My dear ladies and gentlemen, I have to disappoint you, we are talking in English. Although we are on Dorf TV for Upper Austria. Why are we talking in English today here at Robo Exotica? Because we have an international guest sitting next to me. So he is to blame that we have to speak with him. Ligua franca of late capitalism. He moved to Germany so maybe when he returns to it for another Robo Exotica hopefully he'll probably be able to speak in German or something like that. Yeah but for all the people out there who have no idea why they tuned in, this is the official panel discussion of Robo Exotica 2021 and Robo Exotica is the festival for cocktail robotics and here we have our little mascot Mr. Guzman and all the nice little gadgets that we put into the mascot and the very important cocktail our mascot is holding. So the backstory of Robo Exotica is that we started it in 1999 because back then we were a little bit frustrated at Monochrome. Monochrome is the arts and technology group hosting Robo Exotica. So we were a little bit disappointed by the future. It was the year 1999, almost the new millennium, and there were no robots that would fly with us in cars or deliver us drinks and stuff like that. But the future, like modernity, promised us flying cars and robots who made drinks for us for many, many decades. But the future like came in slightly different ways, in slightly different channels. So we were disappointed. So we said, we need a festival where every year people from all over the world can come to Vienna and present machines, automatons or other contraptions that mix cocktails, serve cocktails, have bar conversations and that's pretty challenging. Back then we also had smoking robots or robots that would light cigarettes when you could still smoke a cigarette in a bar, but also categories like bar food and all the stuff that's kind of like related to the ambience of a cocktail bar. And now we're doing it over 20 years and I can tell you I've seen a lot of things, very interesting things, very funny things, things that I actually would like to forget. But we can talk about that a little bit later. And today I want to discuss with my wonderful panelists here about electric jokes. And to a certain degree, of course, Rubik's Oblique is a joke. It's a very ironic thing. It's like, who really needs a cockpit robot or something like that? But the thinking behind it was also to kind of like level the playing field or to invite people to a really interesting party where they know that there will be robots and most people like can attract people with the promise of a party and cocktail robots and then suddenly as it already happened here also in linz suddenly we have a ton of guests they are standing in front of those crazy contraptions and machines and want to know how they work and why people build them and And usually right next to the person interested in the machine is usually the person who built the machine. So within like a split second, you usually have interesting, great conversations about what kind of pumps did you use? Why did you build this? Is there a chip in it? It doesn't really work. Is it just a mechanical turk? What's going on? there a chip in it? It doesn't really work. Is it just a mechanical turk? What's going on? So we have funny, interesting, witty machines and conversations and that of course brings people into the basic idea of like maybe I can build that myself. So we're big, big fans of the concept of do-it-yourself culture. That you only can understand technology and science if you just like try it yourself. And we've seen it in the last year that so many people crawled out of the woodwork and kind of like detesting science or challenging it or saying like I did my own research. The hell you did not. But let's start with the guest, Mr. Mitch Altman, who forces us to speak English. It is a wonderful pleasure to have you here. Mitch is originally from San Francisco, but because of a couple of reasons, some of the most critical, I guess. He moved to Germany and to Berlin, and so it was a little bit easier to get you over to Linz from Berlin. Mitch is like a big name, like kind of almost like a superstar in the field of do-it-yourself culture. He has been traveling everywhere from China, I like you name it, you have been there and you have done workshops about building your machines, your own devices, hands-on and you did this great interview because you're an artist in residence at the Museumsport here in Vienna at the moment and you said that you're very much interested in technology that subverts technology or science that subverts science in a certain way i guess but tell us a little bit about that well technology is very powerful and powerful tools are capable of doing many many things good and bad and as the technology is based on the technology before it which which were powerful tools, they become ever increasingly more powerful, which means the good and the bad continually increase. And it's much easier to destroy than to create. So unfortunately, as I see it, the technology is making a world a worse place rather than a world a better place. the technology is making a world a worse place rather than a world a better place. And by saying that I like creating, I like technology the best that supports technology, it's really to give people an opportunity to think about all that with the technology we use, the technology we can create. We have to think about this. We're at a few crisis points in the history of humans on the planet. I don't think we can rely on technology alone to solve the problems that technology created. If we create technology, even if it's just for fun, that gives the notion of subverting technology, then hopefully more people will be thinking about the issues that are created the problems that are created by just being enamored with technology for its own sake and I think we really need that now. Let's talk a little bit about the machine that you built for Robo Exotica here in Linz. Because I think that's a great example of the concept you're speaking about. Tell us about it. Yeah, so Robo Exotica, I've been to, this is my third one, and I think they're super wonderful. But I don't drink alcohol. So I created a robot that, as Johannes mentioned, is just a theme around all of this. So I made a robot that makes bad lounge music. And I have an ambivalent relationship with lounge music. I mean, most people hate lounge music, and I'm no exception there, but there are elements of brilliance in lounge music. There's a whole industry around lounge music. It exists because it makes a lot of profit for huge corporations that put this stuff out into the world and they hire people who are otherwise very creative, intelligent musicians and composers to make more of this stuff that overall makes music that gets stuck in our heads and we wish it weren't there. But the people who make the music are trying to do their best to do something meaningful for themselves and others. So there's elements of brilliance in there. And I think that's analogous to all of tech. brilliance in there. And I think that's analogous to all of tech. Tech can be really brilliant. Tech can do so many things that make our lives better. And overall, though, tech is doing things that are making our planet and our lives so much worse. You know, the internet was supposed to free us, right? Now it's the best surveillance tool ever. I mean, the people in former DDR couldn't even