so I like humans who hears human go ahead and raise your hand everybody
human human three orange whips orange whip orange whip that's from the Blues
Brothers i also like machines i'm a geek so I know a lot of you I say this with
pride it's a compliment if I call you a geek or a nerd that's cred you have to
earn I love machines I've been writing about technology in the intersection of
technology and culture since about two thousand five but right now in maricel
again I thought your your opening was so helpful because you actually had a
picture just like this one this is not an exaggeration or hyperbole to say that
we are genuinely in a unique point in human history in terms of artificial
intelligence I talked about a lot of this stuff and the front end of my song
but there's this idea of what's called the singularity which reycarts while
who's now Google bringing guy things can actually happen by 2029 that's not too
far from now where machines gained sentience where it means machines
actually could have a consciousness so why I say this a gap is I believe in my
research and work with ethics well-being happiness we have clarity right now of
where we stand as humans and where our machines sort of begin an end and that
may sound obvious you're like well yeah that's a phone that's a toaster that's
Bob right but here's what I mean a lot of these arguments and discussions about
artificial intelligence in one sense to me is kind of semantics you know was
2050 when machines took over now 2048 ha my toaster is killing me who cares right
I put this picture here because i read about technology and well-being you
think i wouldn't do this but i have two kids 12 and 9 and i can't tell you how
many times i've done this raise your hand after i do this if you've also done
this i'm looking on my phone probably at facebook like a cat videos right which
drain your soul anyway so i'm looking at a cat video and my son is over playing a
video game and i go like this Nate Nate get off the screens buddy off the
strains all right let's go up to speed had enough screen time not for the
screens right anybody done that with your family and then later in the
day you're like what a tool you totally just told my kid to do something I'm not
willing to do myself and i'm not here to condemn i'm here to point out that what
i found in my research technology is neither good nor evil right i can give
someone to stick and they build a fire and warm a bunch of people with it I
give someone else to stick and they use it to beat someone over the head but
here's the thing technology is neither good nor evil but it's also not inert
and that's why today I want to talk to you about minding the gap so if you've
ever been to the UK and you get on the subway you probably know this you come
up to the edge of the subway and you hear this beautiful mellifluous British
voice say mind the gap mind the gap and you go thank you and someone hands you
tea and you stand back so you don't get hit by the train right the logic is the
gap is that space that you could fall into or get hit by the train and by the
way I'm from Boston so in Boston it's not nearly it's nice it's like mind the
crack look out for the crack oh my god you're back from the crack crack say no
to crack just say no to crack and I'm using this word gap to think about i'm
going to give you three examples where I see in my life and potentially in the
future with the work I've done and artificial intelligence three gaps
meaning technological gaps that we can fall into these dangers were right now
today the same behaviors that we've started either ignoring or not always
putting our family first or our humanity first you hell you have gaps of your own
so you can think about those but I also want to give you the word gap that's an
acronym and gaps tins for gratitude altruism and purpose and I want to give
you tools and exercises i will in part two of my talk part one is concerns part
two is solutions where you can actually use these tools from positive psychology
which is an empirical science it's an extension of traditional psychoanalysis
so you can improve your well-being and i'll tell you more about that in a
minute so the three concerns about technology that i want to talk to you
about i'm going to wrap in this idea of automation and maricel mentioned this
already you know automation we're used to GPS maps being
automated so we don't have to sit there with a map anymore well I think
automation is fantastic in some ways I think however what's happening is we're
working so much to automate everything with algorithms that sort of measure
asst machine learning algorithms have measured us we aren't taking the time to
say okay measure this automate that and stop here this is work I need to do as a
human