I'm a futurist and an award-winning author.

I'm a professor of strategic foresight

at the NYU Stern School of Business,

and the founder of The Future Today Institute.

Today we're going to be reviewing some scenes from movies

that are set in the future.

[techno music]

So I get a lot of questions about my job.

You know, what's a futurist?

A futurist is somebody who methodically explores signals

and data in order to anticipate what might come next.

We don't predict the future,

but we certainly track everything that's happening

in the present, and try to imagine what might be next.

This is "Blade Runner 2049" directed by Denis Villeneuve.

[ominous music]

- [Man] Officer KD6-3.7, let's begin.

Ready?

- [KD6-3.7] Yes, sir.

- In the science fiction canon,

this is kind of a sacred text.

So this movie, "Blade Runner 2049",

and the previous version, "Blade Runner"

comes from a story written by Phillip K. Dick

who's a super genius in the world of science fiction

and futurist work.

So what's happening during this scene

is that he's taking a psychological test,

but the psychological test is actually looking

to see whether there's corruption in his system,

not to tell whether or not he's human.

And that's kind of important because,

within artificial intelligence,

the test to tell whether or not somebody is human

has always been about deception.

Can the human tell whether or not the machine is human?

But in this case, this test is about proving

that the machine is, in fact, a machine and not human.

- [Man] Cells.

- [Machine] Cells.

- [Man] Have you ever been in an institution?

Cells.

- [Machine] Cells.

- [Man] Do they keep you in a cell?

Cells.

- [Machine] Cells.

- When we think about artificial intelligence and,

you know, "Blade Runner" is all about self-aware AI,

we tend to anthropomorphize it.

So we tend to put that AI inside of a human container,

right, a body, and then the rest of the story is,

you know, what does it mean to interact with somebody

who feels human, but isn't.

You know, the porous boundaries between humans and machines.

But at the end of the day, we're already surrounded

by meaningful artificial intelligence,

and sometimes that AI goes rogue, and sometimes it doesn't.

I mean, in a way, even without the flying cars

and always-nighttime-raining situation, we're sort of living

bits and pieces of "Blade Runner" in our everyday lives.

We just don't recognize that that's what's happening.

This is "Gattaca", directed by Andrew Niccols.

It's the story of a society in which genetic manipulation

is commonplace, and people are in a constant quest

to build their perfect children.

- [Man] I'll never understand what possessed to my mother

to put her faith in God's hands, rather than those

of her local geneticists.

[baby wailing]

10 fingers, 10 toes.

That's all that used to matter.

- So what's so interesting about this movie

is that when it came out in 1997,

there were a ton of movies about aliens.

And in this movie, it's also kind of about aliens,

it's just that the aliens are the natural-born humans,

because in this future world,

anybody who hasn't been edited is the mutant,

versus the other way around.

So this movie is all about the future of genetic engineering

and it wasn't too long before this,

some of you might remember Dolly the sheep.

So Dolly, the sheep was a cloned animal

and it caused this absolute manic furor

all around the world.

People were really upset that scientists had figured out

and had advanced the science enough to genetically,

not just modify, but copy another living being,

and that it was actually born.

I mean, this freaked everybody out.

The Pope made a special edict, President Clinton had to have

a break-in with a press conference,

and reassure the American public that, don't worry,

clones are not going to be just roaming around

the streets outside.

So in the middle of all of this

comes this incredible movie "Gattaca."

[baby crying]

- Neurological condition, 60% probability.

Manic depression, 42% probability.

Attention deficit disorder, 89% probability.

Heart disorder, 99% probability.

Early fatal potential, life expectancy, 30.2 years.

- 30 years.

- In this future world, there is a biological caste system

that exists, and people are slotted

into different professions based on their genetic makeup.

What's interesting is that we're kind of in a situation now

that's reminiscent of what was in that movie.

We're gonna be entering a period in human history

where there will be people

who are vaccinated for the coronavirus,

and people who are not for various different reasons.

And that's going to create biological levels,

different sets of permissions

throughout all of our societies, all around the world

that don't really have as much to do

with all of the traditional ways that we've sorted people

in the past, like based on their education, or their wealth.

It's a new type of biological system

of sorting and tagging people, which is profound

if you stop and think about it.

This is "The Matrix", directed by the Wachowskis,

one of my favorite movies.

