Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: Is a technology ever good or evil on its own, or does it only become that through the people who use it — and who gets to decide? In Room #879 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme “Pioneering Spirit with brAIn,” the group digs into a storytelling thought experiment about gene-edited babies, why robot companionship raises life-or-death ethical stakes, gait-recognition surveillance, and the gap between how fast technology moves and how slowly people change. Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
A wonderful good morning to you. Yes, today we’re talking about ethics and technologies. And over the past days and weeks we’ve opened up various fields under the umbrella Pioneering Spirit with Brain and looked at various technologies too. And today I’d like to pick up this ethical aspect together with you, in connection with technologies — what could an ethically responsible use of new technologies look like? That’s what we want to explore together today. We’ve established, whether it’s technologies or other topics, we keep coming back to the fact that, basically, in this case it’s not the technology itself that’s good or bad per se, but has a lot to do with how it gets used or applied by people. That means there are of course possibilities for misuse and so on. And accordingly it makes sense to think about this together, or get into an exchange, to consider how one thing or another could be handled — regulations, for example, were an aspect that kept coming up. But maybe there isn’t just regulation from outside, from a central authority, but maybe there are other alternatives too. So let’s look at what options exist here in the context of ethical consideration, to steer one thing or another in a positive direction, in inverted commas, or to ensure — can it even be ensured — that there’s no misuse, or less misuse, to maybe narrow that down a bit and not phrase it too extremely. Right, and with that you’re all very warmly invited to join in again today, and let’s just bring together some first impulses. Maybe there are also examples where you can draw comparisons and say, here one thing or another could maybe be transferred, adapted, or similar — so let’s just pick up various thoughts and impulses. And please remember, today too, the room is being recorded for the entire time. Anyone who joins automatically agrees that it’ll be published afterward. And we have three small room rules — a profile photo where you’re clearly recognizable, first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio. Anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason is warmly invited to just use the chat, to bring in various thoughts, questions, or impulses, so we can pick that up over the course of the room too. Right, and with that I’d like to welcome Marc at my side. A wonderful good morning, dear Marc. What do you say about this topic?
Good morning to the round, and a good start to the week for everyone. Let me tie into the authors’ breakfast on Sunday, storytelling, and invite you into a thought experiment. My topic is genetic engineering, and Marc is now a politician. And I know that all new technologies, genetic engineering included, trigger fear in some people, and, well, hope in others — and, as you said, positive aspects. And I’d like to use this now as a negative moment, by saying, oh, genetic engineering, I know, a lot of people are afraid. And if I used this negatively, I’d frame my platform this way — in China, folks, they’re using genetic engineering on babies. Good heavens, some of you might say. Yes. And do you know what you can do with that? Parents will determine in the future whether the baby’s eyes turn blue, whether it has blonde hair, and so on. And if you elect me, I’m absolutely against it. No, I can understand that, we’re against it too, good that you’re standing up for that. And the exciting thing is, I twisted the facts completely. In China, they do use genetic engineering — yes, what got done three years ago — using CRISPR technology on three girls… they genetically treated the embryos. But the background to that wasn’t that they’d have blue hair or blue eyes, but the background was, through a germline treatment, to start a trial on whether the three girls, in the future — AIDS is still a disease that exists, you don’t die immediately, you can live a very long time with it, but it’s still a dangerous disease — and the background was simply that the scientists said, and the parents then also decided, if I can protect my child in the future from a deadly disease — meaning, no parent wants their child to die, or suffer. And if I now sell the story this way, and say, hey, with this genetic technology, you can make sure your child maybe won’t die of cancer, and maybe won’t get HIV, then you’ll probably feel great about it, then you get a completely different reaction to this technology, depending on which facts get left out, and depending on which story gets told about it. That would be a starting point for now.
