He likes the audience to interact with him. To ask questions. He opens up the floor.
One of the Muslim women in the Sophia hoodies raises her hand. The runner passes the microphone.
Professor Stein, as you know, the Hanson robot, Sophia, was awarded citizenship of Saudi Arabia in 2017. She has more rights than any Saudi woman. What does this tell us about artificial intelligence?
Nothing – said Professor Stein – it tells us a great deal about Saudi Arabia.
(Laughter in the hall but the woman persists.)
Will women be the first casualties of obsolescence in your brave new world?
On the contrary, said Professor Stein, AI need not replicate outmoded gender prejudices. If there is no biological male or female, then—
But the woman interrupts him – he hates that, but he contains his irritation.
What about sexbots? Pulsing vaginas that never say no?
A young man gets in on the act – Yeah, and you don’t even have to buy them dinner!
There’s more laughter. The young man turns round to the women and smiles a big, wide, practised non-sexist smile – Just kidding! Can I get you guys a Coke later?
Professor Stein senses he is losing the room. He holds up his hand to quell the micro-conversations bubbling around the hall.
He has natural authority – like a lion tamer.
He says, There is a substantial difference between low-to-medium grade robotics that deploy narrow-goal outcomes – and I would include a pulsating vagina in that – even if she can call you Big Boy in eight languages … (Laughter.)
I spot a shape in the rear row jumping up and down to speak, but Professor Stein ignores the shape, and continues, Please listen … a substantial difference between narrow-goal outcomes and true artificial intelligence; by which I mean machines that will learn to think for themselves.
He pauses to let his words take effect. So, if your concern is that ultimately, will women be replaced by robots, as in The Stepford Wives, a film I love, by the way, and especially the remake with Glenn Close – have you seen that? No? Well, you should … it has a happy ending (he’s joking to take back control by getting everyone on the same side, but there’s resistance) – then I would say—
Another woman stands up to interrupt him. I see the splash of anger on his face like he’s caught in a headlight. He takes a step back. The woman looks familiar to me. She’s attractive in a discontented kind of way, blonde hair escaping from her clip, a torn, expensive jacket.
She says, Professor Stein, you are the acceptable face of AI, but in fact the race to create what you call true artificial intelligence is a race run by autistic-spectrum white boys with poor emotional intelligence and frat-dorm social skills. In what way will their brave new world be gender neutral – or anything neutral?
I wouldn’t call the Chinese autistic-spectrum white boys, says Professor Stein mildly.
She says, China is a chauvinist culture where men grow up learning to disparage women … they are the biggest manufacturers and the biggest consumers of sexbots.
(I can see the guy in the back waving his hand again.)
She says, We know already that machine learning is deeply sexist in outcomes. Amazon had to stop using machines to sift through job application CVs because the machines chose men over women time after time. There is nothing neutral about AI.
Professor Stein holds up his hand to pause her … I agree with what you are saying about the current state of machine learning. Yes, there are problems – but it is my view that such problems are temporary, and not systemic.
The woman won’t back down. She holds on to the microphone and shouts at him: WHAT IS SO SMART ABOUT THE END OF THE HUMAN?
There is a spontaneous round of applause in the hall; even some of the (rational, logical, forward-investing) men-in-suits applaud.
Victor looks unhappy. He wouldn’t call it unhappy; he would call it misunderstood. He waits. He isn’t patient, but he knows how to wait, the way an actor or a politician knows how to wait to deliver a line. Then he does one of the things he does so well – heads out of the sciences and into the arts:
To name things wrongly is to add to the misfortune of the world.
His voice-recognition app writes up the quote on the screen behind him. We stare at it. It is beautiful, like an equation.
There’s a pause.
He waits again till the students have stopped tweeting and the geeks have stopped trying to find it online. He waits like he’s got all the time in the world – and I suppose – if he’s right – he has, because before he’s dead he’ll be able to upload his brain. The rest of us, as the lecture session reaches its end, know that it’s 8:30 p.m. on a Wednesday. Are you hungry? I see it flash on the phone in front of me.
