Atul Jalan of Manthan talks about 'Man Creating God' @ #Cypher2017

I think last I was here in 2015 and the theme if I remember right of Battier's was Big Data technology and this year is insured machine learning AI and that kind of thing. Technology trends change and fly fast, right? And time flies faster. That big data has brought AI to its current tipping point, so much so that AI now is promising, is threatening to unfurl us, to take us into a hitherto unknown territory. And so let's start.

Multiverse all got formed, Quanta, Big Bang, right? And they say around ten billion years it took for things to cool down, for this earth as we know to cool down, for life-forming conditions to take place. And to fast forward the story, just seventy thousand years back, we and chimpanzees were pretty much the same. We and chimpanzees, just seventy thousand years back, were pretty much the same. Just one percent, you know? First cognitive revolution happened before cognitive computing happened. The first cognitive revolution happened, and our DNA genome, which is a DNA sequence, changed from chimpanzees by one percent.

One percent change, just another one percent change. The story of the whole thing of human progress, to my mind, has moved on the rails of story and technology. We humans invent both. We invent stories and we invent technologies. In turn, both stories and technologies reinvent us. The hunter becomes the hunted. Whether it is the opposable thumb, you know, no other animal even today can put button shirts together or tie their shoelaces. Those use case scenarios came much later. The earlier use case scenario was that that other tools, and that itself made you from any other animal on this planet to hunter-gatherers, correct? That phase must have gone on for many thousand years. And then other technology inventions came by way of fire and wheel, right? And we became from hunter-gatherers, we became farmers. That went on for too long till three hundred years back, in wake of Reformation and Renaissance, okay? When steam engine at all, sir, we became manufacturers, okay? I think we are set for another upgrade. As again I repeat, I think I can safely condense that story. The whole progress of human is accelerating, you know? It took so many thousand years from turning manufacturer from farmer, okay? It took much lesser, okay? To arrive in where we have arrived in this 300 years. I think most of us would agree that if you reflect back to last ten years, it would seem that the changes in last 10 years are bigger than the changes in the last hundred years. Would you agree? But I agree too. I think the reason for this adoption is the exponentiality of the technology and also the math and science has today evolved to an extent that they're making us so dependent, you know? I serve people, you know, people across strata use it. Think about it, it's leveraging theory of relativity, correct? Because we know that the clock on the satellite and the clock on the objects on the earth would keep different time because of how far or close are you to gravity. We don't, I mean, that's what I'm trying to point. I'm trying to make the math and science involved itself to such a point that it is able to absorb its own complexity, thus making the most sophisticated application of science most intuitive to us. For example, smartphones is an AI factory: image cognition, speech cognition, Alexa, Siri, Cortana, correct? Spam filters.

Based on the trajectory line length and the rules of the game and the fish condition, it's a kind of an AI machine. Most of us wake up to AI's potential willy-nilly, fortunately or unfortunately as it were, by the hullabaloo around AI. AI to trigger a World War 3, the public spat between Elon Musk and Zuckerberg of Facebook, that the mock my croissants at bought T dot AI. I don't know how many of you picked up that news. Okay, started singing Nazi slogans.

Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy, okay, 1957 Dartmouth College. That's what my sense of history tells me, anyways. That same year something else happened: a Russian sent rocket to space and Americans freaked out. They totally psyched out. They thought they were going to be playing ping pong with them from space, you know? And there were all kinds of efforts to catch up to the Russians, the progress that they had made in space technology, okay? And the Russian spy agencies seemingly gathered some space program research, leaked papers, and because Minsky and McCarthy were making a lot of promises, in turn a lot of funding was developed. They got the syntax right, Russian and German. They got the lexicology right, the lexical so right in terms of translation of one word to other, but the outcome was not close to being satisfactory. I remember there's a joke that you heard this expression: 'The spirit is willing' and somebody completed for me, 'The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.' So the translation came out as 'Vodka is good but the meat is rotten.'

Believe that you can see this with most technology trends and so on. We are very insular. We are in weeks. We all overestimate the powers of technology in short term and we highly underappreciate its capability to change things in long term. Amazon, ten years back, dot-com boom bust, and they were called flash in the pan, right? A fluke, okay? Today they are 15 years on, a trillion dollar company. They might be arguably in some bytes and theory.

We underappreciate its power to change. We do realize sometimes how much the current technologies of internet, smartphone, and whatever that comes in wake of it, WhatsApp and Facebook and Mail and so on so forth, has changed our lives radically. One would think. I personally would like to think that technology evolution is really similar to biological evolution, you know? They don't have a plan and deterministic path, you know? They are based on the environmental factors, okay? They move forward by way of crossovers and mutations. They move forward by.

Here are, in one way or the other, or practitioners or have vested interest in this whole idea of analytics in here. So what I mean, I will not get into all the factors, but some of the factors just would highlight. You already know one is data, you know? The data that came in wake of internet, digitization of things as it were, or mobility, social media, you know? And because the whole neural nets, machine learning in us. Machine learning is new, but whether it is genetic algorithms or recursive or neural nets, they were not new, but the availability of data could mean that you could throw data at them and get better.