imagine such a great tool for national surveillance overall and citizens and everyone on the planet. Paid for by my former tax money. So, yeah, so my robot anyways has a surveillance camera and it looks at you when you walk by and it chooses the perfect lounge music song, and I should say bad lounge music, even though that's redundant. It picks the perfect bad lounge music song for your desires and fulfills them. So yeah, and it's a fun way just to think about, perhaps get people to think about these concepts, but even if you don't think about that, it's still fun. Yay. Kirsten, anyone here here the audience who tried it at rubik's article ah there are a couple of people more people have to try it thanks a lot for the introduction okay let's go to to the far left and to uh uh it's wonderful to have you you are also an artist in residence at the museum's water at the moment wonderful you're an artist you also very much i guess in a similar way interested in the social dynamics behind technology and science tell us a little bit about what brought you into art and what brought you specifically also into the concept of like challenging technology or thinking about the social dimensions of all of that? A lot of questions. To be honest, I started design before and then I decided okay this is nothing for me so I have to switch to art because I think that Because I think that design is also really into technology now in this time of 2012, it grows a lot. And I saw that something would make me really angry, and I didn about also the social circumstances about technology and how I deal with technology and how we live with technology. So and this, yeah, it was a process, what I'm really interested in, this kind of process is what we live inside and how we deal with technology as well. And like I know the time without Mobafone and I know the time with Mobafone. I'm pretty into this time. And they call that the Green Age generation. I don't know if you know something about that. Maybe it's only in Germany they say something like this. That you know the time before and the time after. So, and all this kind of processes are really involved in the trust of the airport. And also the political aspects as well. And the artists in residence, should I tell you something about that? Yeah, tell me what I bring to Vienna? Oh yeah. Okay, so to explain more about this process, I've been in China and bought a little Leo tank here. Actually, it was so sweet, pink, beautiful and small. I started to bring it to Germany and research about this little tank. It's a cute little weapon of nice destruction. Yeah, actually for children, but it won't fall down. Because it looks interesting. And then I was wondering, so actually for children it's a tank, it's for girls. So I have to focus on which kind of model this. So I then found out it was just a low name model of tanks, doesn't exist, only for China legal, I think. And then I decided to go through the history. I come on that base, I come through the history of tanks, how they were developed and all this kind of stuff. And the idea was to create then I come to why, what is the future of the tank? Because they are still producing in Germany tanks and there's also a large museum and they're also talking about the future of the tank and i thought about yeah ai and the topic is really big in the last years and also about the in the combination human and machine about the core evolution about machines and humans and it's a bit abstract humans. And it's a bit abstract, but if you see an animal, the co-evolution between animals and humans, then you see nowadays a projection like the little dogs that you have. And many people project themselves on the dogs. And they turn little puppies into real and all this stuff. And it's like the basic, like how the dog looks like. It took us 10,000 years to turn a wolf into like a rat, I guess. And then I found out that I make also research about dogs and about breeding. And the breeding aspect is something what I think is also technology. So we bring technology into this breeding so to find the perfect bred dog, what is able to fight in war and also able to be a family dog at the same time. And this kind of dog in Germany was the German Shepherd Dog. It's used for police, for war, and has the breeding history. It's the same history like the tank development history. And they have really good connections to each other because they both, tank and German Shepherd Dogs, fight in the World War II, the Second World War against each other. So German Shepherd Dogs were trained to eat under the tank and yeah, in the war they definitely run under the tank because they saw the players fit under the tank. But they have bombs. Oh, they use them to carry bombs? Yeah. And also our little guy with the funny moustache has also a German Shepard dog. big fan and also was friend with Max von Stephanitz, the co-founder of the German Shepherd Dog Association. So this is how everything comes together and I created this tank model as a projection and as a dog and think about the idea how I can bring this well-trained dog data into this machine. It's a little tank. It's very cute. It's not super tiny, but it's like this big. Yeah. Actually, it was here in Austria, by the way. Okay. As far as I understand, it wants you to do things. Yes. It talks to you. It wants to make you do things. What does it want from you? So in Germany it's the official, it's a trained dog, so it's called Bundesdiensthund. So during Corona I go out with my Bundesdiensthund and go out with him to controlling the distance between the humans. And it works sometimes. And he was not so finished now, so he was still in the training mode. So I go out with him jogging and training him to make sit-ups and also shooting was possible. But for here, for all the exotic animals, also here, the little tank, I decided, yes, you need security. This is what the little tank is trained for. Ah, it's a Barsacute. So it's a Bouncer now. Bouncer. So it's our Austrian Bouncer tank now. It's a very cute Austrian Bouncer. Yes, I try to make it a bit friendly. So how you do that with your dogs as well, like the pit bulls, give them something nice and look more friendlier than the normal bouncers that we have. And he's asking for the 3G proof. So, and you can hold your mobile phone through the camera and the tank will create some scans. So if you're vaccinated or... Yeah, yeah, and asking you. So you also turn it into like a COVID project at the same time. Yes, exactly. I have to deal with this. It has a lot of components. It's complex. Yeah, because you come in so many, during the research and working on the, and thinking about what you can do with the tank, you come in so many topics and political topics, always coming in the technology and the political side. And this makes the whole view, the whole thing, the whole project totally interesting. So the next step is to go to the space. It's strange because it's so endearing. It's like you see the tank and it's actually very fun. But interestingly, I think like talking about electric jokes, in that case, the joke is on us in a certain way, because most people who don't realize that. I mean, how many discussions did you have with people at Rubik's Oblika that were asking you about what it actually means? Because I'm pretty sure the people walk by saying, oh, that's a nice little tank. And then they go home not thinking about German Shepherd dogs. No, no. Yeah. So this was the idea that I think it was managed with Ford to perform with the tank as well. So this was the main idea. But if the people aren't around with the tank and they're asking what the tank is doing, what is the idea behind that, then I explain that in a shorter version and most of the time is to give them the idea about training a tank as a machine that you can live with a tank together in your home and yeah thinking about the idea as the new dog, something like this. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah. And our third guest, I'm super honored to have you here. It's Bruno Buchberger. And like, I think it's the first time that I sit on the same podium as someone who was kind of the, you got one of the highest honors of the Republic of Austria. Österreicher. You don't even have to translate that. It wasn't so... Anyway, anyways. But the back story is, and that's what I find really interesting, is that one of the many projects you did is you founded the software park in Heidenberg and also the University of Applied Sciences there, like specifically dealing with software and informatics. And here at this RUBEXOTICA, we have four members of the team, four people who built machines here for this RUBEXOTICA, who all went to Heidenberg. What did you do wrong actually it was a great pleasure to meet these people here so it's a big honor for me because when i came here i did not know the whole operation of fighterita. I only got it from my daughter who is a group member of Vita. And she always told me there is something going on here in this age. I have a guess. The age of 5. Today was the first time I came here and I really have to say I'm excited because it's not about excited about of course I shouldn't be excited about robots that behave like doggy tanks essentially. Yes, yes, of course. But what I really liked was the atmosphere, the human atmosphere. And the people coming together and the one principle which I understood is what is the principle of doing it. Don't think long time about funding agencies and this and this and some political program you are there, I have an idea and I just do it. That's great, that's wonderful and this is absolutely human. And since we speak about robotics, etc., artificial intelligence, etc., and this always will be human. And so if people are afraid today, as they always could have been, and they always have been, about the impact of technology, there was always the question, will humans be in control of the whole thing? And of course, this is today, it is more obvious, this is a very important question, that it ever was. In principle, this question existed since the time when one of our predecessors took two stones, not only one, but two stones and smashed them against each other. And then there was one stone was split and it had a sharp edge. And stone to stone, primitive technology to primitive technology created a very sharp technology because with a sharp edge you can start to cut wood and cutting wood you can create an arrow and this is like a wheel. And from this moment on this wheel was unstoppable. So people think, yes we could have stopped at this historic moment. No, it is not possible because this wheel which I call the reflection wheel, I could go into much more detail about this, but I think it is very important to understand that technology is a wheel and it has one driving principle in it which I call reflection. And this is the technology that is only used to do something like, for example, breaking bombs here and breaking bombs there, and crippling the glass, and automatically move it to the new mouth. This is the application of technology, it is fancy. But the principle of reflection in technology is the following. That technology is applied to technology. So every round in technology is also applied to improve the technology itself. For example, if this glass is split and somebody detects it, if you look through it, there is a kind of deflection of light. So this technology of producing glass was known for a very long time and the production of glass was used in order to put liquid in it so that it doesn't flow to the ground and you can drink it. So this is the normal application of technology. But the application of the glass technology to technology is that at a certain moment people that at a certain moment people observe that this technology can be used in order to enhance what you see. So it was the idea of a microscope or a magnifying glass. This was an enormous chunk in the technology. It was not more glasses and thousand glasses and one million glasses. No, no. It was the moment when a completely new horizon of technology came up. Mainly that now people were able to see something which they never saw before. How does, for example, the leg of a little of a little fly look like? Nobody knew that there are little hairs and so forth. So it was great. And of course, if you think about what the consequences of this new technology were, it was of course enormous. It was such a big step forward in the history of mankind. And this happens again and again and again, in particular in the last few decades. And what I call the reflection principle. Technology is used not only to produce effects in the environment, but technology is used to improve technology. And if you think about this deeply, then you will immediately understand that this is the reason why the technological development gets faster and faster because people are wondering, they are sitting and maybe 500 years ago, there was in one lifetime, there was the advancement of technology, maybe if you read Humberto Eco, and there was this monk and he detected that actually such a glass has a magnifying effect. And this was for a whole lifetime, this was the advancement in one generation. But now, as you said, you are proud that you lived already before the mobile phone, you are proud about it. But now, of course, in young life and old life, you see one wave of technology after the other, and if you take out your iPhone 8, as you showed to some students, they laugh at you because, oh, old professor iPhone 8. This is so funny. And we are wondering, why is this going on always faster? And the answer is reflection. Because technology is applied to technology and therefore, if for example from 1950 to 1960, at the beginning of 1950, we had some technology and it could have been used to produce something, tapes, knives, glasses, and tools, and what have you. And then people think that between 1960 and 1970 the same amount will have been produced. No, because the technology invented from 1950 to 1960 was used to improve the technology. So that the technology we had in 1960 was much on, we produced, we wrote down, etc. In 1960, there was tremendously more than we could make in 1560. And this is explanation for growth, what we call it, Explanation for Growth from its best. And some people are enormously afraid about this speed. Because now in one life length we can really observe how fast it is growing. And now some people of course they believe that yes this is all so bad and we run into burnout and so on and so on so let's try to slow it down and there are extra clubs and movements slowing down clubs okay show the way your mobile phone throw away your watches your computer, etc. and you just have to pay the 50s or so. But this is a big misunderstanding because this reflection principle is not a human invention that some crazy scientists invented in reflection principle in order to