Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Speaker 2: Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio. All right, well, we're joined now
Speaker 2: by Craig Mundy, president of Munday and Associates and also
Speaker 2: former Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer, on location on
Speaker 2: Zoom in Washington, DC. He's here to discuss his new
Speaker 2: book Genesis, Artificial Intelligence, Hope and the Human Spirit. And
Speaker 2: this was co authored with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt
Speaker 2: and the late doctor Henry Kissinger. I want to get
Speaker 2: into the book and the future of AI and humanity,
Speaker 2: but I first want to ask Craig about just how
Speaker 2: this partnership of the three authors came together and the
Speaker 2: idea for writing this book.
Speaker 3: Begod. I've known Henry for about well in twenty seven
Speaker 3: years now. Back in the earlier days at Microsoft, we
Speaker 3: started to deal with a number of challenges on a
Speaker 3: global basis, and I was introduced to Henry and we
Speaker 3: became fast friends. That lasted another twenty five years, and
Speaker 3: so we talked very regularly, almost twice a month. We'd
Speaker 3: sit and talk for a while, and that evolved about
Speaker 3: five or six years ago to a discussion more and
Speaker 3: more around artificial intelligence. Eric Schmidt I've actually known since
Speaker 3: he was originally joined Sun Microsystems, probably pushing toward forty
Speaker 3: years now, and Eric and I encountered each other in
Speaker 3: a number of ways and places. You know, we both
Speaker 3: served President Obama as science advisors during.
Speaker 1: His terms, and.
Speaker 3: We got a chance be a meeting that we attended
Speaker 3: with Henry about six years ago to get Henry first
Speaker 3: exposed to what was happening in artificial intelligen and he
Speaker 3: was I guess ninety four at the time or something,
Speaker 3: but he was completely taken by the issues that he
Speaker 3: thought would be created by the emergence of a super intelligence.
Speaker 3: And because his background was in philosophy and history as
Speaker 3: well as diplomacy, you know, he got more and more
Speaker 3: interested and involved in that. That led to Eric and
Speaker 3: Henry and Dan Huttonlocker from MIT wrote a book a
Speaker 3: few years ago. We started to talk about the issues,
Speaker 3: but it didn't really talk so much about possible solutions,
Speaker 3: and the discussions I was having with Henry at the
Speaker 3: time were targeted a little more at this question of
Speaker 3: solutions than the very long term issues, and that led
Speaker 3: to the three of us coming together and designing to
Speaker 3: write a second book that would focus more on both
Speaker 3: the upsides and a strategy for how to manage the downside.
Speaker 3: And that's Genesis.
Speaker 4: Genesis, I guess the beginning of this new era that
Speaker 4: that we face. What I find most interesting is the
Speaker 4: with the involvement of Henry Kissinger. Then to me, it
Speaker 4: means you can use artificial intelligence to do more things
Speaker 4: than like make Siri better, but maybe solve the Middle
Speaker 4: East conflict. And I wonder how AI would attempt to
Speaker 4: do something like achieve world peace. How would you use
Speaker 4: that tool to reach that goal?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, you chose an interesting word. Tool. In
Speaker 3: the book, we talk about our view that over the
Speaker 3: long term, our involvement with an ultimately relationship with these
Speaker 3: super intelligent machines goes through three phases. First phase, we're
Speaker 3: sort of in now is is where we use it
Speaker 3: as a tool, much like we have in all the
Speaker 3: other inventions you know mankind has made. But we think
Speaker 3: this is the first one where things have to move
Speaker 3: beyond thinking of it as a tool that just amplifies
Speaker 3: our own capabilities. We call the second stage coexistence, where
Speaker 3: humans come to the realization that in essence these machines
Speaker 3: are like a new intelligent species, and in fact, it
Speaker 3: is probably super intelligent relative to humans. And while it's
Speaker 3: not a biological species and the way we normally think
Speaker 3: about it, it has sort of all those other properties.
Speaker 3: So that puts us in a situation where we want
Speaker 3: to think about how does this other intelligent species help us?
Speaker 3: And that brings on many new issues philosophical, you know,
Speaker 3: societal and technological, and so you know, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of focus on that. Assuming we manage to get through
Speaker 3: that in a positive way and humans come out the
Speaker 3: other side, you know, in kind of a new environment,
Speaker 3: then we end up in a stage we call co evolution,
Speaker 3: where as has happened with biological species over the millennium
Speaker 3: on Earth. You know, each of these things begins to
Speaker 3: affect the other and you end up with some long
Speaker 3: term symbiotic relationship. And while we can't really define what
Speaker 3: that will be in advance, you know, we expect that
Speaker 3: that's where this ultimately ends up. And so in that regard,
Speaker 3: at each of these points in time, how AAI will
Speaker 3: affect everything, including diplomacy and international relations as well as
Speaker 3: science and discovery and politics. You know, we look at
Speaker 3: some of those issues specifically in the book, but I
Speaker 3: think in each of those three phases, the role that
Speaker 3: the AI plays in moving toward resolution, you know, could
Speaker 3: be quite different.