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. So that means actually using storytelling to see whether fears get stoked, in inverted commas, or confidence gets created. Of course it could still be that there are people who find that ethically questionable, precisely because it involves genetic engineering and so on. That means, in this concrete example, you wouldn’t completely eliminate that, but other discussions would certainly still arise in this context too. And still, this is a nice example to show how differently this can be steered, at that point. The question in this context with storytelling, though — we’ve had rooms where we established that media, for example, pick up certain fear-stoking things, or, well, because of the clicks involved, choose corresponding headlines and so on, because people already tend to react to that. That means, the moment we have the option to generate more clicks or similar, and that’s relevant now, for example, in connection with media — is it enough to have this approach of, I’ll use storytelling positively, for example, to create confidence and curiosity and so on, because that would also mean that a completely, completely different approach would suddenly get chosen in one place or another. We talked once about how things like positive news on social media channels, for example, went through the roof, because people were tired, in inverted commas, of always, or almost exclusively, reading negative news in the media, and started their own initiative on their own. That works quite well too, but that’s only a certain portion of people who use that for themselves, or find it cool and follow it. Others might not have even noticed it at all. But storytelling isn’t — especially when we look toward media — how could you influence something like that, in inverted commas, so it’s not driven by clicks or whatever, to secure your own financing, so to speak, secure reach and so on, but instead steer it in a certain direction. So I’d find that a really exciting question too. So you can certainly achieve something with storytelling — getting some alignment here so reporting leans more positive, especially in the media. The question is whether that’s even possible, or whether that’s just a utopian, hopeful idea. I’d find that really exciting to look at. And we also talked yesterday about how storytelling could also be used differently, especially in a political context, not just to discuss what humanity somehow needs to do or should do or whatever, but to actually stoke a desire, so to speak, or stoke curiosity, to look at certain things with confidence — though of course you’d still have to ask whether it’s even the task of politics to get involved here, in inverted commas, with certain things. Marc, would you like to tie into my thoughts here too?
Yes, two things. We have this right now, currently, with politics — that’s a sensitive topic. I think politics has the task, and I keep coming back to this, of education and raising awareness. And just on the side, the heating topic — I can ask everyone in the room right now, who’s in favor of environmental protection? Then all fingers go up. I’m sure 99 percent of fingers go up if you ask, who’s in favor of a good climate? But if I flip the question around and say, I’ll determine in the future what you heat with, because I’m dictating it, because you have no idea and I simply have the knowledge — then we’re talking about the same topic, but I haven’t explained the background, and so on, and I can basically do that with any topic. And ethics and technology — I brought another example for that too. We’ve all had cars for quite a while now, and if I remember, the very first car I had, I drove it and got through the night pretty well with it. That means the lights are better today, but it was enough for me to get through the night back then. Back then you still had bulbs and lights — that meant, if a bulb broke, I went to a car dealer and said, my bulb’s broken, and he’d say, four marks, or four, five euros, and I had light again. Today they talk about “light units.” These light units have of course technically evolved too, there’s laser light, really wonderful things, but of course that also has the downside that you can’t replace anything anymore. And I’ll never forget, I was at a trade fair once, sitting in a car with someone who worked in the automotive industry, and he told me, well, these light units are of course technical progress, but at the same time we can make more money with them. Because anyone who’s ever bought a light unit for a car knows you’re not getting away with 5, 6 euros anymore, but with 6 to 700 or 800 euros, depending on the model. It’s technical progress, yes — but this technical development has also led to generating more money, because you can no longer repair the devices. And in connection with ethics and technology — we’re all technically advancing, with smartphones, with TVs, but at the same time the industry has a huge interest in devices not being repairable, because a new device brings in more money than a repair.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much. And here the question arises again too, since you brought up education and things like that — and this triggered my next impulse right away — to look at various levels too, because storytelling is one option on one hand. There are various options, also regarding education, if we pick up this concept of education again — it’s about the topic of self-determination and self-organization, self-efficacy. That means going into a certain form of accompaniment here too, meaning not just tying in at the end somewhere, in inverted commas, but also, when we see, for example, that developments are happening right now — and they haven’t just started yesterday — especially with something like the internet, a lot could already be foreseen in the past too, what was going to develop, what was coming, in inverted commas. And viewed over time, more and more aspects keep getting added. That means it would be logical and necessary, especially with discussions right now — I mean, certain fields you might not have as much insight into, not everyone’s familiar with it, in inverted commas — but things like AI and ChatGPT and so on, that’s already something that’s really become common knowledge. That means it’s being discussed in schools too, or by teachers. So accordingly, thinking about ethics and technology in this way, picking up the topic relatively early, in schools for example, or daycare, school, and further on, in a kind of accompaniment, and picking up this combination of ethics and technologies, and approaching these topics in a corresponding way, to build awareness for “ethical use” too. With that I’d like to bring Jürgen into the round first, and then we can gladly make cross-connections too. Good morning, dear Jürgen.
