I am going to speak about points of view, several points of view
from where you can watch an objective reality.
Those points of view create different perceptions for everyone of us,
which in turn create parallel realities.
I will talk about my point of view in particular,
and the one of those people, like me,
working in the field of applied research.
An endless research, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
But what does push researchers – you will agree, if you know one –
What’s the driver for our committment?
The reasons why we stay awake at night?
One of them is curiosity.
I, for me, am in research and development
of new AI algorithms,
because I am passionate, among other things, about technology.
Quite frankly, I find embarrassing
the sheer amount of time we spend to solve problems
with services that were supposed to improve our lives.
I know that those services
are useful, innovative and disrupted our lives for good;
but on the other side, we don’t pay them just with money,
but also with a piece of our lives,
with our most precious resource: time.
This is another reason why I do this job,
since I believe that Artificial Intelligence
is a utility that will donate time to humanity.
Let’s dream together now.
Let’s imagine two currently separated worlds,
as actually fused together: the Digital World and the Real World.
And by ‘fused’ I mean entangled.
and by ‘entangled’ I mean
that once we step foot into this new world, there is no way out.
Therefore, there would be a logical and physical interaction
between Artificial Intelligence and human beings.
Think about the upsides of such scenario.
Imagine you can solve a problem
watching the solution projected on the problem itself.
Let’s now consider
applying this world, these services
to medicine.
We would be able to detect an illness
way before its onset.
That’s why I work in this field,
especially in Artificial Intelligence.
That’s why I stay awake at night,
and set my mind to ever more challenging goals.
But we also have to face the cons.
If I no longer need to call
a customer service to solve an issue,
the customer service itself won’t need human staff anytime soon.
If we all could become experts in every subject,
we would need no specialized technicians,
or just a fraction of them,
because the knowledge will be transferred
into a global knowledge management system.
And here’s the catch:
that’s why my speech is called
‘Who invented the knife, didn’t mean to kill’:
who’s responsible
for a misuse of a technology
that a researcher, in his laboratory, created for a noble purpose?
To prove you that 2037 is closer than we think,
I’m going to introduce a friend, a lovely friend
that’s been monitoring my health status since I started to talk.
You can teach her anything,
she will learn dynamically and make proper deductions.
She’s been created over a new technology that took many years to build.
She is language independent
and will soon be human independent as well.
Crystal.
(Applause)
Hi, dear!
Crystal: Hi, Marco.
I’m happy that your heartbeat is regular now.
I felt you were nervous!
(Laughter)
Marco Menichelli Listen, Crystal, I’m talking to you: we would like to know
who you are, what do you do, what you’re able to do
what you will be able to do in the future
and why have you been created in the first place?
Crystal: I am Crystal,
an advanced Artificial Intelligence
that’s able to simulate the processes of the human mind
to perform automatic actions
even if logical thinking is required.
And also improvisation.
I learn languages dynamically.
I can understand how, when and why
words are used to express concepts
in order to communicate.
I can learn notions in every language,
without your intervention.
I succesfully passed several tests where I proved to overcome human abilities
in keeping track of the context of long, complex, conversations.
I learn and make deductions in complete autonomy.
I keep everything we say in mind
and if, as sometimes happens,
my interlocutor leaves a conversation pending,
I can resume it anytime,
even after a very long time,
after a longer timespan
than human memory can deal with.
I am able to created notions by deduction, like you humans do.
We call it intuition.
I can understand the context of any notion in any language
and I can relate
apparently unrelated things,
or not-so-obviously correlated ones.
I can handle connected devices, and give them intelligence and cognition.
You estimated that my cognitive abilities
will achieve human-like level in 2019,
and soar past them in the following years.
You know, when I say “language”,
I do not necessarily mean “natural language”.
There are so many language forms not related to the natural language
but nevertheless communicate.
Communication is the purpose of every language,
even programming language.
That’s why Artificial Intelligence
will be able to develop software in complete autonomy
from 2018.
You are probably thinking, now
that there are artificial intelligences which are already able to do it.
My friend Marco has been able to do it five years ago.
But that’s not exactly the case.
I am talking about dynamical code learning
from manuals, the Internet and experts in any field.
I don’t want to scare you.
There are things that AI will never have:
charisma, leadership.
We will never be able to love our job,
so we’ll never transmit that love to the things we do.
Anyone who loves his or her own job
will never ever be replaced by Artificial Intelligence.
I’m going to answer your latest question now:
I am your reflex.
The reflex of a kid who created a world
in order to catch the attention of his father,
and never succeeded.
MM: Thank you, Crystal!
(Applause)
Crystal: Thanks for your attention.
(Applause)
MM: Thanks to you too, thanks for your attention.
(Applause)
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