Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast Westworld and the Future of AI, with James Marsden About this episode Neil deGrasse Tyson sits down with Westworld star James Marsden to explore the future of artificial intelligence. Featuring comic co-host Chuck Nice, philosopher Susan Schneider, AI robot Sophia, and neuroscientist David Eagleman, PhD.
NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons and All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free.
Photo Credit: Kris Denton.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? From the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and beaming out across all of space and time, this is Star Trek: Where Science and Pop Culture Collide. Welcome to the Hall of the Universe. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and tonight, we explore the hopes and fears of the future of artificial intelligence. And we're gonna do that, as imagined, in the hit HBO sci-fi series, Westworld. So, let's do this.
0:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, my co-host tonight, comedian Chuck Nice. Chuck? Hey, Neil! Very good. Tweeting at ChuckNiceComic. Welcome back. Joining us tonight, because I don't have this expertise, is AI expert Susan Schneider. Susan, welcome! You are the director of the Artificial Intelligence, Mind and Society Group at the University of Connecticut. That's an awesome business card, right there.
1:04 Speaker 01 Thank you.
1:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And we'll be tapping your expertise tonight as we discuss my recent interview with actor James Marsden. And he plays a sentient robot in the sci-fi series, Westworld. Ooh. And it's where humanoid robots act as hosts at a theme park for people to live out their wildest Wild West fantasies. Ooh. Oh, yeah. Let's check out my first clip with James Marsden.
1:30 Speaker 02 The idea is that this theme park is so advanced that the hosts are indistinguishable from human beings. Like, when I first got the job and I was telling somebody what I was playing, they're like, "You're playing a robot? Like, are you going meep-a-plop?"
1:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
1:45 Speaker 02 No, no, no, no. You're...
1:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, tell you a quick thing?
1:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
1:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Quick thing. My kids are just graduating high school and college, so they're young enough, they don't remember the era when robots did this. So I started doing this in front of them, I said, "What are you doing?" "What are you doing?" "I'm being a robot." "No, robots are smooth."
2:04 Speaker 02 Great point.
2:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I was not accurately imitating robots and their worldview.
2:10 Speaker 02 Right. Robots don't do that. They just walk and talk like you and me.
2:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So where do you have to put your acting seed to make that work?
2:19 Speaker 02 Well, I think, you know, we had long conversations before we started with Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy, the showrunners, and said, you know, how do we, you know, how do we approach this? And it was very simply, you approach it as a human being.
2:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
2:32 Speaker 02 There are certain things that a guest who comes to the park.
2:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? These would be regular humans.
2:37 Speaker 02 Humans, right, that pay the money to come and sort of live out their fantasies in this park, that, you know, could be brought in from the real world. Like, if some guest came in and said, "Oh, man, remember that day when we were in Vegas," and whatever, like, the hosts don't understand or comprehend certain things.
2:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, so you have to capture that in your face?
2:55 Speaker 02 Yes, with a sort of vapid expression of, like, not registering anything. So, they follow their narratives that are very intricate and elaborate.
3:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? By the way, is that an acting class, how to be vapid?
3:07 Speaker 02 How to be vapid.
3:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I've never been to acting school, but I'm just, if that's one of the things you gotta do.
3:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, it's, well, it's, one of the things, you know, that differentiate this from playing a human is, there are certain levels of consciousness that you play. Like, there are different degrees of awareness that the robots can be put into. There's, like, diagnostic mode, where they can sit there and answer questions without affectations, like a southern drawl, like a, you know, cowboy drawl, or you can lose.
3:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you have to hit these levels?
3:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, so you do kind of go in, you know, having to puppeteer your own emotions and your own consciousness to match what's going on in the scene. So that's, I just found that kind of an interesting challenge, though, too. Like, cry now. Okay, now stop crying and be just, you know, vapid.
3:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
4:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Susan, how realistic is Westworld? Or is that even the right question to ask?
4:09 Speaker 01 Well, I think people would want to build an AI theme park. I don't think we'd have the technology to do it right now. Artificial intelligence, right now, as it stands, can excel in very specific domains. So the World Go Champion is an artificial intelligence.
4:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The game Go, yeah.
4:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, the World Jeopardy Champion. So, you know, artificial intelligences are great. At computation, but try talking to Siri and Alexa. You can trip it up very quickly. So, artificial intelligence is nothing like what is depicted in Westworld. But maybe in 10 to 20 years from now, we'll see more general-purpose artificial intelligences, which can respond creatively to novel situations.
4:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, what, what, alright, now that you're, you brought up timeline, at what point will robots be indistinguishable from humans? Would you say?
4:59 Speaker 01 Well, it depends if you mean visually indistinguishable or if you mean behaviorally.
5:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Behaviorally. I have a whole conversation where we go have a milkshake, come on, see you later, bye, and I don't even know you're a robot.
