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(Toby Walsh) I wanna talk [br]about artificial intelligence: it's --

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I'm a professor of artificial intelligence

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and its a great time, 2015, [br]to be working in AI.

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We're making real palpable progress

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and there's loads of money [br]being thrown at us.

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Google just spent [br]five hundred million dollars --

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pounds buying an AI startup called Deep Mind a couple of weeks ago,

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today they announced that they were [br]going to spend a billion dollars

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setting up an AI lab in Silicon Valley.

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IBM is betting about [br]a third of the company

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on their cognitive AI computing effort.

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So it's really interesting time to be working in AI.

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But the first thing I wanted to [br]help inform you about

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is what is the state of art, [br]what progress have we made in AI

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because Hollywood paints [br]all these pictures,

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these mostly dystopian pictures of AI.

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Whenever the next science fiction movie[br]comes out, I put my head in my hands

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and think Oh my God, what do people think[br]that we're doing?

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So, I wanted to start by just giving you[br]a feel for what actually is really capable.

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So a couple of years ago, IBM Watson[br]won the game show Jeopardy 1,

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the million dollar prize in the game show,[br]Jeopardy P, the reigning human champions.

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Now, you might think, well that's just[br]a party trick, isn't it?

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It's a -- pour enough of Wikipedia [br]and the internet into a computer,

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and it can answer general knowledge[br]questions.

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Well, you guys are being a bit unfair to[br]IBM Watson,

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there are the cryptic questions[br]they are answering.

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But just to give you a real feel for [br]what is technically possible today,

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something that was announced[br]just two days ago:

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some colleagues of mine at NII in Japan[br]passed the University Entrance Exam

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with an AI program.

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Now, I thought long and hard about[br]putting up a page of maths.

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I thought, well, I'm going to get --

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half of the audience is going to [br]leave immediately

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if I put up a page of math

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But I wanted you to see, just to feel

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the depth of questions [br]that they were answering.

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So this is from the maths paper, you know,[br]a non trivial, sort of,

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if you come from the UK, [br]A-level-like math question

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that they were able to answer

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Here is a physics question[br]about Newtonian dynamics

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that they were able to answer.

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Now they got 511 points, out of[br]a maximum of 950.

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That's more than the average score[br]of Japanese students

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sitting the entrance exam.

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They would have got into most [br]Japanese universities with a score of 511.

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That's what's possible today.

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Their ambition in 10 years' time is to get[br]into Tokyo, University of Tokyo,

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which is one of the best universities[br]in the world.

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So, this is why I put up [br]a picture of Terminator,

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because whenever I talk to the media[br]about what we do in AI,

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they put up a picture of Terminator,[br]right?

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So I don't want you to worry [br]about Terminator,

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Terminator is at least [br]50 to 100 years away.

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and there are lots of reasons why[br]we don't have to worry about it,

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about Terminator.

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I'm not going to go and spend[br]too much time

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on why you don't have to worry about Terminator.

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But there is actually things [br]that you should worry about,

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much nearer than Terminator.

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Many people have said, [br]Stephen Hawkins has said

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that, you know, AI is going to spell[br]the end of the human race.

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Elon Musk chimed in afterwards, said[br]"It's our biggest existential threat."

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Bill Gates followed on by saying,[br]"Elon Musk was right."

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Lots of people have said that's a --[br]AI is a real existential threat to us.

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I don't want you to worry about[br]the existential threat that AI

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or Terminator is going to bring.

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There's actually a very common confusion,

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which is that it's not the AI [br]that's going to be the existential threat,

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it's autonomy, it's autonomous systems.

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What's in the (check) --

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it isn't it going to wake up [br]any time in the morning and say:

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"You know what? I'm tired [br]of playing Jeopardy,

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"I want to play Who Wants to Be a Millionaire!

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"Or wait a second, I'm tired of playing [br]game shows,

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I want to take over the universe."

