What does a future that includes robots as co-workers, friends, and perhaps even family look and feel like? How are we ensuring that this new “class” is integrated into our societies with respect and empathy? And what about those who worry about a robotic invasion or overlord, how can we ensure that humans feel safe to expand our view of humanity? Is this something we are ready to imagine? This talk focuses on the core issues of empathy, ethics, and rights as we move into a future reality that includes robots as an upgrade to our shared civilization.

1. SingularityU Executive Program, May 2018
Is it too early for robot rights?
Dr. Suzanne Gildert
Founder and CEO
Sanctuary AI

2. Humanoid
robots with
human-like AI
are coming.

3. Critique 1:
Isn’t this hundreds of
years away?

4. Human-like
bodies
Human-like
minds
Human-like
values

5. Humanoid bodies are improving rapidly

6. AI is exponential
● Open academic publication culture
● Moore’s law like gains on GPUs for training deep models
● Generative models “artificial creativity”
● Reinforcement learning advances (e.g. AlphaGo, video game agents)
● Combining RL, ML, and symbolic AI into cognitive architectures - “AGI”

7. Increasingly immersive
teleoperation

8. Errorsignal
AI is rewarded
for copying
human
Human reward
function (black
box oracle)
Human
model
AI model
Robot body
PERCEPTION
ACTION
REWARD
REWARD
Human-like AI is becoming
an engineering problem
● Human tele-operates; supplies data
● The AI learns in the background
● This “imitation learning” process can be
extrapolated towards human-like AI
● Inherits the goal system of the human

9. What happens when we
put these exponential
technologies together?

10. Biological
human
Synth
Biological
human
Synth

11. Within a couple of decades
synths will be able to do
ANY human job

12. Critique 2:
We aren’t ready for
the impacts

13. Economic
Political
Social
Psychological
Physical

14. Don’t just consider the
impact on humans...

15. There is also an
ETHICAL IMPACT of
HUMANS on SYNTHS

19. Let’s do something rather
than just talking about this.

20. Sanctuary:
A place for Synths

21. Sanctuary is a micro-society for synths - a safe haven where they can live
and learn alongside humans that share our vision of a symbiotic future
Synth Human
Human
Synth
Synth
Synth SynthHuman
Synth

23. Optimism in a dystopian world
● Personalized education
● Personalized healthcare
● Social isolation
● Rehumanizing tech interfaces
● Exploration and new experiences
● World of abundance
● Solving global challenges
● Transcending biology
● Super scientists

24. © 2018 Singularity University
Thank You.
Suzanne Gildert
@suzannegildert