Good morning, dear Yasemin, good morning, dear Marc, and good morning everyone in the room. Thank you for picking this up, dear Yasemin, and I found a sub-area — I generally find all of Marc’s comments always very grounded in real life, and therefore relevant for our topics, but especially this example with the current discussion around the new heating law, or whatever it’s called, this particular… oh, I’m missing the exact term now. I’d like to take your example, dear Marc, that you gave, and connected with storytelling — that with the terms ethics and technology, if we start with ethics, one of the common definitions is that it’s the theoretical construct of what gets labeled as right and wrong, or as good or evil. Applied to the connection with technology, that means ethics, whoever defines it — I’ll get to that briefly — defines which technologies are good and evil. And regarding who defines it, I see two sub-areas, essentially, in the distinction, also in terms of consequence. On one hand, what’s seen as ethical, defined by, say, a political authority, by the legislature, as an ethical construct and directive, and on the other hand, what doesn’t necessarily have to align with that, what each of us individually has defined as our own personal ethics. The resulting outcomes, the implementation forms of ethics — that’s, in my understanding, morality. So what we perceive, in our daily dealings with each other, as good and evil, right and wrong, and what we sanction accordingly through agreement or through corresponding pushback. And on the level, let me add this and then I’ll be quiet again, on the level of the institutionalized connection between ethics and technology, there’s an authority in the Federal Republic that deals with this quite vehemently — namely the German Ethics Council. And the Ethics Council recently published a really interesting publication on the connection between ethics and artificial intelligence — I can only recommend it to everyone, to read, because a lot of emphasis is placed on delimitation and the precision of the terminology. Thank you for listening, that’s my input for now.
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. And yes, Marc, would you like to tie in directly here too?
Yes, dear Jürgen, thank you, thank you very much for your contribution. That’s exactly the interesting thing, that you always specialize in the words, for me. And the topic is just so complex. And I’m coming back to the topic of education. And I think we can’t even fully grasp a lot of things yet. I would’ve also brought up the topic of robotics — there’s research on this too. How do people react to robots? How do you build a relationship between human and robot? Do you even want to build that? What happens if there are relationships? There’s definitely research, or good material, you can look at this well. Loneliness is going to increase — we have an aging population, that means a lot of us, and I don’t wish this on anyone, will maybe be alone in old age, because our partner dies. It’s the same in other cultures too. And now there are robot dogs, and there’s research showing that a person can build a relationship with this robot, and at some point can’t even distinguish anymore whether it’s a machine or a human. And there are ideas for how you could program computers this way — we know we’re all emotionally driven, and there are mechanisms for why we fall in love, why we build a relationship with someone, and that can be programmed into a machine exactly the same way. But then, looking into the future, what consequences does that have? Namely, what I already mentioned last week — if I have a relationship with my robot, and my house catches fire, and I save my robot instead — which might sound absurd now, but I have a relationship, and it would take me far too long to get another robot to the point where it does exactly what I want, where it’s perfectly tuned to me. And maybe, in a crisis, I decide to save my robot rather than my neighbor, who I maybe don’t even like anyway, and so on. And that, as I said, looking into the future, I think it’s good that we have an ethicist, dear Jürgen, because things are coming our way that we can’t fully think through yet, because they’re simply not here yet. And once they are here, it might be too late to think about it, because it gets harder and harder to change subsequent laws.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much. And another impulse came up for me, maybe triggered by the terms used regarding ethics — what’s right and wrong, or good and evil, in the context of technologies — the question arises for me whether that even needs to be defined so clearly. And from that, on one hand, on the level of the Ethics Council, for example, something gets defined or prescribed, in inverted commas, and on the other hand this individual level. If we approach the topic differently now, namely not that someone defines, regardless of which side, and not that it’s defined individually either what’s good or evil, but, in inverted commas — we’ve established that basically none of it is good or bad, or right or wrong, but it’s always the perspective from which the whole thing gets viewed, and
this also has to do with the fact that we can ask ourselves this question. We talked, for example, about overarching key qualifications — here we’re moving from the terminology toward Future Skills. We’ll pick up this topic of Future Skills separately too, and mega-learning separately too, and look at that more closely in the coming days. But at least to have touched on this here — whether, independent of which terms we use for it, these originally intended overarching key qualifications should go so far, in this context, as to say, creating a certain kind of awareness for these topics, accompanying people, or setting guardrails in such a way, that within this, people also get empowered, so to speak, to keep coming to their own weighing-up, without it being prescribed or predefined from outside, and the individual then also has to make the comparison for themselves, as a consequence. Is something like that conceivable and possible from your point of view, and would that be effective — that’s a question I’d like to raise too. Jürgen, would you like to add to that?
