0:16Good evening. Um, thanks everyone for coming. Uh, I'm David Joseph, CEO of the Royal Society of Arts. This evening is one of the highlights of our year. It's the night we choose one person, one idea and say that it mattered. Before we do a word about where you're sitting, which is the great room. So in this room in 1877, Alexander Graham Bell showed people the telephone. They stood about where you
0:44are and heard a voice come out of a box. And in this room, Sir William Cook unveiled the electric telegraph. And until that afternoon, the fastest a message had ever traveled was the speed of a horse.
0:58In this room, Thomas Edison's light bulb was first shown to the British public for the first time. Light in your house that wasn't a flame. And this isn't a museum of things. These were actual nights. People walked in not knowing and walked out having seen history made. And by the way, every single time someone sensible explained why it wouldn't work.
1:26When Edison said he was building a light bulb, gas shares crashed and Parliament set up a committee. The committee concluded the whole idea wasn't worth the attention of practical men. And when the telephone turned up, the post office took it to court and won.
1:47on the grounds that a telephone was illegally a telegraph and a phone call was illegally a telegram. I I personally can't get the image out of a a telephone in handcuffs at the back of a police car. Um but every time something arrives, sensible people explain why it can't happen. And a few years later, it's in everybody's house. And that's what's special about the Royal Society of Arts. For more than 270 years, this
2:16has been the place where people bring ideas and test them before the rest of the world has decided what to make of them. It's also why this year we're resetting the Royal Society of Arts as the home of creativity for the common good. It sounds like a mission, but it's really a return to what this place has always tried to do. find people with ideas and bring different worlds together and put creativity to work making life better for everyone.
2:46Which brings me to the medal and why we're all here tonight. Prince Albert ran the society for 18 years. When he died, the society made a medal in his name. In 1864, we gave the first one to a man called Roland Hill. Hill's idea was that a letter should go anywhere in the country for a penny.
3:09That sounds small, but it wasn't. Before Hill, you paid whenever the letter arrived, and the further it had come, the more it cost you. People turned letters away at their door because they couldn't afford to find out what was inside.
3:24Hills Penny fixed it, and overnight anybody could write to anyone. After Hill, the medal went to Mary Cury for radium. To Alexander Graanbell, back again, but this time for the telephone he showed us in this room 25 years before. to Winston Churchill in 1945 to Stephven Hawking for putting physics into ordinary people's heads to Tim Berners Lee for the worldwide web to
3:54Zaren Carris for co-founding Just Giving and to Sarah Gilbert for the Oxford vaccine. None of it looked obvious at the time. I spent most of my life working in music, so please bear with me for one more minute. In 1982, a branch of the Musicians Union voted to ban the synthesizer.
4:17Not limit it, ban it. Their worry was simple. One keyboard could sound like a string section, and a string section was 40 jobs. What tipped them over was Barry Manalo, who was ahead of his he is ahead of his time. It said Barry Manalow was touring Britain but since instead the orchestra he' bought the time before. So the idea of the band was madness but the fear
4:44underneath it wasn't. They were wrong about the machine. Synths were hopeless at sounding like violins and brilliant at sounding like something never heard before. And the whole sound of the 80s came out of that. They weren't wrong about the musicians. Some of these players never worked again. Others were fine. Nobody could tell you at the time which could be which. And that's worth remembering. Things change. Sometimes we
5:13resist them and sometimes we embrace them. And sometimes we only understand what they meant years later looking back. But there are a few people who seem to know what matters before the rest of us do and who help us see to it. Which brings me to this year's medal recipient, Sir Demis Habis. Now, if you want to feel really bad about yourself, uh, listen up.
5:53Uh, chess master at 13 wrote a computer game at 17 that sold millions. Cambridge then a doctorate in how memory works in the brain. Then he started deep mind and deep mind built the machine that built the best go player in the world. He's been a fellow of this society since 2009.
6:15He was later made a royal designer for industry, the highest honor for designer in this country. He stood in this room in 2016 and talked to us about artificial intelligence. No one sitting here could have told you which bits would come true. Since then, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the knighthood, the Alaska, the breakthrough, the gardener. Three of the biggest prizes in medicine, one after another. And here's what he actually did.
6:49Your body is run by proteins, tiny machines, millions of them, doing every job going, digesting your dinner, fighting off a cold. And what each one depends on is its shape. So if you want to understand a disease or build a drug, you need the shape. That's the whole game. And getting the shape of one protein, just one, could take a scientist years, sometimes a whole
7:16career. Alphold has now done 262 million of them and he gave every single one away free to every researcher on earth.
7:38Um Roland Hill would have recognized that. Um people had gone at that problem for same way for 50 years and what changed was somebody looking at it differently. That's a creative act for the common good. His dad is a singer songwriter who's always admired Bob Dylan and in retirement he's composed and staged a musical. So whatever that house was doing it was really working.
8:05He carries all of this lightly, which I think is how you can tell he's a British scientist.
8:13Now, this medal matters too much to hand it over carelessly. We think whoever pre presents it should know the recipient properly. So, I asked Deis' team whether someone might say a few words. It took them about a second to come back with Professor Hannah Fry. I should declare a personal interest. Hannah once dissolved a bank card in nail varnish remover on television to show the thin copper wire
8:40hidden inside it. We tried it at home and now every time we pay the bill in a restaurant, someone at the table has to mention the wire. And I love that.
8:51That's one of the most remarkable things about Hannah. She takes something you've carried in your pocket for 20 years and shows you the idea inside it. And that's why we're here tonight. Not the invention, the moment somebody thought of it. Please give a very warm welcome to Professor Hannah Fry. Thank you very much, David. Um, okay.