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It's just not in its code, there is no way,

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it's not given any freedom to think [br]about anything other

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than maximizing its Jeopardy score.

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And it has no desires, no other desires than,

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other to improve its maximum scores.

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So I don't want you to worry about Terminator,

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but I do want you to worry about jobs.

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Because lots of people, [br]lots of very serious people,

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have been saying [br]hat AI is going to end jobs,

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and that is a very great consequence [br]for anyone working in education,

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because, certainly, the jobs that are going [br]to exist in the future

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are going to be different [br]than the jobs that exist today.

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Now, who has an odd birthday?

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Well, I haven't told you [br]what an odd birthday is yet,

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so someone has an odd birthday, like me.

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OK. Who was born on an odd-number [br]day of the month?

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I was born on the 11th of April, right?

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Come on, it's half the room, [br]I know it's half the room.

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(Laughter)

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OK.Well, you want to have [br]an odd birthday, by the way,

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because that means, in 20 years' time, [br]you will be a person with a job.

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As opposed to the even people, [br]who won't have jobs.

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That's certainty -- if you believe [br]lots of serious people,

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you might have missed this news [br]on Friday the 13th,

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I thought this was a rather[br]depressing news story

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....... (check) comparison otherwise ...... (check)

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but the chief economist, Bank of England,

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went on the record saying 50% of jobs [br]were under threat in the UK.

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And he's not the first serious person[br]who should know what he's talking about

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who said similar things.

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There was a very influential Merrill Lynch[br]report that came out a month or to ago

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saying very similar things about [br]the impact of AI,

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robotics, automation on jobs.

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And some of this goes back to, I think, [br]one of the first reports

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that really hit the press, [br]that really got people's attention,

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was a report that came out of [br]the Oxford Martin School.

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They predicted that 47% of jobs [br]in the United States

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were under threat of automation [br]in the next 20 years.

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We followed that up [br]with a very similar study and analysis

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for jobs in Australia, where I work.

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And because it's a slightly different [br]profile of workers,

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of the work force in Australia, we came up[br]with a number of around 40%.

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These are non trivial numbers, right? [br]40-50%.

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No, just an aside: 47%, I don't know [br]why they didn't say 47.2%, right?

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You can't believe a number [br]that's far too precise

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when you're predicting the future,[br]but nevertheless,

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the fact that it's of this sort of scale,

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you've got to take away: it wasn't 4%, [br]it was roughly about half the jobs.

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Now, let's put some context to this.

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I mean, is this really a credible claim?

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The Number One job [br]in the United States today: truck driver.

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Now you might have noticed,

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the autonomous cars[br]are coming to us very soon.

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We're going to be having -- tried[br]the first trial of autonomous cars

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on the roads, public roads of Australia, [br]three weeks ago.

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The Google Car has driven [br]over a million kilometers

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-- or the Google cars, rather, [br]have driven over a million kilometers,

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autonomously, on the roads of California.

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In 20 years' time, we are going to have [br]autonomous cars.

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We're also going to have [br]autonomous trucks.

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So if you are in the Number One profession[br]in the United States,

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you have to worry that your job [br]is not going to be automated away.

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The Number Two job in the United States [br]is salesperson.

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Again, since we use the internet,

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we've actually mostly automated [br]that process ourselves,

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but it's clear that a lot of those jobs [br]are going to be disappearing.

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So I think these claims [br]have a lot of credibility.

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There's actually a nice dinner party game [br]that my colleagues in AI play

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at the end of our conferences,[br]where we sit around

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and the game is, you have to name a job

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and then, someone has to put up [br]some credible evidence

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that we're actually well on the way [br]to actually automating that.

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And this game is almost impossible to win.

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If I had more time, [br]I'd play the game with you.

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The only -- about the only winning answer[br]is politician.

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(Laughter)

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They will certainly regulate that[br]they'll be the last to be automated.