Yes, to be honest, I can’t quite connect the beginning of your remark with the end anymore. Maybe that’s because I’m in a very intense environment right now, and didn’t quite understand it properly, dear Yasemin, but let me throw the question back — are you assuming there’s both an individual level of defining this ethics, this good and evil, bluntly put, as well as an institutionalized one? I’m asking because at the start I understood that you wanted to separate these two positions, and I asked myself, which level applies then? Because, for example, a new technology doesn’t exist per se — it always has an intention, at least from whoever creates it. But it could be, as I said, that due to my current environment, I misunderstood that. Sorry.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much for the question. What I mean is not to define the technology itself, per se, as good or bad. So there can be various levels on which we ethically define certain things, yes, but not the technology as such — so, for example, not saying, nuclear power plants are fundamentally bad per se, we want to move away from that, but rather leaving certain doors open here, so to speak, in terms of setting guardrails, but not defining upfront, per se, which technology is now good or bad or similar. That’s what I meant by that. Jürgen, would you like to add to that again?
Okay, now we’re aligned, because — and I think this is a really divisive and idiosyncratic way of looking at it — I’m assuming you use or see this with the same intention as I do, in that I say, the technology itself doesn’t make good and evil, and it doesn’t decide whether it’s right or wrong, but rather the person who develops the technology, who uses the technology, and who uses it for their own purposes. Did I understand you correctly in that direction?
Yes, absolutely.
Okay, then we’re aligned. Then the question arises for me too — if I have a new technology, like the example Marc brought up, with these gene scissors, for example, which I’ll gladly pick up, because I read something about that recently too — then you’re actually capable, like with a lot of other things, of seeing both positive and negative, and the market has responded to that too. The difference, and the defining difference, also regarding storytelling for this new technology, is that the outsider — you, me, and Marc too — looks at it with completely different eyes, and politics looks at it with different eyes too, in the same way. Politics looks at this technology, and I’ll go out on a limb here, from opportunity and, in inverted commas, power aspects. But that’s basically hardly anything different from my own view — I don’t want to include you in this, I don’t want to do that — but from my view, because, and now we’re back at the basic structure of neuroscience, dear Yasemin, in that I say, what benefit does it have for me, or do I need to fear it — and basically the circle closes for me there, in that I said, a new technology, or an adapted technology, never exists per se, but it always has an onlooker, someone looking at it, who connects a certain motivation, an intention, and a vision or goal with it.
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. Marc, would you like to add to that here?
Yes, I have another point, because when I read about this with the babies, the three girls in China, there’s a much more interesting aspect to it. What about data protection? Let’s say I’m genetically treated and can no longer get HIV. Now I’m looking for a partner, and I’d love to have a child with this partner too. To what extent would that need to be regulated? It could be that the partner has a different attitude than I do — let’s say my partner says, I don’t want a child with you. Why not? You’re genetically treated. I’m terrified of what that’ll do to our baby. I don’t want a child from a man who’s genetically treated. And I simply say, that’s my thing, I don’t want to tell you that, that’s my private matter. And there we are again at laws — where does my freedom, the individual’s freedom, end? And where do things need to be regulated? If it’s my own business, I can say, I won’t tell you that, that’s my own thing. But equally, the other person has the right to say, listen, I still get to decide who I reproduce with or not.
Oh yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. And the exciting thing is, this shows how much complexity there is in this, because it’s not just, and that’s why I thought this was another nice example here, because it doesn’t just concern us ourselves, in inverted commas, at that point, but, for example, if we think in terms of the constellation of family, marriage, and so on, family gets included too. Then that also affects things like, say, children who might not yet be of legal age, who can’t make decisions themselves, and so on. And that makes it really, really clear how quickly this complexity becomes visible, that it’s there. And also, when we pick up various discussions in various places, whether that’s technologies, or other contexts, especially with all the discussions currently taking place, starting with gender-neutral language, all the way to, well, these rainbow movements, all the way to gender-affirming surgeries that might or might not be permitted, or how it’s handled if parents don’t consent, or similar — you can observe all of this really nicely, especially in current discussions, what impulses that triggers, how it gets discussed. And ethical aspects are involved everywhere here too, which play a really essential role in all these ways of looking at it, and how people react to it, what their stance ultimately is on certain topics, in inverted commas — without judging that, just observing it neutrally first, and looking at it from this perspective. So it becomes clear that this complexity is present, and that’s what makes it so challenging to find solutions, in inverted commas, for this topic or issue, so to speak. And possibly one of the reasons why, in the end, in inverted commas, even though there are maybe a lot of discussions, or a lot of approaches and considerations, the solution keeps getting found in saying, well, now it has to somehow get prescribed or steered by a central authority, whoever that central authority is — that can vary too, depending on what we’re looking at — from a central authority, somehow, because otherwise we don’t get anywhere here. Is that even a solution, though? Question mark, that would be the next question we could pick up here too. Would anyone like to tie in here again?
