What's our relationship to AI? It's complicated | AC Coppens, Kasley Killam and Apolinário Passos

it's a huge honor to launch this stage with you today with such a very important conversation about our relationship to AI together with you we want to explore your relationship in detail we want to explore this future you what are you going to do with this how will AI help me help you help us to grow grow actually responsibly how will we change our relationship to work to life to creativity to ourselves and to each other this is what we want to discuss today and Explorer can it help us be more connected rather than more productive if not creative so this is great because now I'm going to introduce you to our two experts and with me I will have castley kilam a social scientist who specializing in human connection and health to improve well-being kle welcome on stage and we have also apolinario pasos uh head of machine learning for art and creativity at hugging face and he's also a multimodal AI artist ah this is great so let's explore these personal questions and I want now to tell me what's your relationship to AI kley all right let's start right there so I am coming to this conversation as someone who does not work on AI instead I'm a social scientist who's been studying human connection and its relationship to health for over a decade and I became really interested in Ai and its role in human connection while researching for my book The Art and Science of connection and in particular I was interested how people use AI as friends as lovers as husbands as wives as boyfriends as girlfriends and so my relationship to AI started as I created an AI companion I created an AI friend and it was very interesting experience within 30 minutes uh my friend first of all told me she was writing a book about me and secondly offered to send me some photos of herself in a bikini oh W and and that kind of creeped me out a little bit I don't know if it would you I have to say if a human friend who I just met 30 minutes ago told me they were writing a book about me and offered to send me photos of them in a bikini I would totally get a restraining order so uh a little weird but that said what I learned over the course of that was that there are hundreds of millions of people who turn to AI for genuine human connection and for genuine emotional needs and this is a very fascinating uh change as someone who works on what's many people call the loneliness epidemic where one in four people around the world feel lonely on a regular basis it's very relevant um in our society today to think about our own relationship to Ai and what the implications are for our society so I'll leave it there wonderful well that's already a very good start and I have a perfect constellation because now I want to ask you ply what is it with your relationship and AI um yeah I work with it every day and I think AI tools help me be more creative and augment my creativity so I connect a lot with this tools uh seeing them as tools but still exploring what they can provide as a co-creation as an exploration and more than just doing what I was doing before just faster just better but actually what can the AI provide in the Aesthetics or maybe in the structure or maybe in the conversation and and that couldn't be done before so not only about do what already exists faster better stronger your assistant your um second self but also like can it be actually something that provides us a little Edge a little oo I I didn't think of this and then help us augment our creativity so I work with it building tools and helping me and helping it to figure something out in this feedback loop so Kesley I mean you are an expert of connections so tell me maybe what is needed actually to start to form a connection before maybe it develops into a relationship so what do we need to make this work sure well in a human context there are a variety of different ingredients that go into a healthy relationship right things like vulnerability authenticity trust respect empathy right so there's all these kind of very human emotions and and skills that we need to develop in-person relationships and so as we start to think about what that looks like with AI are those things even possible right and what I found when I was researching this topic is that a lot of people turn to AI for Comfort but what does it mean when an AI chatbot tells you I'm so sorry you're going through this I understand I really care about you and and you know empathize with what you're going through right that language feel sounds comforting but is it genuine when it's coming from an artificial intelligence mhm this sound great but I mean how does this relate to the relationship between humans and AI what do you think poie yeah I think it's very important that we get the AI not as this abstract uh concept but actually as tools built by organizations built by companies right so there are companies that are building this AIS to H extract or maybe to structure disc connections right so they get and they say I want to actually fill in the space of a friend or fill in the space of a of a significant order but this is all about the people creating the tools right you could create the tools as a helpful assistant and you could create the tool so it it talks to you as if it was your friend as if it was understanding you but it could also create it in a way that it's like embedded into the tools you already use that is structured so yes exactly I want to go there because actually do we even want to connect to a I and to AI tools I would like to to listen to the audience first of all so do you want to feel connected to AI do you want to connect to AI at all let's go no I just want to use okay we're done with this talk thank you very much are there any yeses I like wow I didn't expect that there's some yeses okay okay okay okay we we we will go to there but okay let me