The vexed issue of whether AI will take over humanity is at the forefront of the minds of some attendees at Lisbon’s Web Summit, as CGTN’s Ken Browne reports. .
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00:00It's impossible to overstate the importance, the prominence of AI in all of the different discussions and themes that we're seeing here at WebSummit in Lisbon.
00:11CEO of WebSummit, Paddy Cosgrave, said that there are so many AI startups this year that the WebSummit has become one of the world's biggest AI events.
00:21We've heard from Brad Smith. He's the president of Microsoft. He said that AI is the next great general-purpose technology.
00:30And we're all using it already, really, in the Internet searches we make, even in some of the dishwashers that people are now buying.
00:38But I don't know about you in the studio. I'm not a big user of things like ChatGPT or OpenAI, those image generators.
00:47I like to write my own sentences, and I don't really need an image of a capybara surfing on a wardrobe or whatever the latest Internet trend is.
00:56I did try to use ChatGPT to help me write some of this live, but I couldn't even get it to work.
01:01Artificial intelligence, clearly too intelligent for me, but it is going to be everywhere.
01:08If you listen to what's being said here, AI is going to help solve everything from the climate crisis to folding your Speedos before you go on holiday.
01:19So the news is, from WebSummit, the AI robots are here, and they haven't gone on the rampage yet. Here's more in our report.
01:30Welcome to the robot rollout.
01:33Humanoid robots are here in force, with companies from California to Beijing promising to free people from mundane tasks.
01:43A big hit in the US, Europe, Asia and beyond is this little guy, KiwiBot.
01:50Once KiwiBot just delivered food, now the creators are dreaming big, as AI has enabled it to incorporate advertising, scan roads for rubbish, and interact with people in the street.
02:03So if you think about a movie like Blade Runner, or Back to the Future, we were promised and we've had these visions of what the future could look like.
02:13We're finally seeing that come to life through technology companies like KiwiBot.
02:17And we see robotics being the largest industry over the next 10 years, with almost applications in every single industry.
02:26Vizi here is on standby for the robot revolution.
02:29By 2040, Elon Musk says that we will have 10 billion humanoid robots already working for us, doing things like cooking, cleaning, being our personal assistants.
02:40And it's going to cost between $20,000 and $25,000 for one of them.
02:46Advances in AI are at the heart of this robot revolution.
02:51In German industrial plants, cyber dogs already talk to each other as they undertake dangerous tasks like sniffing out gas leaks and detecting chemical spills.
03:01Robots could also be the solution to a very human problem.
03:06There's a big need of automation, simply because we're running out of humans.
03:10There is a demographic shift happening.
03:13The baby boomers are going off board, and the new generations are not big enough to carry everything, what was previously done by the baby boomers.
03:21So there's a big need on the outside to really move those tasks away from humans, towards automation, towards robotics, towards IoT.
03:31Robots are serving food and taking over in warehouses, car factories, taxis, and beyond.
03:37Right now, they're already helping humans with their workload.
03:41Even if some fear humans could eventually end up working for the robots.
03:48So robots still our friends, it seems.
03:51Some people maybe not quite on board with AI.
03:55People like Max Tegmark, he's one of the most prominent AI critics and skeptics.
04:01He is the president of the Future for Life Institute.
04:05And he says that this new AI race isn't an arms race, it's a suicide race.
04:11And that there needs to be really strong regulation in place to stop this innovation going somewhere where the machines could take over.
04:21That's the big nightmare of tech for the future, right?
04:25Also here in Web Summit, we're hearing a lot about Donald Trump and his new right-hand man, Elon Musk.
04:31What that means for the future of tech, what that means for the future of Europe, Ukraine, war, for example.
04:37So lots more to be discussed here.
04:40I've just got a cappuccino from the robot barista around the corner, which was pretty good.
04:45So for now, the robots still our friends.