make everything go faster. It is in the nature of our intelligence. It is human nature, meaning body, meaning our kind of brain. You can express it in a materialistic way, everything is brain. It's the principle of our brain. If you are religious or not, I don't know, you can describe this differently, but it is in the principle of not only human nature, but the principle of nature, that nature observes itself and using nature, nature improves itself, so to say. And in the technological age we really see it, we see it every day, we see it every day. Many days, really. So, um... I was going to ask a question. I guess the question is the universe. I started from the question of yours, and then you asked my question. But I think this is maybe a very important question that you should understand. Because the demand said you stop being afraid. There is an interesting aspect I think that I witnessed a couple of times. For example, a couple of years ago, out of the homework, you suddenly had Wi-Fi on airplanes. Before that, it was always, you know, like, if you're on the airplane, you turn your phone off, that's it, and then you were like stuck in the tin can for 10 hours, and then you have internet again. And suddenly some airline companies provided Wi-Fi, and people were just like, like, oh, Jesus Christ, I can't believe what the fuck is going on. I can't have Wi-Fi, I can't do internet stuff there. Wonderful, great. And ten minutes later it wouldn't work because of some technical difficulty and people would start complaining, why the shit is just not working? It was just like a miracle ten minutes ago and suddenly it's everyday existence and you can complain about it. That's what I tell people when you complain today that the internet is not working. You get nervous. Yes, so now I remember your question but I don't repeat your question. But the point is that I think you have understood this reflection principle. On the one hand side you understand that you don't have to get nervous, because it's the flow of nature in us. And on the other hand you understand that each of us who is doing anything in this direction, whether a cooking machine or a dog or a tank or whatever, has higher responsibility. And we cannot split the society in one part without knowing all these technological dimensions of innovation and artificial intelligence whatsoever. Actually artificial intelligence is nothing else than artificial non-intelligence. But what's that about? And the other part of society, so to say, they are the good ones who understand this is a danger or a success. No, no, no. We are all the same humans. We are the same humans who try to figure out, say, who want more. And the same humans who make something. And each of us, each of us has the responsibility to create and to be responsible for how we use it. And we should not let this society be split. And if you now look to your nice club here, the enthusiasm of people, and this atmosphere, the vibrating atmosphere, young humans growing older, yes, we should not just leave the subject. It's all the same. And on the other hand, you see the mathematics students and people think they are the works and they are uncreative. They are just doing their own thing. It's all the same. But what do you see? It's of course the same responsibility. And you cannot say I am doing physics, no, politics is not my duty. And only I will say, I am an architect, so I am not thinking about the technology, etc. So everybody has his or her sharing in responsibility and creativity. And if you understand this reflection principle, really many examples, one must go through this, many concrete examples, then one starts to really understand this enormous power in nature. Then you also understand that whatever what level of technology we need, not only now, but also in the future. On the uppermost level, there is the human who creates. Next level of technology, next level, and of course the thing you will think about is how do I use this in a responsible way. This is what I was going to say. Mitch, so let's not only talk about artificial intelligence, let's also talk about natural stupidity, I guess, to a certain degree we have to. You're from San Francisco, or as you say, Silly Valley, because you don't like the term Silicon Valley, you kind of fled Silicon Valley to a certain degree. And I think Silicon Valley is an excellent example of enormous innovative power and enormous drive. Billions and billions of euros and dollars are pumped into that innovation machine. The question is, is this really the innovation that we that we need no good it's um it's innovation that is driven solely by maximizing profit and as a result of that the technology that's created is only for profiting those corporations, not for the benefit of the people who work in those corporations, not for the people who buy the products these corporations make, not for the benefit of the environment. Of course, we are making use of technology that exists to create new technology, as I point out, and we always have done that and we always will do that, but when it's driven primarily, in Silly Valley, it's solely for the maximizing the profit every quarter for these corporations, necessarily the world is becoming a way worse place. So we need to have responsibility somehow built into it. But in our current economic system, it's divorced from it. And this is the problem. And what we have in the United States right now is the worst sociopaths on the planet are heading all this. Because they use it not only for maximizing the profit for the corporation and their own personal profit, but maximizing their power over other people. And somehow that's worshipped now all over the world, but primarily in places like the United States. I can imagine societies where when people don't take responsibility for the powerful technologies that they are responsible for creating. They're not worshiped for it, but they're perhaps put in jail for it. That's not a society that I left in these days. That's unfortunately not the society that we've collectively created that brings us here right now. So how do we move forward? Somehow we have to bring responsibility back. Somehow we have to have an economic system that has built into it that when you do something that's negative for the environment that supports us, when you do something that's negative for us, for other creatures on the planet, for our whole ecosystem, it's bad for the economy. But we're not there. How do we get there? I wish I bad for the economy but we're not there how do we get there i wish i had an answer but we're definitely having the wrong direction right now so uh like the obviously never-ending cycle of innovation could at some point that we had that for many many decades kind of lead us to the British extinction. Because at some point, if you think about something like nuclear power, I mean, it was like I remember I was born in 1975. I was probably the last generation who grew up with this inbred angst of nuclear annihilation. I remember that I was when I was in elementary school. We still had the stuff we had to crawl under the table and play nuclear war. We did that in the Volksschule in Stuttgart where I worked a lot. Of course, that's something that shapes also a personality, I guess, because that was like seven years ago when we did that. So that innovation, for example, in terms of I'm an absolute fan of nuclear power. I think there is an enormous potential for doing