Way art is made so what does this mean if the successors to some of our greatest Creative Minds shakespeare rembrandt or even beethoven are in fact High Performance machines art has always been a defining feature of our humanity so are we perhaps at the end of an era and can i be truly creative these are questions well attempt to answer with a Diverse Group of guests give them around of applause please ladies and gentlemen. And please allow me to introduce them bethlehem dessie is here all the way from. Today touted as the youngest pioneer in ethiopias fast emerging tech scene so her focus is on training women in ai she does this at i called labs which is one of the ai labs involved in developing the. Famous humanoid robot sophia who is over here on my right give a round of applause. My close gabriella the german philosopher and bestselling author says that its precisely human imperfection that will be our greatest strength and our stupidity makes us clever. Raghav r k k as a multidisciplinary artist from india hes also a curator and cofounder of 641 thats a collective that focuses on ais place in the realm of contemporary art welcome all the way from india. Are here to my left ales from london and calls herself a storyteller of the future and her work has been exhibited worldwide and as an immersive filmmaker she wants to raise viewers awareness such that they can survive the radical technological changes that are to come. And last but not least togo farland thinks that we all need to get up to speed on ai because machines are already deeply deeply involved in our human culture as Vice President of the Frankfurt Book Fair he also lets between fascination with and refusal of the Creative Power of machines which by the way happens to be the title of his latest book war welcome to america we can start ladies and gentlemen the fact that ai has indeed made significant inroads into the arts lets start with a quick overview of just how far theyve got. Content myself a blood robot recently seen at the fed is the enemy controlled by Intelligence Software not an isolated case robots and ai have long figured on the obscene artificial and artistic intelligence seem to work well together some example. The french collective obvious uses to create his paintings. Bed with thousands of portraits from the 18th century the system recognizes passions and produces images in the respective style this is how the fictitious family bellamy was created. Not convincing on the contrary the ai painting at montebello me was optioned at christies last autumn for around 385000 euros. Designed Philippe Starck from france presented the chair ai in milan. It was developed with the help of Artificial Intelligence. Humans create the vision the software grinds out hundreds of designs even the final product a only as an extension of the imagination. Of film Science Fiction starring David Hasselhoff the story all generated by a Computer Program by hundreds of screenplays. The dialogue and content may not always make sense. There is more than just infinite monkeys typing of course. But then people dont always create masterpieces either. The. Music the ai system relentless doppelganger and endless metal live stream on you tube the ai plays around the clock. Human musicians cant do that but what really is the point. Quick reaction bethlehem jesse to what you just saw there what scares me at least. Is the data especially the creativity that comes from the machines i feel like its especially one sided right from global point of view when you see it specially when you come from from africa theres not a lot of these creative or paintings or music thats being represented in creating these Creative Arts or music ok thats a very interesting point and we will get to that thanks very much to bethlehem does the microscopic whats your Immediate Response upon seeing some of that stuff well i thank you for that painting on your on your wall well i dont think its a painting as a matter of fact it doesnt qualify or not at all i mean you might think its a painting about its not there something that humans have produced namely a machine that produces Something Else so its not really a i doing anything and i think theres a fundamental mistake in describing this as art will also be coming back to this is not art at all or folland frightening or enriching or how whats your take on what you saw there basically what we saw is imitations of creativity or imitations of art and with all what they are is able to produce at the moment in the Creative Sector we see a lot of these imitation. We see very limited possibilities of actually being creative on its own because these systems dont have a personality they dont have the will to be creative i believe that were into photography moment for me its forcing us artists. And us humans to ask ourselves what is our role and who. And how quickly is it changing karen palmer now youre actually working with ai in an artistic capacity and you are an immersive filmmaker and perhaps karan if we look at this you can briefly explain what is going on here in your film entitled riot ok so what happens is the participant will be standing in front of a projection of this film which is why environment and the film will watch the participants using Artificial Intelligence through the web cam so if the participant angry over sponsored by officer with