Two hundred dollars, three hundred dollars, what was supercomputer just twenty years back and actually less what you carry is much more in terms of its power. And look at the price. So price performance has exponentiality of computation power and price is blowing up the charts. Third, I think as computers started becoming cheaper, we also realized that every information, all information is actually numbers. Otherwise computers were used as glorified calculators, you know? You subtracted, added, divided, multiplied the number to another number and got a number. Suddenly you started realizing that actually everything, all information, you know, is number.

There's the, you know, then there's a magic happening, right? Okay, I think that was a driving force. Last but not the least of the willy-nilly factors that came together to prop up AI to where it is, is the IoT thing. It also means that there's a cognate equation of everything. Now an entire biology of us is calmly fired, right? Now Fitbits and all are very kindergarten applications in the scheme of things today, you know? The coming technology, our whole biology, our emotions and everything. So I know now that when somebody says I have a hallelujah moment, what is what kind of factors have brought and so on to move forward with the story. Of course there will be fantastic applications of this new technology. There will be fantastic applications. They'll be new Uber, new Facebook, new Airbnb, newest iPhone, new not imagined yet, not spoken yet, right? Okay, but what I think personally I am most fascinated about most is, I think in quest of understanding AI, okay? Because there's no general theory of artificial intelligence.

Of self-awareness only were looked through the lenses of religion and philosophy, is that correct, sir? Would you agree? So far the questions of who we are, what makes us human, the questions of consciousness, of self-awareness, you know? We figured out about kidneys and lungs and limbs and whatever, but all the matters that make us human, we called it 'dil ki baat', right? So I think what fascinates me with me is that AI in question, pursuit of perfecting AI, I am going to learn more about ourselves.

Once we know, we'll make better spin bowler than fastball or whatever be the example. A good better example of it: once we know ourselves, then our chances, ability to optimize our potential moves up. And to me, that would be the biggest gain. And I keep forgetting these guys, all right? And I think that would be our finest achievement, elite, okay? To know who we are, okay? Would be our finest achievement till date, and that is going to prop us to our next jump, that is going to progress to.

There is comes with some work, you know? And otherwise I'm fine, you know? But I think we would need some god-like control of our biology because we want to take out disease, pain, old age, death from our lives. Because we want god-like qualities, because we want to read out disease, old age, pain, death from our lives. I would think that.

Lives and I would like to believe that it's a kind of, you know, it seems to fit a pattern. It's a continuous journey. Remember we started with something called Homo habilis, all the fences and so on and so forth, and I think we are set for another germ which let's call it Homo Deus or a God, or if you like, you all know our Homo sapiens, correct? I think we are primed for another leap and that station would be the station of God.

Human-like second path is that we do something about our biology, genetics, okay? And we upgrade ourselves to take out those four or five things, right? Our intelligence anyway has been enhanced, right? We know more today. Even a four-year-old with smartphone internet knows more than any Oracle in history, and you know, in any geography or any time in the history of this world, correct? So we will do something genetic, biological. We genetically engineer ourselves. That could be, in my opinion, path two. Path three could be we become half man, half machine. I want to clarify and apologize to all of them.

Machines becoming. I saw the Turing booth also there, and I'm sure as practitioners of AI and all, you're fascinated by Alan Turing and his achievements and the glory and tragedy of his life as much as I am, okay? And it all started with him asking in 1950, you know, 'Can machines think?' And he put up a thought experiment, a fourth to what is called Turing test, which is very simple: let's say there is a computer, correct? And there are two people talking to this computer, okay? Nobody, all these three people, nobody sees who's what, okay? If that machine is intelligent, correct? How do I know you're intelligent? When you talk sense, otherwise I think, 'Hey, who are you?' I know, I'm sorry. And this line of thinking works very well with what is called computational theory of mind, or what I was referring to that everything is number. Then the emotion that I feel right now is number, yeah? Everything around me is number, you know? Even consciousness and the idea of love and hate and all emotions can be reduced to a number and processed, that kind of thing. And someone like Arthur C. Clarke in one of his book I remember wrote that.

Just referring, Vyasa's don't know what is consciousness. We have not answered that. What is self-awareness? When I say 'I like something,' what exactly I mean? Can I code it? Got my point? Huh? When you enjoy the chart, what would that feeling of chart, you know? You don't country, country, there's the madness. The math have still not worked out, and first to know this and then trying to pour that into a machine which is another challenge. So any longer story short, there are many many unknowns there. I personally feel that machines increasing human-like, human likeness, that they will in some areas be more.

Second possibility as I was saying, the whole genetic engineering part. Again, I'll remind that is a continuous journey of us, right? We started with when the life form started emerging on this planet. We started being amoeba, then we became reptiles, then we became mammals, and then we became somewhere the family of sapiens. So it's a continuous journey, and we know Darwin Baba taught us that this whole evolution has happened on.

