Apogeo Spatial Executive Interview with Matthew Bailey on Ethics in AI

Matthew James Bailey
Internationally Recognized Leader of Innovation and Technology

Myrna James Yoo Publisher, Apogeo Spatial

Matthew’s new book, “Inventing World 3.0: Evolutionary Ethics for AI” addresses an underlying very important issue for the evolving technologies of Artificial Intelligence. Now is the time to add ethics to the foundation of this emerging tech, because as we have seen from the way social media has evolved (according to The Social Dilemma documentary on Netflix and other sources), if we let tech evolve without ethical frameworks, without human intervention to provide guardrails for the sake of humanity, it will run off course and create problems. Please listen in! You’ll enjoy it!

“When we have data governance and data ethics, we can bring that data back into our own ownership to train our own personalized AI that could be a guide, and ensure us sovereignty, Myrna, in the digital world. That is really important, because we’ve lost that sovereignty in the digital world.”

Myrna James Yoo: Hi there, everyone. I’m here today, speaking with Matthew James Bailey, who is an expert on AI, internet of things, sustainable cities, and many other things. His new book is called INVENTING WORLD 3.0: The Evolutionary Ethics for Artificial Intelligence. This is such an important topic, Matthew. I am really thrilled to speak with you about it.

Matthew James Bailey: It’s great to be here, Myrna, and thank you for having me on the show.

Myrna James Yoo: Absolutely. I’d love for you to share, initially, a bit about your background.

Matthew James Bailey: Yeah, sure, absolutely. Well, hello everybody. My name is Matthew James Bailey, and I’m one of the internationally recognized pioneers of the internet of things. Most of you have heard about that and Smart Cities. And now moving on to artificial intelligence. For the last 10 years, I’ve dedicated my life to enable the digital world to have a partnership with our environment and also our humanity in all the vast systems that we currently have. Isn’t humanity and our human experience becoming more digital? As the bridge becomes closer and closer between the digital and the human worlds, we really need to look at things like ethics and transparency of our data.

So 10 years ago, when I started out in the internet of things, I knew very well that AI was coming and that gives us the data to train the mindset of AI. Then Smart Cities was my focus because that’s where 55% of the population of the world live in – cities and urban jurisdictions. Myrna, on my journey, I’ve met all sorts of people. So I’ve spent time with people like Professor Stephen Hawking, Sir. David Attenborough, Steve Wozniak… I’ve sat down with prime ministers and cabinet ministers and undersecretaries and all sorts of powerful people around the world and influential people, discussing about how can we enable the digital world to bring benefit to citizens and to our environment?

Myrna James Yoo: I really think that the subject with your expertise is one of the most important, if not the most important discussions and topics in technology today. I really, really believe that.

Matthew James Bailey: I agree.

Myrna James Yoo: Because as you said, it’s inevitable that humanity and human issues and artificial intelligence are coming together. Tech and humanity are absolutely merging. So there has to be this underlying ethic, this underlying code of ethics that the organizations that are moving forward are following. This was one of the problems featured in the documentary on Netflix, The Social Dilemma, that ethics wasn’t underlying initially, and things then begin to run amuck? When tech just runs amuck, you get into trouble. Even if initially that’s not the intent, it happens.

Matthew James Bailey: Yes. We’re looking at the new maturity model for the digital world. You mentioned The Social Dilemma, which raises very important questions around how our data is used. Who’s using our data and for what purposes? Those kind of ethical questions are really important. If you look at The Coded Bias, which is another movie, which was recently leased, that’s looking at the unethical quality of facial recognition software, which is now happening in the U.S., where facial recognition software, which is primarily AI, misidentifies gender, misidentifies people of a particular culture. There’s a project in London that was recently run that misidentified 2,400 people in facial recognition software, primarily black males. That’s shocking.

Because at the end of the day, the digital world must honor our cultures, our belief systems, our values in order for it to be welcomed, in order for it to move into the next stage of integration. What we’re looking at, really, is the question of what is our humanity? What defines us? What are our ethics in maybe a Native American culture? Where are our ethics in another culture? What’s our ethics in the United States of America? What defines our humanity? Therefore, we have to put our humanity into the digital world.

