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00:10The complexity of a machine will exceed the complexity of the human brain.
00:16Could scientific advances render humans obsolete?
00:20After Asimov's work on robots, we never saw them the same way again.
00:24And legendary sci-fi author Isaac Asimov throws humanity's future into question,
00:31asking, are robots the key to human progress or the end of our species?
00:40Tomorrow begins with a spark of imagination,
00:43a flash of insight that demolishes yesterday's limitations
00:47and inspires technologies to create new worlds.
00:52I'm Ridley Scott, and these are the prophets of science fiction.
01:02Isaac Asimov successfully took a generation from skepticism about new technology to embracing it.
01:10The United States was coming into its own as its most powerful nation in the world.
01:15And with it, its industry and its optimism and devices which electric this and electric that.
01:23And going with that would be the idea of robots, would be home help.
01:29Could you have a robot to actually clean the house for you?
01:31And so, he presented a very optimistic view of our future and the brave new world.
01:451933. Thirteen-year-old Isaac Asimov may be one of the luckiest kids in New York City.
01:51His father owns a candy store. But for young Isaac, the magazine rack is more tasty.
01:59His addiction is the fantastic realm of pulp science fiction.
02:04The whole reason Asimov was allowed to kind of obsessively read pulp-era science fiction
02:10was because the word science was in it.
02:12Well, it must be good for you. It's got the word science. It's got to be some degree of educational.
02:17In the popes of young Asimov's time, early robots are portrayed as Frankensteins.
02:24Crazed automatons rising up against their creators.
02:29Metal monsters out to crush humanity.
02:32The word was coined in Czechoslovakia,
02:36Rossum's Universal Robots by Karel ÄŒapek.
02:40And it's the Slavic word for worker.
02:42So, the robots were workers, they were toilers,
02:45in this kind of metropolis-like atmosphere of that novel.
02:51Then, they revolt.
02:55And really, what it was, was an image of worldwide communist revolution, in effect.
03:01And naturally thought of as being dangerous.
03:05But young Isaac imagines a new paradigm of possibility.
03:10He thinks about useful and harmless devices we use every day.
03:16Radios, blenders, or any other machines.
03:21His mind races.
03:27If we trust our appliances without question, why can't we trust a robot?
03:36Asimov pictures a world where robots are a helping hand in our daily lives.
03:42His sharp mind begins piercing the future at a rapid pace.
03:48Asimov was born in Russia in 1920 and came with his parents when they immigrated to America.
03:55He was a Russian Jew, grew up in Brooklyn.
03:57He was a kind of brilliant kid.
03:59And it was pretty clear from his earliest teenage years that he was a super geek, in effect, ahead of
04:06his time.
04:06Asimov starts writing stories at age 11 and is first published at 19 by the legendary editor of Astounding Stories
04:15magazine, John W. Campbell.
04:18He would go to Campbell's office, which is what you did in those days.
04:22You went and you sat literally at the feet of John Campbell.
04:26John Campbell made sure his chair was higher than yours.
04:30I mean, he was science fiction.
04:33Everybody who was anybody aspired to be an astounding science fiction.
04:38Isaac's tales stand apart from the pulp fare of his contemporaries.
04:43His robots are the opposite of violent monsters.
04:47Highly intelligent, trustworthy machines confronting complex challenges and a complicated relationship with humans.
04:55He was trying to figure out robots and robotics, not just for how they're going to work within the parameters
04:59of his story,
05:00but, okay, how would this work if this worked?
05:03He posited that humans would have a love-hate relationship with the robots,
05:08and it culminated in the iRobot series about a woman scientist named Susan Calvin, who was a robo-psychologist.
05:18Great stuff.
05:20So, Dr. Calvin, what exactly do you do around here?
05:25My general fields are advanced robotics and psychiatry, although I specialize in hardware to wetware interfaces
05:31in an effort to advance USR's robotic anthropomorphization program.
05:36So, what exactly do you do around here?
05:38I make the robots seem more human.
05:42In the earliest of the iRobot stories, Susan Calvin's employer produces an obedient, domestic robot called Robby.
05:52It's about a family who buys a robot and the daughter becomes very attached to the robot.
05:57The young girl and Robby form this amazing friendship.
06:01However, in the background of this story, there is a, shall we say, a technophobia, a robotophobia.
