01x04 - Future

[bunniefuu]

I'm Anjan Sundaram

and I'm a journalist, author

and mathematician.

I left mathematics because I didn't feel

like math was connecting me to real life,

real people and the real world.

That has all changed.

Algorithms have changed it.

Now I see math

touching all aspects of our lives,

because today,

algorithms are everywhere.

We're using algorithms

to influence what we do.

Algorithms have become

such a part of people's lives.

Social media in the beginning

was about connecting people.

And now it feels like

it's bringing us apart.

Corporations, governments,

computer systems are now watching us.

AI is replacing people's work.

We can't ignore

the algorithms anymore.

Algorithms might sound like

something complex

and they do amazingly complex things.

But what they are

is actually quite simple.

An algorithm is

a set of instructions to follow

to achieve an end,

whether that end is to solve a problem

or make a decision.

Basically it's a recipe.

And as we look towards the future,

I want to know how

these mathematical recipes

will fundamentally transform

essential aspects of our lives.

In tomorrow's world,

how will we love?

Do you think this is the future of love?

Yes.

How will we work?

How will we play?

Oh no!

Can code change

how we experience our past?

You can ask him any questions

about his life.

Before, during, and after the w*r.

Hello.

Hi. How are you?

Can algorithms even change

what we will become in the future?

Yes.

It's crazy.

-Isn't it great?

-How do you even think about doing this?

This is completely nuts.

We often hear about how AI and algorithms

will alter the workforce of tomorrow.

For some people, the future is now.

It might not always be about

losing our jobs to a machine,

but that we don't really know

who we work for anymore.

So what's it like to work

for an algorithm day-to-day?

Is this the future of work?

-Amjad?

-Yes, sir.

Okay, thank you.

I'm taking a ride

with Amjad Mohd Hussain,

a freelance driver in Mumbai,

who works for an Uber-like app

and service called Ola.

I want to know what it feels like

to be judged and controlled by code.

Amjad may not know

what an algorithm is,

or that algorithms make apps

and software work,

but he knows that his boss isn't human.

And pretty much from when

he gets in his car to when he clocks out,

an algorithm is deciding

almost everything about his workday.

Okay, take care.

In the future, will the algorithm care

if we complain?

Will it care about how we feel?

Algorithms are built for efficiency,

so the taxi driver may be right,

the algorithms that

control his work can be heartless.

But can we turn this around

and use code to make us care?

Can algorithms manufacture feelings?

Music is all about feelings.

Now for some people,

music is also all about algorithms.

Algorithms have been used in

electronic music creation for decades

but the algorave movement

is much more recent.

Algoraves are events

where coders use algorithms

to generate live original music,

projecting everything they are doing

out in the open,

so people can see how this music

is being created by math.

And it is possibly the future of music

because they are rewriting the rules

of how sound is made.

How would you define an algorithm?

What does it mean to you as a musician?

As a musician, it's basically

a system to work with,

so something like scales.

Those are algorithms in their own sense.

It may have become a buzzword now,

but everything we know is based on

of some algorithms of some sort.

Abhinay is a passionate local leader

in the algorave movement

and he is trying to grow

the scene in Bengaluru.

He has organised an algorave

happening later tonight,

but first, he has invited me

over to his house

to show me how he is changing music.

Play me some music

that is made by an algorithm.

Okay. So if we have a beat like...

So, you just made that with your hands?

-Yes.

-And now?

I'm going to code something

that creates exactly like that.

So every sound here has a code,

-has a symbol in the programming language.

-Yes, exactly.

We are sort of building

our own instruments,

which let us modify the instrument

as we are playing it.

Modify the instrument itself,

not just the sound.

Not just the sound.

You're hacking not just music,

you're hacking the musical instrument.

Itself, yeah.

You can break the barriers of physics

and make things possible that

are not actually possible in this world.

We can go into the internals

of the system itself

and change how it's supposed to behave.

So they're not just mixing

and sampling existing music.

They're converting everything to code

so they can play with it,

and make a new kind of music

we haven't heard before.

But the real test will come at the rave.

Can this code make music

that people enjoy,

that makes us dance,

that resonates like a favourite song?