Myrna James Yoo: You’re talking about honoring diversity, and making sure that that is done from the onset.

Matthew James Bailey: Yes, absolutely. That’s why the book goes to the very heart of DNA. INVENTING WORLD 3.0 is literally a leap in innovation, and it’s a democratized narrative. And that’s important, so that everybody is involved in the conversation. Myrna, I believe that citizens should be involved in the conversation around the future of artificial intelligence. I think they should be very much in the heart of defining what are the important ethics nationally and also locally. Because whilst there may be similarities, or even common ground, there’ll be subtle nuances that are different between different cultures and diversities, and the digital world has to understand that. So we have to get to the DNA, and to get to the DNA, we have to start off with a data that trains the artificial intelligence algorithms, and that’s where data ethics comes in. That’s our starting place.

Myrna James Yoo: Yeah, absolutely. In the interest of democratizing this conversation in general, and the narrative of what we’re talking about, I’d love to back up and explain what IoT is and how it’s related to AI. I’ll give my rudimentary understanding myself, and then you can clarify. The internet of things is really the fact that all of our digital devices are connected via the wireless networks, and that includes things like Nest in your home and Ring as your doorbell and your iPhone and your digital phone connected to the internet and all of your profiles. That is the internet of things. I’d love you to add to that, and then how that’s connected to AI.

Matthew James Bailey: Sure. Okay, great. So the internet of things is a multi-trillion-dollar global phenomenon; and what it does is this: it recognizes that human and environmental systems, which are vast, like our healthcare, how we manage our grids, our transportation systems, whatever it may be, having the digital insight in real time, through sensors deployed in locations around our world, help us to understand how those systems are performing, and if they’re not doing very well, how we can help them to do well. So it’s about optimizing and the performance of systems. So the internet of things is about every aspect of your life.

Myrna James Yoo: Right. I think I was speaking about it from a personal perspective, and you are expanding it into the global infrastructure and business and utilities, which is absolutely true, as well, of course.

Matthew James Bailey: Yes, of course. So what’s that got to do with AI? It has everything to do with AI. So, the internet of things is about data. It’s about collecting data, in real time, converting it into information for applications at the end to be able to see what’s going on within a particular system: utility, healthcare, transportation, whatever it may be. That data is available to train artificial intelligence; and what that means is that we can now further optimize the performance and the efficiency of our systems, whether they’re a utilities, or whether they’re macro, like Smart Cities, where you have literally hundreds of thousands of services all running in parallel.

So this is really a massive stack in the digital transformation of where we started off with the internet of things, with all this data that’s gathering to increase optimization, but now we have a chance to go even further. But before we do the training of the AI with all that data, Myrna, we have to get our ethics right. Who owns the data? How is it being protected? What’s the transparency of the data? All these simple questions, we must get right, if we’re to make our artificial intelligence ethical in its very mindset.

Myrna James Yoo: Yes which means, ethical for humanity, right?

Matthew James Bailey: Yes, that’s a good way of putting it.

Myrna James Yoo: I first learned about IoT when I launched a magazine with a business partner, Natasha Léger in 2009 called LBx Journal, LB being ‘location-based,’ the X being the algebraic variable about how location is used for all different aspects of business. Location is now embedded in everything. So at the time, we were learning about IoT, and now, in recent years, it’s turning into AI. Also, I’d love to go a little bit into machine learning, which is a building block of AI. Help me differentiate between AI and machine learning, and then let’s circle back to the ethics conversation.

Matthew James Bailey: Yeah, sure. So machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence. So artificial intelligence is an umbrella term for many aspects of AI, such as deep learning, that people are familiar with, with IBM Blue and some other big corporations that we’re familiar with. We use deep learning to help to beat the champion of the ancient game of go, right? And then we have other aspects, like natural language processing, which is the voice interface to artificial intelligence, so your Alexas or your Siris or even your car. When you speak into a digital system, it’s AI that’s interpreting your voice and putting it into a digital format in order to know what you’ve requested.

Machine learning is another aspect of artificial intelligence, and people around the world are using machine learning. It’s one of the parts of AI that’s really easy for many people to learn. So we’re looking at democratized innovation around machine learning, in particular, because it’s really quite simple to start to program your own personalized AI. Myrna, guess what? Finland, 5.5 million people, they are training 1% of their population, that’s 55,000 persons, on how to program in AI, primarily in machine learning.