that. But the way how it is used, the way how this like corrupt system around it, like be it the Soviets or whoever, or even the Americans, they all had their meltdowns and their problems with nuclear power. But they primarily had it because not that the technology is bad, but someone was running that technology out of a profit motive, producing security personnel, whatever it is. In the case of Chernobyl, we had the problem that they were just like using use a secret that they knew about the nature of the system and they just didn't want to fix it because it would reflect back back on the on on on on the system of doing science etc etc so there is always this like component of like the real world application uh and the economic application of that technology. So, and I guess if we go back to your tank or to your work in general, what is your perspective on that? Are you very pessimistic about that kind of stuff or what is your outlook? Or what is your outlook? So for me, I was pessimistic. Then I tried to look also on both sides. Because you get really depressed if you do not want to say. So and I think if I see based on this tank situation, this was really interesting after half a year I read an article that they are really working on a machine learning trained tank now and they will use I think chip to provide something. I mean there's probably not a big difference if it's a self-driving tank or a self-driving car. There is a difference because if you look back to the whole about repression and demonstration for example in China, the massacre. This is a really interesting story because in between the people... The Tiananmen. Yeah, so I look into all this kind of revolutions where tanks were um so and the interesting part if you go deep into the documentaries and the material from archives that the people have they are doing the demonstration and the revolution, have the chance to bring the soldiers out of the tanks and bring them to their side. If you don't have that anymore, then the tanks will just shoot you because they have one task to do, is to clean up the space. So this is what I think makes me a bit nervous that I hear something about German companies producing tanks like this. So it was really interesting point because it was not only in China, it was also in Poland and also the Arabic Spring. And all of those revolutions was really specific that based on this tank that they eat together on the tanks. Unbelievable. To come together. Actually, the soldiers will have to pick up those phrases and delete the whole illustration for revolutions. But in the end, the people from the revolution bring them all inside. It's good. It's good. Yeah, but if you have these non-speaking machines, they are not talking with you, then we have a big problem. You can't negotiate with a self-driving tank. Yeah. And you can still negotiate with the soldier. I mean, you could theoretically debate with the soldier. You shouldn't be able to do that actually. It's like, per definition, the soldier should just do whatever the soldier has to do. But there is like a supportive element of like you can still debate something with the human being. And you can do a little bit of pushing. Yeah, so there is something like in Israel, they have, I think, drones, helicopter, there is someone sitting, so there's also this kind of stuff that there is someone sitting and they see where they shoot, they know that. But there's a long, long distance between them. So this is like a computer game? Yeah, but they're good and real. Yeah, absolutely. And this is the same with the tank, I think. But there's a long distance. It's a long distance between one human and another human. And if you think about a revolution where all together really close to each other, so they see how the people are shouting and fighting for human rights. And yeah, if you don't have that anymore, you're just sitting in this little room and you have only one task to do, to coordinate and clean up spaces and make everything cool for the government. I think this is a big change in between our society and we have that in the point of this kind of stuff with capitalism as well. We have that also in other jobs that were student long time ago. You see an increase in interest in war robots and telecontrol, flight drones and all that stuff pretty much the very moment the birth rates go down especially in western societies if you only have one or two kids in the family and not four or five but in world war two it is really like like like for cohen biopolitics it's almost cynical to think like that but of course uh the military think about that like because the giant like the outcry of like if one of your kids dies in the war and you only had one kid is something that's significantly different than in other wars before that so they made these like studies at the pentagon where they said like yeah we have not that much soldier material around and it's a big source of social unrest so we have to kind of like do some research and kind of keep them at home so most of the american soldiers who control the drones in iraq they sit in nevada just like a driving hour from from las vegas and they are not in actual physical harm but of course that's also good for the for the defense corporations because they can build enormous, enormous machines for enormous amounts of dollars. But it's still a little bit depressing, isn't it? Yeah, I'm telling you. You know, the reason why I go around the world... I'm asking questions. Yeah, well, you know, to address that though, you know, the reason why I've been going around the world before the pandemic, teaching people DIY, and one of the reasons I love Robo Exotica is it doesn't create people to just do it and, you know, you pointed out, you know, the reason why I've been going around the world before the pandemic, teaching people DIY, and one of the reasons I love Robo Exotica is it doesn't create people to just do it, and, you know, you pointed out, you know, the reason why I've been going around the world before the pandemic, teaching people DIY, and one of the reasons I love Robo Exotica is it doesn't create people to just do it, and, you know, you pointed out, you know, the reason why I've been going around the world before the pandemic, teaching people DIY, and one of the reasons why I've been going around the world before the pandemic, teaching people DIY, and one of the reasons why I've been going around the world before the pandemic, teaching people DIY, and one of the reasons why I've been going around the world before the pandemic, teaching people DIY, and one of the reasons why I've been going around the world before the pandemic, teaching people DIY, and one of the reasons why I love Robo Exotica is it doesn't create people to just do it, and, you know, you pointed out, you know, the reason why I've been going around the world before the pandemic, teaching people DIY, and one of of the reasons I love Robo Exotica is it does encourage people to just do it and you know you pointed out you know this encourages all of us to play and by playing together we learn a lot we also even introverted geeky people like myself learn to play with other people and look each other in the eye with body language and we learn to like doing that with each other in the eye, our body language, and we learn to like doing that with each other. But the more people that understand more about various technologies, the more people, and playing with