Seeing them break down the music

into code, equations and math,

how do you feel about that?

The thing that intrigued me

most about this

is the fact that

it's being done on the spot,

and you can go right or wrong.

That makes me appreciate

the music much more.

It's not as easy as it looks.

Do you think it's changing

your perception of code?

Yes, actually a lot.

It's like something

I never thought could be done.

Maybe this code enables everyone

to make sounds,

but are all these people

actually musicians

or just coders who want to be musicians?

Thank you, everyone,

for listening and coming to this algorave.

Do you consider yourself

more a musician or a coder?

Musician.

It's an instrument on its own.

That's how I look at it.

Anybody can make music.

Most people think that

they have to learn about music.

It's like this elitist tradition that

you can't have access to.

Do you see yourself some kind of

democratiser of music, of code?

It does democratise it.

One of the biggest things

with algorave is...

we want people to be involved

because it's open-source.

It's like you want people

to use the code.

You want people to be sharing ideas.

You want people to see it.

Take my code and remix it.

That's the idea.

That's kind of the point, right?

You're opening the hood

to show how the music is made.

Exactly.

There was some weird stuff there.

A guy wearing a sensor cap,

it's all kind of so cool!

And when I asked the algorave organisers

what they thought about it,

they said, "Well, it's all data,

and that's their vibe,

so they're part of the movement."

Hey, guys, it's raining hard.

Next up is Khoparzi,

so please give it up

for the great algoraver from India.

That was perfect.

I think the music was richer

and more complex

than I had imagined previously.

I guess what's interesting is that,

for me, mathematics

is the universal language.

And music is also a universal language.

So this is a marriage of two

universal languages

that humans have at their disposal,

and that's so beautiful.

This is the future of music,

there's no doubt about it.

You're hacking into

the very source code of sound,

and there's no limitations anymore.

But are algorithms themselves

truly limitless?

They seem pretty smart,

but sometimes smart isn't enough.

What else do they need to learn?

And what can they learn playing games?

There are a lot of things

that we do quite naturally intuitively

like playing ping pong.

I'm tracking the path of this ball,

the spin that's on it,

and deciding how to move,

all kind of simultaneously.

It's all almost in one motion

that I take for granted.

And a lot of these human functions,

we're starting to try to encode these

and decipher them through algorithms,

and through equations.

I'm curious to know

how far we've gotten,

how closely we can mimic

human movements, human actions.

To find out, I'm going to play a game

against a robot, and an algorithm.

Alberto Rodriguez is a scientist

and the lab director for MCube,

the manipulation

and mechanisms laboratory at MIT.

He's using algorithms to teach machines

to master both intelligence,

and the sensitivity of touch.

He believes this brings the world of code

a step closer to the world of humans.

The key skill to play Jenga is dexterity,

it's tactile perception.

But it's extremely complex

for robots to master that skill.

For those who haven't played Jenga,

this is a highly competitive sport

in many families.

It requires sharp motor skills,

and to win,

you have to make multiple decisions

based on what you observe and feel.

And that is what this robot

is learning from us.

I've never played Jenga.

-So my first time playing Jenga...

-Oh, really?

-is going to be with the robot.

-I see.

There you go.

I almost want it to win.

-It's moving the whole set.

-Yeah.

There you go.

-Now it has realised that it has lost.

-Oh, no!

Is there an equation that describes

the decision-making of the robot?

The math behind it doesn't necessarily

feel like an equation.

It's more like an algorithmic search.

It's a process by which it's trying

to map where it feels right now

to where it has experienced in the past.

-So there's a kind of memory.

-Yes, exactly.

To some degree, all machine learning

algorithms are a version of memory.

So to play this game properly,

the algorithms need to be able

to understand and interpret

the physical sense of touch,

be smart enough to remember

what worked best before,

and then combine that information

to decide what to do next.

Most robots, if not all robots,

are doing repetitive motions, right?

So, they're great at doing exactly

what they're told to do.

And this robot is not doing that.

This is such a human skill,

to be able to touch sensitively.

And why is it so important for robots

to mimic what we can do?