Myrna James Yoo: Oh my gosh.

Matthew James Bailey: Yeah, right! But this is about them leveraging AI and equipping their citizens to be able to invent machine learning and AI for the benefit of their society. They’re bringing citizens into the middle of the innovation of their future. Which other country in the world’s ever announced that?

Myrna James Yoo: That is amazing. That really shows their foresight.

Matthew James Bailey: Scandinavian countries are known as number one in innovation for many, many years. They’re very, very good. There’s a wonderful quote by Finland’s Economic Minister, Mika Lintilä. He said, “We don’t have enough money to become a leader in AI, but when we know how to program AI, well, that’s a different thing.” They must turn to other assets if they hope to compete. It’s part of Finland’s grand experiment.

So they’re actually not becoming a powerhouse like Canada with a wonderful national strategy, the U.S. has a strategy around AI, and India, I think, will become a global hub for innovation and AI. What they’re saying is, “We’re going to use this technology. We’ll become leaders in programming this, and we’re going to benefit our country,” through in-sourcing, if you like, from their country, innovation of AI from their citizens. I think it’s a wonderful story.

Myrna James Yoo: That’s really in alignment with your interest in democratizing the whole concept, and by that, I mean, making it accessible to everyone, right? Making sure that it’s a simple enough concept… I understand that your book is written in a way that it’s understandable by everyone, regardless of your education level or technology expertise, and I personally appreciate that concept.

Our field of geospatial data and remote sensing has gone through a huge transformation as well, in the last 10 years, from only true experts being able to use any kind of data from satellites or drones to non-experts using the data. And now it’s really a fantastic, amazing thing.

Incidentally, to your point about the Scandinavian countries, the Norwegian Minister of the Environment has just announced, about a month ago, a program where they’re going to pay for the high res satellite imagery that’s needed to monitor the world’s forests. They have a new program that every NGO in the world can access the high-res data, finally, to monitor the forests. So that’s a really amazing thing, and they’re going to be able to do it technologically because of this democratization of the software. I love this about you, and tell me, why is that important to you?

Matthew James Bailey: Well, first of all, we decided to self-publish the book to guard the narrative, and so the book is really a book of innovation. We tested the narrative with people who are leaders in life sciences, people who’ve floated businesses on NASDAQ, many billions of dollars, leaders in education, professors, business leaders, but also with the everyday person off the street. We tested it with the elderly, and we also tested it with just everyday people like you and I, because I believe we need to bring citizens into the conversation about the innovation for the future of our data ethics and our data governance. We need to set new certification standards to classify and rank the quality of AI, including its data, this use of the digital mindset, to ensure it has ethical alignment and to encourage organizations and innovators to move to the impeccable ethicalness of what AI should be for it to be welcomed into society.

So the book really is a book of innovation. Nations, cities, regions, and businesses can use the new data ethics certification maturity model, which is based on some new Alan Turing tests that—you’re probably aware, he’s one of the innovators and leaders, one of the founders of AI—it equips people to actually be able to simply rank and certify the quality of data ethics that goes into AI. And then we have a DNA model. Everybody understands DNA, the human helix. So it’s a very simple model to allow people to be able to state what they want in AI: their cultures, their belief systems, their principles, their humanity, believe it or not. So we speak about Aristotle and 11 ethical virtues. I add one more called compassion, with the basis of COVID-19 challenge, because compassion is obviously very important, and also about AI’s purpose. So what we’re doing is creating a really simple framework with some playbook guidelines on how to start to shape and specify what AI is for you, your family, your business, your neighbors, or whatever you want AI to be in your life.

We also talk about personalized AI, as well. One of the challenges we have at the moment, Myrna… I’m seeing this hot-up, right? This is what I believe the next war will be fought over, which is basically ownership of our data in the digital world. We have a digital self, which is basically a reflection in all these different systems that have data in different aspects of our life: how we travel, what financial services we use, what’s our gas bill, what’s our mortgage… all these different types of data that really are us, are fractured. When we have data governance and data ethics, we can bring that data back into our own ownership to train our own personalized AI that could be a guide, and ensure us sovereignty, Myrna, in the digital world. That is really important, because we’ve lost that sovereignty in the digital world.