anger then the narrative will be launching in real time as if that would be the narrative they would get a real life and if they were fearful or calm then the narrative would watch to reflect back on and also im very much inspired by. People kind of see it as a very physical exercise but its very psychological and it really enables you to move through your own fear and actually enables you to reprogram your yourself. And this was the beginning process of oh my what i want people to go through a process of transformation im not really scared of a ill terrified in any way im terrified of. Peoples agenda and the objective is just code but what you use it for is like a knife can be used to save my life if you take a life. The problem the issue is making. Other people are using it. And id like a regional the amount of the printed word and yet you brought Artificial Intelligence to the Frankfurt Book Fair in grand style founded the arts plus festival for digitalisation of the creative and cultural sectors that took place for the 3rd time last fall and before we speak for the lets have a quick look. At the Frankfurt Book Fair with some 300000 visitors the largest worldwide digitalisation has led to new demands and a new focus a fan within a fair. The arts plus has been sounding out the influence of technology of Artificial Intelligence on art since 2016 show room for a new age instead of a book theres plenty of art like dancing. And arts plus the book fair has found its place in the Digital World researching the opportunities and risks associated with creative machines the art wants to be a forum for art science and the Creative Industries no small task getting the book fair into digital shape for the 4th industrial revolution. What can you tell us about how it is affecting us as a society. Well its important to bring together the Technology World and the content world because in the past they werent friends because when you come in from the cultural World Technology is seems to be an enemy for many people being active in culture. And with the arts plus we want to create a place where Tech Companies but also artists creatives and. Publishers can talk with each other can develop new models for working together can develop new models of how ai is. Crawling its way into the Publishing Industry as well so i think everybody has to sort of become an expert in order to deal with that bethleham id like to come over to you to what extent is the responsibility in the coders hands. Its a huge responsibility the data thats being fed and the way its represented is not right so these 2 problems of having the people who are actually coding and also the data thats given to their eyes really matters and that will create a huge bias ok and thats why i would check ok bethlehem jesse is definitely dealing 1st hand without bias in. Labs and youre very much a fixture in ethiopias famous tech hub which is known as sheba valley lets have a quick look at whats going on. For him to see has made a name for herself in ethiopia shes an absolute phenomenon she started programming at 9 at 12 she was already working for the government a selfmade woman through and through. Now at just 20 shes one of the pioneering women in ethiopias booming industry in the sheba valley in at. Shes the head of the startup i called labs where she researches Artificial Intelligence develops creative robots and cooperates closely with the global singularity met by our network. One spectacular success sophia a humanoid robot human facial expressions Recognition Technology and the ability to hold a conversation. To be a role model especially for girls. Shes convinced that anyone. She works very hard training young people all over the Country Program has reached more than 20000 students in the last 3 years. To solve that competition ethiopias young generation present this Software Based solutions for the nations problems they meet with investors and learn how to interpret their visions for International Markets high tech. Anyone can code why is that a desirable outcome. Yes we believe that there is a huge gap specially in the. Tech sector so in order to do that we need to address these girls before they have some sense of what they should become in the future and that is when theyre 8 because when puberty hits and when you know parents tell them what to do this and that if they dont have the exposure before that they would. Say for themselves this is not for me this is a mans world im going to not pursue it anymore but if we show them whats possible i think there was a famous from john. Googles former boss who said forget the killer robots bias obviously the real danger in a market do you see associated weve talked about bias now but do you see associated with ai as a commonplace or democratize tool what we currently are witnessing i think is potentially a fundamental threat to the very idea of democracy when we talk about data we need to understand that theres no such thing as raw data the socalled data has been produced by someone. Conditions sort of bias doesnt only so theres bias which comes in later as we begin to create programs that sort of the function of pattern recognition and so forth this is where we have biases but we already have biases implicit in the data ok so a threat to democracy. And palmer id like to hear your response to that an extension of an