Hands are the key way

in which we interact with our world.

We have these great tools and

they're connected to a great brain, right?

I never thought about hands that way,

but yes, it makes sense.

That's one of the things that

makes us different from other beings.

The moment that we get machines

to be able to reach out

and touch the world with confidence

is when we will be able

to get them to do things

that are relevant to us

that we don't want to do.

The skill here

is not to play Jenga, right?

The skill that we're going after

is the ability to learn

how to interact with an environment.

But the key technology is the learning

algorithm that makes it possible.

In this case, playing is not all about

winning or even the game.

It's about helping code

understand the physical world.

It was different from

everything else I've seen

because it felt like another sense.

It was less about the mind,

the abstract thought.

As these algorithms

learn more and more

about how to process thought

in the physical world,

I want to know what comes next.

Can they help us start solving

some of tomorrow's problems today?

The people at the IBM research lab

in Bengaluru

believe they can do just that.

They are using artificial intelligence to

revolutionise what farmers do in the field

with something called

precision agriculture.

It's a farming concept

based on observing,

measuring and responding

to the environment

and how it affects crops.

Farming isn't always associated

with big math and big data

but now it looks like this will be a step

towards protecting our future.

Ranjini, what are we looking at,

this map and data?

We've developed a very rich

big data curation platform

which you're looking at now.

We ingest terabytes of data every day

from radio satellites across the world.

We have the capability to take in

even the drone data, the sensor data,

-and even social media data.

-Right.

Then we have the radar, and

the weather stations all over the world.

Then we have airplane sensors.

It gives us not only historical data,

but also forecasts so that we can tell

what's going to happen next in the farm.

And so, taking all that data,

what can the algorithms

do specifically that humans

are unable to do or imperfect at?

These machine learning algorithms

can recognise patterns

across big chunks of data,

across time and space.

For a human being to do that,

it's going to be very hard.

What prompted your research team

to develop this kind of system?

Climate is changing, the rains

don't come as they would.

So, we will tell you

when it's going to rain

and that's the best time you have to sow.

And we will tell you

when is the best time to harvest

or when is the best time

to put in fertilisers or pesticides.

We also enable the farmers with apps

to take pictures of the plant.

If he zooms in on a leaf and says,

"Oh, there are some brown spots here,

let me take a picture."

It gets uploaded to our cloud

and then the image analysis algorithm

runs through them and says,

"This looks like this disease."

It must be hard to get farmers to change

their minds because they must say,

"I know this land, I know..."

Yes, there is an acceptance curve

that comes into the picture.

They may be apprehensive.

But they are able to see

the changing dynamics,

and they want to do something about it.

Given all the problems we're facing,

climate change and

food insecurity in the world,

do you think the algorithms

will solve the problem?

Yes, it's definitely a step

towards that direction

because Earth's not expanding.

We're not going to have

more and more arable land,

because the population's growing.

We need to make do with what we have,

so the land that we have

needs to be nurtured,

needs to be taken care of,

needs to be preserved.

And precision agriculture

is precisely trying to do that.

Do you see the algorithms

and the machine learning tools

replacing the farmers in some way?

No, they're not replacing the farmers.

They are helping them.

They're enhancing

their decision-making capabilities

to improve harvest quality.

This is especially needed in India,

where they are facing

a crisis in agriculture,

with farm productivity

that is substantially lower

than the world average.

If something isn't done,

farmers will be forced

to leave their land,

and move away from farming

as a livelihood.

And after being in

the sterility of the lab,

so removed from the world

where farmers work,

I feel the need to get out

into the fields,

to see where this artificial intelligence

will take effect,

and meet someone who might be

helped by this code in the future.

Chourappa, what do you grow

on your farm?

Are you having problems with farming,

especially in recent years with regard

to the climate and things like that?

Is it becoming more difficult

to farm nowadays?

Do you understand

why the rains are not on time

and why the patterns are changing?

He pointed out that

climactic patterns are changing

and he can't quite discern

those patterns anymore.

And so, he's lost a bunch of crop here

because he made a mistake

or he didn't judge the climate right.

And so, he's aware that he needs help.

