I have Asperger’s that’s to say I’m on
the autism spectrum and when I tell
people that their first reaction is
normally to disagree with me they say no
you’re not you you behave like a normal
human you’re not a robot to which I
typically reply by asking them if a
robot can learn to behave like a normal
human then what’s the difference I’ve
grown and changed a lot throughout my
life and it seems that the general
impression towards autism spectrum
disorder hasn’t changed much at all
since I was a little kid
I grew up in a very small town in
Queensland Australia and it was rough
we had dirt roads we lived off of rain
water in a small house made of
fiberglass and I remember once when I
was 10 a very very angry and very deadly
brown snake got inside of our house and
my dad was at work that day and my mum
is a paraplegic so she was unable to
kill it herself so she said that I
should go get a shovel from the shed so
that I could chop off its head and she
looked at me and she said Andrew one of
you is going to die it’s you or the
snake good luck
and it’s funny now but I remember at the
time I was so afraid I was 10 learning
to cope with death and I couldn’t escape
that situation I had to rise to the
occasion well I I survived which means
the snake didn’t deadly creatures
invading the house made life complicated
but not being able to behave like a
normal kid made growing up in that small
town almost unbearable some of the
aspects that I struggle with things like
experiencing deep anxiety over
situations I can’t control picking up on
facial expressions making eye contact
social cues understanding how other
people feel and decrypting those signals
in real time was always very difficult
for me especially when I was young and
my behavior was considered quite robotic
this made life in school quite difficult
I spent 12 years trying to figure out
how to make friends and that was a
puzzle that I just couldn’t solve but
when I escaped school I started solving
other kinds of puzzles actually when I
was 13 I put together my first computer
from broken parts that I rescued from
the tip his name was Oscar and he was my
best friend I was making programs which
turned into products and computers and
Technology took me to some amazing
places and I ended up being able to
dream up the future for some of the most
powerful technology companies in the
world creating products at a planetary
scale is a very complex puzzle I love
puzzles because it’s not easy to please
more than 1 billion people and have them
fall in love with your idea and no
matter where I’ve worked or which
company one of the most important
aspects of good product design is to
always increase engagement so that
people keep using your product more and
more and to make sure that people love
the product we use concepts like user
sent
design where we put the users needs at
the center of our thinking and we build
the whole product around them but in
recent years I’ve started noticing a
pattern we aren’t putting the user’s
needs first at all because our
technology products don’t actually care
about us or our emotions and emotional
needs are as important to human beings
as nutrition sleep and water so we’ve
been trying to solve this puzzle the
wrong way
let me give you an example most of you
have probably heard of a lexer or Siri
technologies like these are at the
cutting edge of consumer voice
technology they are screen ‘less
interfaces and they utilize specific
forms of artificial intelligence now
let’s say I have a great day today I’m
gonna go home and talk to Alexa and she
will speak to me tonight the same way
she spoke to me yesterday when I was
super stressed she speaks to me the same
way every day and it’s the same way she
speaks to you and your neighbor she
doesn’t care that we are different
she doesn’t care if we are happy or sad
because she was not designed to care
about us and we must understand that
when we invite technologies like these
into our homes they are a guest they
participate in all of our conversations
and we don’t mind that they don’t care
if we say please or thank you and it
doesn’t upset us that they don’t say
please or thank you or you’re welcome in
return and our children hear them speak
to us this way and that’s okay it’s not
just voice products it’s actually every
digital product that demands our
attention because none of them have been
designed with our emotions at the heart
of the product linking none of them have
been designed to care about us in fact
they’ve been designed to tap into
specific reward centers inside of your
brain to release chemicals to make sure
that you are so addicted that you cannot
live without them and even though the
value they promise you seems like a
great idea at the time it’s largely
intangible
mostly they like slot machines we feed
them with our time we feed them our
money and we give them our precious
personal data and we never win so you
are all addicted to technology and
technology doesn’t care about you and I
see some people from you me I’m not an
addict excuse me
I’m not an addict yes I’m sorry this is
an intervention you are any one of us
who actively engages with one of these
things is experiencing this problem and
to cope with our addictions we’ve