each other along the way, the more we can start connecting responsibility with the technologies that we create together. And the more that we understand technology, it's not just some, you know, these things in our pockets, table there, all over the place. The more we understand these things, the more possibility there is that we're the ones controlling the technology and not the other people. Maybe the question that I really like to ask many, many people, because it's one of my favorite things ever, and it's a question about the beautiful, the beautifulness, the beautiful failure. Because I think I do kind of like refer to that already. When you said like people broke a piece of glass and that gave them the next step in technological evolution. So that's, of course, a failure like dropping a glass. But there's something beautiful coming out of that failure. And I've seen many, many interesting failures at moments of, you can imagine, especially machines that handle liquids and stuff like that. I've seen like, uh, cockler robots pretty much like killed themselves within the first five minutes of them being turned on, because they filled themselves up with alcohol and then the chin burned and everything started smoking so i've seen a beautiful uh desolation at robo exotica so what i mean maybe let's start with you is do you have a story about failure that brought you somewhere uh that you haven't considered before or something like a story of beautiful failure in your life there's a 99 percent of the life of a researcher is failure so it is not something peculiar to what you are considering here here maybe you see processing coffee machine burning and whatsoever and then it becomes clear that this was a failure. Let's try next time, we're going to get into it. I think it's a long series of people who are particular about the conception. But actually, it is the way how nature works in order to produce the next type of evolution. It's millions of things, millions, millions, millions. This is the reason why there are millions of flies and millions of seeds and millions of animals. So, as I say, really, then, it's the chance to create something new. So, the principle of evolution is failure. I don't have to teach you about this, it was such an ingenious observation of this, that we need lots and lots of possibilities and then we need competition. Maybe if the only one gets wrong and this one is on the next level of evolution. So this is completely normal. And in the scientist's life it's completely normal. So, starting with my dissertation many years ago, I still remember this. There were thousands of pages written in mathematics. It's a paper of the former, the former, and the former. written in the medics paper. Formal and formal and formal. They tried this, they tried this, gone, gone, gone. It's like if you once watched a movie, you would base how Picasso was drawing. And this was just failure and failure and failure. The thousands design of the bull, then this was the one that just talks on my initiative. Especially if I just don't want to talk about how much they had to practice until they... I just don't want to sell themselves to the geniuses. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no The concept of ingenious people is very disappointing, discouraging for our young people. So very often in schools the music teacher says, well, and then we get rid of him. And he was ingenious. Now what is ingenious? What is achievement? Achievement is a seat and just close it. The symphony comes to him and put his, what do you say, It's from God. He just has to write it down and place it. No, no, no. No artist started like this. No artist started like this. And each of us who plays a little bit instrumental or works in painting, it takes hours and hours of practicing, which actually is beautiful. So every artist, I think, likes practicing, because this is a process where you find yourself and then you teach them. And then after, we remain ourselves. Maybe that is the ingenious invention in internetics or the picture that really becomes famous or the music people really like or whatever. So failure, I don't have to think a long time about it. Because we could tell you thousands of failures and all that. But later people think it was really an invention. It happens maybe every thousand, ten thousand times. This is life, this is nature, this is 10,000. This is life. This is life. This is nature. This is evolution. This is also the reflection. Because in every moment when you create a failure, of course, if you go on, you produce greater failure. But this is not creation. This is artificial knowledge, actually. But if you observe yourself, what did I do here? What did I do here? Did I like this? Did this work a little? Yeah, this is thinking about one's own thinking, observing about our own observation and acting about our own action. This is the way our reflection works and this is the way our evolution gets us to happen. Thank you. I love this. I love that. And if for, should I say artistic, artistic? What do you mean? So in life you have many failures and you learn from them and then you stand up and maybe you don't do it again. And if you do it again, so maybe the next time you don't want to do it again and maybe you learn from that. And this is something what I think it's not... Sometimes you have to go a step back to go two steps forward. And artistically, I love fangirls because you get so much creativity out of that. You found new things, especially, for example, 3D scanning. Everyone wants now the perfect 3D scan. I hate them. They're boring. And because you find so many interesting things inside this unperfect 3D model, for example. Beautiful, lively, more lively. Some data are really lively. And for machines, like especially the Tanki is also not working well. It's perfect. That's why I'm promoting ExoGP. Because Tanki is a little place for testing new environments and beings and with this, how do you say that? It's definitely worth the time. It sucks too much. It sucks. You're just a little stutterer time. It's actually too much. It's actually too much. It's actually too much. Beautiful state you're in. Beautiful state. Perfect. Wow. So, yeah, as visitors, so the owner, the owner and me, we have this relationship, have fun together, and it was, for example, also, we made a film, I have to go with Tanki the whole time on the floor in a special way for the camera and my arms were bleeding. The machine was, Tanki was always moving the other way but the scenes were great. So they filmed you so Tanki could learn the movement of a human. Yes, so we created a film as well. So to have that also for the installation, me interacting with Tanki. And so that's why in the beginning I said about sit-ups and we filmed that, we are hiking with Tanki on my back, so we really have this close relationship and have our outfits together, everything what you need to have this close relationship and have our outfits together everything what you need to have this human machine relationship at one point that's a statistic especially sometimes we have machines who only work the last 10 minutes of the entire because something fails and then like the team sits there for the whole four days trying to fix what's going on and in the end of RoboXotic one drink comes out. Perfect! It's great for talking to those people. Of course they don't want to be talked to because they want to fix it with a machine which slows