Some researchers are developing software

that will monitor how wet the soil is,

what kind of seeds to grow,

how much water to put in,

that kind of thing which will monitor

your land for you, using satellites.

Do you think this would help you?

It's interesting that technology

has over decades and centuries

changed our climate and the knowledge

that farmers have been handed down

is no longer as useful as it was before

and so the farmers are, in a way,

forced to turn to new technology

that is now coming in the form

of artificial intelligence and software,

satellite images,

and all of this has become necessary

in order to farm tomatoes.

So one of the oldest,

most ancient of professions

and basis of knowledge,

have in some way, become obsolete

and dependent on technology as well.

My worry is that this technology

might be imposed upon farmers.

And so we enter a world in which

government, scientists and software

are farming,

and the farmers themselves are left out.

And that could be dangerous.

So it looks like, for the greater good,

we might sometimes

have to give up control to code.

But I wonder, can we also learn

to control the code

for our individual benefit?

Can algorithms change

what we will become in the future?

Some say brain-computer interface

is the future of human AI fusion

and is the path to us becoming

one with the machines.

I want to see if big math can turn me

into a better version of myself,

and help me exercise

new skills I don't now have.

Anjan, are you ready

to move something with your mind?

I can move something physically

with my brain?

Yes.

Tan Le is the founder of Emotiv,

one of the leading companies

in the field of brain computer interface.

Her company is known

for this wearable neuro-headset

that uses algorithms

to recognise thoughts,

and then convert those thoughts

into commands,

so that you can control virtual

and real objects with your brain.

The idea with this is

it's a machine learning algorithm

that just learns what your brain

looks like when you're just hanging out

and being normal.

You don't have to think about

anything in particular.

-That's the baseline.

-Okay.

So now, let's add a command.

Let's say...

I want to lift, I want to levitate

-an object. Yeah.

-Levitate?

-I've dreamt of this since I was a kid.

-Okay.

This is great.

Now I'm going to put this

in your hands,

and then I'm going to put this

five-channel EEG onto your head.

So that should be good.

In theory, if this works, I could move

things around my house using my brain?

-Yes.

-The ultimate couch potato.

That's right!

We're going to start first by

training a neutral signal.

Open your eyes, just be relaxed.

It's training me to be zen.

Yes.

Cool, calm, and collected.

It's just calibrating, okay.

Great. Now, just imagine

flying this with your mind.

This is what I used to watch in cartoons.

Yes, me too.

Okay.

When I turn this on,

it will take your command and it'll fly.

This is not possible.

Well, let's see.

If you can get into the brain zone.

I can't even...

This is just not possible.

It did it for a second.

So the idea of the fleeting thought,

you can't have one

because it won't allow you

to move anything.

Oh my goodness!

I got distracted, I think so.

-It requires me to really focus.

-Yes.

The machine learning algorithm

doesn't know anything.

It just knows what you've trained it.

It's going to try and find

that pattern again.

The force is with you.

-Yes!

-That's so cool!

Well done!

It's crazy.

-How do you even think about doing this?

-Isn't that great?

This is completely nuts.

I now officially live in science fiction.

I can move a physical object

with my mind.

What is your purpose?

Why are you developing this headset?

Our brain is an analog system.

And what we want to do

is we want to create technology

that allows everyone

to be able to take this analog system

and interface

with the digital world as well.

What you're seeing here

is a real-time trace of the EEG signals

that's coming out from your brain.

There are billions of neurons

inside your brain.

When they interact,

there's a chemical reaction

that takes place.

That emits an electrical impulse.

So what we're doing is

we're just tapping in,

tuning into those very subtle changes in

electrical fluctuations from your brain.

That's where the signal processing

meets the algorithms

-in the machine learning.

-Exactly.

The algorithm is deciphering

all these signals

and trying to figure out

when I'm saying move forward or back.

Exactly.

But if you're controlling something

using my thoughts,

then I'm a bit scared about

what I could think.

Yes. The thing is, the thought

has to be very intentional.

You have to really,

really think that singular idea.

It has to be a very specific pattern

because you're essentially training

a machine-learning algorithm

to recognise a very specific thought.