started to modify our own behavior we’ve
started to change our expectations of
ourselves and of others and of our
technology you’ve seen the phone zombies
right in restaurants and cafes they’re
supposed to be with their friends and
they’re just like this or what about the
people walking down the street not
looking where they’re going heads down
staring at their phones they’ve actually
started installing traffic lights on the
ground in Al’s burg and Germany really
because people are just walking into the
road and dying we are turning into
robots and I’ll tell you what’s got me
really worried I’ve traveled the world
and I’ve met many different kinds of
people and I’m starting to see that we
are exhibiting traits that remind me a
lot of some of the symptoms of autism
spectrum disorder now I’m not suggesting
that everyone on the autism spectrum
shares my opinion and I’m not suggesting
that scientifically our technology is
making our civilization autistic but I
can’t deny I see a pattern forming here
I see the similarities I went through a
lot of cognitive training and therapy to
learn how to behave more like a normal
person so that I could live in this
world without isolating myself but now
what does the new normal look like let
me ask you who here feels more
comfortable today making eye contact
with strangers
than you did maybe ten years ago I want
to talk to you later use the study what
about facial recognition facial
expressions when your friends and family
kids are typing into their devices can
you tell how they feel are they typing
the poop emoji of a happy sad do they
need help or hug I was thinking about
this a lot recently and the universe it
seemed wanted to prove a point to me in
a very dramatic way I was catching a bus
in Berlin a few months ago and a man
next to me started shaking and then he
had a seizure and he bit inside of his
mouth I think because a lot of blood
started pouring out of his nose and
mouth and I caught him as he kind of
fell and I held his hand his head in my
hands and I was trying so hard to just
keep his airway clear and keep him alive
I was screaming for help for anyone to
come and help and the bus was full of
people and no one came to help and what
horrified me about that day wasn’t the
blood dripping through my fingers and
getting onto my shoes or the man’s face
that was turning blue because he was
dying when I looked back what really
horrified me was the apathy of all of
the other people on the bus who didn’t
help and I remember because of my
adrenaline I could see every detail I
have remember seeing Facebook and
Instagram and Twitter logos on device
screens of the people looking down and
not helping me save the man why didn’t
they help why didn’t they rise to the
occasion was it because they were afraid
we have a saying in English that when
we’re scared or anxious we just want to
retreat to the comfort and the safety of
our own homes but now whenever we’re
scared we can retreat to the comfort and
safety of our own phones we take them
with us everywhere
and inside of them we are completely
safe from physical harm and we are in
complete control so when something bad
happens in real life now instead of
rising to the occasion we just hide in
our devices and hope for the bad thing
to end looking back on that day I can’t
help but wonder what would have happened
if no one on the bus had a phone would I
have been the only one trying to save
the man he survived by the way he
actually just like reanimated and came
back to life and the blue went away and
he started breathing again and in the
commotion he had dropped some
possessions so his first words to me
when he came to wasn’t thank you it was
where is my phone so if this continues
to be the normal the new normal for us
what does the future look like well
first we need to understand something
most of the big companies that control
our data are not interested in solving
this problem they’re not motivated to do
it because to do so would mean a
dramatic reduction in revenues generated
by user engagement so we aren’t measured
by Facebook for example on our health or
our happiness or how kind we are to
others we are measured by how many
minutes per day we are staring at this
thing
we are measured by how many
advertisements we see and the more data
we give them the more specific those
advertisements become make no mistake
they know this is a problem but they
cannot fix it all they can do is offer
us deeper longer and better distractions
Mark Zuckerberg recently wrote an
article where he mentioned social
isolation for the first time and
community he forgot to mention
conveniently that Facebook may have in
fact contributed to the largest global
wave of social and emotional isolation
in the history of our species we have
never been more
connected than we are today and
simultaneously we have never been more
alone so sad stuffs over I’m a solution
oriented person I like fixing things and
solving puzzles so how can we fix this
problem we can’t I can’t take away your
phones and throw them out that would
create a riot and we’re not going to go
back to posting each other letters and
sending them in the mail although my
grandma and I still do that
so if Elan musk for example was right