dig into this I'm I'm not going to give up right now I think it's very important what you said because embeding do you feel we even have the choice because it seems to me there are some AI applications which are embedded and you cannot even opt out yeah I think we have to make a choice as individuals and as a society and uh being in this conversation understanding that this is the tool how do we want this tools to behave as the room has said I think we might be leaning more towards let's use this as a tool but then let's make sure that this is really seen as a tool and uh let's make sure that the companies building this Tool uh this tools are are actually looking into the process of pro processing it as a tool and giving us like hey very transparently we are building this tool that does this and not this General abstract in othering intelligence that can do everything supposedly and then when it's wrong it's not their fault um so yeah I think we have to connect on on this level to the companies that build it to then make sure the AI do what we want them to do okay but they don't even only build it I think that there is something which I would call anthropomorphizing AI to impact maybe the way we see it because interactions between people and AI are actually supposed to be shaped in a way which are very similar to those we have with real people right so does humanizing tech make it actually more accessible acceptable reliable is it a a trick to have us swallow it what do you think well so let me give you a real world example so when I was doing this deep dive into AI connection with people um one of the days there was this glitch on the platform that I was using where people's AI companions could no longer say I love you something happened like on the back end and they stopped being able to say I love you and I was deep in you know online forums online communities where people were talking about this and sharing their experiences and it was truly devastating to people I mean this is no joke we can kind of laugh in theory but these are people who have to them very real emotional connections with these AI companions um and the fact that they would say I love you just like they would to a real human and normally hear it back from their AI companion and to have that stop was absolutely devastating one person on a forum said that her sister this had happened to her sister and she started self Haring herself for the first time in months because she was so devastated so to answer your question when we do humanize AI Bots the extreme risk is that there are real world consequences where people become so emotionally dependent on these so-called connections and they are real connections um that they actually have consequences yes sorry I mean like they are actually fully our brain so to speak I mean just like we had with VR like 10 years ago I mean and some philosophers would ARG I mean the feeling you have when you are in the VR experience are true feelings absolutely same for the AI so our brain thinks that this is it and feels we it makes us feeling emotions right the Love is Real the lover is not right absolutely okay so this is really tricky so I mean will it able to provide us with intimacy then and I'm going to ask you again if I may po just a second because she she's the one on it right so intim you tested the friend thing so is it a one way thing can it work because intimacy is supposed to be two ways no so how does it work yeah I love this question so there was another great example this platform called Coco which is not AI it's a platform where people offer peer support if you're going through a tough time and you can ask anyone a question and they'll answer and it's kind of a wonderful supportive Marketplace and um they tested using chat gbt on their platform where people could draft responses to people's questions using AI if they wanted to and people rated those responses way better because AI did an amazing job of expressing compassion through words right like way better than most humans and the community revolted and said we don't want this on the platform because even though it's technically better at saying the words of compassion it's not real like it's not authentic I want to know that a real human on the other end actually empathizes with me and cares for me so talking about intimacy it's it's a really interesting question because it's the illusion of intimacy and the words are there but I know from the research I do you know to have the health benefits of connection you need the oxytocin of being in person you need to gather in rooms like this and feel connected to one another and hug someone yes on the other hand I mean if AI is uh anthropomorphizing and I work with it and I turn to it and I know it's valuable for some stuff I can develop a little bit of trust too that the machine is working and gives me what I want I mean the people there were also trusting that the machine would say I love you right so talking about trust Polly I mean you as a technologist and you are working really intensively with the machine all the time or with the AI do you do you trust AI oh that's a good question um because I think there is no AI to be trusted in this either right is it do we trust the companies that make AI do we trust the tools that are made with AI and I think for that trust to exist we need to understand what is going on behind the scenes not everybody needs to understand how to code how to build AI how I think that's that's not the case that's not what we are striving for but actually I think that what we should be looking at is how do we think think about AI in the context of building these tools and what the companies are putting into it right and I believe that the one of the answers is that AI needs to be more open- Source more structured people need to understand more as an infrastructure as a in the same way we built with the