Victor speaks slowly and clearly. His voice is warm, and slightly accented from the years he has spent working in the States.
He says, Let me start by repeating what I said at the beginning of my lecture (in other words, weren’t you listening, goldfish brain?). It is not the Silicon Valley geeks who are perversely turning life as we know it into an algorithm – it is the biologists. It is from the natural sciences that the barrier between organic and inorganic is being dismantled.
The room is quiet now. He continues …
What is an algorithm? An algorithm is a series of steps for solving a recurring problem. A problem isn’t a bad thing – it’s more of a How Do I? A problem might be – my route to work every morning; it might be, I am a tree – so how do I transpire? So an algorithm is a data-processing plant. Frogs, potatoes, humans can be understood as biological data-processing plants – if you believe the biologists. Computers are non-biological data-processing plants.
If data is the input and the rest is processing, then humans aren’t so special after all.
And is that so terrible a piece of knowledge? Perhaps it comes as a relief. We haven’t been wonderful as Masters of the Universe, have we? Climate change, mass extinction of fauna and flora, destruction of habitat and wilderness, atmospheric pollution, failure to control population, extraordinary brutality, the daily stupidity of our childish feelings …
He pauses again, his handsome face serious and sincere; yes, I think he means what he is about to say:
If we are reaching the end of Project Human, don’t blame the geeks.
There is a loud cheer from the geeks in the room.
Victor continues, And science, remember, tries to deal in realities, not magical thinking. Science is no longer convinced that Homo sapiens is a special case.
Victor smiles and turns to his quote on the screen behind him:
To name things wrongly is to add to the misfortune of the world.
Albert Camus. You may not have read him, but perhaps you should. In any case, you all know, however vaguely, the Bible story of the Garden of Eden, and that Adam’s task was to name his world. If you believe, as I do, that religious texts – like myths – are texts we create to mirror the deeper structures of the human psyche, then yes, naming is still our primary task. Poets and philosophers know this – perhaps science has confused naming with taxonomy. Perhaps, in our early efforts to distance ourselves from the alchemists who came before us, we forgot that naming is power. I cannot conjure spirits, but I can tell you that calling things by their right names is more than giving them an identity bracelet or a label, or a serial number. We summon a vision. Naming is power.
He comes forward to the front of the platform, the toes of his boots right on the edge, and he says, The world I imagine, the world that AI will make possible, will not be a world of labels – and that includes binaries like male and female, black and white, rich and poor. There will not be a division between head and heart, between what I feel and what I think. The future will not be a version of Blade Runner, where replicants long to be named – like humans – and therefore to be known – like humans. What I am proposing is far bigger. As we develop true artificial intelligence, what are we doing? We
are summoning a vision.
(He steps back. Pause. Wait. Hold. Go.)
Even if, even if the first superintelligence is the worst possible iteration of what you might call the white male autistic default programme, the first upgrade by the intelligence itself will begin to correct such errors. And why? Because we humans will only programme the future once. After that, the intelligence we create will manage itself.
And us.
Thank you.
APPLAUSE APPLAUSE APPLAUSE APPLAUSE.
The future is a plausible app.
I believe him. This second I truly do. Valhalla is burning and the white male gods are falling into the fire, but the Rheingold is what it always is – pure and untainted – and it will be found again, like a second chance, like a new beginning, and these will be the bad old days, when humans ruled the earth – which, by the way, will be restored as a nature reserve because AI won’t need shopping malls and automobiles to satisfy its desires. All your worries about robots taking over your jobs – dude, you can’t even imagine the coming world …
I didn’t say that – it was a tweet.