9:23Okay. Well, David has already taken us through some of the biggest achievements that Demis has has made, which is useful because I think reading out Deis' entire CV would take us through to next morning. Um, but uh I I I'm here instead to give you a little bit more of a picture of of the person who's sitting in front of us. Um, when I very first got to interview Dennis back in 2017, um, I was going through the frankly absurd list of things that he'd achieved before most of us have even worked out what we're good at. chess prodigy, games
9:51designer, Cambridge graduate, world-class neuroscientist. And I uh cheekily decided to ask him, "Demis, could you not have tried a bit harder?"
10:00And rather than just laugh it off, Demis told me this incredible story about when he was a kid and his dad had offered him the exact same piece of advice. Uh it doesn't matter how well you do as long as you try your hardest. Now, rather than hearing that as reassurance, Dennis, who by the way was aged about nine at this point, right? um heard it instead as a philosophical problem here um because how do you actually know that you've tried your hardest? How do you
10:27manage to optimize for effort without dying? Um because the thing is I mean there is a logic to it here. If you are alive at the end of it then surely you could you had a bit more to give.
10:40Now the the deep mind this is a picture of you as a child I think Dennis um the deep mind co-founder uh Shane Le puts it really well. He says there is no 50% mode in Dennis, right? There isn't even a 99% mode. There is only 100%. And as somebody who has played bananagram with Dennis, can I just confirm how accurate that is. Right. By the way, word of advice, if you get that option, don't take it. It's not good for your ego. Um,
11:09now I think there is something else in that story about when Demis was a child that is is really worth noting because the thing that strikes me about Demis is that he appears to have spent his entire life asking I mean on the surface unreasonable questions, right? Not just how do I get better at chess, but what is it in my brain? What is my brain actually doing when I am playing chess?
11:31Not just how do I build a computer game, but how much of reality could be captured by simulation? Not just can AI beat us at games, but can AI help us to solve some of the hardest problems in science and help humanity while we're at it? And that last bit, that's the bit I think that really matters here. Because with Demis, I've seen firsthand how the concern for humanity isn't just something that gets tacked on afterwards. It is right there at every
12:00single stage of his thought process. The ambition is enormous, of course, but so is Demis' extraordinary sense of responsibility that comes with it. And I think that's the combination, right?
12:11Extraordinary ambition, relentless curiosity, and a genuine concern for where it all leads that really makes Demis quite so special. Um, it's also why so many people, myself included, feel so much more optimistic about the future, knowing that Demis is such a key part of shaping it. Um, and all of that I think feels particularly fitting for the Albert Medal, uh, which is an award that celebrates extraordinary ingenuity, but also put to work in a way that makes
12:40a real difference to the world. Now, Demis, you have spent your life trying very, very hard. Um, possibly harder than is entirely sensible. And it is an absolutely enormous pleasure for me to get to present you with the RSA's Albert Medal. Well, thank you all of you for for coming this evening and thank you David and Hannah for those amazing introductions and and opening remarks.
13:23Uh so generous of you. Um it's always a enormous pleasure for me to come and uh visit the RSA and especially uh be in this room as they reminded me I gave a talk about it 10 year here 10 years ago.
13:38It felt much more recent than that but uh uh um it's just such such an inspiring space uh and all of the amazing things that have happened in this room. uh the amazing art that we see. Uh and it's a huge honor to be awarded uh uh the Albert Medal. Um especially as I was looking through back through all the previous recipients and um all these amazing people uh and what I really love about it is the interdicciplinary nature of what uh uh
14:06it celebrates and recognizes. And that's the way I've tried to uh live my whole life and run my career is um not really seeing any boundaries between creativity and science. In fact, much the opposite.
14:20I've I've always worked at the intersection of technology and creativity right from the very beginning. Uh David mentioned my my early games career uh uh designing and and programming video games in in mostly in the 90s uh in the early stages of the games industry. And I was so fascinated by uh the games industry at that time because it was really using creativity, this idea of making uh something fun or interesting for millions of people to
14:49interact with. Um but that goal, the creative goal, um was driving all of this amazing technology uh advancements.
14:58Um at the time it was inventing 3D graphics. Um I was using it to try and push AI at the forefront of what was going on. And in fact beyond what was happening in academia at that time was actually the game industry that was pushing forward um a lot of AI ideas um and then even the hardware. So uh the the the hardware we use today the GPUs um that we uh use for AI were originally
15:26of course invented for 3D graphics. Uh and it turns out that you know everything is a matrix multiplication it turns out. So, it's uh maybe in the universe, but we'll we can maybe talk about that later at dinner, but at the drinks, but it's um it's kind of incredible that the things that not only the direct things that you were trying to do, but these are sort of ancillary benefits appear. Um, and that's been one of the lessons I've taken throughout my career is you pursue a goal for its own
15:54sake and then if it's a big enough ambitious enough goal with an in a multi-disiplinary enough other amazing things will happen and be facilitated by that that you couldn't have imagined at the time. Uh, and I think there's just so many examples of that. Uh, and I guess I was brought up in a household and David mentioned my dad, my mom, and actually my brother and sister. They're all on the creative side of things, you know, music. And my my sister's a professional musician and composer. Um, and and games playing and and and uh uh
16:24the arts is really where my whole family, I guess my genetics, uh uh my kind of upbringing is about that. But the interesting thing for me is I trained first through chess, then computers, and then the sciences. My whole formal training has all been on the scientific logical side. But but at my heart, I think of myself as being led creatively, intuitively, and emotionally actually, which is maybe you wouldn't expect to hear that from a scientist.
16:52But I think that's also what's helped me in my science. Um, you know, I think what separates the good scientists from the great scientists is creativity. Like all, you know, good professional scientists, professors, and so on, they're they're already by by definition brilliant technically at what they do.
17:08Otherwise, they wouldn't have reached that level. But then it's the creative side that I think and intuitive leaps that I think is uh are the things that have yielded the big breakthroughs. If you look again at some of the people that were mentioned um recipients of the of the Albert medal and the other big prizes, it's basically their leaps of intuition often that lead them to their big breakthroughs um under underpinned by their technical capabilities.