I have another point, dear Yasemin. We all know, we can best imagine this, that the phone has changed all of us. At least that’s what people say, and there’s research showing that the phone has changed children’s attention span — that children have a completely different level of concentration in school than before. If, before phones existed, someone had said, watch out, phones, careful, that could affect our concentration, you wouldn’t have known that at all. And it’s the same with robots. There’s a test where, in a daycare group, with children between 18 and 24 months, they brought in a dancing robot. And they found that after five months, the children had already accepted the robot to the point that when it ran out of power and stopped moving, the children — up to 24 months old — started shaking the robot, and thought, more or less, get up, maybe it’s tired. And if they then thought it wasn’t getting up, the conclusion was, it’s tired. So these children treated the robot like a peer, took a blanket, and covered the robot, because if it’s not moving and not dead, it must just be sleeping. And you can take this further — there’s no research yet on how a child changes, if a child grows up longer in such a group with a robot, whether the behavior of these children is completely different from children who grew up without a dancing robot or without AI. And then we’re back at the ethical question, and since none of us knows that, no politician will be able to answer that question definitively either. I can’t either. And that’s why discussions are important, and again, education, asking and re-examining, always looking at who someone represents, what group they come from, is this a lobbyist working for a robot company or whatever — but not, as I said, controlling these questions in the sense of where my counterpart’s answers come from — looking at the matter detached from that, I find that interesting too, Yasemin. If you say, fundamentally a technology isn’t good or evil, then I could also just say, well, then a politician isn’t good or evil either, then something isn’t good or right either. And if, hopefully, the next American president, if he’s not elected again, says, who cares about Europe, that’s completely irrelevant, and we’re not letting any more foreigners in — then that’s not right or wrong either, that’s first of all just a statement. And that’s why I tend to lean toward Jürgen’s view, that there are always different interests — that’s just how we humans are wired, we won’t be able to switch off our emotions, thank goodness, that’s what distinguishes us from a robot. And as long as we have emotions, as long as there are people with emotions, this discussion will keep existing. And that only works with respect, and engaging with each other on equal footing.
Yes, great, thank you, thank you so much. And that ultimately shows too that, because a lot of things simply aren’t foreseeable, on one hand a lot of different doors, in inverted commas, so I’ll call it that, need to be left open too, because you first need to observe and watch, and you can’t plan everything in advance, so to speak, because you might not even know the effects of certain technologies yet, and can’t judge that yet. That’s one thing. That’s why you can’t take a restrictive view everywhere and already prohibit certain things, even though you don’t yet know how it’ll develop or what’ll happen. At the same time, it also shows that, in one place or another, a high speed of reaction, or discussion or reaction speed, is needed, to react agilely enough, in inverted commas, to certain challenges and problems that do start to become visible, and to close doors again, in inverted commas, that were previously left open. And at the same time, a discourse, with the consideration of various perspectives and so on, is also something that inherently needs a certain amount of time too — the time factor plays an enormous role here, in this tension we find ourselves in. On one hand, seeing something’s coming our way, and it’s necessary to look at it ethically, in inverted commas, and possibly consider, in this discourse, what can be done, or how to proceed, and at the same time, on one hand, not let too much time pass, but on the other hand, also give it the time needed for problems to actually become visible, that maybe couldn’t have been foreseen or anticipated in advance, to then deal with them accordingly, once they’ve, in inverted commas, actually occurred, even if you didn’t expect that beforehand, in inverted commas. And of course you can then look at various — and now we’re talking relatively abstractly about this, and it becomes clear that it probably depends on which contexts we’re actually talking about, and that it might be easier to find answers, or get closer, if we take more concrete examples too. And one example that’s been discussed really, really intensely in various places recently is the use of artificial intelligence, for example, in video creation or similar, where you can use the voices of celebrities, use images of celebrities, where it’s already becoming hard for people to distinguish whether something’s real or fake. In the future, when the systems get even more sophisticated, it’ll probably be completely undetectable to the naked eye. Today it’s still possible in some cases, you can look closer and might find a few inconsistencies. But often we don’t even take the time — we see a video on social media, for example, and scroll on relatively quickly. That means you can relatively quickly get the feeling of having seen something a politician or some celebrity supposedly said, which the person never actually did. That means things spread in the direction of fake news, so to speak. If you think in terms of politics, elections, and so on, that can of course have devastating consequences too — not just regarding the individual, who can get harmed here in terms of reputation and so on, but all the way to the level of politics, where decisions get made, elections get manipulated, or similar. And these are actually topics to be taken seriously, where it really makes sense to look at it and consider how to handle this in the future, in inverted commas. And I’m curious, Marc, what you have to say about that. We also talked about this security aspect — of course it makes sense, we know this from airports, of course it makes sense to have identity checks, ID checks, corresponding security checks, and so on. But there’s no such thing as 100 percent security in that sense either. And I think that’s also something to consider in these discussions — that you’re always, ultimately in inverted commas, striving to set certain guardrails, have discourses, find solutions, but that there’ll never be one solution, no matter from which side or level we approach this topic, that represents the absolute solution — but also accepting that there’s no final solution to this issue, but that there’ll always be new situations you hadn’t thought of, always new aspects that couldn’t have been considered beforehand, surprising moments we’ll experience as humans, where we’ll simply have to keep looking at the situation anew, again and again — and therefore not having the expectation of finding a final solution here. Marc, what do you say about that?
