WEBVTT

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I'm here to offer you
a new way to think about my field,

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artificial intelligence.

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I think the purpose of AI

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is to empower humans
with machine intelligence,

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and as machines get smarter,

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we get smarter.

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I call this humanistic AI:

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artificial intelligence designed
to meet human needs

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by collaborating and augmenting people.

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Now today I'm happy to see

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that the idea that intelligent assistant

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is mainstream.

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It's the well-accepted metaphor
for the interface between humans and AI.

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And the one
I helped create is called Siri.

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Now you know Siri.

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Siri is the thing that knows your intent

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and helps you do it for you,

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helps you get things done,

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but what you might not know
is that we designed Siri

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as humanistic AI,

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to augment people
with a conversational interface

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that made it possible for them
to use mobile computing,

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regardless of who they were
and their abilities.

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Now for most of us,

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the impact of this technology

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is to make things a little bit
easier to use,

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but for my friend Daniel,

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the impact of the AI
in these systems is a life-changer.

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You see, Daniel is a really social guy,

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and he's blind and quadriplegic

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which makes it hard to use those devices

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that we all take for granted.

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The last time I was at his house,
his brother said,

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"Hang on a second, Daniel's not ready.

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He's on the phone with a woman
he met online."

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I'm like, "That's cool, how'd he do it?"

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Well, Daniel uses Siri
to manage his own social life,

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his email, text, and phone,

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without depending on his caregivers.

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This is kind of interesting, right?

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The irony here is great.

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Here's the man whose relationship with AI

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helps him have relationships
with genuine human beings.

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And this is humanistic AI.

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Another example with
life-changing consequences

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is diagnosing cancer.

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When a doctor suspects cancer,

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they take a sample,
send it to a pathologist

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who looks at it under a microscope.

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Now, pathologists look at
hundreds of slides

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and millions of cells every day,

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so to support this task,

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some researchers made an AI classifier.

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Now the classifier says,
"Is this cancer or is this not cancer?"

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looking at the picture.

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The classifier was pretty good,

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but not as good as the person,

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who got it right most of the time.

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But when they combine the ability

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of the machine and the human together,

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accuracy went to 99.5 percent.

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Adding that AI to a partnership

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eliminated 85 percent of the errors
that the human pathologist

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would have made working alone.

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That's a lot of cancer

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that would have otherwise gone untreated.

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Now, for the curious, it turns out that
the human is better at

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rejecting false positives

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and the machine was better at recognizing
those hard-to-spot cases,

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but the lesson here isn't about
which agent is better

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at this image classification task.

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Those things are changing every day.

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The lesson here

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is that by combining the abilities
of the human and machine,

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it created a partnership

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that had superhuman performance.

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And that is humanistic AI.

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Now let's look at another example

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with turbocharging performance.

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This is design.

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Now, let's say you're an engineer.

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You want to design
a new frame for a drum.

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You get out your favorite software tools,

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cad tools,

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and you enter the form and the materials
and then you analyze performance.

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That gives you one design.

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If you give those same tools to an AI,

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it can generate thousands of designs.

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This video by Autodesk is amazing.

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This is real stuff.

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So now this transforms how we do design.

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The human engineer now

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says what the machine,
what the design should achieve,

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and the machine says,
here's the possibilities.

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Now in her job now, the engineer's job

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is to pick the one that best meets
the goals of the design,

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which she knows as a human

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better than anyone else,

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using human judgment and expertise.

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In this case, the winning form

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looks kind of like something
nature would have designed,

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minus a few million years of evolution

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and all that unnecessary fur.

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Now let's see where this idea

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of humanistic AI might lead us

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if we follow it into
the speculative beyond.

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What's a kind of augmentation
that we would all like to have?

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Well, how about cognitive enhancement?

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Instead of asking

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how smart can we make our machines,

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let's ask how smart

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can our machines make us?

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I mean, take memory for example.

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Memory is the foundation
of human intelligence,

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but human memory is famously flawed.

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We're great at telling stories,

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but not getting the details right,

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and our memories, they decay over time.

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I mean, like, where did the '60s go,
and can I go there too?

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But what if you could have a memory

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that was as good as computer memory,

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and was about your life?

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What if you could remember
every person you ever met,

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how to pronounce their name,

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their family details,
their favorite sports,

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the last conversation you had with them?

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If you had this memory all your life,

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you could have the AI look
at all the interactions

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you had with people over time

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and help you reflect

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on the long arc of your relationships.

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What if you could have the AI read

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everything you've ever read

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and listen to every song
you've ever heard?

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From the tiniest clue,
it could help you retrieve

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anything you've ever seen or heard before.

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Imagine what that would do
for the ability to make new connections

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and form new ideas.

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And what about our bodies?

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What if we could remember the consequences
of every food we eat,

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every pill we take,

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every all-nighter we pull?

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We could do our own science
on our own data

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about what makes us feel good

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and stay healthy,

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and imagine how this could revolutionize

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the way we manage
allergies and chronic disease.

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I believe that AI will make

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personal memory enhancement a reality.

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I can't say when or what
form factors are involved,

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but I think it's inevitable

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because the very things

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that make AI successful today,

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the availability of comprehensive data

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and the ability for machines
to make sense of that data

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can be applied to the data of our lives,

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and those data are here today,

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available for all of us because we lead

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digitally mediated lives,

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in mobile and online.

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In my view, a personal memory
is a private memory.

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We get to choose what is and is not
recalled and retained.

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It's absolutely essential

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that this be kept very secure.

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Now for most of us,

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the impact of augmented personal memory

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will be a more improved mental gain,

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maybe, hopefully, a bit more social grace.

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But for the millions who suffer

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from Alzheimer's and dementia,

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the difference that augmented
memory could make

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is a difference between a life of isolation

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and a life of dignity and connection.

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We are in the middle

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of a renaissance

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in artificial intelligence right now.

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I mean, in just the past few years

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we're beginning to see
solutions to AI problems

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that we have struggled with

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literally for decades:

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speech understanding, text understanding,

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image understanding.

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We have a choice in how we use
this powerful technology.

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We can choose to use AI to automate

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and compete with us,

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or we can use AI to augment
and collaborate with us,

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to overcome our cognitive limitations

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and to help us do what we want to do

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only better.

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And as we discover new ways

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to give machines intelligence,

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we can distribute that intelligence

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to all of the AI assistants in the world,

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and therefore to every person,
regardless of circumstance.

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And that is why,

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every time a machine gets smarter,

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we get smarter.

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That is an AI worth spreading.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)