maybe this won’t be a problem for very
long because apparently artificial
intelligence is coming to destroy us all
and while I don’t agree with him 100% I
can say that one part of that statement
is very true and that is that artificial
intelligence is coming there are AI
systems available right now that are so
advanced they can predict the traffic of
the Internet
minute by minute on a global scale days
ahead and combined with very acute
meteorological modeling they can raise
or lower the temperatures of giant data
centers days ahead to make sure that we
have a consistent temperature inside of
them or year-round and using a complex
system like this Google was able to save
40 percent on their power bills so these
systems exist this isn’t science fiction
they’re available they’re ready and
waiting to be put to good work on
complex puzzles and that got me thinking
well human beings with all of our
emotions and our desires and our fears
we are complex puzzles what would happen
if we put a very powerful AI system in
charge of managing our digital daily
lives to take most of the heavy lifting
off of our plate to free us up again to
spend time with people to smell see
touch and hear each other again using
artificial intelligence we can measure
the moods and emotions of humans on a
micro scale and use this data in a
synergy to augment our existing digital
products
so that they respond to our emotional
needs in real time what I’m saying is
using artificial intelligence we can
teach technology to care about us truly
when we raise children for example we
teach them to care by caring about them
we imbue in them a sense of right and
wrong so that they understand how their
actions might make other people feel and
we do this to reinforce social bonds and
improve the harmony of the pack
I dream of a time where we could use
artificial intelligence systems to
augment our products to help us
reconnect with reality again I dream of
a time where new digital companies
create products from the ground up with
our emotions at the centre of their
thinking not to distract us from reality
but to help us truly live in it and the
time that I’m dreaming of is not far
ahead in the future that time is now we
are the mothers and fathers of
Technology it’s our baby and with
artificial intelligence around the
corner our babies growing up really fast
it’s time that we take responsibility
over what kind of adult we want our
technology to be it’s time that we teach
technology to care about us while we
still remember how to care about each
other thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
the autism spectrum and when I tell
people that their first reaction is
normally to disagree with me they say no
you’re not you you behave like a normal
human you’re not a robot to which I
typically reply by asking them if a
robot can learn to behave like a normal
human then what’s the difference I’ve
grown and changed a lot throughout my
life and it seems that the general
impression towards autism spectrum
disorder hasn’t changed much at all
since I was a little kid
I grew up in a very small town in
Queensland Australia and it was rough
we had dirt roads we lived off of rain
water in a small house made of
fiberglass and I remember once when I
was 10 a very very angry and very deadly
brown snake got inside of our house and
my dad was at work that day and my mum
is a paraplegic so she was unable to
kill it herself so she said that I
should go get a shovel from the shed so
that I could chop off its head and she
looked at me and she said Andrew one of
you is going to die it’s you or the
snake good luck
and it’s funny now but I remember at the
time I was so afraid I was 10 learning
to cope with death and I couldn’t escape
that situation I had to rise to the
occasion well I I survived which means
the snake didn’t deadly creatures
invading the house made life complicated
but not being able to behave like a
normal kid made growing up in that small
town almost unbearable some of the
aspects that I struggle with things like
experiencing deep anxiety over
situations I can’t control picking up on
facial expressions making eye contact
social cues understanding how other
people feel and decrypting those signals
in real time was always very difficult
for me especially when I was young and
my behavior was considered quite robotic
this made life in school quite difficult
I spent 12 years trying to figure out
how to make friends and that was a
puzzle that I just couldn’t solve but
when I escaped school I started solving
other kinds of puzzles actually when I
was 13 I put together my first computer
from broken parts that I rescued from
the tip his name was Oscar and he was my
best friend I was making programs which
turned into products and computers and
Technology took me to some amazing
places and I ended up being able to
dream up the future for some of the most
powerful technology companies in the
world creating products at a planetary
scale is a very complex puzzle I love
puzzles because it’s not easy to please
more than 1 billion people and have them
fall in love with your idea and no
matter where I’ve worked or which
company one of the most important
aspects of good product design is to