down the whole process but it's perfect to talk about what is going on what are you doing why are you soldering this what is this at all like why is there a cable uh why is this smoking here i don't know failure you're a person beautiful failure yeah well uh i'm not sure what to add but uh but failure, we learn from failure and success, but we fail, as you point out, much, much, much, much, much more than we succeed. So if we don't learn from our failures, then it's just failure. But we're training all our lives that failure's bad. We're all brought up in schools, and you failed your test or whatever. That's a terrible thing. It's not just that you failed on the test, but you're a failure, and that's a terrible thing. Then it's not just that you failed in the test, but you're a failure and that's a terrible thing. So, I mean that what you do reflects like that's who you are. And so growing up with a lot of shame as I did, you know, every failure was an indictment against me as a human being and I grew up totally depressed. So everything's, and I wanted to escape all of that. And I escaped with television and I would up totally depressed, so everything was... And I wanted to escape all of that, and I escaped television, and I would seem to forget about all of my pain and, yeah, childhood, I can't go into all that now, but escaping the pain of my childhood, TV was my first addiction. I would watch TV, the pain would seem to go away, and then the show would end. And then I'd watch another show, and then I'd watch another show, and time went away. And this was all, in my little kid brain, what I deserved. I deserved to feel like a turd. But later in life, that whole set of failures and that really me being a failure set me up for seeing televisions as something that I could live much better without. And when they started appearing all over in public places, I couldn't do anything about that. You know, like I have a before and after with television. There was a time when TV did not exist in public places. Can you even imagine that? It's bizarre, but you know, like now it's normal. Every standard bar has a television set in the corner. Or 15 or 20. And so anyways, I couldn't do anything about all these TVs popping up everywhere, but I could create a remote control to turn them all off, so I did. And that's what I've made a living on for the last 18 years. And so this is failure being something which has to find the rest of my life. And so embracing failure is super important. So can you still buy the remote control? Because I have to repeat that, yeah. So he built the remote control that you can carry with you all the time to turn off, like you sit at the bar and you press a button and all the televisions in the bar go off. It's kind of funny. Yeah, and before you go to the next, I don't know, like, media market or something like that, and all the televisions are off here. I remember when I saw the thing for the first time at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, and there is really like a media market next door, and all the hackers would go to the media market and constantly turn the televisions off there, and then they turned them all on, and then turned them off, and then them off, and turn them all off. Ah, nice. Sorry, I have to oppose now. Yeah, oppose, please. I won't drown, there needs to be some... I just want to tell you how beautiful it is to be a success. Oh yeah, that's your success. There's nothing wrong with success. There's nothing wrong with failure. It is like, you know, we're a patient, you know, so suffering, or just, you still hope. And there's a great moment. It's the beautiful aspect of humanity is that there is hope. And you cling to it. But of course if you have only that suffering, suffering the suffering i'd rather not um okay so uh at uber exotica so that's probably also i've had how much more time i completely forgot we have some more time and we have a microphone if there are some questions so my my let's let's let's phrase my last question for the people on stage but also for the audience if there is some some interaction okay the thing is that uh is that at ProWorks Austria, what I learned over the last 20 years is that there is one aspect of technology and that aspect is, is the technology working or not? So is the machine really delivering a cocktail or not? Does it taste good? So there's like the functionality, the design you you could call it, of something. But what's really important, and that is something that I also see a lot, the development of apps and communities around technology, stuff like that. There is always a greater narrative that you have that goes alongside with the technology uh the narrative of like if i don't know george clooney sells uh uh the the coffee the coffee stuff and so there's and that narrative of course means like uh george could be might like you if you buy the fishing of course it's all capitalistically driven of course but there's there's always like a narrative element to technology. And one example from Exotica a couple of years ago that I really like concerning that is we had a machine, it was a small little robot, and it was moving on the ground. And it was driving around in the ground at the cocktail party. And the story was that that little machine is scanning the faces of all the people at the party and it tries to find the most drunk person in the room and go to that person and give that person a beer. So like an escalation machine. So I'm finding the drunk person, giving him more alcohol. And of course, I'm pretty sure that machine didn't have such a sophisticated facial recognition software that could really detect if someone is drunk or not. But just by pretending that team just said, that's our machine and it does that, everyone in the room suddenly believed it and there were people running away from the machine. Oh, leave me alone. And suddenly there's this thing that was just roaming around at a party, being the one thing that people were actually fearing or projecting something on it. But that was part of the story of that technology so to speak and so my question would be how do you guys see that like how what is the narrative aspect of technology and or maybe what kind of stuff should we tell about technology that helps us to get along better or prosper. I don't know, maybe I'll start with you. Thank you very much for this interesting question, but of course the audience should be able to understand that I am so much intrigued by your question. Thank you, this is a very good opinion. So, I think if we have technology, then we have functionality. So, some machines should have some functionality. There are two ways how to approach this reality. We have a functionality and we have a machine. We have an expected functionality and then we have a machine. This is one way of looking at it. You first have an expectation, what should this machine do for example, I have a massive interface, this is the functionality independent of the machine, then Serlo reconstructs the machine. Then you can righteously ask the question, does the machine satisfy its functionality? Yes or no? Can you give a proof? And this is what is the sincere relationship between functionality and machine. Of course, this is not what happens in most or many cases. In many cases, the relation between functionality and machine is just opposite. Of course, this is not what happens in most of the cases. In many cases, the relation between