Speaker 2: Description of the book said that AI might well solve
Speaker 2: some of the greatest mysteries of our universe and elevate
Speaker 2: the human spirit to unimaginable heights. I'm wondering what the book,
Speaker 2: in this exploration of AI actually teaches the reader about
Speaker 2: what it means to be human.
Speaker 3: Well, one of the things that we point out in
Speaker 3: the book is that humanity is ultimately going to have
Speaker 3: to redefine the things that we think characterize humanity. We
Speaker 3: call in a book for the need to redefine dignity.
Speaker 3: Dignity as a base of giving people sort of purpose
Speaker 3: and self respect we think is going to have to
Speaker 3: be rethought once the AI begins to not only be
Speaker 3: smarter than we are in virtually every field, but where
Speaker 3: the emergence of it in conjunction with robotics and a
Speaker 3: redisc rebution of work. In many ways, humans have always
Speaker 3: had to work in order to be able to survive,
Speaker 3: and in that environment, work becomes a big component of
Speaker 3: how they view themselves and produce his dignity. And you know,
Speaker 3: as the as the AI and the and the evolving
Speaker 3: technical environment changes the relationship between work and humans, you know,
Speaker 3: we're going to have to rethink what these things are.
Speaker 3: And so, you know, the book tries to point to
Speaker 3: areas where we think the emergence of super intelligent machines
Speaker 3: will benefit humans in science and discovery and things like
Speaker 3: healthcare and education. But in the long run, it's really
Speaker 3: also a call for humans to come together with some
Speaker 3: urgency in order to be able to continue to redefine
Speaker 3: and utilize our own agency during this transitional period.
Speaker 4: Craig, then, do we continue to control this technology or
Speaker 4: this super intelligence, because it sounds like in the final
Speaker 4: phase it becomes near to omniscient and omnipotent. But I'm
Speaker 4: not sure that there's any reason it would be omni benevolent.
Speaker 4: Like you know, I always think of the three properties
Speaker 4: of a Christian God, is it really going to want
Speaker 4: to do good?
Speaker 3: In the book, we talk about a new idea that's
Speaker 3: emerging in some quarters academically and a little bit it's
Speaker 3: been the focus of my own work in this area,
Speaker 3: which is to try to think about how do we
Speaker 3: engineer the AI in such a way that, in fact,
Speaker 3: it does have a fundamental grounding in the same value
Speaker 3: systems that are important to humanity. Without that, you know,
Speaker 3: you could say, and of course, many of the things
Speaker 3: that have been written in the last couple of years
Speaker 3: tend to be sensational. Sensationalized, you know, visit the risk
Speaker 3: of the of the machine and the humans. And you know,
Speaker 3: our own view is that if we want to contain
Speaker 3: those risks, there's ultimately no way to do that other
Speaker 3: than by building a trusted way in which the AI
Speaker 3: itself is involved in policing its own actions.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: And you know, we've come to believe that that that's possible.
Speaker 3: And so if we can build this kind of trusted
Speaker 3: system that can monitor and and to some extent control
Speaker 3: the use of all the other AIS collectively, then we
Speaker 3: think that we can avoid many of the downsides and
Speaker 3: get the full benefit of AI without suffering a substantial
Speaker 3: risk that the AI becomes basically adversarial to humanity.
Speaker 4: Fascinating, really fascinating stuff, Craig, and fantastic that you get
Speaker 4: a chance to write with doctor Kissinger his last piece
Speaker 4: of work, at least his last book. Craig Mundy there
Speaker 4: on his book Genesis, Artificial Intelligence, Hope and the Human Spirit,
Speaker 4: which he wrote with Henry Kissinger and Eric Schmidt. Thanks
Speaker 4: very much for joining us. Let's talk right now about
Speaker 4: the environment and waste Management or now it's known as
Speaker 4: w M. We have Tara Hemmer right now out of Houston,
Speaker 4: Texas joining us, senior vice president, chief Sustainability Officer at
Speaker 4: wn w M. And as we you know, look at
Speaker 4: the rising temperatures, the rising wind, the natural disasters. How
Speaker 4: can WM or waste management help in this crisis?
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for having me. And it
Speaker 1: did take me a while to get used to the
Speaker 1: to the name change to WM. But it really is
Speaker 1: about the fact that WM. We handle so many different
Speaker 1: material types each and every day, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't know this about us. We are the largest
Speaker 1: recycler in North America and we made significant investments announce
Speaker 1: a one point four billion dollar investment in recycling infrastructure
Speaker 1: across North America from twenty twenty two to twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: And this is about bringing access to communities. Recycling is
Speaker 1: something that's so tangible and people can get their brains around.
Speaker 1: But there are some myths around recycling that we really
Speaker 1: want to work towards, so to speak, mythbusting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have to admit, you know, I do recycle. However,
Speaker 2: I also typically will like a meme that has to
Speaker 2: do with the fact that, like, why am I recycling
Speaker 2: my yogurt container when you know a CEO is taking
Speaker 2: a private jet thirty times a year. But I still recycle.