always increase engagement so that
people keep using your product more and
more and to make sure that people love
the product we use concepts like user
sent
design where we put the users needs at
the center of our thinking and we build
the whole product around them but in
recent years I’ve started noticing a
pattern we aren’t putting the user’s
needs first at all because our
technology products don’t actually care
about us or our emotions and emotional
needs are as important to human beings
as nutrition sleep and water so we’ve
been trying to solve this puzzle the
wrong way
let me give you an example most of you
have probably heard of a lexer or Siri
technologies like these are at the
cutting edge of consumer voice
technology they are screen ‘less
interfaces and they utilize specific
forms of artificial intelligence now
let’s say I have a great day today I’m
gonna go home and talk to Alexa and she
will speak to me tonight the same way
she spoke to me yesterday when I was
super stressed she speaks to me the same
way every day and it’s the same way she
speaks to you and your neighbor she
doesn’t care that we are different
she doesn’t care if we are happy or sad
because she was not designed to care
about us and we must understand that
when we invite technologies like these
into our homes they are a guest they
participate in all of our conversations
and we don’t mind that they don’t care
if we say please or thank you and it
doesn’t upset us that they don’t say
please or thank you or you’re welcome in
return and our children hear them speak
to us this way and that’s okay it’s not
just voice products it’s actually every
digital product that demands our
attention because none of them have been
designed with our emotions at the heart
of the product linking none of them have
been designed to care about us in fact
they’ve been designed to tap into
specific reward centers inside of your
brain to release chemicals to make sure
that you are so addicted that you cannot
live without them and even though the
value they promise you seems like a
great idea at the time it’s largely
intangible
mostly they like slot machines we feed
them with our time we feed them our
money and we give them our precious
personal data and we never win so you
are all addicted to technology and
technology doesn’t care about you and I
see some people from you me I’m not an
addict excuse me
I’m not an addict yes I’m sorry this is
an intervention you are any one of us
who actively engages with one of these
things is experiencing this problem and
to cope with our addictions we’ve
started to modify our own behavior we’ve
started to change our expectations of
ourselves and of others and of our
technology you’ve seen the phone zombies
right in restaurants and cafes they’re
supposed to be with their friends and
they’re just like this or what about the
people walking down the street not
looking where they’re going heads down
staring at their phones they’ve actually
started installing traffic lights on the
ground in Al’s burg and Germany really
because people are just walking into the
road and dying we are turning into
robots and I’ll tell you what’s got me
really worried I’ve traveled the world
and I’ve met many different kinds of
people and I’m starting to see that we
are exhibiting traits that remind me a
lot of some of the symptoms of autism
spectrum disorder now I’m not suggesting
that everyone on the autism spectrum
shares my opinion and I’m not suggesting
that scientifically our technology is
making our civilization autistic but I
can’t deny I see a pattern forming here
I see the similarities I went through a
lot of cognitive training and therapy to
learn how to behave more like a normal
person so that I could live in this
world without isolating myself but now
what does the new normal look like let
me ask you who here feels more
comfortable today making eye contact
with strangers
than you did maybe ten years ago I want
to talk to you later use the study what
about facial recognition facial
expressions when your friends and family
kids are typing into their devices can
you tell how they feel are they typing
the poop emoji of a happy sad do they
need help or hug I was thinking about
this a lot recently and the universe it
seemed wanted to prove a point to me in
a very dramatic way I was catching a bus
in Berlin a few months ago and a man
next to me started shaking and then he
had a seizure and he bit inside of his
mouth I think because a lot of blood
started pouring out of his nose and
mouth and I caught him as he kind of
fell and I held his hand his head in my
hands and I was trying so hard to just
keep his airway clear and keep him alive
I was screaming for help for anyone to
come and help and the bus was full of
people and no one came to help and what
horrified me about that day wasn’t the
blood dripping through my fingers and
getting onto my shoes or the man’s face
that was turning blue because he was
dying when I looked back what really
horrified me was the apathy of all of
the other people on the bus who didn’t
help and I remember because of my
adrenaline I could see every detail I
have remember seeing Facebook and
Instagram and Twitter logos on device
screens of the people looking down and
