should we? can we? that s our show tonight. robots and living machines are breaking out of the laboratories and stepping into our lives. what will the future look like? i struggle with the present. using digital video recorder to tape a tv program. gps in my car. i just got a cool new smart phone. i have no idea how to use most of the apps. but those of you who do understand things like that are changing the world and for the better. people like mit professor eric yoltson. here s a talk he gave about how technology makes people richer. worldwide incomes have grown at a faster rate in past decades than ever in history. in anything all of these numbers
under state our progress. because the new machine age is more about knowledge creation than just physical pro dpuks. it s mind not matter, brain not brawn, ideas not things. that creates a problem for standard metrics, because we are getting more and more stuff for free. eric joins us now. what do you mean ideas create a problem for standard metrics? wikipedia has tremendous value for me and other people. it is available for free that means that it doesn t show up in their gdp statistics which measures value of goods and services bought and soeltd. one example you used is the robot ibm named watson. watson went on to jeopardy to compete with people and lost. but that was in 2011. the computer kept learning. these little dots here. those are all of the champions on the quiz show jeopardy. at first watson wasn t very good.
period where machines don t understand us and routinely carry out our instructions. that s quite a milestone. thank you, eric. hollywood always imaged a world with robots. star wars made r2d2 and c3-po famous and they were kind and helpful. probably more often the robots turned deadly. we designed them to be trusted with our homes. robots cannot harm a human being. if robots teach themselves might they become a threat to us in real life? patrick tucker is editor at large of the magazine the futurist. shoed we worry? robots can become much more dangerous. they become more dangerous as we ask them to do more and more things and we are not exactly