 books, 400 papers, holds 3 doctorates and has won numerous awards.

More profile about the speaker
Sebastian Thrun | Speaker | TED.com
Chris Anderson - TED Curator
After a long career in journalism and publishing, Chris Anderson became the curator of the TED Conference in 2002 and has developed it as a platform for identifying and disseminating ideas worth spreading.

Why you should listen

Chris Anderson is the Curator of TED, a nonprofit devoted to sharing valuable ideas, primarily through the medium of 'TED Talks' -- short talks that are offered free online to a global audience.

Chris was born in a remote village in Pakistan in 1957. He spent his early years in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where his parents worked as medical missionaries, and he attended an American school in the Himalayas for his early education. After boarding school in Bath, England, he went on to Oxford University, graduating in 1978 with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics.

Chris then trained as a journalist, working in newspapers and radio, including two years producing a world news service in the Seychelles Islands.

Back in the UK in 1984, Chris was captivated by the personal computer revolution and became an editor at one of the UK's early computer magazines. A year later he founded Future Publishing with a $25,000 bank loan. The new company initially focused on specialist computer publications but eventually expanded into other areas such as cycling, music, video games, technology and design, doubling in size every year for seven years. In 1994, Chris moved to the United States where he built Imagine Media, publisher of Business 2.0 magazine and creator of the popular video game users website IGN. Chris eventually merged Imagine and Future, taking the combined entity public in London in 1999, under the Future name. At its peak, it published 150 magazines and websites and employed 2,000 people.

This success allowed Chris to create a private nonprofit organization, the Sapling Foundation, with the hope of finding new ways to tackle tough global issues through media, technology, entrepreneurship and, most of all, ideas. In 2001, the foundation acquired the TED Conference, then an annual meeting of luminaries in the fields of Technology, Entertainment and Design held in Monterey, California, and Chris left Future to work full time on TED.

He expanded the conference's remit to cover all topics, including science, business and key global issues, while adding a Fellows program, which now has some 300 alumni, and the TED Prize, which grants its recipients "one wish to change the world." The TED stage has become a place for thinkers and doers from all fields to share their ideas and their work, capturing imaginations, sparking conversation and encouraging discovery along the way.

In 2006, TED experimented with posting some of its talks on the Internet. Their viral success encouraged Chris to begin positioning the organization as a global media initiative devoted to 'ideas worth spreading,' part of a new era of information dissemination using the power of online video. In June 2015, the organization posted its 2,000th talk online. The talks are free to view, and they have been translated into more than 100 languages with the help of volunteers from around the world. Viewership has grown to approximately one billion views per year.

Continuing a strategy of 'radical openness,' in 2009 Chris introduced the TEDx initiative, allowing free licenses to local organizers who wished to organize their own TED-like events. More than 8,000 such events have been held, generating an archive of 60,000 TEDx talks. And three years later, the TED-Ed program was launched, offering free educational videos and tools to students and teachers.

More profile about the speaker
Chris Anderson | Speaker | TED.com

Data provided by TED.

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