Machines won’t replace us. Ignore the fear-mongering. If pointed in the right direction, AI and Robotics will advance our civilization

Tej Kohli | 23 August 2019

Rewired is a robotics venture studio that launched two years ago with $100m of initial funding. It is focused on developing machine-perception technologies that enable robots to interact with uncontrolled environments and to more effectively collaborate with humans.

The Rewired thesis is based on the potential of humanitarian robotics to drive innovations that will alleviate human suffering of many kinds, both directly and indirectly. Robotics and AI are beginning to transform a broad spectrum of industries, and I believe that humanitarian efforts the world over will be greatly advanced by these emerging technologies as they continue their exponential growth trajectory.

Augmenting Human Ability

Before we can begin to realize the potential of humanitarian robotics, we have to address the most common questions people ask about the future of human and machine collaboration. Will robots take our jobs? Will robots create a more unequal society?

Back in 1962, Doug Engelbart hypothesized that the future of our race lay not in replacing humans but in augmenting them. His work culminated in the invention of the computer mouse, which is still remembered by many as “the mother of all demos.” After Apple and Microsoft repackaged it for commercial deployment, the mouse changed the course of modern life and human productivity.

Similarly, at this inflection point of robotics, I actually think we’re looking at a massive productivity leap forward that will allow us humans to accomplish more, not less.

By assigning robots the task of working in hazardous conditions such as poor lighting, toxic chemicals, tight spaces, heavy lifting, we remove the risk to humans of workplace injuries. By deploying robots to execute dangerous tasks, we can keep humans out of harm's way. We can also use robots to assist humans, so they can continue to work without fearing long-term health issues.

Take robot-assisted surgery, for example. Surgical robots are advanced enough to allow for remote surgery and have dramatically improved the limitations of minimally invasive surgery. Exoskeletons are currently being developed to help workers with heavy lifting. Intelligence amplification will also open new opportunities for alleviating suffering and improving the human condition. Efforts like these in robotics and AI will create more jobs, safer jobs. And I am certain that human ambition will grow proportionately - if not exponentially - once that we are freed to focus on doing what we humans do best.

Real World Problems

Whilst I am optimistic that these new technologies have continually amplified our natural human abilities – and that this trend will not abate any time soon - I have to emphasize that we can all too easily get ahead of ourselves. I’d love to concern myself and my philanthropic team at the Tej Kohli Foundation solely with trendy future-forward matters like human longevity. But what I’m really worried about is that, right now, 39 million people can’t see. Their eyes are failing them, and so are we.

This is why I’ve committed to take a portion of any profits realized through my investments in robotics and AI and put them towards far more basic and urgent human needs. Most recently the Tej Kohli Foundation gave $2M to Massachusetts Eye and Ear, a Harvard teaching hospital. You can watch Dr. Joan Miller, Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at Harvard, talking about the problem of corneal blindness and our new Tej Kohli Cornea Program here.

A key activity of my Foundation is also the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute (TKCI) which was created to further the cause of preventing blindness and restoring the eyesight of people everywhere. Working with our partners at LV Prasad, we have completed more than a million eye surgeries, and I’m proud to say that we’re marching steadily towards our goal of substantially reducing corneal blindness worldwide by 2030.

But we absolutely must keep ambitiously pursuing what we formerly believed to be impossible. The majority of our effort, however, should go toward attending the most basic requirements of our fellow humans. Many families aren’t worried about being replaced by a robot. Instead they’re worried about basic crop viability and about access to water. Their fear is becoming a climate or economic refugee. This is why I’m driven to eradicate blindness. A similar belief guided Bill Gates to eradicate Malaria.

AI-Driven Impact

It is therefore imperative to shape emerging technologies in such a way that is socially responsible and beneficial to humanity as a whole. The initial approach of my Foundation to curing corneal disease for example, was to develop methods of synthesizing cornea from yeast and peptides. But technology is key, and we have now moved on and acquired the intellectual property for a liquid biosynthetic that could offer a scalable, accessible and affordable solution for the masses that does not rely on expensive and invasive surgery.

Take also for example, the millions of digital patient records collected by the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute. What was once passive data is now being used as training data for the development of preventative algorithms, and our machine learning team is urgently pursuing technology-enabled interventions, or “digital therapeutics,” that could have an outsized impact.

So overall I’m quite bullish that machine vision and other applied technologies being developed by AI and Robotics teams around the world will play an essential role in the fight to cure blindness, and other diseases too. Basic human problems and deep technological challenges have more in common than you might realize.

In my view the solutions to seemingly intractable human problems are most likely to emerge from cutting-edge science and technology labs and startups. Better food systems and solving climate change are as much data problems and computer science problems as anything else.

A more humanitarian vision of AI and Robotics is particularly needed. Machines won’t replace us. Ignore the fearmongering. If pointed in the right direction, AI and Robotics will accelerate the impact of the solutions we’ve already developed, and present new opportunities to advance our civilization too.

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