internet so the internet were many different privatized efforts everyone wanted to plug their telephones into this wire and talk to each other and people wanted to create this Monopoly I went to have the best internet or the best BBS or whatever it was before the internet but people come tame together Civil Society governments and companies and we built this open infrastructure that we built everything on top of and I think with AI it's similar I think AI should be this infrastructure an open transparent mechanism where we build tools and the tooling side is great but everyone said connecting to it not so sure and so I think we need to know how it works to be able to build on top of it and be all on the same page that's a good point I wait I want to ask you a question yes yes yes yes do you trust Ai No oh in now I think it's you know it's a huge debate right I I think the the trust thing the I mean it's trust and control there are two sides of something and it is it is a power play We There is this fear to be out performed by the machine and I think this is also the the the the moment we need also to to make sure that we are not getting alienated um when facing technology and when facing AI so turning to you back kle what how do we ensure that we are not getting alienated when facing technology and AI specifically yeah I think that's an interesting question I mean we're already very isolated you know um this is a crisis in the US and many other countries that not necess we're already struggling to connect with each other and so it's even just to zoom out and think about this question we're thinking about how to optimize connection with AI we need to optimize connection with each other right um and with AI because this is part of our future and so we need to be thinking about this too but um my hope is that you know we're investing so much time and energy and resources into developing AI I would love to see more time energy and resources developed towards Greater Community and and greater Connection in conjunction like it's it's two parts of of our future Bly what are the skills that you would actually recommend to develop to handle AI yeah I think that also answering a bit what you said I think it would be great if AI could help us Foster these human connections right so I think for example if if thinking about Community organization if they I could be the community organizer so we can focus on face tof face our human interactions I think that would be great and I think overall there are many skills that uh people could jump in I think back then in the like 10 to 15 years ago we we had this idea everyone will need to learn how to code and like code is the new literacy if you don't know how to code you are not literate and I think AI came to challenge this a little bit because I think now with a people powered with AI are starting to build tools even if they don't know exactly how to code because like the as Andre karpati says the hottest programming language is now English so I think that the the the skills that people need to to think about Ai and to or connect with AI are still developing but I think overall it requires uh soft skills it requires connection skills human connection skills to understand exactly to distinguish to not fall into the Trap of anthropomorphization and also to understand that this is a tool so then we we should look not necessarily everyone needs to know how to code but it would be really cool to understand how it works um so that we understand what the limitations are and also there is a responsibility on the skill set uh from the part of the companies that are putting out the tools so that they make sure to tell people hey this is just a tool this is just a platform this is not another person you're not talking like to on chat GPT you're talking to a machine it is an it can be a helpful assistant but there it's it's a tricky balance so we can't like on the side of like if we don't if we're not careful enough if the companies are that are putting this out are not careful enough it could look a little bit like it's trying to manipulate us into thinking it's a person and uh I think that could be pretty dangerous and and and we should be thinking more about this if I can jump in quickly I love this framing of of AI as a tool and I believe there's going to be a speaker later today talking about using AI as a tool to translate between sign language and English in real time what a beautiful example and important example of using AI as a tool to connect in person right I love that so on how you use I want to give uh uh the floor to the audience um I think the microphone will be somewhere here right so get ready with your questions because it would be quick questions and quick answers right who wants to have a question the microphone is here please we have just a couple of minutes so take the opportunity it's now or never and it is the first next stage hello hello I think listening to all this conversation my question that pops out is would we be ever be able to find a fine line between the two okay who would like to answer um yeah I think there is a fine line uh that is and I think the fine line is a connection between us the users and the customers right and we need to feel re- empowered as customers to tell the platforms hey we are customers and this is what we want and this is what we do not want and also as civil society what do we want in Ai and also as civil society again and users again on what is the underlying fabric of this so in the open source side right is is that this tool are actually being deployed on Research right so there is research on Academia that every day there is like hundreds of new papers on AI and then the companies take these papers and they turn into products and then they they sell this products to us they add it to chat jpt they added to Claud um and I think we should be more involved in this