There’s a drinks reception afterwards. We can admire the portraits of Isaac Newton, Hook, Boyle, Franklin, Darwin, Faraday, Watson and Crick (apologies to Rosalind Franklin – the woman who supplied Watson and Crick with the vital X-rays they needed to unravel the structure of DNA).
Here’s Tim Berners-Lee, Stephen Hawking, Venki Ramakrishnan. All the big guns, and only one female member of the Society has ever won a Nobel Prize (Dorothy Hodgkin). Maybe the next one will be a citizen of Saudi Arabia called Sophia.
The women in the hoodies are asking Victor if he has ever met Sophia, the Hanson robot with a sense of humour (‘I want to kill all humans’). He has. He likes her. She is the reassuring face of robotics. It’s all about humans and robots working together for a better life.
I know that Victor isn’t really interested in robotics – he wants pure intelligence. But he sees robots as an intermediate species that will help humanity adjust to its coming role. The nature of that role is unclear.
In theory, if you own your own robot, you can send it out to work for you and keep the money. Or you can use it at home as an unpaid servant. Or you can send it to weed your chemical-free farm. Should be great. But when have things ever worked out great? In the human dream?
In the human dream.
Outside the window a cat walks along the parapet.
Hair falling over her shoulders, soft silk shirt under her leather jacket, the woman who wouldn’t let go of the microphone is shoving her way towards Victor. She’s feline, dangerous, part-wild, part-tame, like a zoo cat that can read and write.
Then she sees me. Jesus! she says. It’s Dr Jackoff!
Yes, it’s her. Polly D, Miss VIP.
How did your teledildonics work out? I say.
Just who or what are you? she asks. She presses her iPhone to RECORD.
The same now as I was then. And I am a medical doctor. Look!
I flip my ID at her. Now she’s uncomfortable.
Then she sees Victor coming towards me. She gets on-message. Professor Stein! My name is Polly D. I work for Vanity Fair and I have been emailing you for some time. No reply. Why is that? I’d like to ask you a few questions.
This is not the moment, says Victor. The lecture is on the website, and you can email me via the link.
I have a few questions, insists Polly D.
Excuse me, please, says Victor. I have guests to attend to this evening. Ry!
Victor claps me on the back. I smile at Polly and shrug. I am a little bit pleased. Then I stop being pleased because I am obviously caught in one of those dreams where incongruous and mismatched people huddle in the same place. There he is … As large as his life.
You’ve met Ron Lord, haven’t you, Ry?
Crumpled grey linen suit – faint urine stain on the crotch – I suppose it is urine – and a pink shirt that gapes between the fifth and sixth buttons. He’s pink underneath too. TMI.
Ron is regarding me; reluctantly he holds out his hand. Well, good to see you again, Ryan.
It’s Ry. Just Ry.
Not short for Ryan?
Ry is short for Mary.
Ron falls silent while he processes this fact. The thing about humans is that we process information at different speeds, depending on the human, depending on the information. In some ways machines are easier to deal with. If I had just told machine intelligence that I am now a man, although I was born a woman, it wouldn’t slow up its processing speed.
You’re a woman, then? says Ron.
No, Ron. I am a hybrid. My name is Ry.
You’re a bloke, then? says Ron.
I’m trans.
Like, transhuman?
Transgender.
You look like a bloke, says Ron. Not a serious bloke, but a bloke. I wouldn’t have given you that interview at the Sexpo if you was a girl.
I’m trans, I say again.
Victor has his hand on Ron’s shoulder.
Ron has decided to become an investor, says Victor, in Optimal.
Optimal is Victor’s company.
Optimal’s logo reads: The Future Is Now. That annoys me because if the future is now, where is the present?
I reckon the prof and me are in the same business, says Ron.
You do? I say, looking at Victor.
Yeah, says Ron. The Future.
Victor is smiling. Not always a good sign. Ron, did you bring Claire?
Yeah! She’s in the cloakroom folded in half. She’s only about 2 foot 6 doubled up. I put her in a gym bag. There’s a few of them in there – gym bags, I mean. Mine’s the one that says ADIDAS.