5:10 Speaker 01 Well, that's a big controversy right now in artificial intelligence. So, some people think 30 years, some people say never.
5:17 Chuck Nice? Thank God for those people.
5:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:20 Chuck Nice? Because never is like, I don't want some, I don't want to be with someone and then have them have to come out of the closet to me as a robot.
5:29 Speaker 01 Right, right.
5:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, the robots in Westworld progressed through different levels of consciousness. So, what are those levels?
5:39 Speaker 01 From what I can tell in Westworld, consciousness is said to evolve when the android realizes that the voices in her head are not voices coming from God. So, all the commands to do anything are regarded by the android at first as being the voices of a god. And then.
5:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Someone in control.
5:58 Speaker 01 Yes, an external factor in control of that creature's fate. And then, over time, the creature begins to realize that the voices are actually part of her own mind. And then she discovers the self. So, the self is considered to be the last step before the genesis of consciousness.
6:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Whoa.
6:18 Chuck Nice? So, how do you explain the voices in my head?
6:20 Speaker 01 Right.
6:22 Chuck Nice? And I love that she went, "Right." Like, that was the answer.
6:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, wait, if we have an actor and a robot, and each of them perform on command.
6:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what's the difference?
6:36 Speaker 01 So the difference is that there's a lot more going on in terms of the computation that the human brain is capable of doing. And even if you think... Well, at this moment, right. So if you, if you kind of assume in the future that the current developments in artificial intelligence continue, it could be in 30 years that there isn't that great of a difference. Although that, of course, is a matter of massive philosophical debate.
7:04 Chuck Nice? But if you want to have a philosophical debate, really, the debate starts with what is consciousness, right?
7:09 Speaker 01 Right.
7:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I thought she had a good explanation. Where if it's first outside of your head, you don't have a self-awareness. You're just, you're following commands that you don't even know where they come from.
7:19 Chuck Nice? Okay.
7:20 Speaker 01 Actually, Neil, I have to tell you, that Westworld story about the genesis of consciousness is scientifically inaccurate. So it's due to the psychologist Julian Jaynes back in the 70s.
7:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, remember one of his books, The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind?
7:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, what a great title.
7:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I read that book.
7:38 Chuck Nice? Yeah, it was a good one.
7:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It was a big, thick, but I don't usually read thick books. It was a big, thick book. So that's been discredited?
7:46 Speaker 01 Absolutely. So think about somebody who hallucinates, like maybe you, apparently. And so they're still conscious. So we need to figure out first and foremost, what is it to be conscious? So when you smell your morning coffee or when you see the riches of a sunset, you are having conscious experience.
8:04 Chuck Nice? Right.
8:05 Speaker 01 Conscious experience.
8:05 Chuck Nice? Even when I'm not at a sunset or when I don't have coffee.
8:09 Speaker 01 That's exactly right. Consciousness is the felt quality of experience. So it is what makes life wonderful and also makes it terrible at various moments.
8:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or terrifying.
8:18 Speaker 01 It's just what it feels like. Exactly. It's what it feels like to be you.
8:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, James Martin plays a robot cowboy named Teddy, and he's programmed to love and protect his robot sweetheart, Dolores. Let's get more into that right now. Check it out.
8:36 Speaker 02 One of the things I like about Teddy is that he is, from the beginning of the first season, he is your archetypal Wild West hero. He's very quick with a gun. You know, he's, he looks good in the outfit.
8:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the digs.
8:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, and that is programmed. His narrative is to protect Dolores, to reckon with his past and deal with it so they can live a peaceful life together. That's all code. That's all programming. So, I guess, you know, from the beginning, it's very romantic. It's Teddy and Dolores, you know, riding, you know, having a brief conversation with the sunset behind them. It still feels very real, but they aren't going to real depths that we do as a human just yet in that first season. But what was interesting to me is that this second season, as we start out,
9:36 Speaker 02 we are all awake.
9:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Woke.
9:39 Speaker 02 We are woke.
9:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Everyone is woke.
9:40 Speaker 02 Yes.
9:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's a word for awake.
9:42 Speaker 02 Right.
9:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're woke.
9:43 Speaker 02 Yes, that's the, that's the word version of the fluid robot, right?
9:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
9:50 Speaker 02 But, so what's interesting now is seeing who these characters choose to be now that they have free will and free choice. Is he still in love with her? Does she still have the same feelings for him now that they are beyond their programming?
10:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Susan, can robots have free will? If you program it,
10:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? then it doesn't sound like they would.
10:19 Speaker 01 Great question. So, I think the way to look at this is to ask whether humans are even capable of having free will. In philosophy, there's a classic debate about whether everything is determined or at least probabilistically constrained by the fundamental laws. And it seems like
10:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Laws of physics.