Speaker 2: But Tara, I'd love to hear kind of what your
Speaker 2: recent recycling port kind of showed about consumer perceptions of
Speaker 2: what recycle, what the impact of recycling actually is, because
Speaker 2: sometimes when you put your yogurt container in the recycling bin,
Speaker 2: it it really doesn't feel like you're doing much right.
Speaker 1: That's right, well, and the most important. We did this
Speaker 1: study because we wanted to understand what are consumers preferences
Speaker 1: and what are they what's their understanding around recycling, And
Speaker 1: what we found was really fascinating. We found that consumers
Speaker 1: really are interested and want to know more about four
Speaker 1: key areas. They're they're interested in learning more about recycling.
Speaker 1: They want to be edged about what happens to their materials.
Speaker 1: They need more access to recycle. Some communities don't even
Speaker 1: have recycling as a service. And that's something that's incredibly important.
Speaker 1: And then what we also found is that consumer brands,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of brand pull from millennials. And so
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you brought up the example of yogurt containers,
Speaker 1: because when I meet people in my community or my neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: a lot of people are really interested in can I
Speaker 1: recycle my yogurt container? And then what happens to it
Speaker 1: once it gets recycled. The thing is we need to
Speaker 1: bring to life what happens to the materials that you
Speaker 1: put in the bin a yogurt container. In our world,
Speaker 1: it gets turned into paint cans, as an example, or
Speaker 1: your water bottle that you might put in your recycling bin,
Speaker 1: it could get turned into another water bottle. It could
Speaker 1: get turned into a parel that you wear each and
Speaker 1: every day. In our case, it gets turned into our employees' uniforms.
Speaker 1: There's no greater circularity story than that. And in other instances,
Speaker 1: it gets turned into carpet that goes into homes. So
Speaker 1: it's important to know that if you are putting the
Speaker 1: right recycling types in your bin, it does get turned
Speaker 1: into other products, and the vast majority of it stays
Speaker 1: in the United States.
Speaker 4: Right, although there are a lot of caveats there like
Speaker 4: so By the way, this is the second time we've
Speaker 4: talked about yogurt on today's show. I think it's funny
Speaker 4: because there's so many skews, right. If you go to
Speaker 4: a grocery store, there's nothing they have more different kinds
Speaker 4: of than yogurt. I typically eat Siggi's yogurt, and when
Speaker 4: I'm done with it, I'm always wondering, do I have
Speaker 4: to rinse the yogurt out of it before I put recycling?
Speaker 4: Do I need to rip off the paper label and
Speaker 4: put that in the paper recycling bin before I put
Speaker 4: my yogurt in the plastic recycling bin. And then when
Speaker 4: that all goes into the bins, what are the chances
Speaker 4: that the garbage men are actually going to take that
Speaker 4: stuff to recycling or are they all going to throw it,
Speaker 4: as I suspect, in the same giant bin that they
Speaker 4: throw all of the other garbage into, you know, or
Speaker 4: sell it to a company that just ships it off
Speaker 4: to Indonesia and floats it in the ocean outside of
Speaker 4: Jakarta rather than recycling it. I think the transparency problem
Speaker 4: is a really big one. Tara, how do you overcome that?
Speaker 1: Well, First and foremost, I want to underscore at WM,
Speaker 1: we take recycling extremely seriously. It's one of our more
Speaker 1: significant business lines. And when we collect your materials at
Speaker 1: the curb, it goes to a WM recycling facility or
Speaker 1: a recycling facility that we're vetting, and we have very
Speaker 1: sophisticated technology. I think this is something that people don't
Speaker 1: really understand. When you throw your yogurt container, your water bottle,
Speaker 1: your hardboard boxes from all the e commerce shopping that
Speaker 1: we're doing, and you put it in one bin, single stream.
Speaker 1: We have advanced technology that sorts it out, so pulls
Speaker 1: out that cardbore container from all of the other things
Speaker 1: that it's commingled with, and we send it in a
Speaker 1: lot of instances to domestic markets and that cardboard box
Speaker 1: might get turned into a pizza box that shows up
Speaker 1: in your local neighborhood. And regarding plastics, you know, I've
Speaker 1: heard this from others too, like do I rinse my
Speaker 1: material I've heard of people putting their peanut butter jars
Speaker 1: through the dishwasher.
Speaker 3: Don't do that.
Speaker 1: From an environmental perspective, But also we want to have
Speaker 1: these materials mostly clean, and so if you can just
Speaker 1: you know, give it a quick rinse, that's great. But
Speaker 1: when it ends up at our facilities, we're still able
Speaker 1: to pick it out, and we work really hard to
Speaker 1: build markets for these materials. That's a big part of
Speaker 1: what we do. And I think the other reason why
Speaker 1: we did the study is there is a recognition that
Speaker 1: people are confused and they want to better understand where
Speaker 1: if I'm doing all this work, where do my materials go.
Speaker 4: Tara, We're gonna have to Sorry, we're going to running
Speaker 4: upgainst the clock, but we're gonna have to have you
Speaker 4: come back because this really is fascinating stuff and interesting
Speaker 4: to hear what WM it does and how dedicated you are.
Speaker 4: Tarah Hammer there, senior vice president, chief sustainability Officer at WM.
Speaker 4: This is Bloomberg