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But that's about [br]the only winning answer we have.

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So -- and it's not just technology [br]that is the cause of this.

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There's many other, really, [br]sort of rather unhelpful trends.

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If you were trying to set up [br]the world's economy,

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you would not put these things [br]all down on the table at the same time:

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the global, [br]ongoing global financial crisis,

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which seems like [br]it will never disappear, I think;

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the fact that we're all living longer: [br]this is great, great news for us

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but bad news for employment;

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the impact of globalization, the fact that [br]we can outsource our work

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to cheaper economies.

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All of these things [br]are compounding the impact

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that technology is having [br]on the nature of work.

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And this transformation is going to be [br]different than the last one,

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the Industrial revolution.

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There's no hard and fast [br]rule of economics that says:

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"As many jobs need to be created [br]by a new technology as destroyed."

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Every time we have a new technology, [br]of course, new jobs are created.

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There's lots of, there's thousands, [br]hundreds of thousands of new jobs

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enabled by technology today.

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But there's no reason that they have to [br]balance exactly those that are destroyed.

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In the last -- in the last revolution, [br]that did happen to be the case.

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A third of the population was working [br]out in the fields, in agriculture.

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Now, worldwide, [br]it's 3 or 4% of the world's population

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working in agriculture.

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Those people are working [br]in factories and offices now.

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We employ far more people than we did [br]at the turn of the 19th century.

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But this one looks different, this [br]information revolution looks different.

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It looks like it has the potential [br]to take away more jobs, perhaps,

0:10:00.233,0:10:01.529
than it does.

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And one of the other things is that [br]we used to think

0:10:03.684,0:10:05.293
it was the blue-collar jobs.

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And that's true: if you go [br]to a car factory today, sure enough,

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there are robots [br]that are doing the painting,

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there are robots [br]that are doing the welding.

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But nowadays, it's white-collar jobs:

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it's journalists, it's lawyers, [br]it's accountants,

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these jobs that are under threat.

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These graphs here show [br]the percentage change in employment

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and the change in employment rates.

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And it's the middle, the middle class, [br]white-collar professions

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that we thought that you would go [br]to university to make yourself safe,

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but it seems to be the ones [br]that are most under threat.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
If you are a ....... (check) [br]it's probably --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you're too cheap to be replaced [br]by something automated.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But if you're a more expensive person, [br]and this means (check)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that the rich are getting richer and [br]inequalities that we are seeing in society

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that are distressing our societies to day,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
seem to be magnified [br]by these technological changes.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And there is so many frightening graphs,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
if you're going to read [br]Thomas Picketty (check), I encourage you.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Go and look at one of his books[br]and you can see here

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that we're seeing [br]a constant improvement in productivity.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Technology is buying us [br]those improvements in productivity,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is increasing our wealth,[br]but there's a leveling off of employment.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And so, the challenge, then, is how

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
-- it's a question for society, [br]not for a technologist like myself --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
how do we all benefit [br]from this rising tide,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
not so that it is the rich get richer [br]and the rest of us get further behind.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So, many parts of many jobs [br]looks likely (check) to be automated.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
One confusion is this: people say [br]these jobs are going to disappear.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Actually, it seems to be more likely that [br]many parts of your job will be automated.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But that still means that there is [br]perhaps less employment around.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So how can you make yourself [br]more future-proof?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Well, I have two pieces of advice [br]as a technologist,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in terms of what's going to be [br]technically possible in AI.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Either you've got to embrace the future, [br]so become like me,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
become someone who's working [br]on trying to invent that future.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And if you're not technically minded, [br]that's fine:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I've got the other part of the equation, [br]the other answer to your question

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which is completely at the other end [br]of the spectrum, which is:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
focus on those things that find as AI, (check)[br]the hardest things,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
making a future that's more creative,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
making a future that can understand [br]your emotional state,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
focusing on emotional terms [br]and not intellectual intelligence. 12:23