Yes, on my security aspect — we need to become aware that a lot of these technologies will only work if we collect data and store data too. And there are already countries — this really shocked me — okay, we all know cameras get used for security everywhere. Now I could have the clever idea of saying, well, I don’t care, I’ll just pull a baseball cap over my face, or wear a beanie, or a motorcycle helmet or something, then I can prevent them from recognizing me. But that’s very ignorant and naive, because by now there are AI systems that can identify me exactly by my gait. That means, a person has such an individual walk that the camera can match me just based on my gait and movement pattern. But that only works, again, if my data gets stored in the first place — once I’ve been recorded once, and this data gets linked to my identity, only then can the AI recognize me again if I show up somewhere else. On one hand, that gives us the security aspect — great, because if I’m planning something bad, that’s a form of security for all of you, that I get recognized even if I walk around the airport with a mask on. On the other hand, well, how many bad people are there, and do all citizens have to suffer under that? And that’s why I think data protection, within this whole topic, is also an aspect we’ll certainly keep discussing again and again.
Yes, thank you very much, Marc. And that of course doesn’t make it any less complex here, and shows too, well, there are various aspects coming together here. And data protection is also something that’s important on one hand, and right, in inverted commas, in the sense of personal protection too, let’s say, to protect the individual at that point. And on the other hand it also becomes clear — and the question arises too — how do you handle data protection in a digital age, in inverted commas, where it also becomes clear — and we’ve had this very clearly in other contexts too with these new technologies — how important data actually is, in terms of competition, in terms of developments taking place here too. That means, if, from this idea of protecting the individual, you don’t make anything possible here, so to speak, that also has effects and consequences elsewhere — falling behind again in another place. And here too you notice really, really clearly how challenging this handling actually is, having to keep deciding anew how we deal with it. And possibly also putting past decisions back on the table again and again, and reviewing them anew against the backdrop of new developments, and discussing them anew. That means, and this is the next thing I derive from this, that a decision made in the past might no longer be up to date today, and so it needs to be picked up critically again and again, and questioned anew, to possibly make adjustments or make new decisions, or maybe, in one case or another, decide to stick with the old decision — that’s not ruled out either. But to be able to make these assessments, these weighings, you always need, on one hand, this renewed examination, this critical re-questioning, and a new decision too, based on the various considerations made and taken here. Would Marc like to add something here too?
Yes, I’d like to add one more point. I think, I’m deeply convinced, robots as help — not robots that build things, but robots as assistance — will become a huge topic in the future. And I find it totally interesting that this doesn’t just occupy engineers — it’s not just teams asking, how do we build the robot, what does it need to be like, what does it need to be able to do. There are also sociologists and psychologists, and then, for example, tests get run — because you want to sell the robot too — and they found that people feel uncomfortable if a household helper, so a moving robot, moves behind their back. So there’s actual research on how people react, and how the robot needs to behave. If the robot, for example, always only says the same sentence — say, I have a robot that brings me coffee, but it can only say, here’s your coffee, good morning, Marc — that’ll get on my nerves after two months, because it can’t say anything else. So it needs several variations. And in parallel there’s research on, how do I feel most comfortable? And the current state of knowledge is that people feel uncomfortable both when a robot comes from behind — that’s threatening to them — and when it comes from the front, because even coming from the front, no matter how cute it looks, it can still come across as a threat. If it looks too cute, if it looks too human-like, we unconsciously compare it, and notice that when the robot smiles, its facial features don’t actually change, and its eyes don’t move — then we perceive that as unnatural, and off-putting again too. Maybe it’s not human after all. And you can see there what considerations flow into this — it’s not just about the technology, but also, how will machines, robots, get integrated into our lives in the future, without us perceiving them as a threat, but really as work support, and, well, as an enrichment.
