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Empathy will save humanity: Anita Nowak at TEDxUWCT | Anita Nowak | TEDxUWCT


a few years ago I attended a conference
and I was sitting in the audience just
like you when a team of researchers
rolled out a table with a giant screen
attached to a computer and they said
ladies and gentlemen we’d like you to
meet Larry Larry was a therapist a
digital hologram therapist that could
understand language and read facial
expressions in real-time so one of the
researchers pulled up a chair and sat
facing Larry she pretended to be a
client and proceeded to tell a very sad
story and when she was done Larry leaned
forward paused for a moment and gently
replied so what I’m hearing you say is
no no no no no I remember looking around
the room for other people’s reactions
what were the researchers thinking that
some lines of code and a pixelated face
could somehow fake human connection but
they defended their research by saying
that millions of people around the world
suffer from mental illness and that if
our official intelligence could somehow
help alleviate the pain of depression
and anxiety or just plain loneliness why
not
and if 24 hour online therapy bots could
prevent a mass shooting or or keep teens
from being recruited by Isis or the
alt-right why not
intellectually that made sense but I
couldn’t shake a sinking feeling
machines don’t have empathy empathy is
all the rage these days and Design
Thinking neuroscience leadership and
business you name it it’s also my life’s
work that’s why I’d like to share my
definition with you empathy is the
innate trait that unites us in our
shared humanity to me empathy is about
connection based on what we have in
common and through empathy we transcend
this thing called other nests without
denying unique lived experience empathy
evokes what it means to be human
so decart was close
I empathize therefore I am so you can
appreciate why Larry really got under my
skin and I’ve had a complicated
relationship with technology my entire
life in fact my family and friends would
tell you that I am the last person in
the world that should be giving a talk
about tech I still use a paper agenda to
keep track of my appointments it took me
seven years to join Facebook and here’s
the kicker back in 1999 I didn’t think
email would become a thing so when it
comes to new technology I get a little
freaked out
things like robotics and quantum
computing the Internet of Things
artificial intelligence virtual reality
everything that falls under the umbrella
of what is being called industry 4.0 and
I’m not the only skeptic out there in
fact even technologists are getting
concerned take Elon Musk for example the
man who wants to colonize Mars he
believes we are summoning the demon with
AI now that sounds scary but a lot of
people are really excited about the
future so let’s take a deep dive into
this brave new world let’s start with
virtual reality in education the
applications are amazing especially for
student motivation imagine being able to
take a virtual field trip through the
inside of your human body or biology
class or teleporting to the Jurassic era
to study history and speaking of travel
imagine what virtual reality tourism is
going to do for people who have limited
mobility either economic or physical and
in terms of healthcare we can now step
into exoskeleton suits and experience
the physical effects of aging and
hopefully make some wiser lifestyle
decisions as a result and that’s just
one example
and what about VR for to promote social
inclusion and social justice it is a
powerful tool for storytelling some even
call it the ultimate empathy machine
I remember when I first tried virtual
reality headset I put it on and I was
traveled to Rwanda a country I’ve
actually been to ten years ago and
wherever I looked left right down to the
ground up to the blue sky felt like I
was really there again and that’s why
journalists and filmmakers love the
medium so much it lets users step into
other people’s worlds worlds like
refugee camps and disaster zones and
even date rape scenarios three examples
of pioneering VR films that were created
to help build bridges of understanding
now that sounds great but it’s not all
roses fact critics call VR tragedy
tourism Mark Zuckerberg recently was
slammed for a promo video that he shot
on a virtual trip to Puerto Rico instead
of focusing on the duty of the hurricane
and its impact he was ruling and on
about his company’s cool technology talk
about being tone deaf
and what about addiction a pioneering
lab at Stanford University is creating
VR apps for social good but the director
of this lab would be the first to tell
you that addiction to VR pornography
fantasy worlds and video games are going
to be epic and that’s because VR is the
most psychologically powerful medium
ever invented very soon we’ll be driving
in virtual races in our cars and we’ll
be robbing virtual banks so I’ll be
having virtual sex real life is going to
feel incredibly dull and boring by
comparison and all of that risk-taking
and cortisol and adrenaline rush what is
that going to do to our bodies our
levels of stress our relations to one
another nobody really knows and that is
a problem does this tug of war between
pros and cons for new technology sound a
little familiar that’s because we’ve
been here before when it comes to new
technology the diehards
always
of it and the naysayers always think
it’s the end of the world industry 4.0
will be no different we can anticipate
breakthrough innovations innovations
that will benefit humanity and for sure
there will be collateral damage just
like there was with the last tech
revolution here’s what I mean when you
think about smart phones in the internet
they were supposed to unleash
unprecedented democratization and
improve our lives right but did they
well the results are mixed sure we have
unlimited access to information and can
communicate like never before but our
online privacy is gone ok social media
lets us stay in touch with our tribe but
now we have hostile actors that are
exploiting echo chambers to drive us
apart with very dire consequences as we
all know and yes smartphones do make our
lives easier but they also make us
lonelier it’s sad but true we spend an
average of four to five hours a day on
our handheld devices using apps that
have been reverse-engineered to keep us
hooked and for children Xboxes
smartphones all that they’re like
digital drugs regular use increases
dopamine and decreases impulse control
just like cocaine and Tec addiction for
older youth is getting just as serious
it’s changing their brains literally
reconfiguring their neural networks and
it’s correlated with increases anxiety
depression and self-harm in fact in 2012
the same year that smartphone
penetration reached 50% teen suicide
skyrocketed in terms of my own personal
experience with Millennials and Gen
Zed’s after a decade spent with them
teaching in classrooms here’s what I’ve
come to see every semester we do a