17:34So I think again as we look forward now to AI, this is a you know you've all probably heard me give talks about I think it's and I spent my whole career working on AI in one form or another because I think it's going to be one of the most profound technologies humanity will ever invent. Um and uh I think it will be a revolution uh in the way that electricity was. Um telephone, we've heard the internet, mobile, I think it'll be at least as big but perhaps bigger than all of those. um maybe
18:04something like you know 10 times the impact of the industrial revolution and the additional t challenge is that it's probably going to happen 10 times faster so unfolding over a decade instead of a century and um the industrial revolution brought many amazing things modern medicine child mortality went down all of these incredible things in the end that it brought but it also came with challenges right that we all knew and in fact new institutions new new approaches were needed to deal with the the the downsides of industrialization
18:33and the environment, the effect on the environment and so on. And um and I think again with AI there's just unbelievable opportunity. Um I of one of the main reasons and motivations for me to work on AI my whole life is to advance science and medicine. That's why I personally work on things like Alphafold and now our spin out isomeorphic to do to accelerate drug discovery. Um I've always said that the number one thing I think we can apply AI to is improving human health.
19:02um and and I still believe that now and I think um ultimately it could be the the most amazing tool for advancing our understanding of the world around us. Um that's what I'm dreaming about and that's what I'm pushing trying to push really hard on. Uh and I think that's what society needs from these new technologies. Um but of course it's not just about um the technology, it's also about what do we do what do we want as a society to do with it. um you know the technology just enables all these
19:31opportunities right all these possibilities all these paths and that's what I see as a technologist and an engineer and a scientist but it doesn't define what we should do with it all what is beneficial for society how should it shape uh the next era of humanity and I think that's for the arts and humanities and social sciences and those aspects that are represented by the RSA and many of the people in this room about shaping that and guiding
19:58um humanity into that next era in a way that is going to be beneficial for everyone. And I think that's almost a philosophical problem actually. And I've often talked about the need for uh at this juncture when we're on the cusp on the eve of you know the foothills of the singularity I like to call it you know a few years away from full AGI. We need to start thinking about that now. I don't think um society's ready uh yet for what's coming. Um what are we going to value? What is purpose? How are we going
20:28to use these tools to enhance human creativity not replace it? um what is uh the difference between you know craft and uh the soul of a creative piece going to be in the in the world of AI really fascinating questions that I think um uh the technologists are not best placed to answer actually I think that's got to come from the arts and the humanities uh to define that next era and uh and I and what I really hope is that you know places like this can be a
20:58convening point for that discussion across the science sciences and and the arts. Um, and I think that's more important than ever in this new era of AI. Like what is it going to mean to be human and the things that we create and then value? Um, and I've no doubt, so the the optimistic part of me is I've no doubt we will be able to deal with this new era and adapt to it because I I really believe in the power of human ingenuity again represented by by this room and I think what uh Dame Judy Dench
21:28mentioned about isn't it amazing what we've already created with our creative minds. Um, you know, I often stop and marvel when I go on a transatlantic flight of how did we do this with our brains that were evolved for, you know, hunter gathering uh uh uh out in the in the tundra, you know, how have we managed to create all of this art and this beauty and this modern what we call modern civilization, including all of our technologies like, you know, flying
21:56on a 747 across across the ocean. Um, it's just miraculous if you think about it. So if we manage to do that and adapt to here, I've got no doubt we we we and the next generation will figure out what to do next. But we need to take it seriously. Um we need to start that debate yesterday and um because I think it's you know this is coming very fast towards us. Um but I'm sure we will we will work through it and and we'll come out the other side in a in a bright new
22:24future and what I hope will be almost a new renaissance. uh a new coming together of science and the arts maybe that hasn't happened since the Renaissance. I think we're due that again and perhaps it will unleash a new golden era of scientific discovery and wonder. Thank you very much.
22:52I mean you ended your comments there talking about the Renaissance. I always thought it was really notable that for for a number of years your office at DeepMind was named after Da Vinci.
23:03Why why Da Vinci? What is it about Da Vinci that inspired you so much?
23:06Um so I have sort of three or four favorite I guess you can call them scientific heroes uh of all time and um Da Vinci is one of them and Aristotle is the other because of uh their all-roundedness. you know, you could say Da Vinci, you know, he his incredible artistic talents, um, like the Mona and the Last Supper and so on. Um, and then you look at his like medical and engineering, uh, draw diagrams, and he painted these exquisitly beautiful, you
23:36know, drawings of the heart and the lungs and the and and and lots of biology. And he wouldn't have been able to do that to the scientific level of accuracy if he wasn't brilliant at from the artistic side. So, I just find him fascinating. Um, and I'd love to see that type of era again and I think AI could maybe help with that. So, he's always been my big inspiration for me.
23:58He's like the ultimate interdiciplinarity.
24:00Yes. Exactly. Where there's no And I think if you read biographies of him, you know, is that he just didn't see any any boundaries between what he was able to do. I don't think he thought about it as I'm doing art now. I'm doing science now. He just drew. He just did amazing things, produced amazing things. In terms of those boundaries, I mean, David was talking about your your family background, you know, the fact that all of your family are artists. Did you feel a boundary as it were when you were growing up? Did you feel like the odd one out or did it just feel like you
24:29were doing No, when I was young, it didn't. Um, I mean later I realized it sort of I kind of realized that in my maybe my late 20s or something, but the the I sort of described my parents as bohemian in the sense of like we had no money, but it was always um, you know, just sort of being creative. Uh, and I think my dad encouraged um, not being conventional, let's put it that way. So my my parents have never had sort of normal 9 toive jobs and they didn't really believe in that. So I guess that
24:58gave all of us the the kids the the the sort of permission to be kind of unconventional, follow your passions. Um and then my mom was always more on the kind of spiritual and arts side. So I've always had that kind of input, the humanities if you want to call it, coming through that. Uh, and then I think it was just a great happened to be a great combination with me loving chess and computers and sort of the those and then having to get better at those
25:27things encouraged me to um improve my logical scientific part of my mind. I think what I what I really loved about computers and chess and all those things was the creative the creative output. So, you know, designing games or playing great games of chess. These are kind of artistic pursuits really and outputs, but you have to be very technical to produce uh outputs worthy of the name.