I think some of our guests would like to see her, says Victor. She’s reassuring.
Ron is not so reassured. I didn’t like what you said about sexbots. About them being no threat. Every new development is a threat. Right? Some day robots will be an independent life form. That’s what you told me when I said I might invest in you.
That is correct, says Victor. But at present all sexbots are narrow-goal robots.
You mean they got small cunts? says Ron.
That’s not what I meant, says Victor.
So what exactly did you mean? says Ron. Mean? Exactly?
What I mean, says Victor, is that your robots do what it says on the box. They are for sex and personal satisfaction.
That’s not a narrow goal, says Ron, that’s the sum total. That’s what men want.
Not all men, says Victor.
It’s not what I want, I say, and Ron looks at me with even more doubt and even more dismay. He puts his free hand back in his pocket and waves his whisky glass at me. Listen, Ryan, or Mary, or whatever your name is, I’m not being personal, but have you got a dick?
I think that’s personal, says Victor.
No, I say. My name is Ry and I don’t have a dick.
Well then, says Ron, OK, no dick. So you’re not a bloke really. So what blokes want – well, it’s not about you, is it?
Is manhood dickhood? I ask Ron.
He looks at me like I am the stupidest thing he has ever seen. He says, Why would you want to be a man if you don’t want a dick?
A man is not a dick on legs, is he?
More or less, says Ron.
There’s a bit more to it, says Victor.
I am not sure how to proceed, so I keep it personal, and I say to Ron, I didn’t feel comfortable as a woman.
Why not?
It’s hard to explain.
Did you fancy women? You fancied women but you didn’t fancy being a lesbian? I get that.
I am attracted to men, I say.
Ron takes a step back. His hand moves protectively towards his crotch. I want to say, Don’t worry, Ron, I don’t mean you.
Someone distracts Victor and I am left with nonplussed Ron. He says, Well, Ryan, I don’t know if you’re a bloke or whatever, but you are definitely a doctor, yeah?
That
’s right.
In a hospital?
Yes.
How do you know the prof?
I supply him with body parts.
Ron’s pink nose starts twitching like a terrier’s. Does he expect me to smell of mould? Is he looking for bloodstains? Dirt under my fingernails?
I’m not a grave robber, Ron. Do you think I go to the churchyard at night with a crowbar and a sack? You think I spade away the heaped mound of earth, prise open the coffin lid, lift her out from her last resting place, clothes damp with decay, and carry her off for dissection?
No! No! says Ron, meaning, Yes! Yes!
After dissection, in the old days, the human remains might be ground up as bonemeal, or rendered into candles, or fed to the pigs. There was no waste. You could say that burial is a waste – at least the way it’s done these days, in solid caskets, worm-proof, rain-proof, anything to stop the natural processes of death.
Death is natural. Yet nothing looks more unnatural than a dead body.
It looks wrong, doesn’t it, Ry? I remember when we first met, Victor’s soft, urgent voice standing behind me. It looks wrong because it is wrong.
Victor Stein works across the boundary of smart medicine and machine learning. He is teaching non-human intelligence to diagnose. Machines are better than we are at the algorithms of disease. The doctor of the future will be a robot. But skin is skin, and flesh is flesh, and you can’t learn anatomy from textbooks and videos. As long as there are bodies you will need a body. Body parts. I’ve seen the little probes gliding curiously across the muscles of a severed arm (preserved) and into the soft tissue of a leg (decaying). When you amputate a leg it has to be carried out of theatre. Legs are surprisingly heavy.
You amputate legs? says Ron.
Not only legs, I say.
How’s it done? says Ron.
With a saw …
Ron looks paler now.
Then we cauterise the sliced end, wash and dry the discarded limb, drop it into a large plastic bag, seal it, label it and put it in the fridge or the freezer – or the incinerator – depending.
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