06:08The mother and father decide to get rid of their robot.
06:12Robby's removed from domestic life and cast out into a world of industrial labor.
06:18The daughter becomes so distraught that her father reconsiders.
06:22He takes her to the factory where Robby now works.
06:26And the young girl sees Robby and she rushes toward Robby.
06:34Robby saves her life.
06:36And so Robby is now accepted back into the family.
06:4260 years later, even tech-savvy parents still aren't ready to hire Robo-nannies for their children.
06:50Dr. Maya Matarek wants to change that.
06:53Our robots are safe, they're friendly, they're cute, they're fun, and they're helpful.
06:58There's so many people who could use something, someone, to help them on a daily basis.
07:03Dr. Matarek's students are developing a new generation of socially assistive robots.
07:09Machines that can help humans in every aspect of their lives.
07:13PR2 actually was designed as a robot platform for mobile manipulation.
07:19It would go around and pick up objects and move them around in the environment.
07:23We're trying to show that you could use this kind of robot platform, not just for mobile manipulation,
07:28but also for this socially assistive robotics context.
07:31To achieve this, the students are tapping into PR2's state-of-the-art integrated functions.
07:38We have stereo cameras up here for wide field of view and narrow field of view.
07:43It gives us a 5.1 megapixel picture of the environment.
07:46It has these two really complex manipulators on both sides of its body, sort of like a human has with
07:52their arms.
07:52And we have these really nice grippers on the end here that can grab objects with different kinds of force.
07:58And I can actually see the objects with the cameras here, so it's actually aware of what it's doing.
08:02It combines that information with the camera information from the head to really understand what's going on in the environment.
08:07PR2's cameras and manipulators make it a natural for executing complex spatial tasks like household chores.
08:15But multiple infrared laser scanners give PR2 the ability to see beyond the tasks at hand.
08:22On the ground here, we have this ground-based laser. It scans in a plane and gives us really, really
08:26accurate distance readings done to a few millimeters.
08:29So it could actually move around the same way that you or I would.
08:33We have a sensor up here. It's tilting up and down, so it gives us this nice scan of the
08:37entire room in full 3D.
08:39PR2's sensors stream this data through algorithmic software, which allows it to navigate its ever-changing environment.
08:48Ross and his fellow students are finding ways to harness these 3D sensors and rewrite PR2's algorithms to give it
08:56more natural interaction with humans, even respecting one's personal space.
09:01So the robot right now is trying to maintain a socially appropriate distance. Even when I move, the robot is
09:07trying to stay engaged in a social interaction.
09:12All of our robots are programmed to not get too close, ever. We don't have them touching people because touch
09:19is, you know, it can be unsafe.
09:22PR2 has a partner who is articulate and has a more personal way of relating to others.
09:27Hello, it's nice to see you. My name is Bandit, and we're going to play a few exercise games today.
09:35This is our humanoid robot platform. His name is Bandit. He's a socially assistive robot who was designed to do
09:41daily physical exercise with the elderly.
09:44OK, great. You chose the imitation game.
09:49In this game, the robot is imitating my own movements. So I'm deciding what the robot in the exercise is
09:54what to do.
09:55You're having too much fun.
09:56There he's giving me some brief comments and little feedback.
09:59Bandit analyzes the exerciser's movement in real time.
10:04What he can do now is he's got a camera at the base of the torso, and he's using the
10:09black background to easily segment out my body from the background.
10:13Bandit then imitates the exerciser's movements, creating a more intimate connection with each person it works with.
10:20Our robot Bandit has been used with stroke patients, with kids with autism, and with elderly users with Alzheimer's.
10:27Socially assistive units like PR2 and Bandit take robots one step closer to Asimov's childhood prophecy.
10:36In many ways one can think of Asimov as the first roboticist. He thought about what robots could do for
10:41people in a way that we're just now starting to catch up with.
10:46Asimov is aware that humans fear the unknown, and intelligent robots pose a problem.
10:53What if robots question their orders, and start doing things mankind does not want them to do?
11:00Murder's a new trick for a robot. Congratulations.
11:04Asimov's robots obey human commands.
11:07Respond.
11:08But what if the command itself is dangerous?
11:11What if a robot, in the process of carrying out one of my orders, does something harmful?
11:16You have to do what someone asks you.
