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Jon on CNBC Talking about Robots and AI

2011-02-17
I now we come to Watson we're looking for Bram Stoker and we find who is Bram Stoker and the wager hello three 41,000 for 13 and a two-day total of seventy seven thousand and it I suppose truly made it look Elementary man versus machine this time Watson the IBM computer cream two of the best the best jeopardy players in history in two games across three days Watson earned more than the two players combined Wow well Watson's win be dinner conversation for President Obama tonight he's sitting down with top technology exacts including Steve Jobs Mark Zuckerberg and Eric Schmidt the group will reportedly discuss innovation and job creation and probably Watson but do innovation job creation go hand in hand or does innovation put jobs in jeopardy joining us Natali Morris senior editor at cnet com and jon rettinger president of TechnoBuffalo John let me start with you you know we sit here and there's it's neat and cool to watch and rather scary with that little green thing going on to watch Watson house those winners but this is a broader problem perhaps in our society absolutely there's definitely a Hal sense to seeing Watson out there in action what witnessing right now is really a paradigm shift and how we interact with machines and anytime there is a paradigm shift its oftentimes met with a bit of reticence so when we saw the telegraph operator give way to cell phones and different communications those automations and artificial intelligence ultimately opens avenues for new jobs and new employments for people so it's not necessarily robots are going to be taking the jobs that are available it's how humans are going to interact with these new automated machines and John give some examples I hear your point but I know that you you thought about this I mean in places where we have seen job loss as a result of technology I understand you say conversely we may make up for those jobs elsewhere but let's just look at Wall Street where a lot of our viewers are today we've seen it there right you know we have seen it certainly there there's automated trading less people on the trading floor there's trading software which wasn't there in the past but they're also the people that are making the software that are servicing the robots that are in charge of updates and maintenance so there's definitely both sides of it we don't have the benefit of decades of hindsight yet to see where the new job creation is going to be the automations that we've seen in the past have led to the employment giants Google Microsoft and Facebook the company is that you just all right Natalie what about you you have an interesting Jetsons reference on your take on this yeah you know what I I thought about this about how we compare humans to machines now you know I have to hire a nanny to watch my little boy when I go to work and that nanny has an emotional component that's very important to me it can robot do what the nanny does yeah sure they could probably put Neosporin on the wounds I put an ice pack on the head when did little boy bumps his head but is it going to be able to soothe my child the way I want him to is it going to be able to have that emotional component what I worry about with the lesson of Watson is something called neuro plasticity it's where your brain changes based on the tools at hand so if you look at the way we're preventing presenting information to our viewers there's information below the screen there's information above the screen we're expecting the viewers to process all of this we change the way we think about things because there's so many messages coming out us there's Twitter there's your newsfeed and so we don't realize that the way that we're different from a machine is that we can synthesize we can analyze we can think and act and make decisions emotionally not just based on data which is all that Watson can do Watson won all that money and didn't say great Jim Watson jr. can now go to college Watson just as bad as bits and bytes we don't do that so I think the lesson we can take from Watson is what our strengths are not how we're worse than Watson that's true and we give Watson a name and all the sudden I he does become a little anthropomorphised right so Natalie what's interesting though is you're also saying that more automation and more information can make our jobs easier what do you deal though with this um how do you do with the issue of the fact that that means that jobs are lost well like I said I think that we should think about the jobs that we can automate and think okay that's something that a human once did but there are jobs now that we can put our strengths into what if we all went to work every day and thought well the reason that I'm better than a machine is because I can synthesize I can think more profoundly so I'm going to capitalize on that ability as a human and then instead of just trying to get on an assembly line we all thought about how we can think outside the bus I mean when the workplace be such a better place to be it's an interesting point John what about that you know but some people make sure okay first it was in India now you've got doctors there who can look at cat-scans instead of people here I mean every industry in this country has not been immune to outsourcing now on top of it potentially you could have a whole nother level of job loss we still haven't fully recovered from outsourcing no absolutely and if I can reference back natalie is nanny reference i think we're certainly far away from everyone having Rosie you know in our in our homes but the technology and the artificial intelligence the automation are certainly making our lives easier we've got the da Vinci machine for example that's leading to more precision surgery and increased life span for a lot of these surgical patients so there are a lot of opportunities where this automation that's artificial intelligence is making our lives a lot better now certainly there's not going to be that emotional component robots are never going to think in robots never going to feel but there are a lot of avenues and a lot of employment opportunities where that thinking and that rational thought is that necessary you've got human error as well if looked at the automation at a checkout when you go to the grocery store as well so there's a lot of opportunities for automation to improve and automation to help our lives all right Natalie John thanks to both thank you welcome alright and let us know what you think have you seen examples of job-killing technology in America actually given how that segment one let's throw Natalie's question out there at you would you be comfortable with a robot if there really was a good robot a Watson like robot taking care of your kid while you're at work street signs at CNBC com
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