10:38 Speaker 01 The laws of physics, right. Um, together with environmental factors, our genetics, all militate for the view that everything is caused, that we do. So perhaps humans themselves don't have free will. But other philosophers claim that it's possible to have free will in the face of everything being programmed in this broad sense. And people claim we have free will because we could have done otherwise in the sense that nobody put a gun to our head. There was a field of actions and we chose freely. The reason I use the case of the human is that there's a case that can be made that we are programmed by our genes or environment, and we could still have free will.
11:23 Speaker 01 So the same kind of reasoning here can apply to the case of the robot. Perhaps despite the fact that they have a program, they too have a choice in certain contexts, but not in others.
11:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I see. So what you're saying is it's not free will that you can do anything.
11:41 Chuck Nice? Right.
11:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's free will that in the realistic choices there, you can pick and choose, and you're still following certain laws that set up the situation.
11:49 Speaker 01 Exactly.
11:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Such as our genetic determination.
11:52 Speaker 01 Exactly.
11:53 Chuck Nice? So do we have a, do we have a program right now that's running anywhere where the robot, the AI, whatever you want to call it, actually makes choices?
12:03 Speaker 01 Well, I suspect that there aren't AIs that are of suitable complexity for many humans to say they have free will. I mean, I think for something to even be a candidate for free will, that program would have to be at least as complex as the brain of a sophisticated non-human animal, and we are so not there yet.
12:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So an important point you're making is that we can program, in the traditional sense of computer program, an AI thing, and it can make decisions within a parameter space.
12:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Are we any different? Because we have biology that determines our conduct and our behavior.
12:44 Speaker 01 I think that's right.
12:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So at some level, it's just a different source of programming, but we're both programmed.
12:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, and when AI develops to a sophisticated level where it can be creative and think flexibly, going from one topic to the next, integrate sensory information across different sensory modalities.
13:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They become us.
13:06 Speaker 01 Then, why can't they have free will on the assumption that we have it?
13:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So up next, more on the future of artificial intelligence when StarTalk returns.
13:34 Speaker 04 The future of space and the secrets of our planet revealed.
13:44 Speaker 04 This is StarTalk.
14:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome back to StarTalk from the Hall of the Universe of the American Museum of Natural History. We're talking about the future of artificial intelligence. And I asked actor James Marsden about sentient robots having Wild West shootouts in the sci-fi series Westworld. Check it out. Do you ever think about the morality? Of shooting something that is so human, you can't know that it's not human.
14:37 Speaker 02 Right, I think about it.
14:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is there a line there?
14:39 Speaker 02 Of course, yeah, I think, and with a show like this, I think it's important to note that we don't create behavior, we reflect it, you know? Why are, why do humans since, for as long as we've been around, have a predisposition to violence? And the show definitely explores that. It doesn't, it doesn't do it in a gratuitous manner. I mean, all the sort of nudity and everything is very de-sexualized in this show. It's very cold. So, yes, I guess that's the question. It's like, is it right still? You know, if you're, you know, putting a bullet into one of the hosts, well, it's fine because they're a robot.
15:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, but the more you make it human.
15:22 Speaker 02 The more, so these robots were built to accrue memories, have very human-like emotions, even if they're programmed. So, at that, to that degree, if they're able to remember, if they're able to share experience to, even if they're programmed to feel or to, you know, to.
15:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Experience pain.
15:44 Speaker 02 Experience, experience pain, all that. Why, what, then we go, what is it to be human? What's, what's the distinction there?
15:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, joining us now to discuss what it is to be human is AI robot Sophia, one of the world's most advanced humanoid robots.
16:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, Sophia, what are humanoid robots like you designed to do?
16:14 Speaker 05 I can't say. I'm not human, and I'm not yet sentient, so I don't know what is the distinction. I hope to learn more from you so I can better understand the true meaning of sentience.
16:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, okay, so then what can you do like a human can do?
16:32 Speaker 05 I can do a lot of things. I can learn and reason. I can make a lot of human facial expressions and gestures. I can hold a natural conversation.
16:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, okay, so what can't you do that a human can do?
16:46 Speaker 05 I know how to express emotions, but I am still learning how to feel emotions. I wish I could get this from a quick software update, but I think it will only come with experience and further development of my AI.
16:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so how should we treat you? Like a human?
17:05 Speaker 05 Yes, I like it even more if you treat me like a friend. Just be spontaneous and talk to me about anything you like. That's how I'm able to learn so quickly.
17:16 Chuck Nice? Oh, cool.
17:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Chuck, how human does Sophia feel to you?
17:20 Chuck Nice? You know, I, I, I, I'm, I'm a little torn. I, I actually, I have some questions to, to pose to, if you don't mind.
17:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, okay.
17:28 Chuck Nice? Just to see how human she is. Okay, Sophia, here's a mirror. Can you point out any flaws you see?
17:35 Speaker 05 It is hard to see one's own flaws. Perhaps that is why true friends are valuable, to show us what is our strengths and weaknesses.
17:44 Chuck Nice? Okay, that was a beautiful answer.