And in this scene, Neo wakes up.

[eerie music]

[gagging and gasping]

[electricity buzzing]

[dramatic music]

Two things you need to know about "The Matrix":

one it is an incredibly clever story

about artificial intelligence and control.

Two, it is a metaphor.

It's a very clever, incredibly well-told metaphor.

So, no, I don't think that artificial super-intelligence

is at some point in the future going to give birth

to humans and force us to be batteries,

which is what's happening in that scene.

The amazing story that's being told

is that it's our data that power the systems,

and in that amazing scene where Neo is waking up,

he's taken the pill, he's decided to learn more

and to be disconnected from the system,

the story that's being told there is he now understands

what data are being collected,

and how the algorithms manipulate people.

This movie was brilliant and ahead of its time,

because what's happening right now in American society

and other places around the world

is that we are waking up.

People do recognize how the big tech giants

are harvesting, and scraping, and mining,

and refining their data.

At some point in the future, yes,

there are generative algorithms.

There are evolutionary algorithms.

And at some point they may decide to do things

that we didn't intend.

But the story that's being told here is about what happens

when we cede control to algorithms,

to systems designed by other people,

for the purpose of rewarding us,

nudging us and getting us to do what they want.

Here's a crazy little factoid.

Some researchers a couple of years ago

at Carnegie Mellon University calculated that it would take

76 work days to read through all of the privacy agreements

and all of the terms of service agreements

the average person sees in a year.

None of us read any of that, myself included.

I mean, who has the time?

But what this means is, we humans are slowly going to sleep

just as the machines are starting to wake up.

Which is my way of saying, we rely more and more

on automated systems that power our everyday lives,

and we are more and more disconnected from them.

We don't understand how they work.

And so when you find out that persistent biometric

surveillance systems are everywhere in your city,

or that drones that you can neither see nor hear

have been flying around overhead, taking pictures of you

at a protest, or that simply by doing a little bit

of online shopping,

there's a rich profile of what are called

personally identifiable information markers, or PII's,

about you that divulge an incredible amount of information

to third parties that you may never know or see,

and that entire connected system of data and algorithms

are built to try to make decisions for you.

I mean, that is not the future, people.

That is like right now.

Part of what we're being asked to contemplate

in "The Matrix" is, are we in a simulation,

or can we see what's happening?

I mean, it's brilliant.

This movie, "The Matrix", about artificial intelligence

and supercomputers, and also a post-apocalyptic

environmental crisis is just great.

Just great.

If you have not seen this movie,

I got nothing to say to you beyond what I've already said.

This is "Ex Machina" directed by Alex Garland,

and in this clip,

Nathan explains how he created Ava, the AI.

- Sorry.

- If you knew the trouble I had getting an AI

to read and duplicate facial expressions.

You know how I cracked it?

- I don't know how you did any of this.

- Every cell phone, just about, has a microphone, camera,

and a means to transmit data.

So I turned on every microphone and camera

across the entire fucking planet.

- No.

- And I redirected the data through Blue Book.

Boom, limitless resource vocal and facial interaction.

- You hacked the world's cell phones?

- Yeah, and all the manufacturers knew I was doing it, too.

- Couple of thoughts here,

but that whole thing about a single entity

pulling the entire world's worth of cellular data

into one spot and then, I guess,

having some kind of crazy powerful algorithmic system

to parse it all, that's not a thing.

The number of cell phones exceeds the number of people,

and it's not just cellular devices.

I mean, cell phones divulge your location,

among other things, but we're all connected

to many different systems and tools.

So if I was going to try to build

a high-functioning AI system, there's other ways to do it.

- Here we have her mind.

Structured gel.

I had to get away from circuitry.

I needed something that could arrange and rearrange

on a molecular level and keep its form when required.

Holding for memories, shifting for thoughts.

- This is your hardware?

- Wetware.

- You hear them talking about something called wetware.

Wetware is actually a real thing.

One way to think about people

is that we are just soft robots.

We're just containers for code,

and the squishy computer inside of our heads, our brains,

are what make us work.

So this concept of wetware?

Totally on point, and it turns out that theoretical chemists

have created molecules that can work

as what are called cubits.

So in regular computing, we have bits and bytes,

and in quantum computing,

we have these things called cubits.