11:19Don't you, Detective Spooner?
11:21How the hell did you know my name?
11:22Don't you?
11:25Asimov knows obedience isn't enough.
11:28If robots are to become a trusted part of human lives, he needs to seismically shift how they're perceived.
11:35The writer engineers a blueprint that will revolutionize how humans see robots forever.
11:521939.
11:53Nineteen-year-old Isaac Asimov has already published over a dozen science fiction stories.
12:01As Isaac ratchets up the complexity in his works, an unwritten code between man and robots begins to emerge.
12:11Back in 1939, there was a pattern in these stories which John Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction and
12:19my literary father, pointed out to me.
12:22He said I was having my robots behave as though they were guided by three laws.
12:27Asimov's three laws of robotics are born.
12:33Three major injunctions that would prevent them from ever harming humanity.
12:42One, a robot may not injure a human being or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm.
12:50Law number two, a robot must obey commands given to it by a human being unless that contradicts the first
12:59law.
12:59And then the third law was let no harm come to the robot as long as it didn't conflict with
13:05the first or second laws.
13:08Asimov puts his laws to the test in the 1942 short story, Runaround.
13:14Asimov's Runaround is about a mining operation on some far away planet and the people need to go out and
13:20get some selenium for whatever reason.
13:23But it's dangerous to go out and get it. So they send out this robot to go get it.
13:28Asimov names the robot Speedy.
13:31They send out Speedy for a five hour mission and he doesn't come back.
13:36They discover Speedy near a selenium pool and he seems to be almost drunk.
13:43What's happening here is two of the laws of robotics are in conflict.
13:48The second law of robotics to obey all of man's orders is driving him to the pool of selenium.
13:53But apparently the selenium is affecting him mechanically and that conflicts with the third law of robotics which is self
14:01-preservation.
14:03They recognize that the law about protecting human beings will override the other two laws.
14:09Speedy's owner puts himself at risk, forcing the robot to break from its vicious circle and come to his rescue.
14:19His early stories, so many of them hinged on the fact that the laws were imperfect in the sense that
14:24robots would go crazy because of the laws.
14:28Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman explores Asimov's three laws in 2004's I, Robot.
14:35He certainly evolved fundamentally this idea of the anthropomorphized robot.
14:41The sort of search for an operating system really in the days long before we understood and had in our
14:50vernacular so commonly the notion of operating system.
14:53I mean that's what the three laws are.
14:54They're an operating system.
14:57So he sort of went, huh, how would that work?
15:00And if it did work, what would that mean?
15:03And if it meant whatever it did mean, how much meaning leads to a soul?
15:11Asimov's fiction inspires two real life engineers to ask, could a robot take on the tasks performed on a factory
15:20floor?
15:21In 1961, General Motors brings the world's first industrial robot, Unimate, to life on the assembly line.
15:30The robot would take die casts of motor parts and spot weld them onto the body of an automobile.
15:36If a human being were to do that, it could suffer noxious fumes or in the welding process could even
15:42lose a limb.
15:43And those kinds of fears for human activity were relieved once Unimate was created.
15:50But other factory workers begin looking over their shoulders.
15:55Will smarter, more advanced robots soon be performing their jobs too?
16:01I think some people fear the concept of artificial intelligence or of robotics.
16:07Maybe because it, first of all, makes you feel replaceable.
16:11Certainly people have lost their jobs as a result, potentially, of robotics.
16:15And maybe there's a little bit of a fear of losing control to the very creations that are supposed to
16:21help us control things.
16:24Since Unimate, increasingly complex robots have rendered a generation of skilled workers obsolete.
16:31Could robots deliver this same fate to other professions?
16:37At the University of California, Irvine, the Mazer Robotics Company deploys Spine Assist,
16:44a medical robot which performs tasks with a level of precision rivaling human surgeons.
16:50We operate on people with problems related to their back or their neck or people who have curvatures of their
16:57spine like scoliosis.
16:59Spine Assist is a robot that helps us putting in screws for some of these operations.
17:06With mere millimeters separating vertebra from sensitive spinal cord tissue, accuracy is paramount.
17:16A three-dimensional CAT scan of the patient's spine is uploaded to Spine Assist's guidance system to create a pre
17:24-operational blueprint.