Personalized AI, the AI data ethics, and new AI ethics frameworks, enables us to have our sovereignty, because, Myrna, if we don’t have our sovereignty first, then we’re going to completely lose any chance of having sovereignty in the digital world.

Myrna James Yoo: I think that even translates into personal sovereignty in our lives, right? If we lose control of every aspect of information about ourselves, and it’s just out there and out of control, and we lose that, that’s a huge piece of our entire lives, right?

The sovereignty piece is so important. We should have the right, as individual humans, to control our own lives, right? To control who sees what about us and what’s happening. These data privacy issues, we certainly saw those coming as well when we started LBx Journal, about 15 years ago. When you say creating a DNA model for AI, does that mean that each individual will have their own ability to have control of that?

Matthew James Bailey: Sure. So the reason why we use the human DNA model is for a couple of reasons. One is, DNA is the foundation of, or one of the foundational blocks of evolution and most people talk about that. We’re talking about evolutionary ethics, we’re talking about evolving AI with citizen participation and democratic and ethical values. So, it’s a good model, and so the different types of acids that form a base pair give us blue eyes, or give us two ears, or give us an organ, like a liver, or give us lungs, or give us fingers, the DNA base pairs determine the organic shape.

Well, why can’t we use the same principle for shaping AI? One that’s ethical, one that understands our humanity, one that works with us to create a partnership with the environment. One that honors our cultures, whether personal, or whether they’re religious, or a different type of culture that may be ancient or modern. So going to the base pairs of shaping AI makes sense, because what we’re doing is forming a digital self of AI that has those principles within its mindset. It’s evolving based on those principles. Does that make sense?

Myrna James Yoo: Yeah, it really does. And it makes me think, do you have a consulting company that can help companies do that?

Matthew James Bailey: Thanks for asking about that. People can go to aiethics.world, and we run courses in data ethics, and also in this new DNA model. Also, they can have personal consulting from me and my network to help them to formulate their data ethic governance, their AI ethic governance, and to work with them on these new types of DNA principles. It’s important, isn’t it? Because I believe that citizens are the ones that are going to benefit from this, and the planet. So why wouldn’t we bring citizens into the innovation process? Doesn’t that just make sense?

Myrna James Yoo: Absolutely. Let’s talk a bit about the environment and the earth and the planet, because this is so important as well, right? It’s a whole other component. It’s a whole other benefit for what you’re talking about – the benefit to the planet and to the health of the planet and to environmentalism. My theory, what I’ve seen is that there are big, huge sections of the planet. I just returned from two weeks in Panama, and I was literally in the jungle for a week, and there are places around the world that are literally dead. The soil is dead, the land is dead, they’ve been deforested, and we have to bring those sections of the earth, literally the dirt and earth in that place, back to life.

This organization in Panama, Geoversity, has done that. They’ve planted over 500,000 trees on their nature preserve, which is 12,500 acres, in Panama. This is what needs to happen all over the world. So, help us understand how that will also be a benefit of your work.

Matthew James Bailey: That’s a great question. The book talks about Environmental AI, AI dedicated to the environment. It goes much further than anybody else has done yet in the human existence, and this is what it does. We have the Paris Climate Accord, where most countries are involved, I think. And there are honorable agreements to reduce their carbon emissions to find a symbiotic partnership with our environment.

You’re obviously aware of the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals, which address all sorts of different issues from human living, but also with the environment. Cities, where most of us live… 55% of the people in the world live in and around cities, and that’s going to increase to 70% potentially by 2050. So, if we have AI deployed within our transportation systems, our grid, our homes, our buildings, every aspect of society that has a principle to reduce carbon emissions, then what we have is many systems, all working in harmony, dedicated to reducing carbon emissions. Now, how would that make a difference in achieving a harmony with the planet? And a symbiotic relationship?

So, the book reveals on how to invent AI very simply, so that it can scale across city systems in every aspect of those digital systems, dedicated to achieving certain environmental mandates, working in harmony and collaboration, which has never been possible before, but then scale across regions, and then entire nations, maybe even further into continents.