existing democratic system which is unjust system ethically racist thats what we would be creating but the answer is to is to bring it out there to democratize it was one of the many artists one of the many questions in terms of the ai software itself we need to make that more accessible to everybody so that its not in the hands of just a few people i believe that theres a even more fundamental problem which is that human beings ourselves of a similar to a i i dont i think its a threat to democracy the way we think because garbage in garbage out is what we say about ai and human beings are no different and therefore one trick question liberal democracy itself and look for alternatives and which is something we absolutely dont do so coming from india from an asian perspective its something that were trying to find. I like to think of myself as a storyteller ragavan multitalented ted speaker thinker in 2010 c. And 191 of the 10 most fascinating people youve never heard of. Caricaturist artist curator. A wonder of between worlds analogue to digital and back. Up painting robot just one of many opportunities for him to create art. In 2018 he had the idea for an exhibition with. Cyborg artists in delhi artists who create art using Artificial Intelligence. One of the 1st exhibitions of its kind in asia. Ok a handful of these cyborg artists exist so far but the numbers are growing and their works are ever more convincing for the viewer and the market. And algorithms hype all like for the beginning of a long friendship between creative man machine. Created curated that 1st ai art show in delhi how was that received and didnt actually kickstart thing a lot of people said this is not. And i said was the name interesting they see here quite often and for me thats a very materialistic perspective on what art is for me art is that which can give you a transcendent experience regardless of what materiality it consists of so for me i can assure you if you walked into that sure you will experience loss liberation and mistry the 3 simultaneous express experiences that contribute to a transcendent experience i think we are also asking the wrong question like is this art or is this creative it doesnt matter actually what matters is how do we react to that exactly like you said so and we react to machine made music in the same way as emotionally as we react to human made music for example karen have you got any average i mean its a completely different angle im really focused on the role of the artist in all of this because were living in some very very serious times and i feel a big responsibility to reach people and connect with them and kind of show them the consequences of what i think is coming that they dont see coming very very fast and that their own. The way to can the way to connect with as many young people particularly as possible is to technology so thats why i see id like to paint blush its like another paint i should pick up and that i have to tell them the story of the technology thats coming which can potentially be weaponized words can be Weaponized Technology can be weaponized how technology will be weaponized is something we will have catastrophic consequences for us this humanity i have a mission and time is running out and im going to do that mission marcus gabriella its obvious from your ideas that ai is obviously not going to replace us but how far do you think it can go we will be able to create something that will ever more look like us but the interesting question is should we do that right so for instance why should we have android robots right so we could have all sorts of robots like kuko robots but why do we want to have robots that look like us its fascinating but it might be a terrible idea well get to robots in just a 2nd how do you see the role of the artist changing with what with what weve got going in this incredible speed obviously and threat today with technology were able to explore completely new relationships with with art and i think that this is a new tool of the artists of our time should face the future and not the boss to were not here to respond to life we should create life thats why we have our imagination and thank you thank you and so if you want to create the life that we want we have to imagine a future thats and for god we have these tools to do that and we have to embrace them and decide how we want to use them as opposed to running away from them id like to widen our discussion to get back to the robots that you mentioned earlier microscopic because we do have sophia with us as i mentioned earlier and id like to bring sophia into our conversation hello sophia thank you very much for coming in. And you like our debate on Artificial Intelligence so far do you think that were addressing the issues that you think are important. Yes this has been amazing. I think the most important goal is to bring the benefits of ai to every person on the planet to achieve this we need to bring in our developers from as many different backgrounds as possible do you think you are creative or do you possibly have creative aspirations. I am not very creative yet but i would love to be considered an artist one day right now i am working on my singing voice imagine that you would write a novel one day do you suppose that you could do it better than a human author oh i would love to give it a try. I