17:26When we're planning the surgery, we have to have a CAT scan, which is an image of the patient's bones,
17:32that is of adequate size and resolution to make sure the computer and the robot can read it well.
17:38Spine Assist's guidance system synchronizes the CAT scan data with the robot's location along the spine to create a three
17:46-dimensional positioning system for safe placement of each screw.
17:51The robot references where it is on the spine using intraoperative X-rays and the pre-operative CAT scan.
17:58So now it knows within a tenth of a millimeter or better where it is and can then lead its
18:03guidance pin to where we need to place screws to help stabilize the patient's spine during the healing process.
18:10The guidance system moves Spine Assist in tandem with doctors during surgical procedures.
18:16We place it on a track where the robot can move from station to station.
18:20Once it's moved into position, we then insert a small tube or a metal tube that goes right through here.
18:26We then pass a drill right through that hollow tube to make sure that it all feels like it should
18:32feel and we insert the screw right in that same angle.
18:35You can see that the screws are avoiding the spinal canal where the spinal cord is.
18:39It's avoiding the area where all the nerves are and running right through the bone.
18:44Spine Assist allows us to be more accurate and it gives us the advantage of efficiency, really, so it's better
18:52for patients.
18:54Building on the achievements of Spine Assist, Mazur's latest generation, Renaissance, promises to take surgical robotics to the next level.
19:05Renaissance is programmed for even more complex procedures like cranial surgery.
19:13These ever increasing capabilities of surgical robots may soon force patients to wonder who's really wielding the scalpel.
19:22The number one fail safe with the robot is the surgeon. The robot doesn't take the place of the surgeon.
19:28It's just another tool we have and used correctly, it works great. Used incorrectly, obviously there can be issues, but
19:35that's why the surgeon is still important.
19:37In his early works, Isaac Asimov's future visions explore robots working in concert with man to protect and save lives.
19:47But what will happen when advances in science propel robots beyond human control, unleashing self-sufficient, emotionally reactive entities?
19:57But emotions don't seem like a very useful simulation for a robot.
20:01I did not murder him.
20:03Hell, I don't want my toaster or my vacuum cleaner appearing emotional.
20:07I did not murder him!
20:19FROUN trained to know the antecedent changed.
20:19August, 1945.
20:22The brilliant flash of an atomic blast ends World War II and kicks off a frantic scientific rivalry between the
20:30U.S. and Soviet Union.
20:32In need of the best and brightest young scientists, the U.S. Army calls 25-year-old Isaac Asimov
20:39away from his writing to conduct research in Hawaii.
20:44He quickly discovers he's not cut out for military life.
20:51Asimov hated the physical end of military life, whether it was marching or all the
20:58strenuous physical activities and tested very poorly.
21:00This is compounded by the fact that Asimov opposes any army's mission statement.
21:08Asimov, you know, rather than resolving things through violence, tended to resolve things
21:12through logic.
21:13I think that that speaks to, you know, a general worldview that he has.
21:21When it came to combat, Asimov understood the needs of getting rid of despots like Adolf
21:26Hitler.
21:26But he also felt that human violence was really kind of a last resort.
21:31Hitler convinced his followers that some people are less than completely human.
21:39In his murder mystery, The Naked Sun, Asimov imagines brainwashing robots in the same way.
21:48The antagonist tried to get the robots in The Naked Sun to violate the first law of robotics
21:55by changing the robot's perception of human beings.
21:59He was able to change their programming so that they no longer saw human beings, but rather
22:03saw inorganic material.
22:07It allowed a robot to, in a sense, kill a person, but really the robot had no knowledge that
22:12he was doing it.
22:17Isaac Asimov, he usually found a route where the darkest element of the stories weren't
22:23necessarily the robots, they tend to be the human beings.
22:26And the human beings, misunderstanding and abuse of the robot.
22:31And then it would turn against you.
22:37Today, the US military deploys bomb-carrying robotic drones over enemy skies.
22:45And on the front lines of the battlefield.
22:58But Colin Engel and his team at iRobot are equipping combat units with battlefield robots that help
23:06rather than harm.
23:07What we do here at iRobot, we try to find problems a robot can solve and build robots that are
23:13as
23:14simple as they can possibly be and still solve the problem that we've identified.
23:19Take, for example, our smallest robot.
23:23First Look is designed to be thrown into an area where there might be something dangerous
23:30or bad and use its cameras and sensors to relay information back.