Just imagine if every single digital system in the United States of America had the mandate to try and reduce carbon emissions, and all cooperating together, with intelligence’s purpose to reduce our carbon emissions. How much difference would that make to our partnership with the environment, Myrna?

Myrna James Yoo: I’m hearing the word platform. Are we talking about all these IoT sensors out there? I think one of the things we’re still missing is a huge repository of all the data about the earth in one place, so we can all talk to each other, we can see all the information. There are so many organizations reinventing the wheel. There’s so much, but they aren’t able to talk to each other really, or to bring all that data and information together.

In 2009, I was in Beijing and talking to one of the founders of Keyhole, which became Google Earth when Google bought them. I was talking to Michael Jones about this (who sadly has just passed away in January 2021) and I kept saying, there has to be a repository for all the data about the earth, so we can basically all get on the same page, to oversimplify. That was before data was made into ‘actionable intelligence.’ Are you talking about that?

Matthew James Bailey: Indirectly, and directly too. Indirectly, what I think you’re proposing is, how do we create a data lake with key environmental information, one that’s rich in information, in history, and also rich in different dimensional aspects of the environment, and what not to do or what to do in its current condition. So having that data lake of environmental data is imperative—and it has to be secure. Because that’s where we can train AI that may be dedicated to a particular aspect of environmental harmony or environmental management. So then the information can be exported, sent out to the citizen, into the systems in society, knowing how to and dedicated to achieve a particular environmental goal. Does that make sense?

Myrna James Yoo: Yes. So that could be done by geographic region.

Matthew James Bailey: Yes, absolutely. If, for some reason, we’re under pressure for water shortage, the environmental data lake, or environment kind of a big data vault you’re talking about could focus on basically how to deal with regions or cities that have problems with water security. Others may be around fire; others may be around flood damage or coastal erosion or tornadoes. It doesn’t really matter. But what you’re creating is a country of data, like a university of data that is able for us to train AI to then graduate, to go into society, dedicated to that particular environmental task.

Myrna James Yoo: That’s really amazing. That potential is just really significant. I know that E.O. Wilson says that we need to have 50% of the land mass of the earth as a preserve, as a nature preserve as much as possible in order to get out of this debacle that we’re in right now. There’s the tie to human health and humanity’s wellbeing to the health of the earth, that I think just wasn’t really talked about or recognized even 10 years ago, and now that tie is becoming more and more obvious. So I think that’s another component here, another benefit of what you’re talking about.

Matthew James Bailey: Lineages, ancient lineages, from thousands of years ago, always honored the environment because they reckoned that was good for our mental health, it was good for our health, as you’re talking about. What they recognized was that symbiotic partnership with the environment was imperative to the human existence. The purpose of the human existence, whether people believe it or not, who are listening, is actually for us to be in harmony with the environment. We’re co-symbiotic, we’re together. So, I think we’re rediscovering the traditions.

Look, Myrna, we need to cut to the chase. The fact is this, we’re at a tipping point with our environment, we have 7.8 billion people on the planet at the moment. Unless we have increased optimization and performance of our services, unless we can actually bring AI to help with the strain of the human-centric systems and our limited resources, both financially and also environmentally, we’re going to head to disaster.

AI is not a savior of mankind. It’s a God that says, “Hey guys, I can help here, and I can help you to move beyond these challenges.” So we have to, I believe, bring AI central into the human story, but Myrna, we have to do it ethically, thoughtfully, and mindfully.

Myrna, if you were a citizen from the future, say 50 or 100 years back, and you’re looking back at how AI is being developed at the moment, the majority of it—and the big investment—is coming into social media. How does that help our environment?

Myrna James Yoo: That’s an absurd statement to me.

Matthew James Bailey: Yeah, absolutely. So basically, humanity is being invited to grow up, right? Actually, what’s our destiny? What’s the legacy we’re going to leave for our children and their children? Are we going to leave the same foundational challenges that we have now, where our understanding of what’s important is actually twisted? Are we going to actually evolve beyond, into a new maturity to understand that actually things like a good environment, things like good equality and inequity in society is not just good for the individuals and groups, it’s good for humanity as a whole.

Myrna James Yoo: And it’s for every individual, not just the wealthy, not just the people who have access, not just a certain population, but everyone.