25:51So you sort of you sort of have to get good of all all of the all of the the the the mathematics and the sciences.
25:58And then really for me where all the drive the north star for me from as from since I was a kid is trying to answer the big questions um and the big mysteries of the world around us. Um, and for that I think you need both the art side and the and the scientific side to really truly understand uh a lot of these questions. The nature of consciousness, creativity, dreaming, time, you mentioned it, I've been interested in it. So, you know, there's so many fascinating things in my opinion
26:28to look into. That's what led me to AI in the end pretty quickly because I felt we needed a meta tool to help us and help me with answering as many of those questions as one can in what is a relatively short lifetime.
26:42Well, I guess your your second career by 16 as a games designer is sort of a a a good illustration of that point. You know, it's kind of a creative pursuit on the one level, but it was also your first foray into AI really, right? tell us how how what you were doing there ended up being the very beginnings of what happened with Dind.
27:00Well, because there's not enough time in general. So, I've always been in this rush because there's so many things, so many amazing things to discover and create um and experience and also um because there's so many interesting things to do uh I like doing things for more than one reason generally. So, at least at least four reasons if if possible. So, games, you know, was a great one. So, I love games. Uh, I loved designing and playing games. I could see the enjoyment people would get from them. But I I also used as a bit of a
27:29Trojan horse, especially with my own company, Elixir Studios, to get some AI research funded somehow, which you couldn't get funded any other. We're talking about early '90s here, right? It was impossible to get it funded any other way. But I would try and sneak in some AI research with people like Dave Silver, like obstensively to do our games, uh, and to control the, you know, the little people or the simulation under the game. and then that would become successful and then could fund the next ideas uh in AI. So I was learning about all of that and also
27:57learning how to manage um startups but also uh creative engineering teams. So the something I took with me from that to deep mind was how do you combine cutting edge engineering with something that's a creative objective. So in this case it was when is it going to be fun?
28:17If you want to really scare a designer, game designer, you could just ask them that question. So, when is this game going to be fun, you know, and is it gonna be in three months or six months?
28:25And it's like, well, I don't know because but obviously your publishers who are paying for it, they're just like, you know, is it fun now? No, not yet. Um, but it will be and that's a little bit it reminded me of then when I did my PhD of like the sort of like, well, when is this breakthrough going to happen? You know, that you want to because research if if you knew the answer already, then it wouldn't be research. If you knew could guarantee it was going to be fun then it wouldn't be creative what you were building right so actually I realized there was it was very analogous in terms of the creative
28:55part of it this unknown it needed a lot of taste and intuition and kind of faith in what you're doing and I realized doing science and game design that was quite similar the games designers and artists in the games the best ones to me felt quite similar in what they were doing to the best scientists that I'd met and then underpinning that was this combination with great engineering and technical abil capability and sort of like how do you mix that together? And
29:23and so the the difficulty we used to have in games is you've got all this engineering going on and it's trying to um support and intercept what is effectively an open-ended creative question. And that's a little bit like the same in science is like we got to build all these technologies especially in AI supporting something like AlphaFold. You don't exactly know when it will be done, but you know what the the the you kind of know the types of things you've got to build and it's an iterative thing. That's why I love building multi-disiplinary teams.
29:50They've got to feed into each other. The engineering informs the research and the research informs the next part of the engineering and that's why things like Alpha Fold and Alph Go were successful.
29:59I mean you mentioned your PhD there. We should probably talk about this as well because I mean this was quite a corner turn from from the surface looking at it from games designer to neuroscientist especially looking at imagination in in the brain and that sort of feels like quite a big sharp change in direction but but for you it was another piece of the same puzzle.
30:16Yeah. So for me I it was just different angles. I think if you didn't realize I was trying to build deep mind and AGI then it would look a bit strange right.
30:25So I was doing game design. I I did computer science as my undergraduate at Cambridge. Why would you switch to neuroscience? Well, it's because I was trying to look at the question from every angle possible. Like what is intelligence? Um what are the capabilities that underly intelligence?
30:40And um and again with my PhD. So I felt during my games career, my early 20s, I'd gone I'd pushed um AI knowledge as far as it could go as it was known then.
30:51So this was the mid9s before the neural network revolution and so on. So I was looking for a kind of you know in the early 2000s an orthogonal source of information about how does intelligence work and thinking and planning and all the things that we regard as being intelligent. So what better place to look than the brain and of course fMRI machines had just become kind of mainstream. So there was there was all these new incredible tools to use. You know we could look inside the brain. If you think about an fMRI machine that's kind of amazing as well. We all we all
31:21do it, you know, use it for our medical exams, you know, routinely now. But back in the early 2000s, it was sort of kind of this incredible thing. You what?