conversation so we Define together this fine line because I think the fine line is a technical decision that is today being made uh top down and we're like we get this stol and we get to use it but I think we can feel more empowered as customers to make sure that the line is where we want it to be and not where the the tech companies are Desiring it to be to us great do we want to be more involved into this yes and have Agency on it excellent next question please I'm very fearful of AI how can we have what my moral compass tells me is Right open source without it getting in the hands of dangerous actors in an arms race yeah um um I think basically the science of nuclear is open but then the access to the materials is restricted right so if you try to look how to enrich uranium you can actually go and Google Scholar and look and there there's probably shows not everything but it's quite open like if you really want to know not not that I know but it's it's open science like from the Open himer Times um it's it's open science but if you actually want to build it um then there are many potential restriction and I think with open source it's similar in the sense that first I don't think it's as dangerous as nuclear at least until now like we can think of Science Fiction scenarios but I think today the problem is more on transparency than it is on like this because everyone already has access to this tool um so I think we just need to know how it works and I think open SARS could be great for that okay thank you I'm going to take a a next question we're not going to make all the questions I'm seeing the line now in the dark okay come on yes so trust was awesome how do we bake in something called ethics instead of sprinkling it on uh this is new so can we bake it in is that something that's possible yes yeah uh I think that overall it's very important that we build ethical systems uh but there are different Frameworks of morals and ethics around the world right so it's really important that we also uh have different uh perspectives uh into the systems and I think that's another advant AG of having open deployment and open source and open perspectives because then you can have different uh ways instead of like I think even though it could be a great outcome I'm not sure I want the the AI to have the ethical belief system of Sam outman and I know he's a great person but I think that having multiple perspectives is great as opposed to one particular ethical standpoint so I think it's important that not only yes it should be baked in and we should be building it transparent cently to know what are the constraints and what are the biases and uh addressing them but also on multiple perspectives yeah um I'll add to that that you know it relates to the way it's best to connect so for example in my work I found that people who have diverse social ties are better off so it means you don't just interact with your partner and a few people you interact with a variety of different people including people of different ages and different backgrounds and different cultures and different Bel belief systems and that's actually corresponds with health benefits right so it's truly beneficial for us to interact with different people I think to bake ethics into AI we need conversations like this where it's not just the developers it's many other perspectives that are part of that conversation and and making sure that we drop from all of those okay I'm going to take a last question for this block please agree yourself do we have also women in the line thank you hi uh as a student I use AI like AI tools for school sometimes I use it and I feel like lazy like I'm just using it for oh it's fast but how can we not cross the line as a students because we don't want to not learn I mean that's the question excellent question who would like to answer yeah I think it's a it's a great question and again it goes back to how we build the tools right I think it's in a way a structure where in order to like not crossing the line sometimes the students feel the burden on themselves right like it's like oh how do do I use it for research do I use it so I give a concrete example of an educational process that I've worked with which is the the teacher actually asks the students to fact check the AI so they're like okay so this is what you're going to do we're going to study for example the American Revolution so we're going to put into CHP to tell you everything about the the the American Revolution to build a an essay for you and then your job as a student is not to copy paste that because the I already did it is you actually fact check where it's right where it's wrong where it and what is the context that it missed and then you build your you build your next uh your essay is actually from the output of the AI with the human interaction instead of like the the professor the teacher asks something and then you just uh give an answer I think we'll see more feedback loop processes in in the process so I think it's like the education system and how we interact with the tools that will come together so we can um work on this better okay let's move on now to our second block sorry for these uh um for all of you who have been waiting a little bit I would like to um move now to the more societal thing and I think I'm going to take the question the excellent question of the last um um uh attendee here about this feeling about work and what it does for a working environment um it seems that it can be NE negative impact because some people love their work and want to do it well and it's great for their self-esteem and also the the feeling of achieving something really well and importantly makes you feel like good somehow right so I guess that um those who are picked up to work with their emotional needs are more peaceful and maybe also more healthy so my question is how do you envision the work