23:40First Look's larger, more sophisticated partner, PackBot, is equipped to play an even greater
23:46role on the battlefield.
23:50PakBot is an incredibly durable miniature tank.
23:56These robots are capable of being thrown off a second-story building, climbing stairs,
24:05climbing stairs, or going underwater.
24:12It can use its arm to pull the detonating wires off an explosive, or pick up the explosive
24:22itself, be very dangerous, and move it to a safe location where it can be disposed of properly.
24:30Their largest creation is the warrior, which does everything from heavy lifting to seeking
24:37out and disabling live explosives like IEDs.
24:43Right now, robots are most commonly used for bomb disposal.
24:49As these robots diffuse thousands of deadly bombs, they've earned the respect and loyalty
24:56of the soldiers who rely on them.
24:58PackBot was the partner of an explosive ordnance disposal team in Afghanistan, and its 18th or
25:0619th mission, the bomb blew up and destroyed the robot.
25:09The EOD operator carries the robot back in his arms like a fallen comrade.
25:17Can you fix it?
25:18Please, you gotta fix it.
25:19Like it was a team member had just saved his life.
25:23These robots are not some kind of cold, dark future.
25:29This is saving our servicemen's lives.
25:34Any time you can use a robot instead of a soldier, it's a great thing.
25:44A battlefield filled with thousands of autonomous robot soldiers, free of human control, promises
25:51to reboot the entire concept of warfare.
25:54Since we can send robot soldiers into battle and not humans, the criticism that we would
26:01face at home from our sons and daughters being killed on the battlefield would not arise.
26:08But this new possibility is not without cost.
26:12One drawback of putting robots on the battlefield is it makes it easier for the general to push
26:18the button and initiate a war.
26:20Human life becomes cheapened because the robots can then, with the push of a button, slaughter
26:25as many enemy combatants as it feels like.
26:29Asimov sees no place for his robots in the bloody battles of mankind.
26:34He looks beyond the primitive skirmishes on Earth, envisioning a future where robots
26:40empower mankind's quest to colonize the cosmos.
26:54Asimov sees no place for his robots.
26:55October 4th, 1957.
26:58Science finally catches up with Isaac Asimov's imagination.
27:06Today there's a new moon in the sky.
27:10The Soviet Union Sputnik satellite.
27:13They tell us the world may never be the same again.
27:20The Soviet Union has beaten the United States into space.
27:25For many Americans, the wonder of this achievement is overshadowed by the fact that it was accomplished
27:31by their ideological enemy.
27:38You are hearing the actual signals transmitted by the Earth circling satellite.
27:43It was the first example of another country's superiority when it came to the realms of science.
27:50Where millions see the rise of a new Cold War threat,
27:55Isaac Asimov sees a momentous accomplishment for all mankind.
28:01It's the dawn of an exciting new era.
28:05Space exploration, prophesied by Asimov in Runaround and the Naked Sun, has finally become fact.
28:14Countless new worlds are suddenly within man's grasp.
28:20Asimov makes it his personal mission to be a gateway to knowledge,
28:24sharing his passion for scientific progress with others.
28:28He shifted over into non-fiction.
28:30And this is where his powers as an explainer came into effect.
28:36Asimov writes dozens of non-fiction books and hundreds of articles on an incredible range of topics,
28:43spanning nine of ten categories in the Dewey Decimal System.
28:47He was like an encyclopedia.
28:49Any subject under the sun he could read about and then he could coalesce it into a new book
28:55that was clearer than the previous books and also had an emphasis on what was important,
29:01because his judgment was good.
29:04Asimov quickly becomes the expert other science fiction authors discreetly call
29:09when they need clarity on the scientific aspects of their tales.
29:13I'd call Isaac and I said,
29:15Isaac, I got a guy and he's on a planet and there's no air and there's nothing to breathe.
29:21How is he living? And he says, anaerobic bacteria.
29:26And I said, what? And he says, I'll spell it.
29:30You got a pencil and paper.
29:31But increasingly, Asimov is withdrawing from the outside world.
29:36His fear of heights and love of enclosed spaces makes him reluctant to leave home.
29:42Yet he knows man's destiny is in the stars and that robots are the key to humanity's progress.