not helping me save the man why didn’t
they help why didn’t they rise to the
occasion was it because they were afraid
we have a saying in English that when
we’re scared or anxious we just want to
retreat to the comfort and the safety of
our own homes but now whenever we’re
scared we can retreat to the comfort and
safety of our own phones we take them
with us everywhere
and inside of them we are completely
safe from physical harm and we are in
complete control so when something bad
happens in real life now instead of
rising to the occasion we just hide in
our devices and hope for the bad thing
to end looking back on that day I can’t
help but wonder what would have happened
if no one on the bus had a phone would I
have been the only one trying to save
the man he survived by the way he
actually just like reanimated and came
back to life and the blue went away and
he started breathing again and in the
commotion he had dropped some
possessions so his first words to me
when he came to wasn’t thank you it was
where is my phone so if this continues
to be the normal the new normal for us
what does the future look like well
first we need to understand something
most of the big companies that control
our data are not interested in solving
this problem they’re not motivated to do
it because to do so would mean a
dramatic reduction in revenues generated
by user engagement so we aren’t measured
by Facebook for example on our health or
our happiness or how kind we are to
others we are measured by how many
minutes per day we are staring at this
thing
we are measured by how many
advertisements we see and the more data
we give them the more specific those
advertisements become make no mistake
they know this is a problem but they
cannot fix it all they can do is offer
us deeper longer and better distractions
Mark Zuckerberg recently wrote an
article where he mentioned social
isolation for the first time and
community he forgot to mention
conveniently that Facebook may have in
fact contributed to the largest global
wave of social and emotional isolation
in the history of our species we have
never been more
connected than we are today and
simultaneously we have never been more
alone so sad stuffs over I’m a solution
oriented person I like fixing things and
solving puzzles so how can we fix this
problem we can’t I can’t take away your
phones and throw them out that would
create a riot and we’re not going to go
back to posting each other letters and
sending them in the mail although my
grandma and I still do that
so if Elan musk for example was right
maybe this won’t be a problem for very
long because apparently artificial
intelligence is coming to destroy us all
and while I don’t agree with him 100% I
can say that one part of that statement
is very true and that is that artificial
intelligence is coming there are AI
systems available right now that are so
advanced they can predict the traffic of
the Internet
minute by minute on a global scale days
ahead and combined with very acute
meteorological modeling they can raise
or lower the temperatures of giant data
centers days ahead to make sure that we
have a consistent temperature inside of
them or year-round and using a complex
system like this Google was able to save
40 percent on their power bills so these
systems exist this isn’t science fiction
they’re available they’re ready and
waiting to be put to good work on
complex puzzles and that got me thinking
well human beings with all of our
emotions and our desires and our fears
we are complex puzzles what would happen
if we put a very powerful AI system in
charge of managing our digital daily
lives to take most of the heavy lifting
off of our plate to free us up again to
spend time with people to smell see
touch and hear each other again using
artificial intelligence we can measure
the moods and emotions of humans on a
micro scale and use this data in a
synergy to augment our existing digital
products
so that they respond to our emotional
needs in real time what I’m saying is
using artificial intelligence we can
teach technology to care about us truly
when we raise children for example we
teach them to care by caring about them
we imbue in them a sense of right and
wrong so that they understand how their
actions might make other people feel and
we do this to reinforce social bonds and
improve the harmony of the pack
I dream of a time where we could use
artificial intelligence systems to
augment our products to help us
reconnect with reality again I dream of
a time where new digital companies
create products from the ground up with
our emotions at the centre of their
thinking not to distract us from reality
but to help us truly live in it and the
time that I’m dreaming of is not far
ahead in the future that time is now we
are the mothers and fathers of
Technology it’s our baby and with
artificial intelligence around the
corner our babies growing up really fast
it’s time that we take responsibility
over what kind of adult we want our
technology to be it’s time that we teach
technology to care about us while we
still remember how to care about each
other thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
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