functionality and machine is just opposite. You create a machine, you create a software, you create something, and then afterwards you create some functionality in the Mac, but it doesn't do anything. It does something. Then it's just a question of storytelling whether you get the appreciation for what you created and then you must try to tell the story about the functionality which is interesting for people and of course this creates an enormous hope today that is surely not what we do in science or at least what we try not to do. In science we try to first define the functionality and in software we call this a specification and then we build software about the machine and then really it is a question how to prove that this machine is doing this activity in all ID instances all the time. In the mid-day this is quite a very good question. And it's one of the most difficult questions in the current age of computer-managed automated reasoning, it's the verification question. So it's an obviously exciting question, but one has to be realistic by knowing what you just said. That in many cases, either by intention one tries to sell the functionality of the machine that doesn't exist or was never believed to be the functionality. has to live with this, but one should see the big difference between the two situations. They are really different and both exist and both have their rights. And of course, in the science, the first situation is really challenging. It's not easy. It's really challenging. The second thing is more for marketing people. Yeah, exactly. That's why I have a science-o-the-work because I've never seen offers. I think the marketing people are the most creative people. They are very creative people and so I try to teach my students. I put a sense of my students' marketing. I always tell them, don't wait for the marketing people to sell their stuff. Learn to sell your own invention. Don't wait for the marketing people. So you must tell them. Yes, they must learn to tell the story of their invention. Why is it useful? Why is it interesting, beautiful, exciting, new, original, entertaining, etc. Because if you... So now I have to fight a little bit against the marketing department of my university. I could do this because they already know that I am doing this. I have always learned. When I began the account of the Society of Barker, it made a big mistake. I hired a great expert from the marketing department. Right? Because I did not yet know how this works. Now I know. I heard a great amount of marketing department. Because they did not yet know how this works. Now I know. And the first thing this person did was a nice guy. But you know, it is the following. He took my concept about things of the black, put a nice red blood around it with a photo of him. So I learned that these guys, they learn how to market themselves. This is great, but this is so simple that I now introduce it to my own curriculum. And I teach them that they should say, market yourself. It's not so difficult. You learn from Silicon Valley, I guess you know all this stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The machine doesn't even need functionality. All you need is marketing people to create a story and then tell people they're uncool unless they buy it. This is the biggest thing. Most of the content users bug-face your software for 20 years and you pay for it and stuff like that. Another statement that we should open to the audience. To deal with a fake, I call it a fake idea, but it's great for me. It's really nice to deal with that. In the beginning, the tech was not working. The tech was not working. The tech was not working. The tech was not working. The tech was not working. The tech was not working. The tech was not working. The tech was not working. The tech was not working. The tech was not working. The tech was not working. Yeah, to deal with the fake, I call it fake idea, but it's great for me. It's really nice to deal with that. So in the beginning the tank was not working, but it was also my graduation project after finishing the university and the professors were sitting there and I come in, I performed the whole piece, presenting me with the German Shepherd Dog and come in and someone was controlling the tape from the background. But they believed me, it's really nice. Thank you to the neighbors. And they believed it and I welcomed them to the German Shepherd Dog Association, the German Shepherd Dog Association. They believed it. They evened it. This was a nice, really good situation. Since then, I'm left to play with that. It's a great system, you are famous for it. Okay, yeah, some statements from the audience, maybe your questions or maybe your personal failures or your personal storytelling stories about technology, maybe if not in case of Starlink. So I wanted to tell a story that I used to tell my pupils when I talk about AI. It's funny because the first machines had a quite primitive functionality. They actually worked like a thumb. And now we turn the wheel further and machines get similar to ourselves more intelligent and now we we are hearing them to be too similar to us and for instance today it's easy to feed an AI with the music from Beethoven and then the AI can spit out Beethoven, Beethoven, Beethoven, it sounds like Beethoven. But the really interesting thing is that where Beethoven is most like himself is where he is not, where he is rupturing his skin. So we are most ourselves where we are not like we have been before. So it's kind of inbuilt failure we need to get further and the AI, the machine is just reproducing the skin. And I think there's some kind of hope for us that the machines may be quite similar to us, but the possibility to commit failures from which we can learn is completely human still. Still, but you're the opposite already. I have to disappoint you. As long as you are able to formulate what you think is beyond simulating Beethoven, because Beethoven was able to disrupt his own, so to say, model. He is able to formulate it as clearly as he did now. There is absolutely no big difficulty. He had to simulate failure producing and disrupting patterns. So don't hope that... There has always been this difference, distance between us and what machines can do. The big mistake is that machines can do it. So it is our... Machines learn the rules, but they also learn how to break the rules. They can learn it, yeah. And of course I should go into very big detail about what artificial intelligence really means. Because there is so much foggy misunderstanding about this notion. But we don't have the time here to really go to the deep analysis of what this notion could mean, because there are at least three very different notions about division of interactions. But I don't want to... You can also conclude that. No. I'm'm joking. I like jokes. Exactly. Because if you google artificial intelligence, what you read is not so superficial. It's historic. People repeat, repeat. Yes, machines can do this, machines can do that. Yeah, okay. Yes, but of course, since I'm a marketing person, if you are interested in these questions, I have been talking for a long time, so if you're all tired and don't have anything more to ask, I think we should go back to Obusotica and really have a drink. That's very appropriate, I guess. Yeah, thank you so much. It was a pleasure having you. Thank you so much to the great panel and you at home make your own drink. So you can do it. Aplausos.