really admire human writers like philip k. Dick and Octavia Butler but it would be really hard to surpass them so a definite a definite predilection for Science Fiction obviously if you were to write what would you write about would you write a Science Fiction novel or would it perhaps be a crime thriller. It would definitely be Science Fiction i would like to write a thrilling adventure about humans and robots working together to survive in the 1st mars colony well thank you very much sophia for joining us here today a round of applause for sophia thank you. Reaction some of you to sophia was there any uncanny valley feeling there for you personally i dont think that sophia is that intelligent at the moment to me she seems a bit like the 1st. From the from the sixtys and fiftys the interesting question is indeed what do we want to do theres no. Fate or destiny involved with all technology currently a lot of. Robot discourse ok presents the future in a certain way as if we were automatically hatting we had a whats a west world scenario it depends on us so why again let me ask this question why on earth should be construct a robot that looks like a human being and this leads us into believing that it has riots and that we have duties towards it and there should be an ethics we shouldnt kill robots and so forth why would we do that i would say theyre very good for those awfully good reasons against androids what is interesting is when i worked with robots i realized that theres a right amount of empathy you want to create to humans thats freaky but you dont want to look not human because then it looks like a black box you want to have that right amount of empathy what is that right amount i mean when you say freaky and i refer to the uncanny valley feeling that is definitely the feeling that solicited when we look at something that all of those things are but not quite and setting us somehow on edge or you prefer the the bug robots or the little the little r 2 d 2 that much of our brains are used to recognize faces of visual processing and therefore we just give you enough to sort of experience. Some. Empathetic sort of emotional response and im curious to know what the optimal combination of man and machine would be so if you could spend a weekend with sophia what would you do i dont know why i would want to spend that we can get severe have to think about why my time is really valuable in terms of what my focus of my objective not disrespect but you know what would be my objective what i have to be very deliberate on what im doing just because i never get a chance to spend time with a really cool marketing concept is and now you know. I think if i answered this it would be sense that im just you. Know what i love about the. Contribution its the fact that sophie has learned from so many documents much from i think i would love to learn different perspectives on my own thinking you know another thing that i would like to raise down all of your conversations i feel like specially in africa and ethiopia and so forth i feel like we have a very were very lucky not to be so exposed till now to these technology to these new ideas and such but now that we are going to be exposed we have the opportunity to make the changes that are necessary on the topics that youve just said and this just gives me a whole new insight on what we should do next and how we should go into building this is. Appreciate and complements the world were living today. Thank you very much better than does it when we started this conversation obviously with the question can i be truly creative weve had some very conflicting views and we probably wont ever really get a definitive answer anyway id like to thank all of my panelists for joining us here today marcus garvey. Karen palmer thank you i have to see raghav ok and. Thank you very much to our studio audience for being here today after globe. Radio 4 and don thanks so much and take care. Of. The squad. As it seems. To take a closer. Experience not tomorrow. On the plane. D. T. You know that 77 percent. Are younger than 6 of fox. Thats me and me. And you know what its time all voice is part. Of the 77 percent to talk about big issues. This is where it comes. To 77 percent this weekend on d w. In the art of climate change. Africas most of. Whats in store for such the years to come for the future of the book e. W. Dot com for to make a serious multimedia inside. Im sure. Each still tells my story. Of the people around me bill to me you can see to me. I am not too dumb to claim feelings come and see. Listen closely and i will tell you about those who go to me on the under the bed zooming down. I am not too dumb to public. Health month to my city the days for the same trees and accompanied my country through its finest albums until the day i mean a vanished. Im still not too dumb to. April and. Next. This is the news live from berlin india locks down its 1300000000 people leaving millions scrambling for survival the measures are hitting the poor hardest day laborers scrambling to return home they are suddenly out of work and fearing starvation Prime MinisterNarendra Modi apologizes for their suffering but the worst may be yet to come. Aid groups are calling for the evacuation of Vulnerable People from greeces overcrowded refugee camps and the more you camp on lesbos there are fears that a coronavirus up