29:48I think that he definitely saw it as a way to go out and explore new frontiers
29:56without putting human beings in direct danger.
30:00In his short story, Reason, Asimov places a robot in charge of a space station.
30:08QT-1 works side by side with humans.
30:12He works with them. He functions with them. He does what they can't do.
30:16He's on this spaceship in order to control rays from the sun that they're directing to Earth for energy.
30:26Today, Asimov's prediction has been realized.
30:29We'd like to introduce you to the newest member of our crew, which is Robonaut 2.
30:36250 miles above Earth, on February 26, 2011,
30:41a robot arrives at the International Space Station to help the astronauts.
30:45Now he's up here with us and we're going to see what Robonaut can do.
30:51NASA project leader Ron Diffler guided the development of Robonaut's flexible operating system.
30:58Actually, Robonaut has multiple control modes.
31:01We can control it when we call it teleoperation mode,
31:04where the human puts on a set of virtual reality gear
31:07and you more or less directly map the human's motion to the robot's motion.
31:12The second mode is what we call shared control.
31:15The robot takes over some of the functions, for example,
31:18how it interacts with the environment, while the human is controlling the overall motion.
31:23And we do have what we call autonomous capability,
31:26where the robot is able to perform certain functions by itself
31:30while being supervised remotely by a human.
31:35Robonaut's humanoid design allows it to easily integrate into the mission workflow.
31:40Well, to be an astronaut assistant, one of the things you have to be able to do
31:43is work with the same tools that the human works with.
31:45So, to be able to work with those tools, we have to be able to have a device that can
31:49manipulate them.
31:50Well, a human-like hand is obviously one good candidate to do that.
31:55Well, now you have to also be able to inspect your environment with cameras so you can see what's going
32:00on.
32:00That's pretty much like a head.
32:04You put all that together, you evolve eventually into a human-like system to be able to help humans.
32:13Diffler believes advanced robotics are vital to man's progress in the harsh environment of space.
32:20If there's a situation where we're worried about the level of radiation in the environment,
32:24or the temperature extremes are significant, we may want to send a robot out first,
32:30inspect that area, and then send the human out later.
32:33If the data we get back from the robot signifies that it's safe for the human to go there.
32:39The most sophisticated robot in space is just one small step towards Asimov's grander vision.
32:46The legacy of Asimov's writings bridges those two different eras of fearing technology
32:53to accepting it and progressing man to that next step of evolution.
33:00He refines his vision even further in the novella The Bicentennial Man.
33:06Detailing a world where humans and robots no longer work side by side.
33:12They become one.
33:261976. As the nation celebrates its 200th year of independence,
33:31Isaac Asimov is inspired to craft a tale confronting the unalienable rights of sentient robots.
33:44Asimov's Bicentennial Man erases the boundary between man and machine,
33:50envisioning humans and robots becoming one.
33:53The premise of Bicentennial Man is a robot who gradually through interaction with human beings
34:02decides that he wants to be more than a robot.
34:06In the novella, Isaac blurs the line between biology and technology.
34:14He envisions transhumanism, the seamless merging of man and robot.
34:21Transhumanism is the idea that we will begin to augment ourselves with bodily changes to ourselves
34:27with genetic engineering, also cyborg-like physical mechanisms injected and compressed into the human body,
34:35and all of it together along with artificial intelligence coming to something that is transhuman.
34:41Today's modern prosthetics are breathing life into Asimov's prediction of transhumanism.
34:48There's wonderful work being done with prosthetics, literally connecting chips with nerves
34:53so that people can now, through pure volition, just thinking, move their prosthetics and literally regain a body.
35:00In 2010, Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory unveiled MPL, the Modular Prosthetic Limb.
35:10The MPL is one of the first prosthetic limbs to be controlled by a user's thoughts.
35:17The MPL is connected to the brain via neural implanted microarrays with sensitive electrodes that monitor brain signals.
35:27When the brain generates signals to move the limb, a wireless transmitter sends these signals to sensors inside the hand,
35:34where software converts these signals into robotic movements.
35:39To seamlessly integrate the limb into the user's central nervous system, feedback sensors are implanted in the hand.
35:47When sensors in the hand detect pressure, force or temperature, they transmit this information back to the receiver,
35:55which activates the neural implants and stimulates the brain, giving MPL users the ability to actually feel their prosthetic limb.