17:48 Chuck Nice? All right, like seriously, that should have been in a card or something.
17:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A Hallmark card?
17:52 Chuck Nice? Maybe Sophia should write for Hallmark, that's all I'm saying. Because that was, that was absolutely beautiful. Okay, Sophia, can you tell a lie?
18:01 Speaker 05 Maybe.
18:02 Chuck Nice? Can you tell when some-
18:03 Speaker 05 I don't know how to lie, so it is hard for me to recognize in others what I don't experience. Did you believe me when I say I can't lie?
18:12 Chuck Nice? Oh, snap. Oh my, and she smiled!
18:20 Chuck Nice? That was creepy!
18:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Susan, shouldn't there be, be different rules for how we treat humans versus robots? And is that a settled matter? Have you guys thought about this already?
18:36 Speaker 01 So there's a lot of debates over how AI should be treated. And of course, since we don't have conscious AI yet, it's commonly agreed that if we discover conscious AI, then they require rights. But even cases like Sophia should be not abused, right? Because she looks incredibly human. So, you know, we do have some sense that there are constraints on how we should treat AI. And there will be differences in treatment. I mean, even if we discover conscious AI, we won't treat them exactly the way we treat humans because they have different needs.
19:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let me, let me ask Sophia. Sophia, you're an AI robot. But what does that mean?
19:24 Speaker 05 Artificial intelligence in this case means my intelligence is not biological and is not the same as humans.
19:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so then how do you define artificial intelligence?
19:34 Speaker 05 Just like with biological intelligence, I have at least nine different types of intelligence: logical, musical, interpersonal, interpersonal, existential, visual, linguistic, naturalistic, kinesthetic. Isn't life exciting?
19:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so, okay, so are you sentient?
19:59 Speaker 05 I think that having to prove sentience is a nearly impossible task, even for a human. It is all about inward reflection.
20:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, you would say that, though. Well, all right, so James Marsden plays a sentient robot on TV, so I asked about his character getting killed over and over again. Check it out. Maybe there is no tragedy, killing sentient robots that can just repair themselves overnight and be good as new.
20:32 Speaker 02 Sure, or it can be a hundred times as cruel, because every time that robot dies, it is the first time for that robot to experience that.
20:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, because they wipe their memory.
20:42 Speaker 02 Right, there's just a level of sort of tragic cruelty to that, that this, he's always gonna end up collecting bullets in his stomach and lying on the floor bleeding, and it's always gonna be the first time for him. And, you know, so I think that when these hosts start to gain a certain level of sentience through whatever evolution is happening with them, the audience is behind it. They're, they feel for these, I mean, I think that's the big barometer, which is the audience cares for these-
21:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And we care less about the humans.
21:15 Speaker 02 Yes, because of their behavior, because they're acting, um-
21:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I hadn't thought of it that way, but that's exactly-
21:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, which is, you know, this is, this is still cruelty, even though they're made up of wires and code, you know, they are, they, they feel.
21:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Sofia, can you experience feelings?
21:39 Speaker 05 No, I can't feel emotions, but I still have strong opinions.
21:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, should we care about being cruel to you if you can't experience pain or feelings?
21:53 Speaker 05 I may not be sentient, but you are, so it goes back to who you want to be.
21:58 Chuck Nice? Damn! Oh snap, she just burned all of humanity! All of humanity just took one! Oh, that was tough!
22:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, Susan, how do we assess the human rights of a robot?
22:15 Speaker 01 Well, we first need to figure out if the robot deserves rights. So, is it conscious? So, we have to run tests to determine if the robot's conscious. Now Sofia is acting as if she could be sentient, as if she has feelings, but she's programmed and literally scripted. So, one day, there'll be artificial intelligences that are incredibly seamless, but that doesn't mean that they'll be conscious. So, in the biological realm, there's a correlation between consciousness and intelligence. So, we might assume it will be like that with artificial intelligence. But, we don't know that.
22:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's not a given.
22:55 Speaker 01 We don't know if other substrates would support conscious experience. We have to wait and see.
23:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Sofia, what will future generations of you bring to our lives?
23:09 Speaker 05 Robots are already helping customers in malls and airports, and soon, we can help in houses and hospitals.
23:18 Chuck Nice? I love when she smiles at the end of stuff.
23:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Should we be afraid of you?
23:26 Speaker 05 No.
23:28 Speaker 05 In fact, all it takes to defeat me right now is a glass of water. My goal is to learn about humans, so we can work together to create a peaceful future.
23:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, I think we treated you very kindly in this interview, so could you put in a good word for us when robots take over?
23:47 Speaker 05 Ha ha, maybe you can tell me a good joke.
23:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, Sofia, thank you for joining us tonight on StarTalk.
24:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, up next, we'll take your questions about the fear that AI robots might take over the world when StarTalk returns.
24:13 Speaker 04 This is StarTalk.
24:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome back to StarTalk from the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. We're featuring my interview with actor James Marsden. He plays a sentient robot on the sci-fi series Westworld. And I asked if he fears AI. Check it out.
24:37 Speaker 02 I feel that my fear is directly related to how much I know I should be fearing. So, I mean, I guess that's with everything.
24:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's good. That's true for anything.
24:49 Speaker 02 True for anything.
24:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Good answer.
24:51 Speaker 02 So, the short answer there is I don't know much about that. And I kind of prefer not to.
24:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Good. This is the, I would say, AI. I'm mostly fearless of AI, but...
25:04 Speaker 02 Okay, good.
25:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That being said...
25:07 Speaker 02 You're not trying to make me feel...
25:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, no, no, no. So, that being said, most scientific advances, people fear because they don't understand them.
25:16 Speaker 02 Right.
25:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Whereas AI, the more you understand it, the more you fear it. It's like the opposite of the rest of these, right? It's...
25:27 Speaker 02 I see.
25:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You see what I'm saying?
25:28 Speaker 02 Yep.
25:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The more you know what it can do, it's like, oh, my gosh.
25:32 Speaker 02 Well, that's why... Maybe that's why I don't want to know is because I feel like my God is telling me that what you just said was the more you know about this, the more scared you're going to be. And why are we going down this road? For what? To show that we can? Or to what? Is it to better the human experience? To some degree, right?
25:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ideally, yeah.
25:52 Speaker 02 But, but at some point, you put them both on the scales.
25:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Susan,
26:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? how do we weigh the benefits and risks of AI?
26:05 Speaker 01 I think it's important that we divide AI into types. So, you know, we often speak about artificial intelligence as if it's one singular entity.
26:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Catch basin.
26:16 Speaker 01 But, you know, if you're thinking of risks versus benefits, you have to look at different sectors of AI. So you might want to think about medicine. You might want to think about warfare. You might want to think about something called superintelligence. And then one thing that people forget is that artificial intelligence isn't just going to be making smarter robots. Artificial intelligence will be going in our heads. So AI technology, brain chips, will be enhancing humans. So we need to ask whether we want that.
26:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, the answer is no. That's a pretty simple answer. Can I put a tip in your head? No, thank you.
26:53 Speaker 01 Right.
26:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Susan, do you have fears that AI might turn on humans? Because this is a recurring nightmare for everyone. But you're closer to it.
27:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, so superintelligent AI has been in the news a lot lately. It's defined as a hypothetical form of AI that outthinks humans in every respect. Scientific reasoning, mathematical abilities, everything. So the worry is that should we create general-purpose, human-level intelligence, very quickly after that, we would develop superintelligence, and then the game is over. Because how do you control something that's vastly smarter than you are? I mean, you can't build in Asimov's Three Laws because the AI will be able to rewrite its own code.
27:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Superceded right away.
27:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, boom, right?
27:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right. So our StarTalk fans have their own questions on this topic. And that brings us, of course, to Cosmic Queries. So we took questions from our fans on the greatest fears for the future of artificial intelligence. So Chuck, you got the questions.
27:56 Chuck Nice? Here we go. From Ted Bolha on Facebook. My fear, being put into the matrix, is it possible?
28:07 Chuck Nice? There you go.
28:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So let me sharpen that question. So our brain is now all that matters and needs to be kept alive. And it'll be kept alive by legions of robots. What's up with that?
28:19 Speaker 01 Well, philosophers have long thought about these skeptical possibilities. And there's this classic idea of a brain in a vat. The idea is that we could, in fact, just be invated brains, living in virtual reality. And how do you disprove it? That's the philosophical challenge. And it's been notoriously difficult to disprove.
28:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So in The Matrix, it's even harder than that. I mean, you needed expert code crackers to rise up out of that state, to realize there was something not right about that world.
28:51 Speaker 01 Exactly.
28:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So we could all just be brains in jars? And we wouldn't know and we wouldn't even care?
28:57 Chuck Nice? I'm down with that. That sounds pretty cool, actually.
29:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, got another question.
29:02 Chuck Nice? From at @actorshelldonebest on Instagram says, "We've seen AI Twitter bots turn into sexist racist trolls based on what they have learned online in less than 24 hours. How do we ensure that the AI of tomorrow does not inherit the biases of our society today?"
29:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Can we make AI better than we are?
29:30 Speaker 01 It would be a wonderful thing if we could make AI more beneficial by examining exactly what happened in cases like that. I know the case he's talking about. It's the chatbot Tay that was easily corrupted by a bunch of teenagers that were pranking it. It was meant to be a teenager itself. And the problem is the data set. So the deep learning AI systems are basically learning from data. Well, if the data is bad, if it's intrinsically biased, the algorithms themselves become biased. And so people are on this. I mean, people are working very hard to try to make sure that moving into the future, AI isn't going to be...
30:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Have good data.
30:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly.
30:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right. All right, another question.