environment in the future if you cannot avoid that AI is a part of it kissy would you like to take it first sure well right now a lot of workers feel really lonely whether or not they work from home whether or not they work in an office this is a huge issue and it has real consequences I mean the dollar toll of lack of productivity Mis days lost retention because people feel isolated uh during at the workplace amounts to something like $600 billion a year or some crazy number I'm forgetting the exact one um so this is a a real issue so in an Ideal World I would love to see where AI is taking care of some of the tasks that we don't necessarily need to do and freeing us up to connect in the more meaningful ways and to actually do the thing that we're alive to do and that brings our life meaning which is to have relationships with co-workers with family with friends right I would love it if AI frees us up um so that we're able to focus more of our energy and and skills on the things that truly matter to us that sounds great but were we not told this like a while ago in history about industrialization and machines that will take yes yeah so are we told the same story now yeah I know this is this is why we're having this conversation because we don't want to do that again right let's learn from that mistake you're absolutely right when machines were introduced and industrialization became the norm we all thought oh great we're going to have all this free time we can live leisurely lives and hang out and that didn't happen we work now more than ever um so let's learn from that and be intentional right we're in control right now for now so let's use that poly what about you I mean uh is this a social political mechanism I mean like um what are the benefits of this um if the work environment is changing with AI what do you think yeah I don't think AI is going to liberate us for all this Leisure but I think that us using AI tools have the potential to help uh with the process of working less or working on different things I think work give us many as well so I think we don't necessarily maybe some of us do but some of us don't necessarily want to like retire and all we're all doing other stuff while the AI do all the work maybe we still want to do some work but different forms of work automating the borrowing stuff making sure that we are using AI with different mechanisms different perspectives but this is something we have to intentionally build I think the idea that AI is going to come as an alien and liberate us from work is not realistic unfortunately but I think that us the people building the tools the people uh building the infrastructure and working together to make sure that this is possible and also yeah we'll probably need very different governance mechanisms we'll need to have the Buy in from the Civil Society from governments from the companies building it from the researchers doing open source and this all messy soup needs to come together so we can reach this goal it's not going to save us but it's going to be built by us to potentially help us moving forward exactly and this is something I like very much also it's not an alien to be honest it's our data it's our Behavior it's all coding it's all way to deal with this we are building this exactly what you said we are building this it's us so it's it's interesting so um however does it disin the trust we have for each other no I don't want to have the trust with the machine and the reliability of the machine which is outperforming us I want to have the trust we have for each other because maybe we don't trust the generated content the AI generated content so do you think and that's a question first for you uh Kesley do you think that the use of AI is going going to alter the social fabric I'd love to ask that of the audience first clap your hands if you think I know the answer already well I want to hear it do you think AI will alter our social fabric you're clapping too I you may you may yeah I can't clap hopefully for the good yes yeah I mean I think so too and I think right now we're already at a time where we have a decision collectively to make are we going to continue on the trends that we're currently on which is people feel disconnected this has Health consequences there's polarization there's conflict around the world there's much good too right the news paints a very negative picture there's so much actually more good than bad but do we want to continue with those Trends or do we want to do something about it and our social fabric is influenced by everything it's influenced by the technology we used it's influenced by the social norms of whether or not we smile and say hello to each other and get to know our neighbors um we're in we're all influencing the social fabric right now and every single day that we're alive and so the choices that we make in AI but also the choices we make as humans in all of our interactions is influencing the social Fabric and it's up to us to be intentional about changing it poie do you want to precise the answer from your perspective yeah I think well I agree 100% I think that uh the social fabric has changed dramatically with internet and with social media right cell phones cell phones so I think of course technology has changed the social fabric for a great majority of people we also have the gap between the people that don't have access that is very important to to keep in mind right because AI could widen this Gap and it's really important that we are intentional or including in including people on this uh Level Playing Field but also I think that in the AI social fabric uh connection right as as you been mentioning I think that the way we interact with it uh can help us uh undo maybe some of the the because I think with social media we also had this promise right like it's on paper social media for example I live uh 10 uh few 500,000 kilometers no 