31:28You're going to look inside the brain and with these massive magnets and see where what bits like aren't when you think. I mean, it was kind of irresistible to me to be honest that you could make some progress there about some of the big questions about thinking and so on. And then I picked memory and imagination because firstly they're fascinating topics, but imagination specifically like planning for the future. Um that was what I was doing a lot in my games and chess career was you know effectively in chess you're like planning forward to some you know you
31:56want to checkmate someone or or get to a winning position and you got to plan you imagine that and then you plan back you visualize that and you plan back from there so I don't know if you've all seen Queen's Gambit the series amazing series it's very accurate because Gary Kasparov you know was consulting on that and you know when she's dreaming about the positions when she's sleeping and you know they're kind of in her mind that is how it that is actually how it feels when you're the top chess player. So I was doing all you know so I'd experienced all of that and then same in game design I reused that as like okay
32:24so answering this question of when it's going to be fun you know you imagine someone playing it and and what are the difficulties they're going to have you know when are they going to get bored and how does the interface going to work and all of those things you know you're kind of viscerally imagining it so I felt so I was very fascinated by how the brain does it and almost no one had looked at this question of imagination they looked at memory but not imagination uh and then also of It was something we had no idea how to do with AI. So it was a capability that seemed
32:53fundamental to the way we create and plan um and and and reason um but we had no idea how to do with AI at that time.
33:02So for like for multiple reasons again that seemed like a good thing to to look at and as a third reason I wanted to understand at you know some of the top universities in the world learning from some of the best professors um how does research work and how does discovering new things at the coldface of you know the the frontier of knowledge how does that feel and and it's exhilarating so and it's amazing but there's a whole process to it too that I think a lot of
33:31my um technologist sort of colleagues don't understand because it's different from engineering uh actually doing research.
33:40I mean when you put them together like that it does sort of feel as though it has all been the same question all along. You know you've got you've got the brain is sort of a simulation engine the the like games are a simulation engine. I mean even in a way chess and literature and music you're sort of constructing this version of reality that you get to sort of go and spend a little bit of time in. It is the same question really isn't it?
33:59It is. It is really I mean so I think that the two fast twin fascinations I've had I mean I've been lucky in my life I've I've been able to find a lot of things I'm very passionate about and then I've been able to connect those things together into the kind of a kind of grander goal and if you think of the heart of it it's the two things is AI and intelligence what is it how can we harness it to advance in other ways and then the second thing is simulations and uh using those accurate building accurate simulators originally I was
34:29doing them by hand for games, but they were little, you know, little microcosms of what I would go on to do. So, you know, even my first game theme park that David mentioned was a little simulation of a Disney World. And it was unheard of to try and do that in this was 1993 94.
34:44And I was amazed by how far you could get, you know, to the extent where 10 million people would enjoy interacting with that uh uh fairly basic simulation of of of a theme park. And and of course that leads me to the bigger question of like well what's going on here? I'm not subscribing to some basic kind of simulation theory but one does have to sort of think through you know computationally and and from a physics point of view and I talked to a lot of physicists about this what is really
35:13underpinning the nature of reality which in my opinion is um the ultimate question and so yeah all for me all the paths lead to that to that question. Let me ask you a bit about AI and creativity because I think you know we we've already seen uh so much uh change in the way that sort of the artist and their tools as it were. What what do you think the the new creative process will look like as we go forwards in the future?
35:38Well, it's very interesting and I think I've been observing it. We've we've tried to build tools. So we've gone a different path for some of our other competitors where we've tried to build build tools in collaboration with top artists who are the top of what they do.
35:51So they can inform us while we're designing these things. What do they want? What do they need? What will help them in their creative process versus versus sort of get in the way. Um and so we work with people like Darren Aronowski and top musicians from every different creative field. um games designers like we you know we've partnered with the the Icelandic company that bu builds Eve Online. So all the different creative pursuits we've tried to partner with several top creators in those areas and really early on so that
36:21that we can work with them to define what uh these tools are going to end up doing. And I think what I've seen so far just like any technology is they can be used for things that are really enhancing to humanity but they can also be used for things that are not great.
36:38And I think we're seeing some of that again with AI, right? So there's this notion of AI slop which is just sort of you know kind of um fairly uh creatively mundane or not interesting creatively but it's there to kind of uh uh you know hook an audience for a few seconds and I think we don't really want to be going in that direction ideally although you know it's maybe it's fine as kind of light entertainment but then on the other side of the ledger you've got um
37:07amazing tools that you could use for prototyping. So what I've seen great artists do is now they can go through iterate through many more ideas than and test them out early and before committing too many resources to find the idea that they really want to back or commit to. So I think that's great for the the the people already at the top of their game. So they they love that aspect of it and it also enables them to do things um because maybe it's cheaper or or quicker to do. they could enable them to do some creative projects
37:37they couldn't have t undertaken otherwise. They wouldn't have got the funding or the resource to do. But the other exciting thing is, you know, the next up and cominging artists um they're able to maybe make breakthroughs quicker into the professional world because they can like instead of just, you know, putting together a slide deck about maybe what film you want to make, you could actually, you know, create a prototype or, you know, even a short trailer of what you're trying to do. So, I think there it's it's it's to it's still all for that to be shaped and I
38:06can see the positives and negatives and I think it's up to us and the creative community to try and push it in a positive direction. Um, but I think we're also going to have to answer what what is it that um we are going to appreciate in the future and it'll probably force us to be a little bit more specific about terms we use every day like craft, intuition, the soul of a piece. I believe in all those concepts, but what does it mean exactly? And I think we're going to we're going to have
38:36to more like carefully define those things and and I think we'll be able to understand them better in this next era.
38:43Well, I also think there's something in this about how we define ourselves, you know, because I think for for a really long time, we've we've thought humans have thought of ourselves as like the thing that makes us, you know, important on this earth is that we can solve complex problems. we can be in, you know, have ingenuity. We can be creative. But but now that we're seeing machines getting better and better and better at all of those pursuits, I I I wonder how humans will define themselves
39:10in future. Yeah, it's it I think there's going to be sort of two periods we're going to see. So the next 10 years or so, I think we're going to see an incredible flourishing of creativity in the sense we'll have these amazing tools that that that the the best human creative scientists or artists can use to 10x what they produce, right? So that I think is going to be the next year.
