Thanks for tuning in to Seeker Plus.

I know this is also on Seeker.

This is a slightly different format

where we get really deep into a topic for a little while.

So stick with us.

I'm Trace.

This is going to be really cool.

We're talking about artificial intelligence today.

And we didn't want to present it as artificial intelligence is

scary or artificial intelligence is the best,

but come down in the middle and give you both perspectives

because there are people on both sides of pretty much every one

of these debates.

So let's kick into it.

Artificial intelligence is everywhere,

and it's growing both in scope and also in scale.

It's just getting to be in everything.

And people have strong opinions on this.

One article called "The Debate Itself--

Singulatarians Versus Skeptics," which

we thought was kind of cool.

And people do see artificial intelligence

as a possible threat--

people like Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking,

Bill Gates kind of, and at one point Steve Wozniak.

On the other side, people see artificial intelligence

as the future and inevitable-- people

like Larry Page of Google-- and said that in order for Google

to achieve its mission, that means achieving AI.

Mark Zuckerberg uses AI to run his home,

and Facebook is moving towards having AI assistants.

Even Uber has an AI division.

So it is like this old tech new tech and with Elon Musk

right in the middle.

But chances are you all probably know this stuff already

because you follow Science News likely

if you're watching this show.

But one way to think about this is positives and negatives.

Everyone has an opinion about AI, and both of those opinions

are usually valid.

So we thought we'd see how the debate is put together

rather than coming down on one side or the other.

So let's quickly define artificial intelligence.

It's not just robots and chat bots and assistants.

It's being used across all sorts of fields in industries,

and it's computers and it's machines

imitating human intelligence.

But it's not just that.

It's more than just learning.

It's more than just replicating our intelligence.

It's about learning new things, and it's also

about the machines learning on their own.

The big idea, the big concept here could be great,

but it also could be kind of scary.

So let's talk about different ways

that you could apply artificial intelligence.

A big one being talked about right

now is artificially intelligent automobiles, trucks,

and cars that drive themselves, which, if you think about it,

that is an intelligent task.

It requires decision making and learning and learning

from your experiences.

And a big thing would be safety.

90 percent of car accidents now, car crashes,

are caused by humans, human error.

Smart cars, intelligent cars, they

would be able to take in the environment around them.

GPS could tell them what roads they're on and also

what buildings are nearby and other monuments and things,

of course.

They have cameras and scanners.

So they can see the trees and the way the road actually moves

versus what it's supposed to do.

And you can see things like other cars.

Which what if they were smart, too?

Then they could interact with each other.

And then you have this network that is moving everywhere.

What if you have smart traffic lights?

Eventually this whole system could

be one giant AI system where they're all

talking to each other.

And then we could virtually eliminate 90% of crashes,

right?

Assuming we're eliminating all of the human error ones.

Of course, there are moral issues here.

The car might be designed to cause the least

damage to the owner of the car.

It might not want the car to be destroyed in a crash.

And so that's a moral question.

Can the owner of the car, say, a taxi company

decide not to protect passengers or predestines

over protecting their property?

This is an ethical dilemma.

What about a guy who owns a car?

He would want to protect his family at all costs.

But what if in doing so it sacrificed

other people's property or destroyed

other intelligent cars?

It gets complicated because nothing

is black and white when you get it out into the real world.

And that's part of the problem with artificial intelligence

across the board right now--

is that the real world is messy.

Is it worth it to have a self-driving intelligent car

that might not think some humans are worth saving

over other humans or that some property isn't worth saving

over other property even if it can prevent more accidents,

even if it knows the fastest routes and could drive itself,

so you wouldn't need to worry about people under age

or people over age or people who were

too intoxicated or inebriated in any number of different ways?

At the end of the day, intelligent automobiles

mean that, on the good side, we don't have to go to the DMV.

We don't have to worry about drunk driving.

But on the bad side, we're taking our control away

from something that happens all the time all around us

especially in urban areas.

So if you're in a car and it's raining and you slide,

you go around a corner and maybe something bad happens.