simple 2-minute I gazing exercise where
students sit in pairs facing one another
their hands on their lap and there’s no
talking and after those two minutes we
do a little debrief and my students tell
me they don’t remember the last time
they looked into someone else’s eyes
some tell me how special it was to
really see a classmate and really feel
like they were seen and some even shed a
few tears they are craving human
interaction and human connection so this
leads me to think if this is happening
with today’s technology what’s gonna
happen with tomorrow’s technology things
like when artificial intelligence
penetrates every aspect of our lives
AI will be everywhere it will be in
education in health care in banking
transportation law they’ll be in our
kitchens and it’ll be in your bedrooms
soon we’ll be having our annual checkup
with an AI doctor imagine contesting a
parking ticket before an AI judge or
imagine having a little pillow talk with
an AI chat bot after a long day at work
after you’ve driven home in your
driverless car all of this is just
around the corner and in terms of global
implications AI is expected to help
fight climate change help provide water
and food security and build sustainable
cities no wonder Stephen Hawking
believed that achieving AI would be the
single biggest event in all of human
history unfortunately he also added that
it might also be the last unless we
learned how to avoid the risks now he’s
speaking about worst-case scenarios like
killer robots and digital dictatorship
but forget about doomsday scenarios
there are plenty of other reasons to be
nervous
for starters robots are expected to
replace up to 800 million jobs by 2030
jobs disproportionately held by people
who already face social inequalities how
will society
adjust to massive destabilizing
unemployment and what about when
companion droids are part of our lives
imagine your grandparents when they
befriend their machine caregivers or our
children fall in love with their family
bonds already US troops hold funerals
for machines and robots that they’ve
lost in combat and what if sex with
robots becomes popular or even the norm
now I know that sounds far-fetched today
but think about this sex dolls which are
not nearly as sophisticated as sex
droids are already all the rage in Japan
and brothels with sex dolls are popping
up all over Europe up to two-thirds of
men say they would have sex with an
Android according to one report and
another survey says that a quarter of
youth would happily date a robot soon
swiping left is gonna seem fantastically
old-fashioned now I have no doubt that a
I will achieve extraordinary things and
I mean that sincerely but that does not
negate the risks and what I’m concerned
about and most worried about is that new
technology is going to erode our natural
capacity to empathize already empathy
has plummeted by 40 percent among
college students over the last 30 years
despite this many tech enthusiasts
believe the answer is to humanize
technology and others believe that
technology and machines augment our
humanity for example one VR expert said
through this machine we become more
empathetic and ultimately we become more
human I really struggle with this line
of thinking
imagine clear-cutting a forest of
majestic sequoias and using bonsais in a
replanting effort there’s no comparison
no offense to the little bonsais no
matter how smart they get or how
sophisticated
kated their algorithms become machines
will never truly emot– and the idea
that machines will somehow make us more
human is a sci-fi myth we developed
empathy a hundred million years ago to
survive as a species and we are born to
empathize in fact we do nearly straight
out of the womb I remember taking my
little daughter Annika out for a walk
when she was three months old we passed
by another young boy in a stroller who
was crying and my daughter burst
spontaneously into tears now don’t judge
me but as an empathy enthusiast I was
ecstatic to see that happen because
that’s called emotional contagion and it
doesn’t just happen with kids it
continues well into our adulthood I want
to show you how it works when you look
at this image you can’t help but smile
and now when you look at this image that
smile will disappear and that’s thanks
to our mirror neurons and when we
empathize we produce oxytocin a
neurotransmitter that helps us connect
and feel trust among one another
something that machines will never be
able to do but very soon machines will
be able to outperform us cognitively
they will be faster they will be smarter
they will be more accurate than us which
leads to a very interesting paradox that
was packed neatly into a blog title that
I came across recently it read why are
we teaching humans how to code and
machines how to learn Jack Ma founder of
Alibaba had a lot to say about education
at this year’s World Economic Forum and
obviously his comments struck a nerve
because they’ve gone viral over thirty
million in counting he said that what we
are teaching in schools should be
different from what machines learn
because very very soon AI will beat us
at all knowledge-based cognitive tasks
instead what we should be focusing on
school
are things like creative and artistic
expression teamwork independent thinking
and caring for others because in those
spaces machines can’t compete now I want
you to remember that schools were
created to meet the needs of the
Industrial Revolution not industry 4.0
that’s why they’re largely irrelevant
and failing us today let’s think about
where we are in 2018 extremism and
populism are on the rise global
inequalities are getting worse
capitalist greed is destroying the
planet that gives us life we seek a
sense of belonging and love through
materialism and celebrity and anxiety
depression and addiction are all
epidemic I’ve asked myself what is at
the root of all of these problems my
conclusion is that we’re suffering from
a massive collective empathy deficit and
the only way out is through a revolution
in how we relate to one another
Einstein believed that humans are
delusional because we think we are
separate from the whole his solution was
to widen the circle of compassion to
embrace all living creatures and all of
nature in its beauty and Charles Darwin
who famously coined the term survival of
the fittest also believed they would
come a day when humans would extend
empathy to all sentient beings isn’t it
interesting the two brilliant scientists
are talking about global and Pathak
consciousness something spiritual
leaders and the wisdom traditions have
espoused for millennia and they are all
right global empathic consciousness is
exactly what we need we need it today to
solve the urgent problems we are facing
and we need it for the future to survive
and to thrive into tomorrow perhaps
going forward only the most
and Pathak will survive and empathy will
save humanity I believe even in a world
full of machines that is our destiny
thank you [Applause]
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