39:32It's going to be pretty amazing, I think. But then after that, these tools might continue to get better and more autonomous. And then the question is what happens, you know, after that? I suspect, but I think again it's for society to shape that the human connection and the human creativity and the human craft and soul will be more important than ever. That's what I'm guessing is going to happen. In the same way that we, you know, we still appreciate the old masters and the original art versus um, you know, we
40:01could copy it many times today, but we don't we don't appreciate that as much.
40:05The question is is what's going to happen though? I think part of that is the human craft and effort and discipline that's gone in to being a great piano player, a great chess player, a great mathematician, a great artist. But what if there's some shortcut to that? So then you can't define it by the the effort that has gone in. So I think we will need to collectively work out what I really mean it when I say what are we going to value, what are we going to consider to be a virtue, what are we going to
40:33appreciate and recognize and celebrate.
40:36Um and depending on those things and august societies like this that will then lead the next generation um you know our kids who are going to be growing up with this technology native they'll be be able to do incredible things but what sorts of things are we going to encourage as society as the right direction for those things to be built in? And that's true of everything from uh the the the the the new interactive experiences we create. I
41:05think we could I can imagine a world where we create really wholesome things that nurture and connect people and and a positive sum versus I can imagine if we let things go unfettered we just start with with you know sort of addictive silos right I think we've seen that with social media if you just leave it to the technology it will just go with wherever capitalism takes it and capitalism is amazing by the way obviously it powers progress but it needs an overlay over it about you know
41:34philosophical ical societal overlay of like well what do we actually want intentionally um I think we need to be very intentional about this technology of what what do we want it to do because it could probably facilitate almost anything so that's the good news I think the future is really not written and I don't believe anyone who says it is any technologist they don't know I can tell you we don't know what is going to happen nobody does and anyone telling you they do they're lying or they're doing it for ulterior motives it's still to be determined so that's the good news
42:03right but We have to you all and we all from different parts of have to get involved. Take it seriously. It's not going back in a box. It's not going away. Um but there are many amazing things that can happen with it and there are not some some not so good things.
42:17And I mean that technically we got to make sure it's safe as they get more autonomous and and and so on. There's technical risks. Um and then but we got to think about it even if we get the technology right. Are we going to get the economics of it right so everyone shares in it? Um and are we going to get the philosophical points right? And I think this affects everything. And you know, I see Thomas and other architects in the room from our physical world to our artistic world to our philosophical world. You know, it's all going to change. Uh but that change could be
42:46good. Uh I but we have to be intentional about it to make sure that it is.
42:51And I think as you say, standing in the foothills of the singularity, I think I think that change does feel like quite a scary thing, right? With so much potential and so much possibility. But I also know that every time I get to talk to you, I walk away with like a renewed sense of optimism for how things could possibly turn out. So maybe maybe as my last question before we come to the audience, maybe my last question for you then is is paint us a picture of what could we be aiming for? It's not written yet, but like how how good could the future be?
43:21Well, I think the best version of the future would be one where we have um these incredible new tools that we carefully and sensibly sort of steward into the world and thoughtfully do that um that enable incredible new advances in science and in medicine. So, we solve some terrible diseases, maybe all of them eventually. Um we come up with better materials, new energy sources, so we really help with the environment,
43:49right? we you know we solve fusion other things quantum computers um then that resolves a lot of things uh that are that are big societal challenges today from the environment to water access to um uh uh you know resources in general um and so that that could be an amazing so we'll enter a world of abundance um and then that unlocks will unlock things like you know proper space travel cuz really it's down to like how do you
44:18create the fuel now at this point which is an energy problem. So a lot of these things can be fixed with as as with solutions to particular kind of root nodes. Um and then we in potentially in a new era of maximum human flourishing but we have to get I think the economics and the philosophical side will be the the biggest challenges at that point. Um and and the idea of purpose and value um and some of the things I you know I mentioned this evening those are going to be the the the bigger challenges. But
44:47from the arts perspective, we could also unlock new levels of aesthetic, you know, uh, judgment and and and refinement potentially. Like there's no reason like we we sort of open by discussing this this our brain was invented for, you know, evolved for hunter gathering, right? And yet here we are appreciating fine art and creating fine art and physical things like architecture and amazing technologies like, you know, sciences. So um, but that's not the limit of that. that maybe
45:16there's new uh uh forms of art to be discovered and I think these tools um used in the right way will help us discover that new world of that's why I call it scientific discover discovery and wonder um so I think it could be amazing and I think even there the best blueprints for that come from the arts from some amazing science fiction and any of you who are science fiction writers in the room or script writers you know what we need is more examples of good north stars that we can that are
45:45grounded in science, hard science. So, they're they're plausible and potentially potentially doable, but there are good uh north stars. And for me, when I was growing up, it was Asimoth's Foundation series. It was and it was um Ian Banks's culture series that really inspired uh the sorts of world or universe that I thought could be amazing uh for humanity to get to. I mean, you've you've alongside everything else, Dennis, you've done a really great job of uh demonstrating why the RSA is
46:14so important. So, I'm sure they I'm sure that they thank you for that. Exactly.
46:19Exactly. Okay, we have a few questions in the audience. Kate, where are you?
46:24Uh thank you, uh Kate Far, the co-chief exec of the National Theater. Thank you. That was completely fascinating. um you talked really uh convincingly about um the work you've been doing with artists to think about the ways that AI can enhance creativity and not replace it.
46:41And so I think I'd love to ask a question about um how you think or whether you think there are any elements of human storytelling that are non-computable and if so how we could go about protecting them in the rush to innovate and adopt.