Yes, thank you. And I’d already brought up this example a few days ago — that, for example, in Silicon Valley, corresponding tests get carried out, that there are so-called showrooms in Silicon Valley, or San Francisco, where the population lives, where various things actually get tested, in the sense of, how does this get received? And I brought this up in this context with these robots that prepare various dishes in the background, and so on, such that while you know it per se, you don’t see the robots, so it doesn’t feel off-putting, and ultimately the order gets placed, gets prepared in the background, and then you take it out of the drawers that open accordingly when you click, when you want to pick up your order, and then eat it. Just as one example — there are various showrooms out there. There’s one from Amazon too, by the way, where, for example, they track which products get picked up, what people look at closely, or similar, so that human behavior gets observed to some extent too, to see how it actually gets received, before certain decisions get made regarding whether people are even ready for it yet, or whether it needs to be designed differently, to maintain acceptance, so to speak, if you were to launch a certain product on the market at this particular time. That means this market research also plays a really, really important role in this technological context too. And a lot of you might have experienced or noticed this in one place or another — especially when new ideas come along, for example when it’s about bringing a new product to market that represents a technological innovation, it also has something to do with the timing, whether humanity is “ready” for it yet. That means it could be a good idea, something that might get accepted in ten years, but today the need isn’t recognized yet, or the acceptance isn’t there yet, and so a product like that, if it gets brought to market too early, might fail in terms of market penetration — not because the idea is bad per se, but because the timing, in inverted commas, isn’t ripe yet for acceptance. And there are a lot, a lot of examples of this in technology where you can see and follow this — that certain startups, let’s say, that brought certain products or ideas to market, didn’t get accepted, but then, a few years later, did after all, maybe in a slightly modified form — but it’s not because of the modified form, but often just because the first startup that went out with it went out too early. And that’s really, really exciting to observe and see. That means further aspects come into play here too that need to be considered — so market research plays an important role here, to really look at where we stand. And here we also have this aspect, the human. And that’s a gap that arises here. On one hand we have newer technologies advancing at an incredible speed, in terms of what’s possible. And on the other hand we have us humans, who, in terms of change, if we don’t see a benefit in it or similar, are resistant to change at first. That means behavioral changes, attitudes, stances on topics, and so on, sometimes take significantly longer to initiate than the technology, if we look at the speed of technological development, and bring that together, so to speak. And from my point of view it becomes clear that it needs corresponding accompaniment, because that doesn’t happen on its own. And then it becomes clear, from my point of view, that there isn’t just one solution, but various components that can be brought together. And accordingly, when various components get brought together, viewed as a whole, a leverage effect emerges again. So, to make clear what I mean by this — we talked about storytelling earlier. Storytelling alone, or exclusively storytelling, won’t work. But if, on the other hand, we use storytelling sensibly and cleverly, in inverted commas, on whatever level, gladly on various levels too, then that’s one variant, so to speak. If, on the other hand, accompaniment happens too, then we have a second path. If market research gets added, we have a third path. And not as isolated paths — we could keep going, point, point, point, and open up a lot more areas. And if we don’t view these options as separate, isolated from each other, but bring them together as a whole, then, from my point of view, we only get a certain leverage effect in the result.
Marc, what do you say about that?
You just mentioned the term storytelling again, and I’d like to contrast it with a second term, because for me that’s the practice. Storytelling is one thing, and since we’re humans and dealing with other humans, scare tactics are the other. And scare tactics are when you say, I have, say, an electric car, and that’s environmentally friendly, and I simply claim, well, what about recycling? Or someone tells me, I bought a machine in China, it’s much cheaper — scare tactics would be if I say, well, go get it repaired then, you’ll have to wait a few months for the replacement part to arrive. And then I’m back at the topic of education and communication, that we’re aware of these processes, when we listen to people, whether that’s someone doing storytelling because they want to promote a product — that we check, what advantage does this have for me, what advantage does this have for society. Just as much, paying attention to the answers — is this a scare tactic? What direction is this coming from? Are they just throwing out arguments? And I find this scare tactic thing quite concerning in myself too, because it achieves its effect by stirring emotions. And if I can’t check the facts and data, because I’m not a specialist, then sometimes I’m missing the answer on complex topics again.