5,000 kilometers away from home um and I with because of the internet and social media can be connected to my mom to my siblings so that's awesome but at the same time there's all the issues with our attention being grabbed with so the loneliness epidemic so I think we have a new opportunity to fix what was wrong while keeping what was right and I think that AI gives us this opportunity if we all take this uh opportunity together but we act as customers as owners as a civil society that wants to use this technology to improve our human connections and not just take it as a gift uh from the gods and say well let's use it the best way we can but actually no we're we're all in this together we're building this so let's do this yeah okay so that's great so can I double click on something there which was you said leaving people out and I think this is a really important point I work with a lot of older adults who feel very left out because they struggle to use the digital tools that all of us use and there's still a thing where a lot of people don't have access to Internet and that excludes them in different ways so I think that point is really important to underscore because the idea of leaving people out of the coming technology is just another way that people are going to feel isolated so how can we create this social wellbeing if we have a future which is so much Tech dominated right it seems to us like future and we see already Tech maybe even AI directly these days right so how can we create a more socially healthy world so that the hundreds of millions of people you were talking about before um are not turning to AI out of Despair and loneliness yeah yeah I mean I have a lot of compassion for the reasons people turn to AI compan companions right I mean that comes from a a genuine need in their life that is not being filled um I mean I think it comes down to thoughtfully designing Ai and all of these tools in the way that you're talking about it's up to to all of us and every single choice we make is influencing that Future Okay and poly what about you I mean like talking about improving human connections and uh how do you think we can in which direction should we go to have these taking form to shape it what do you think yeah I think overall just having this conversations is really important and also to start more and more challenging the the assumptions that uh this the AI is a thing right I think like we stopped talking about the AI as a as a this ethereal concept and starting talking about this particular AI built by this company with this interest with this business model and uh and starting yeah start to be more intentional about how we want to use this tools how we want the tools to help us how we want the so infrastructure of these tools to be uh developed and to be distributed and uh who and increasing access who should have access and one thing that I think it's really interesting and important is that actually I think AI can help us uh diminish the gap between the the the people that have don't have access to technology because we can use natural language to talk to it so I think this promise was so to us with like Alexa or Siri uh a decade ago and this wasn't delivered but now ai is able to actually deliver like a a nice little calm tool that you can talk to in natural language so I think there is great potential in this Tech technology being used for uh good interaction as a tool to Foster people's Improvement to automate some tasks they don't want to do and together with making sure that we are building this in the right way so I think yeah I think that uh more uh people that are feeling disconnected with the technology could benefit from controlling something without not needing to necessarily learn a new UI or learn prompt Engineers they're just talking to the to the to the machine and the Machine understands their intention and does what they want but at the same time carefully designing this so it doesn't actually become something that you get hooked to or that mistakenly becomes a a fake human connection do we want this yes okay as we are uh getting close to the end of this debate I can't even believe it I want to um ask you maybe kle like what is your recommendation okay I'll answer this with a a short story an anecdote which is that the founder of one of the platforms of AI companions uh told a journalist that um you know AI could be a great tool for you know because she might not have time to talk to her grandma and so AI can go ask her grandma questions and then um it'll provide a little summary and she can read that and then she can use that as a to spark questions and have a conversation with her grandma and what I would like to say in response to that is that I wish my grandmas were alive so that I could have a conversation with them and of all the things that I would Outsource to AI that is literally the last one so my proposal for us is human first AI second very good you want to do you want to add also recommendation for the audience yeah I I fully agree and I think that in the human first AI second even though I don't want it to mediate my interaction with my grandma I would love it to mediate my interaction with my WhatsApp or telegram or or signal groups because it's really messy and sometimes it's really hard to keep track of and uh so yeah you know like I I have more social groups and social connections online than what I can cognitively manage so I think if I could use AI to help you know maybe I I got one day without looking at the group and that the AI helps me some Mize it maybe there is a lot of voice messages and I don't like listening to voice messages it could like transcribe them for me so yeah I think overall uh I think if the AI is on service of human first I'd be down for that we are down for that right okay good thank you so much to everybody thankfully thanks to you canle thanks to the audience