So the way you trained it

is very, very important.

Do you worry about this kind of thing,

though, of where this technology could go?

It worries me on some level.

Yes, I mean...

At least with this technology,

it's completely non-invasive.

So you have to be a willing participant

unless someone coerces you

to have it on your head, right?

But imagine if it was a technology

that is invasive in the future.

-Implanted in our brain?

-Yes, implanted in your brain.

The potential is really incredible

in terms of what it can do,

but at the same time

there is a responsibility

for people who create this technology

to steward the technology

in a responsible way.

Okay. So, yes, that does sound

a bit worrying

and as this technology progresses,

we might really have to think hard

about where this takes us.

But I have to admit that right now,

I'm just having fun.

It feels so powerful.

It does feel powerful.

I'm not moving my hands.

I'm used to using my hands as tools,

-Yes.

-and now my brain is a tool.

It's like a new sense.

It's like I can see, smell, hear, talk.

And this is like my brain has

a seventh sense or something like that.

That you can actually control,

wilfully control.

What struck me at Emotiv

was the fact that...

the machine was able to read

into those quite random patterns,

specific commands,

like move the helicopter up.

I thought that was kind of spectacular.

It almost felt telepathic.

I was doing it

at a distance of one metre.

I was moving this helicopter up,

but what if I could move objects

a kilometre away.

The possibilities are crazy.

It's the kind of superpower

you dream about as a kid.

Where this could go in the future?

I kind of wonder what these machines

are going to be like in our lives,

and if they're enhancing

my capacities as a human being.

But you don't always need a super power

to be happy in the future.

Sometimes, all you need is love.

And sometimes, we need more

than a little help from our friends.

I've just experienced what code can do

when it taps into my brain,

but what can it do

when it taps into my heart?

Might algorithms be better than us

at finding true love?

More than half of the marriages in the

world today are arranged marriages.

But in India, that number

is closer to 90%.

Marriages arranged by

matchmakers and families

are an integral part of Indian culture

and it doesn't look like

that's changing any time soon.

But something is changing.

Artificial Intelligence

is now infiltrating

one of the most

traditional customs in India.

Is it working?

If you ask Manoj and Archana,

the answer would be yes.

They got married recently

after being matched by Betterhalf.ai,

a new matrimonial site

powered by algorithms.

This is more than just swiping right.

And this is possibly the future of love.

How did you guys decide

to get on Betterhalf?

How did you start to feel that

something's different about this?

Do you feel the algorithm is like a person

who got to know you,

and you got to know them,

you kind of trusted the algorithm?

Couples in India have trusted others to

arrange their marriages for a long time,

but in the future, it looks like

we will now trust code to do the job.

That is definitely what happened

with Manoj and Archana,

who only decided to meet

after Betterhalf.ai

pronounced them a good match.

So why did this work?

What is the AI doing

that's smarter than us?

Pawan Gupta and Rahul Namdev,

two MIT alumni,

started Betterhalf.ai in 2016

because they believe that data

is the key to successfully predicting

the chemistry between two people.

What do you guys think love is?

I think love is a mix of rational

and irrational things,

like feeling love at first sight

or some people fall in love.

So we do not have control on that.

But having said that,

on the rational part,

there is a great optimisation

that you can do.

I started looking into

what kind of trait symptoms

in terms of emotional compatibility,

in terms of social compatibility,

in terms of intellectual relationship

values and physical compatibility.

What kind of aspects I'm looking for

in my prospective life partner.

I started thinking,

why did I not think about it earlier?

In the past,

traditional matchmakers in India

have used the stars and horoscopes

to help match people

beyond basic criteria

like caste, complexion,

height, language and income.

Algorithms learn

from the experience of the masses,

and Betterhalf taps into

social network data,

compatibility research

and information gathered from

over 100,000 married people

in 23 different countries

to find out what really matters to people

in their relationships.

All of which makes me wonder

if their algorithms can help me

find my future love?

What pose do you want?

The first time

you're asking someone out.

I'm going to be sexy.

Or thoughtful.

Mysterious.