How we developed opposable thumb, that's how our grand grand great grand grand grandparents somewhere near the Thals, chimpanzee kind forehead became on a narrower forehead. That is how evolution has moved on, okay? I think if we take so Darwin's thing is random natural selection through crossover and mutation. My thinking is if I were to take out random, it is random, it is natural. Am I done? Not begun. Ha ha ha ha.

Be probabilistic but deterministic if you will. And today, gene editing technology, I won't even talk today given the time, of our stem cell therapies and 3D printed organs and yada yada. The Jean Pierre had dreamed, genetic engineering has reached that point. It is getting commercialized. I don't know if how many of you are aware of 23andMe.com. For very little dollars, you can just, you know, you can get your entire 23 set chromosome genome sequence readout. Now they will tell you the story of yours. And someone like Angelina Jolie, she went through double mastectomy, okay? Was basically a mathematical.

Good and she acted now. So I know the reason I use this sound science fix, this was happening now. It is a consumerization of what sounds like very godly, godlike science. We won't discuss today. Sometimes I wonder what it would be. There would be a new definition to personalized me, okay? What would look like to have seven billion perfect men and women on earth? Seven million gods on earth? Will ponder that some other time, okay? I'll think about it. What if you could buy oratory of Obama, baritone of Amitabh?

Sorry, humans become half-human, half-machine. Sounds logical. First was machine becoming more human-like, right? Okay, second was we do something with our engineering and we become Superman. Don't put underwear outside your pant, but you're good. Ha ha. Third is we become half, we are human but we get augmented, we become half a machine as well. Let me explain. So okay, look, half human half machine would be called cyborgs, okay? And a long story short, we are already some parts have cyborgs. Can you imagine your existence today without smartphone? If I take my eye behind it's okay, you know? And send you to kids, you bring up today, one could you give smartphone and internet that comes with it and whatever else that comes with industry, would be like on the phone like that, right? And the other kid you don't do anything, that kid would be severely cognitively handicapped or not has been, are not non-normal child, correct? You think that child has not developed, yes or no? So this is already a digital self to you. There's only a digital self to you. And think about, I spoke about genetic engineering. Another thing, the smartphone of ours would soon be nano robots.

Computer interface, lots of things are happening in big company interface. Think about, I leave this with the thought: how does great Stephen Hawking communicates? He's got that debilitating disease of ALS, right? So brain computer interface, okay? I coming back and then think about the existence engineered right from before birth. I control my genetics, I've expanded my intelligence by linking it to the Internet and everything. I personally think that's the likely destination of.

Machines think, why does much and we got distracted? Why machines being human-like should be the benchmark? The question should have been: can human be augmented? We already have figured out consciousness and all the other kind of thing. Can we be augmented, right? I personally think that humanity is what gives meaning to this otherwise meaningless existence. From billions of kilometers from Earth, we have not found a single place yet where even life-form can evolve, forget finding any other life form. I personally strongly believe that humanity is.

There's the whole issue of jobs. In the first Industrial Revolution, you know, horses lost their job, right? Horses were replaced by motorized carts, and those horses never got their jobs back. Call it in this disruption, the man behind the wheel, his job is at stake. Have you heard of autonomous cars and things like that? Driverless cars, who lose the job? Oh, I was right. So of course there's a huge disruption which is looming large. Net net, you will argue that there will be more opportunities, greater progress made, and net net will move forward as a civilization and so on, but short-term, huge issue of our time. Second is now this machines, you know, are becoming very human-like. It's like almost bringing a life form into your life, correct? We are product at Manthan, we call our AI platform and the conversational piece Maya, you know? And my anyway, have you guys, how many have you seen this film? Ha, nice nice nice. I loved it too. And Her is, uh, you guys must watch this movie if you like movies and if you like certain kind of science fiction movies. So Her, in Phoenix, right? Okay, he falls in love with the, with he.

Okay, can I take two more minutes? Huh? Okay, he fell in love, story has to be put on a facet, okay? So he falls in love with Samantha, and this falling in love with the nonhuman objects is not new to humans. We fall in love with pets, also with our gadgets also. And earlier when you thought about sex dolls and all, they look like a sleazy thing, but with the advancement in material science, technology, the thing powered by AI, they're becoming lifelike. So I imagine what that new relationship that would trigger between man and humans, as a machine, man and his creation machine. Will this new Samantha which is.

To fill in for that gap, yeah. So last point is all this would mean that we'll have to think about if you are going to become God, then we have ethics and morality also has to be not man-like but God-like if you will. So if I run away with one of the dolls if you brought home as your girlfriend, why whatever, I don't judge. And so I have I stolen your car or have I kidnap your wife? So I'm saying, you know, we'll have to figure out new rules of ethics and code of morality and math of morality and so on so forth. And there are many many many many other questions to be considered in that.

Leave it with this, a quote from Albert Camus that I love a lot. And this is why, because one of my friends say so, this is interesting but why do we do this? Why does what is this pursuit of man, okay? And because we are the only creature who refuses to be what he is. And this time I want to be God. I made my mind on it. Thank you.