46:56Yeah, great question. Um well I I I think that's a open scientific question actually right so I would call it an empirical question in the sense of uh what are the what what are the limits of uh that we have with computers that that the brain may be doing something different and that's partly why I wanted to study neuroscience because I was fascinated about the differences I actually have always believed that building a intelligent artifact like AI and then
47:24comparing it to the human mind will be the best way for us to work out what's what remaining things are special or perhaps even unique about the human mind. This is an open debate. If you talk to someone like Roger Penrose, he will he will talk about quantum effects in the brain and and the idea of quantum consciousness. Um if that's true, then classical computers, AI machines as they're built today won't be able to do those things, right? Unfortunately, on that side of I do I'm not sure I agree
47:53with him. So I I don't think there's any evidence so far I'm on the side of Alan Turing here which is that um that probably most of the things we're able to do even though we're not sure how we do them will eventually be computable shown to be computable. So if that's true then maybe machines will eventually be able to do some of these things if they're given enough inputs and data.
48:14That doesn't necessarily mean it'll be better because what is better? So there are some things like playing chess or go which are measure you can measure are they better than the other player right are they better than the human champion and so on but I think in the in the creative world there isn't that notion of better in some linear fashion so they'll just be different and then I think it comes down to what's more meaningful to another human being and the example I always give here is why do
48:42we for some stories bother like you know whether it's a film or or a book um sometimes it's like based on a true story, right? So why would we bother with that phrase if it didn't have some meaning I think it's because in those particular stories it's more meaningful to the audience to know that another human being went through that actually went through that. So then that has some additive effect, right? I assume otherwise why would you mention whether it was a true story or not. So that will
49:12never be true of an AI created um uh piece of art, right? So uh that you'll have that connection with the artist in the way when I look at an amazing Van Go or something, you can see his pain in in every brush stroke, right? Every stroke of of of of his paintings. Um, would that be so meaningful if an AI robot was able to do that? Probably not. Probably never for us a as fellow human beings.
49:40But, but this is what needs to be unpacked, I think, philosophically.
49:44Uh, we have another question from Thomas.
49:50It's uh Thomas Heatherwick uh our designer, architectural designer. Just wanted to say how it thrilling it is to have this optimism from you and you existing here in London in the capital of the UK where there's a lot of um nonoptimism at the moment and you give I think a lot of uh hope and excitement to um and I think we're not uh optimistic
50:17enough at all. uh and um your decision to not base yourself over in California has been I think brilliant for the UK and sort of reflects British what I think is the best of British which is eccentricity and you are no question a serious eccentric um which is the most rational thing to be um but I my question was just um at the same time as the amazing planes that could have taken you to California and satellites and the
50:46phenomenal achievements we have not been doing incredible things with our cities and we've been making real soullessness at scale everywhere in the world and at the same time the earlier part of the digital revolution has been incredible in so many ways but it's also making what I think Narina Herz in her book said called the lonely century and this disconnection
51:14and um people's toxic behavior with each other And back to your thing of health, uh I think this is a great opportunity to stop thinking of buildings just as individual artworks, but buildings around us as public health. And um I'm fascinated as to what you see the potential is with these sort of which you are unlocking here in Britain in the heart of London for how could we
51:43radically humanize the built world around us with someone like you who's passionate about buildings at the same time.
51:50Yes. Well um thanks Thomas for that question and also thanks for our amazing new buildings. you know, is is very inspiring and I'm a big believer in your physical spaces inspiring uh your next level of, you know, creativity. So, I've always um thought that's unbelievably important. And as we've discussed, I think something needs to be done about the physical world and architecture, especially in big cities, to be inspiring. And we somehow lost that since, you know, you could argue since
52:19World War II. And my favorite type of architecture is art deco. And but you know you can see many beautiful evolutions of that Georgian all around London actually um and then it's kind of stopped and it's sort of strange why that is and um it shouldn't be like that and I think um one of the benefits of entering maybe an era where there's more abundance is we might not have to just use the the cost as the only measure right and we've discussed this before it shouldn't be the only measure of what you build there should we should also
52:48factor in other factors about human health human inspiration how is that being factored into our next design of the next council estate or or or whatever that is. And uh and and and as we've been talking about, we'll probably collaborate on things like there's a lot of new buildings going up like data centers and other things to do with the new AI revolution. Well, maybe we should just spend a little bit more and make them beautiful. You know, these are the new uh uh uh types of assets that we're building. why should we not you know we
53:18should be thinking about their effect on the physical environment uh as well. So I I'm huge believer in that and that's part of what I want to spend um some of my next few years thinking about as well the phys the the impact of um positively of these new uh types of technologies.
53:34Um but it won't happen without uh some serious sort of creative effort and maybe even a new movement. Um, and just to talk about London and why I've always, you know, I I I was born in North London and um, you know, London born and bred and I'm just really love the UK and London, but partly because, you know, I grew up here and I like this a little bit understatedness of Britishness, but I think we should also the thing the Americans do well is they're ambitious and they're optimistic
54:02about their ambition. And that is and and we have to embrace that, I think, in Europe. Otherwise, we're just going to get left behind. And this is what I'm trying to explain about the AI thing.
54:11Don't just view it as it's an it's it's to be shaped what happens with it. It's and it's going to happen. So you you should just make peace with that and then use your talents to shape it in a positive way on the global stage. You're all capable of doing that. You've all got big impacts in your domains. And then you can argue till the cows come home. But actually, and this is the engineer part of me, you just got to show it at some point, right? I was arguing with people for years about is the protein folding problem solvable
54:40whatever and it's good to have those debates because it hardens your ideas and you even deep when I set up deep mind I was doing my postto at MIT I was in the cafeteria with some of the top professors at MIT I won't name who they were cuz but and and they were saying this will never work and you know this new learning type of approach you know it will never work it was tried in the 80s at MIT didn't work u you got to go for logic systems and I listened very carefully to their argu arguments and it just boiled down to dogma in the end. So
55:10there was no reason for so I was actually even more encouraged after and bear in mind these are some of the biggest professors in AI. It's one of the reasons I did my postto because I wanted to meet them on their turf and they didn't have good uh in my view first principles arguments why it wouldn't work. So then I was like, well, I wasn't sure it was going to work, but at least I would fail in an new interesting way, right? That and that's all you can hope for in science and research is, right? Explore something new that could work, and if it doesn't work, you're adding to the
55:39knowledge, you know, the the the the a brick to the wall of human knowledge, right? And that's that's all you can hope for, I think, in in research. I wasn't going to I was going to fail in if it was going to not work, it was going to not work in an interesting new way. And so, um, I think you've all got to do that and embrace that. And I think that's the part that we can bring as the UK is a bit of groundedness to the discussion. There's just, you know, because it can tip over into too much hype and so on, but also some compassion and empathy about what we're going to
56:09use this technologies for. I think that's also the European sensibility. Um, but we got to embrace the the the the ambition and the optimism that this will work out. Like just don't only focus, it's very easy to just focus on the negatives, right? Like, oh, this could go wrong. This could go wrong.