Now that I've nailed the look,

it's time to feed the algorithm

the bits of data it needs.

Rahul is going to walk me through

the crucial process

of answering 16 specific questions

that Betterhalf has come up with

in order to help the algorithm

define who I am.

This is where the questions starts.

Okay, this is where the AI

-is starting to get to know me?

-Yes.

I go out of my way

to help someone in need.

This is such a biased question.

Everyone's going to say that

I go out of my way, right?

But what if I lie?

You can lie.

I often find myself getting into fights.

Who's going to say yes to that?

-See if you are honest with yourself.

-Actually it might be true.

It might be true.

I can look other things

from other people's point of view. Yes.

I dream of having romance

in my future relationship?

What a dumb question is that.

You can answer.

Excellent sense of humour.

I'm a social butterfly. No.

I have an urge to plan

everything out beforehand? No.

I rarely feel insecure

about myself? That's not true.

You are considered to be a physically fit

person by my peers?

I'm not sure what my peers think of me.

I'm not going to help you here.

These questions may seem basic

or even random,

but they are based on Betterhalf's

collective relationship data.

And in India, where traditional values

still often dictate who people marry,

these answers may help the AI

find more genuinely compatible matches,

and help people break out

of the traditional boundaries

that have restricted

arranged marriages in the past.

I'm calm and composed

even in difficult situations?

It depends on how difficult.

I'm done.

I'm finished off in style.

And it looks like the algorithm

has taken pity on me and found me a match.

Conveniently, it's with Priyanka,

here at their office.

I think it cheated!

-This girl's Priyanka.

-Oh, hey!

How's it going?

What we are giving you is a direction,

based on a huge number of data points,

now it's up to you to accept it.

I had a really fun day.

And here it almost seems as though...

what I began was a relationship

not with a person, but with an algorithm.

I thought what was cool

was that the code and the questionnaire

was designed...

knowing that I will lie

and be dishonest in my answers.

It's a dishonest relationship.

But from that dishonest relationship,

the algorithm can glean the truth

about who we are

or enough of the truth to be able

to match us with a potential partner.

Maybe that's the future of relationships.

We're going to be connecting

through the mathematical layer

to the essence of who we are.

If algorithms can be used

to distil us to a love profile,

then can algorithms also be used

to help us define our personal history?

To more honestly share our past?

I've come to the University

of Southern California's

Institute for Creative Technologies

to see the future

of how history will be learned.

And to find out how

I might be remembered in the coded world.

So, I can interact with him

as though he's a person?

Yes, you can ask him

any questions about his life,

-before, during, and after the w*r.

-Interesting.

To interact with him, we say, "Hello."

Hi. How are you?

I'm good.

Is it okay if we ask you some questions?

No, I don't mind

answering any questions.

The Dimensions in Testimony project

was first created

so that people

never forget the Holocaust.

Holocaust survivors

have been telling their stories for years,

but unfortunately

with the passing of time,

they won't be around to tell us

their stories personally anymore.

Dimensions in Testimony

helps to answer the question

of who tells survivors' stories

after they're gone.

When I was caught

and taken out of the bunker

and taken to the guards

and shoved into the wagon,

together with my family,

I was convinced that was the journey

that I was going to go to death.

I'm going to have a conversation

with a virtual holocaust survivor

named Pinchas.

The ability of these holographic displays

to answer random

and not just scripted questions

is where the algorithms come in.

Are you happy to be here today?

Yes, I am. Very much so.

-Look at that.

- I'm very happy that you're here.

My god!

To make this work, they have to

interview the survivors for days on end,

asking thousands of questions,

so that the algorithms have enough data

to draw from to create their responses.

USC created a proprietary

natural language software

that enabled the interaction to begin.

And since then, we have moved into...

Well, I prefer the term "machine learning"

because there's a lot of human labour

that does go into it.

So, even though it is an AI component,

it wouldn't give enough credit to the team

that is working behind the scenes

to train the machine

to learn from the interaction.

This process is what will allow

people in the future

to speak with people from the past.

He looks like he's listening to us.

I know.

How do you feel about

being part of this project?

I think this project

is very, very important.

