A101 Team Duncan Wardle spent 30 years at Disney. He rose through the ranks until he became their head of creativity and imagination. But at a recent conference in Hyderabad, India, he was given second billing to a robot:
Not just any robot, mind you, but Sophia, the AI sensation from Hansen Robotics, which has recently been headlining events all over the world. Adding insult to injury, my presentation on creativity and human ingenuity was scheduled to follow directly after the robot. Given the electricity in the air as Sophie prepared to make her entrance, I felt terrified of being eclipsed by a machine.
It’s an increasingly common terror lately. One recent study by Oxford and Yale University researchers suggests that by 2053, robots will beat us at translating languages, writing essays, and conducting surgeries. Worst of all, they expect all human jobs to be automated within the next 120 years.
Is he worried about humanity becoming obsolete? Not really. Here’s his main takeaway: “In my 30 years at Disney, in all the innovative ways I saw technology being deployed, I never witnessed it beat out human ingenuity.”