56:25Yeah, but it might not. And it's actually all up for grabs in my opinion what's going to happen from here. So, we need more of us to get into the optimistic kind of space. And I think London specifically is great because of the ability to gather like this. So, in the US, you know, if you're in finance, you're in New York. If you're in government, you're in DC. If you're in tech, you're in um San Francisco. And if you're in entertainment, you're in LA.
56:51In London, we have a melting pot of one city that has all of that together. So if multid-disiplinary, if you believe my think thought of like multi-disiplinary is important, I think London is the most multi-disiplinary city in the world where you can talk to worldleading experts in science, architecture, art all in one place, you know, and again this is I think something RSA and the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering can can can use as convening power. Um, and I don't think you can do
57:19that that easily anywhere else in the world at the at the highest level.
57:23See what I mean by how talking to Dennis makes you feel better about the future.
57:27Um, okay. I know loads of you will have tons of questions that you want to ask Deis which I may get you to hold off for on the drinks. We have one last question um from Usha. Where are you?
57:37I'm here. I'll have it.
57:41I'm Usha. I'm an independent member of the House of Lords. Can I first of all say thank you very much indeed for a very inspiring, encouraging and optimistic uh talk and I'd like the way you framed it because in terms of the challenges and so on but can I ask rather a practical question because you see the potential of how we can harness AI in a very positive sense but what I'm concerned about is that how do we ensure
58:10that we actually infuse our education system in a way which talks about it very positively and harnesses the potential because there's a great of talk about what is going to the cognitive development of children and so on. But it' be very useful to hear from you the framing and what do we do now to ensure we actually realize the potential the way you've been talking about it.
58:34Yeah, that's a really important question. Um, so I don't know if you're going to, you know, like my answer, but I I I think something pretty radical has to happen with education. That's the first thing. Maybe it needed to anyway.
58:47I think, you know, again, we're talking about a 50-year-old post sort of war system that I think needs updating anyway. Um, you know, my experience of school and in the '9s and my my parents did some teaching as well later in their careers, uh, of kids that were behind. So they they used to teach evening classes for kids that were behind and ahead at school. And the problem with the school systems day is it caters for the sort of medium. So if you're if you're not in that then you're you're sort of not
59:15really catered for that the the the smart kids that the talented kids are not pushed enough and then they get distracted and then the kids behind they're not helped enough. So I think the other thing is you know again this goes back to my answer to Thomas about we've got to this is happening the AI revolution that that can't be stopped right it's like the tide there's just it's it's going to happen it's going to work you should assume that but what isn't is shaping what it's going to be so either we can you can we as a country
59:45or we as a you know we as individuals we can just sort of worry about the pessimistic things try and hold the tide back you're not going to be successful you know China in US are going to do it whatever we do here right for for starters but and then we it gets shaped for us or we can try and lean in and shape it the way that fits what we believe in and our values and I think that's what everyone needs to get into that mindset that's the mindset I'm in I've kind of made peace with it's going
1:00:13to be messy and it's not quite the way I planned it 20 years ago because it's got it became commercial earlier than I thought I would have done more scientific and alphafold type things first um and then gone to the more commercial chat bots but it went what happened happened and we're going to get advances more quickly but also the risks so coming to education here again is like I think we should accept that we've got to in my opinion train our kids and our next generation to be native with AI it would be like you know in the '90s
1:00:43not training them on computers or the internet they would be behind the rest of the world if you do that and that's the only way they're going to then be fit you know have the tools and equipped with the skills to shape the future. But but we can't do that. We've got to do that in a very intentional way again that helps with the learning. So my thought would be recommendation would be is potentially invert the classroom. So the classroom doesn't become about wte learning anymore. You do that out of class with
1:01:12the help of AI tools because I think that's exactly what AI tools are good for. And the AI tools could do it personalized. So if you need a bit more help with algebra or whatever it is because you're finding that particular the AI tool knows knows that and it gives you more questions on that. Right?
1:01:25So imagine everyone have a great personal tutor. You could imagine people who are really good at lecturing or teaching materials. You just watch YouTube videos of of of the best math teacher in the country. Why does everyone have you know I've got lots of friends of mine who are math teachers and each of them are having to produce the same class materials. This doesn't make sense to me. Right? and and it's using up a lot of teacher time. So then what do you do in the classroom that should be more like Montasauri project-
1:01:54based human human all the things we you know thinking about could be important for the future creativity entrepreneurialism um working as a team leading teams being part of a team how you know those things I think could be really amazing and fun to be done in school and I think the teachers would prefer that probably and and just think about it really different it's a it's a collaborative space and a project space like you maybe get in Oxbridge with like the supervision system something like that but bring
1:02:23that you know or maybe Montasauri schools I didn't go to Montasuri school so I don't know exactly how it feels but that type of approach uh I think we need to explore those things well ladies and gentlemen we have run over by a few minutes but I'm sure nobody minds because it has been absolutely fascinating to hear from you Dennis please join me in giving one last round of applause for