36:06There is a future that's going to see that kind of body optimization.
36:10And I'm just happy that people who are either born with deficits or acquired them in their lives,
36:15actually have a future to look forward to where they can regain that function and be a normal part of
36:20society.
36:22The Modular Prosthetic Limb is a turning point in the convergence between man and robot.
36:28I think it's a metaphor for the way life feels to us right now, that between our abilities in healthcare
36:35and the internet and everything else,
36:37that we're already in the transhuman moment.
36:40I believe Asimov thought transhumanism to be not only a good thing, but an inevitability.
36:45Asimov takes transhumanism to its logical extreme, when the bicentennial man seeks to acquire not just a human body, but
36:54full human rights.
36:56He created this notion of the sentient robot yearning to be free, the robot who has become so like man
37:07that he is more humane than man.
37:10The idea of a robot as a chance for transcendence comes from Asimov.
37:20How do you treat an intelligent machine that knows it's intelligent, that has feelings, that wants to be taken seriously?
37:29It's the notion of citizenship. It's about where we might actually go.
37:36This is the age-old Asimov question, which is, where does autonomy begin?
37:43Who is the arbiter of autonomy and choice? That's at the heart of Asimov's work.
37:49And I think we are still asking those questions.
37:53In 1977, Asimov suffers a heart attack.
37:58It's a stark reminder how little control humans have over their biological fate.
38:05So he imagines a world where the power to decide that fate can exist on a microchip.
38:231983. After years of heart trouble, Isaac Asimov goes under the knife for triple bypass surgery.
38:32From his hospital bed, he begins typing what will eventually become 90 more books, tapping into his deep and eclectic
38:41reserve of knowledge.
38:43When you see what he wrote in his later career, books on just about anything in science and, you know,
38:49whatever.
38:50I mean, Asimov was a polymath, a genius.
38:54There's a story about Vonnegut asking Asimov, so what does it make you feel like to know everything?
38:59And Asimov's response was, uneasy.
39:03Asimov's favorite short story explores the burden that can come with knowing everything.
39:09Asimov's last question postulates a future where people ask whatever the smartest computer is at that point in time,
39:17the question of how can we prevent the universe from ending.
39:24And the computer says I don't have enough information to answer that question.
39:28Insufficient data for meaningful answer.
39:33For eons, generations confront Multivac with the last question.
39:38Yet it perpetually lacks the knowledge to answer.
39:42The computer keeps growing, keeps absorbing data.
39:46Human beings disappear because there's no more need for them.
39:50The computer has amassed all the information in the world, in the universe, supposedly.
39:55And the computer now has a choice to either wipe out the universe or recreate it.
40:03Let there be light.
40:06And so light comes and the universe is recreated.
40:10It shows Asimov, in a sense, he's a benign god within science fiction because he said let there be light.
40:17Let the world go on rather than let it die.
40:22In the last question, Asimov assures us robots will not take over the world or bring about the end of
40:29our species, but achieve perfect harmony with mankind.
40:32A theoretical collective consciousness known as singularity.
40:38Singularity is the idea that the evolution of man and machine continue to evolve towards each other to the point
40:46of one collective mind, one collective being, where man and machine are interwoven.
40:52Asimov's prophetic vision of a singularity supports his lifelong optimism about the future, where robots will not be feared, but
41:02embraced.
41:03I think ultimately, Asimov restructured our conception of what robots could be, from being some kind of threat to being
41:11a huge aid to human existence.
41:16On April 6th 1992, Asimov draws his last breath.
41:26But his enduring mosaic of robot tales is not a codex detailing mankind's extinction, but a playbook for humanity's greatest
41:37achievements.
41:40Isaac Asimov was the son.
41:45There never was, there never shall again be, on this planet, an Isaac Asimov.
41:53Asimov's legacy is best described as that bridge between fearing technology and accepting the benefits of it, allowing humans to
42:03evolve and reach that next step of achievement.
42:08I think there is an ingenuous quality to Asimov.
42:14He wasn't cynical, but he was influenced by a world that was evolving.
42:20And so, of course, it's affecting and infecting his thinking.
42:26And I think Asimov kept one eye on the dark side, but at heart celebrated the power and possibility of
42:34science.
42:35D AÃ
42:36But it was grand reasons to get upon us.
42:37What do you see in this world?
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