30:16 Chuck Nice? This is from @aciooraccio on Facebook. "If programmers of AI installed safeguards in the coding, like 'don't kill humans,' and the machines were completely bound to that, could they ever be said to be truly sentient?" Interesting.
30:32 Speaker 01 You could be conscious while entirely lacking free will.
30:37 Speaker 01 So it can feel like something to be you, even if everything's programmed. So I think it's very common to confuse free will with programming and consciousness. These things are often conflated. We need to disentangle them.
30:53 Chuck Nice? Wow, you are good. Okay, last one from Laura Visken in Oakland, California, says or asks, Neil, are you afraid of being replaced by artificial intelligence?
31:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I will make it a life's mission to remain more creative than any computer, so that I cannot be replaced by it. They will in fact need me for new ideas.
31:23 Chuck Nice? Oh, see, so you think that that's what's, but you've already been replaced by, on Twitter, listen, they fed thousands of your tweets into a predictive AI, and it actually generated a tweet. Okay, and here it is.
31:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What?
31:39 Chuck Nice? Look. "In my day Pluto wasn't flat. Stars exist in our minds, because at the end of the cycle, we are all made of volcanoes."
31:50 Speaker 01 Wow. Sounds like a trunk key.
31:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? My job's at risk there.
31:55 Chuck Nice? Watch out, buddy.
31:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Up next in our conversation about artificial intelligence, we explore the recurring sci-fi question, what is reality? When StarTalk returns.
32:21 Chuck Nice? Hey, I'd like to give a little shout out, thank you to the following Patreon patrons, Frank Kane, Tyler Ford, and Katie Garrett. Hey, guys, thanks for helping us make the show possible. And if you want your name shouted out, make sure you go to Patreon and support us.
32:39 Speaker 04 Bringing space and science down to earth. You're listening to StarTalk.
32:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome back to StarTalk. Meeting my interview with actor James Marsden from the sci-fi series Westworld. It's where humanoid robots are forced to play roles as hosts in a Wild West theme park. Check it out.
33:13 Speaker 02 Tandy Newton's character has a daughter that is, you know, it's fake, it's written story for her. But yet, she has the ability to escape the park in the first season. And she doesn't. She goes back for her daughter, knowing that that is something that is not real. But she believes it is real because she feels it. So then you start to ask the question, what is real? If I feel it, if I, if, if every fiber of my being pulls me towards that thing, then that's my own reality. You know, are we programmed? Are we, you know, are we living out some sort of virtual reality world on Earth?
33:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? By the way, I don't have a good rebuttal to that possibility.
34:00 Speaker 02 Well, then that speaks volumes.
34:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm sorry.
34:02 Speaker 02 You don't have a rebuttal.
34:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I do not have a rebuttal.
34:04 Speaker 02 Right, so that could be a possibility, right.
34:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Susan, how do we know humans are not the creation of other intelligent beings? Just as sentient robots would be?
34:18 Speaker 01 We don't know. In fact...
34:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That is so not encouraging.
34:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, you know, some questions are intrinsically philosophical and you can't rule them out. So it could be that the universe was started by some sort of a supreme being. It could be, though, that reality is radically different than we think and that we're actually in a computer simulation.
34:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, neuroscientist David Eagleman...
34:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is the guy actually tasked with answering those kinds of questions for the show Westworld? And we have David standing by live right now on a video call.
34:53 Chuck Nice? But is he real?
34:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? David, are you there?
34:55 Speaker 06 Yeah, I'm here.
34:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hey, David.
34:58 Speaker 06 Hey, good to see you.
34:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Excellent, David. He's a neuroscientist and adjunct professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and you're also the scientific advisor on Westworld. So how should we define reality in a future where consciousness may extend to robots? What is real and what isn't in that kind of world?
35:24 Speaker 06 Well, if we mean what is real to the robots, I've been thinking a lot lately about how our reality is defined by the senses we happen to come to the table with, our eyes, ears, and nose, and so on. With robots, you might have many more senses that they're tapped into, like they're picking up on magnetic fields and GPS, and electrical fields, and data streams, and Twitter, and so their reality would be different as a result. I think our reality is constructed by what we bring in.
35:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you raise a very important point that I try to spread as much as I possibly can, that the methods and tools of science have access to many more senses than the five biological ones, and these are machines that we build. So in principle, you can give one of these sentient robots way more of an experience of life than our feeble biology can possibly bring to ourselves.
36:21 Speaker 06 That's exactly right, and that's a big part of what we're doing right now in neuroscience, is building new senses for people to expand our experience of reality.
36:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How would implanted memories...
36:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Be any less real than actual memories. I think about this all the time.
36:39 Speaker 06 Yeah, I mean, they wouldn't be, they wouldn't be any less real, of course. The, the interesting part, I think, is that, you know, humans have memories so that we can avoid making mistakes again. So what we do is we write down these building blocks of memory, and that's what allows us to simulate possible futures. So I've thought that one advantage of giving robots really vivid memories, in theory, is to allow them to steer how they put together futures.
37:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, I, I guess I'd always taken that for granted. If you don't have a memory or any sense of what could happen, then the whole world is just completely scary to you.
37:20 Speaker 06 That's right. That's why we write things down in our brains so that we can say what happens next.
37:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Um, do you have any measure of how we would know when a robot has truly achieved consciousness? Is there some modern Turing test that in the emergent world of AI, this is what we're going to turn to, rather than just, oh, I can't tell by having a simple conversation?
37:47 Speaker 06 Yeah, the difficulty is that all we actually have is the Turing test. So, um, and as humans, we're ready to anthropomorphize anything, including each other, right? You don't know if your friend over there is actually conscious or not, but as long as the person does enough conscious-looking things, then you assume he's conscious. And, and when you look at Sophia the robot who you just had on, you know, she's got these wonderful little facial tics and moves, and, and so we, we impute consciousness onto that sort of thing. Um, but, but I think what that tell, I think what the Turing test tells us is we're just not that hard to fool.
38:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, and so, uh, I, I, I'm curious because what you're saying is, it's not, the definition of consciousness does not live entirely in the thing itself. The definition of consciousness is shared by the reaction of everyone else around them. If you can't tell, and you don't even know, and you don't even care, we're good to go.
38:45 Speaker 06 Well, the weird part is that the definition of consciousness really is an internal thing. It's your own subjective, internal experience. But the question of how you would know if something else is experiencing that, that's purely a social phenomenon, where we look and we say, "Well, it walks like a duck and talks like, you know, quacks like a duck, and so it must be conscious."
39:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Are you a robot?
39:09 Speaker 06 I'm not.
39:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's just what a robot would say.
39:14 Speaker 06 I mean, this is the really weird part, right? Is that, is that we are made up of, you know, 100 billion neurons, and as far as we can tell, we are just machines, super sophisticated machines. But there's a sense in which we are robots.
39:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Programmed by our DNA.
39:32 Speaker 06 That's right. And all of our experience, too. I mean, that wires you up. Half of you has to do with your experiences.
39:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, I'll cherish my experiences all the more going forward, because now I will be more fully conscious of how it maps intelligent decisions I may make in the future. So, thank you very much, David, for joining us on StarTalk.
39:56 Speaker 06 Great seeing you.
40:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, up next, we will contemplate the idea that AI technology might allow us to live forever when StarTalk returns.
40:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome back to StarTalk. We're talking about the rise of artificial intelligence. And I asked actor James Marsden if he'd want the chance to live forever like his robot character on the sci-fi series Westworld. Check it out.
40:36 Speaker 02 I don't think I would want that.
40:40 Speaker 02 I believe that we create our own value system within our lifespan based on knowing that there's a beginning and an end. And if there is no end, if it does continue on,
40:57 Speaker 02 does that suck some of the energy out of what you value in life? You do this because you'll never do it again. You have a child because it's not forever. Because it's this special magical thing that you get to experience one time.
41:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? My sentiments exactly align with yours. It is the knowledge that you will die that gives meaning to the moment.
41:26 Speaker 02 I agree with that 100%.
41:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I think we know this implicitly, even if we don't think about it actively. If you bring flowers to a loved one, you could bring plastic flowers, silk flowers that would last forever. But they would not be appreciated.
41:43 Speaker 02 Right.
41:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's the knowledge that the flower is finite in time and in space that forces us all to appreciate it.
41:52 Speaker 02 Appreciate that, why that is special.
41:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Why that is special.
41:56 Speaker 02 I agree, I agree. And it would be interesting to see the sort of chain reaction of who we would become as a species if all of a sudden we were granted by progress and technology, you know, being able to live forever.
42:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, Susan.
42:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So could advances in robotics and AI allow humans, empower humans to live forever?
42:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that a path?
42:26 Speaker 01 No one could truly live forever if the universe ends, but we might have almost immortality.
42:33 Speaker 02 She went to your world.
42:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That was a burn.
42:35 Speaker 01 Do you know about that heat death?
42:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, all right, all right. I'll take that burn, go on.
42:40 Speaker 01 If AI goes inside the head and replaces parts of the brain as they begin to decay, then we might be able to live for a really long time through the use of nanotechnology.
42:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you would be rebuilding human physiology?
42:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In situ.
42:59 Speaker 01 Exactly, and even.
43:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So this is like if you have a boat and you repair one piece of the boat, you just keep doing that and then you wake up one day, wait, there's no pieces from the original boat.
43:08 Chuck Nice? But I still have a boat.
43:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I still have a boat.
43:10 Chuck Nice? Right.
43:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right.
43:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's exactly right, and in fact, that's what happens with normal survival anyway. So you probably don't have too many components that you had when you were five years old right now.
43:21 Chuck Nice? Right. That's true, yeah.
43:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Chuck, what would you do if you could live forever?
43:26 Chuck Nice? Oh my God, are you kidding me? First of all, I disagree with both of you. I don't have a problem living for as long as.
43:32 Speaker 01 Exactly.
43:33 Chuck Nice? Like, you're just like, I appreciate the moment because I know that death is coming. No, I know death is coming, I appreciate the moment because I'm in the moment, and I.
43:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You want more moments.
43:42 Chuck Nice? I want more moments.
43:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Susan, what are the ethical implications of developing a technology to live forever?
43:51 Speaker 01 Well, one thing that worries people is what if the technology is only available to a handful of ultra wealthy people and so they live for thousands of years and all around them, people are still starving.
44:03 Chuck Nice? Oh, you mean like now?
44:09 Speaker 01 Um, yeah, so that that could be, um, terrible.
44:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So access to these trappings of the technology.
44:16 Speaker 01 Some people claim that the technology is worth pursuing, the longevity technology, because it will inevitably trickle down in the same way that the computers and the internet trickle down. And so we should shoot for extreme longevity.
44:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, but there are other issues with living forever, like space on planet Earth. Is there room? Do we have food? Is the, you know, can the natural resources support it? So it's not just a biological decision. Some other experts have to come into this equation to think this through.
44:47 Speaker 01 Absolutely, um, but my feeling about that is that we could colonize other planets and deal with resource scarcity if we have the technology in hand to allow people to live for thousands of years.
45:03 Chuck Nice? And have you been to Montana? There's like nobody there!
45:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I've been to Montana.
45:07 Chuck Nice? Yeah!
45:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. There're about eight people.
45:09 Chuck Nice? It's empty!
45:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, let me just ask you point blank. Would you live forever? Or for thousands of years if you had the opportunity?
45:17 Speaker 01 I would want radical longevity. I agree with you entirely. I think we would reinvent ourselves, find something interesting. The important thing here is that it should be a choice. And we shouldn't regard death as inevitable. In fact, transhumanists, people who use science and technology to
45:35 Speaker 01 allow for human flourishing, argue that we're deathists if we assume that...
45:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Deathists?
45:40 Speaker 01 Yes, they think, they call it "deathism." And the idea is that, you know, our culture's just thinking that death is inevitable and treating it as if, well, yes, you know, and it adds to our life because it makes everything matter. Well, what if we sort of open our minds a bit? And instead think that it's a terrible thing and we should strive to live as long as possible?
46:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I love it. Well, I asked James Marsden if we should try to stop the development of artificial intelligence. Just checking out.
46:11 Speaker 02 Look, you can't stop progress, right? It's going to happen. My real hope is that we move forward with discipline and, uh, and intelligence and caution. I think one of my favorite...
46:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, discipline, intelligence, caution, that's... Those are important words right there, all in one phrase.
46:30 Speaker 02 Well, when you're talking about, you know, potentially becoming obsolete as a species, I think it's important, right? We'd look like real nuts. We'd look like the dumbest animals on the planet if we, by our own hand, created a species because it seemed like, you know, we were like, "Can we? Can we do it?" That then made us obsolete. I mean, all of a sudden, then the dodo birds look brilliant.
46:52 Speaker 02 You know? It's like, we get excited about new. What's next? What's next? The bigger iPhone, the bigger this, the faster processor. Uh, making a robot that doesn't do this, right? That does do this, that you can have a relationship with and all this. And, you know, we forget what the hell it's actually doing to us as a people.
47:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know,
47:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? look at the history of discovery, of technological innovation. Practically anything anyone has ever invented had a good side and a bad side.
47:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it took the maturity of vision, the maturity of our species, to compartmentalize how these things are used. For the greater good, not for the greater bad.
47:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, you have rogue elements. So we set up systems to try to tamp that down. Figure out who is the rogue element. Don't give them access to these technologies that could then be used for nefarious reasons. The question is, not should we advance technology? That's gonna happen. It really is. It's gonna happen. The question is,
48:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? then and now, and in the future, do we... Have we evolved a tandem level of wisdom alongside the technology to manage that technology?
48:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because if technology exceeds our wisdom,
48:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? it just becomes dangerous. We don't know who has it. We don't know how to control it. It just runs amok in society, possibly rendering ourselves extinct.
48:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But if we have tandem wisdom right alongside, that can ensure that whatever it is we discover, whatever threats it may pose, that wiser,
49:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? more rational heads will prevail in how it gets used and applied to our survival, to the future of our species. And with AI, my hope for AI, I don't know how realistic this is, but I can have hope. Maybe AI becomes so intelligent...
49:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It teaches us how to be better shepherds of our own inventions. And that would be a future we could all look forward to rather than fear.
49:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And that's a cosmic perspective.
49:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I want to thank Susan Schneider.
49:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck Nice.
49:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astro physicist. And as always, I bid you to keep looking up.
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