It is important because

you will be able to not just...

read or see the testimony of people,

whoever does this will be able

to engage with individuals

who are there

and who know what happened

on a personal level.

It's kind of eerie and surreal in a way.

It feels like there's a real person there.

Yes, that's exactly what

it's trying to mirror, for sure.

-It's so human, right?

-Yes.

Do you have any brothers or sisters?

I had a twin sister.

Do you remember your twin sister?

What I remember about my sister

are actually three things.

But I can't conjure her up.

It is all to do with her hair.

She had two little plaits.

I would go rush behind her

and I would pull them.

I would give her a fright.

I remember that.

The human layer beneath it

is just so powerful and so authentic.

Being able to interact with them

and talk to them and hear,

not only just about

their experience during the w*r,

but knowing that they had a life

before and after.

It can build a level of empathy

that sitting and watching a movie

may not do for you.

You're able to connect with him

on a deeper level.

In some ways,

this feels to me like a second survival.

He survived once.

And now he's somehow

going to survive again

and survive for maybe an eternity

or a really long time.

Yes, Pinchas' great-great-great grandkids

will be able to talk to him

far into the future.

How cool would it be for me to be able

to talk to my great-great grandfather

or my grandparents?

Great grandparents, people I didn't know,

but I've heard about.

But for me to be able to talk to them

and hear them answer me,

it would completely change the way

that I relate to history.

Yes.

Do you think having Pinchas will change

the way future generations of human beings

relate to human history?

I think it enables people

to see themselves through it,

and suddenly they feel like

they could be in his shoes.

Thank you, Pinchas.

You were really helpful.

Thank you for coming.

I feel like I'm going to miss you.

Sam Gustman is one of the people

responsible for making this all work.

He believes these algorithms can be used

to advance the age-old tradition

of oral storytelling.

One of the best ways people

are able to learn and communicate

is the way we're doing right now,

where they talk face to face,

because for hundreds of thousands

of years, we've communicated like this,

but we've only had reading

and writing for 5,000 years.

I guess I feel some

relation to what you're doing.

Me, as a journalist, I've gone to places

like Congo and Rwanda

and I try to bring testimony back,

but I'm the intermediary.

What I see you doing,

you're bringing those witnesses,

those people, those participants

in those conflicts

directly to the audience.

We're just trying to create

this three-dimensional relationship

where you can feel like

you can go out and touch the person

and feel like you're having an interaction

with a real live person.

Are you trying to make

these people immortal?

Absolutely.

You're trying to preserve the past,

but you're trying also in the future

to have history be taught

and experienced in a different way.

Yes, so that the history that

we've captured doesn't happen again.

I've always been kind of suspicious

of history and who writes history

and where it's coming from,

even when I'm writing my books.

I'm reluctant to put in pieces of history

because you just never know

who's written it.

I guess being with Pinchas,

it does raise the prospect

and the possibility in the future

of learning history first-hand.

And that's incredibly exciting

to people like me.

We can understand

what actually happened.

In the future, if algorithms actually

do allow us to converse with the dead,

then not only will it change

how we share our collective history,

but it might also allow all of us

to have a digital afterlife

where we leave behind

almost living, digital ghosts.

I just see the world changing.

And I think we're at an inflection point

where these ideas,

which have been around for a while,

are now turning into reality.

What we've opened here is a lens

on all the conversations on the Internet.

We need algorithms,

but it's not set in stone

how those algorithms work.

It's a totally different way

of perceiving the world.

We're changing how we relate

to the physical world, to our environment.

The laws that govern

my freedom in the physical world

haven't yet been encoded

in the virtual world.

And so, virtual Anjan,

I think, is less free.

I don't have to do whatever you say.

I have my own free will.

What does this mean for our connection

between man and machine?

I start to wonder,

from here on, will I ever be alone?

I still believe it's possible

to change the world we live in

for the better using computers.

The world of code offers so much hope to

some of the poorest people in the world.

It is mathematics at its most beautiful.

We don't know what we will create,

but it's not us versus the algorithm.

That's kind of what I've begun

to understand about algorithms

and about codes,

being on this journey.