The road's too wet.

The car did something wrong.

It's either going to destroy the life

of the person in the car or a pedestrian on the sidewalk.

That decision is made by a machine not by a human

and maybe by somebody who programmed

or owned that machine.

We as a society have to make a decision

to give up that control and hand it to an artificially

intelligent machine.

How do you feel about that?

It's a debate.

There's good and bad on both sides.

And this applies across the board.

Let's go to another example--

marketing.

Marketing is pervasive, especially

in the era of the internet.

Marketers want to know where you're going to be,

what you're going to buy, and what it takes

to get you to buy something.

You shop for shoes that one time,

and now there's an ad for shoes on every website you

visit and that shoe and a couple of other different shoes

in a variety of true colors.

And they're all really nice, and you kind of want all of them.

But you kind of want none of them

because they're just everywhere.

Or maybe you regularly visit a site on your computer

before you buy something.

Maybe you visit it 20 times.

Now right now all of that stuff happens and all of that data

is there, but no one's really looking

at all of that data except artificially

intelligent machines.

Predictive shopping and also recommendation engines

on Netflix and on Amazon--

those are basic artificial intelligences.

So imagine if they got way better.

When you shop for something, do you just go and buy it

or do you visit the same site once or twice, then

maybe look at some reviews, then maybe ask your friends about it

and then go back and buy it?

An artificial intelligence system

might be able to get you to buy that sooner because they

know your behavior.

So when you go there the first time,

what if an artificial intelligent system

just pulled in recommendations from the sites that you already

visit that it knows you visit because of the cookies--

little files-- that all of those sites

have stored on your computer?

What if it knew your social network

and it went to your friends who it knew

had bought from this web site and already

bought these types of items and said,

oh, here we know that all of your friends like this thing

and we know where you've shopped before.

And the artificially intelligent system

could anticipate what you want.

Is that scary or is that good?

Because sometimes I kind of like shoes,

but I don't know what I want.

And maybe the computer can tell me you do want this,

and I might love it.

But also it's kind of creepy to know that the computer knows

my shopping habits and knows what websites I've visited

and knows what my friends like and is anticipating

what I might like.

Good but also bad.

The Trump campaign tapped into a marketing AI

to help determine how it wanted to send out its messaging.

And this marketing AI claims to have 45,000 data points

on 230 million Americans.

They claim that they know what makes us angry, happy,

impassioned, or despondent.

That's a lot of power for somebody

to have and be able to then manipulate

all sorts of different people into doing

what they want because that's what marketing is about--

is I want to market something to you.

I have to know how to reach you in order

to do that and push your buttons and all sorts of other things.

The idea is to get you to make an emotional decision rather

than a rational one from time to time.

Again, good or bad?

What do you think?

How about in medicine?

Medicine is a field with huge amounts of data.

But most of that data is protected and stored

in very specific places, sometimes never even digitally.

It's just papers or it's just file names and not so much

all of the stuff in the file.

AI machines could potentially take

in huge amounts of this data, like medical records,

doctor's notes, treatment options, disease histories,

family histories, genetic information,

and find patterns that could help doctors diagnose

diseases in people that they didn't even know

would have them.

Let me give you an example.

If I can analyze, as an intelligent machine, all

of your medical history and also all of everyone else's

medical history, who has all of these genetic markers, what

if I can find a pattern and then use that to diagnose you

and many other people?

Would that offset the fact that I now

have your medical information and I'm using it?

Yeah, sure.

I'm using it to help other people.

Great.

But I also have your private medical data.

Maybe not great.

The AI system doesn't necessarily

care whether it has all of your data, but the more data it has,

the better it's going to be able to do.

It does involve us giving up some

of this control to an intelligent machine

in order to get a benefit back.

On top of that, is it good to take away

humans from healthcare?

Will we rely someday 100% on computers diagnosing us?

They don't really have emotions.

They don't have gut feelings.

They can't read real patients' experience in the same way

that a well-trained doctor can.

However, computers can examine data and find patterns

in our genetic codes and things.