Yes, and that’s exactly the point we established too — with a lot of topics, we’d always need to go into checking things ourselves, so to speak, independent of whether we’re experts or not. Even with the news we consume, in inverted commas, not just consuming it, but always checking the sources again too, always looking into it. And that of course doesn’t make it any easier. But at least the ability — and here we’re back at establishing this self-efficacy, back at this education aspect — to have at least learned how to do that in the first place. So, actually having, or getting, the ability to go into an examination, if it’s something where I have the feeling, okay, I read this somewhere, but what does that actually mean? And that shows how important this education context is again here — enabling people, putting them in a position to be able to check certain things at all. Whether they then do that in an individual case for a specific topic, or whether they do it again for the next topic, we won’t be able to influence that at that point — that has to lie in personal responsibility. But at least setting the framework accordingly, that a corresponding review, up to a certain degree — that doesn’t mean you can always resolve everything, or always find an answer to everything — but putting people in a position, in the sense of self-determination and self-efficacy, and self-determination not just seen as an individual, but also as a communally thought-of self-determination too. We’ve talked about this too — that I’m allowed to set such a framework as a country, as politics, as an education orientation, that creates the possibility for this to even become feasible in the first place. Otherwise I only have scare tactics. Those, by the way, won’t be avoided either — they’ll still exist somewhere regardless. But how people handle it — whether I just consume it and react emotionally to it, or whether I’ve been accompanied in a way that enables me to critically question it, look at it critically, have a certain understanding, get into the research, and know how to even research this in the first place — that’s the framework I mean, that first needs to be opened up, and must be opened up, at that point, because otherwise I simply can’t handle it at all. Marc, would you like to add to that too? Or, keeping an eye on the time, we could gladly move into the closing word too.
Yes, my closing word is that I look toward the future totally excited and curious, and everyone who has cancer in their family or circle of friends — my attitude is that I think there’ll be incredible progress in medicine, in treatment, things I can’t even imagine in my wildest dreams yet. That’s what I wish for myself personally. For Marc it would have a much bigger value if I knew that nobody loses their child anymore, or their partner to cancer, than a robot that brings me a coffee. As long as I’m mobile, I’ll very, very gladly still get my own coffee myself.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much. And this also shows once more that everything, in inverted commas, just as it brings disadvantages, also has advantages. And because, from a brain perspective, in inverted commas, we automatically think in the direction of, against the backdrop of securing our existence, what, in what contexts, threatens me — that’s a really human reaction. And that’s why it’s important to keep, quite consciously, not blocking out the opportunities, looking at the opportunities on one hand, to put our focus there too, and at the same time not simply brushing aside or wiping away legitimate concerns, in inverted commas, but looking at this responsibly too, and seeing how solutions can be found here, well aware that it won’t be a final solution. That means the topic, the fields of topics, and ethics ultimately, is complex at this point, and we won’t be able to reduce this complexity through regulation or anything else — a certain complexity remains. That’s why it’s necessary to keep being agile here, in inverted commas, and, well, to pick up new topics, possibly pick them up quickly too, on one hand give room for discourse, but then also not discuss endlessly, but make decisions here too, well aware that it won’t be a final decision, but that it needs to be critically questioned again regularly, and adjustments will be required again — and that’s the attempt, so to speak, to do justice to this complexity, through how we handle it. So, I think a lot of aspects came together here today, and I’m curious how it’ll continue tomorrow. We’ll look at another field, namely art and culture, and look at how technologies are changing the field of art and culture too. A lot is happening here too, and it’ll become relatively clear that it has a lot to do with attitude, with mindset too, independent of whether we come from art and culture ourselves, or belong to the people who have a certain idea of art and culture, and the influences of technologies that are now changing one thing or another here too, where quite interesting discussions come up too. And I’m really excited to look at this field together with you tomorrow too. So you’re all very, very warmly invited to join again tomorrow at 8am, and get into this exchange, with the room title “Technologies, Art & Culture,” with the question “How do technologies change art and culture?” — to get into reflection on this together, and see which direction the room develops in together. With that, thank you, thank you so much for participating, for the wonderful contributions, for the wonderful examples, which really opened up this complexity today too, and showed how difficult it is to really find solutions here. And, yes, I wish you a wonderful day, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow. With that, until then. Ciao.