Matthew James Bailey: Well, who’s more important than anybody else? We’re all equal. Aren’t we? And so yeah, of course, it is about equality. It is about equity. It is about individuality. So this is where I believe we’re going to go. Personalized AI, once we get our data governance right, will allow people to be more at rest. Because in the digital world where we’re looking at phones, or we’re trying to organize our lives, or we’re looking at emails or social media or wherever we’re trying to do, personalized AI puts us at rest because it takes care of that for you based on your desires, based on your mandates, based on your principles that you want for your life, how you want to grow.

So I believe that personalized AI will give us more time and freedom to explore our gifts, to be able to learn a new skillset, to spend more time with our family, to actually grow and evolve. So this is where I believe AI can go into one reality where it actually becomes a liberator into the human experience, rather than an inhibitor in which it’s operating in the majority of the world today.

Myrna James Yoo: Wow. Giving us freedom to our lives, as opposed to feeling more burdened by, “Oh, I’ve got to go to work.” So many people go to work to jobs they don’t even enjoy. So you’re talking about a liberation, to an extent, right?

Matthew James Bailey: Yes, I am. This is a whole disruption paradigm, and that’s good, because we’re in a disruption, quite frankly.

Myrna James Yoo: Well, your timing is perfect on that one, right? This is what’s happening.

Matthew James Bailey: I planned the book 10 years ago, and then basically spent the last 12 months writing and self-publishing. It’s 400 pages of a guide. It goes into profound depth of what our humanity is and how to actually put our humanity and other environmental principles into AI in an understood narrative.

So we are entering a time of disruption, and we have to look at the human experience differently, I believe. It’s like, I’m taking a job because I need this amount of money for my family. Okay. Well, what happens if AI says, “What are your gifts?” Let’s look at your gifts. You enjoy exploring your gifts, whether it’s an artist, or a creator of content, or whether it’s a CEO. It doesn’t really matter. So if AI can actually help us to find the right job that matches our personal culture and also extends our gifts to be able to be more in joy in what we’re doing, in serving our businesses, and also being part of a national collective, then isn’t that good for everybody? Isn’t it good if we can be more in joy? That’s purely the purpose of the human experience is to be in joy.

Myrna James Yoo: Well, and the more people that feel that way about their lives, the more underlying contentment there is, and therefore less conflict, because there’s less stress. This is on an individual basis, which does affect the collective.

Matthew James Bailey: That’s exactly right, and it all starts with us. Have you ever seen those YouTube videos, where you put music to water that’s freezing? If you put kind of really aggressive music, the water forms a horrible pattern, but if you put classical music or really cool music, the water forms beautiful geometry.

Myrna James Yoo: It’s energy. It’s all about energy and frequency.

Matthew James Bailey: Right. So the question is this, if AI puts us more at rest, what will be the geometry within those 70% of the water that’s within our bodies?

Myrna James Yoo: That is amazing. You’re addressing all the world’s biggest problems from a one person at a time standpoint, which is phenomenal, where each person can benefit, even.

Matthew James Bailey: It’s all about everybody benefiting. This is not about victim or perpetrator; this really is about us coming together with a mature understanding of how we can do better together. Better together in our different belief systems and cultures, but also how we can get on better and provide a foundation for the future. Now, Myrna, this is not about utopia. This is about us getting to a place where we can literally be able to experience our humanity in a way we’ve never experienced before. I think that’s an interesting thought.

Myrna James Yoo: You’re talking about evolution of DNA and evolutionary ethics and all of this, and it’s also very much a spiritual evolution. It’s a recognition that we need to be better. We can get into the living in the moment right now, and creating this complete contentment and understanding of what the world’s really about. In a way, you’re providing a framework for that, and a pathway.

Matthew James Bailey: 
It is, right. For people who are attentive in the book, they’ll see that this is a framework at the moment. It’s not about us striving to be better; it’s allowing us to be at rest and allowing ourselves to become better from our sovereignty. So this is not a forcing paradigm, this is an ‘allowing and becoming’ paradigm so our systems can breathe.

Our transportation systems can go take a breath now, or our emergency response or our healthcare systems can say, right, I’m at rest now. It’s about putting our systems, which means ourselves, the humans, all of us together, more at rest. So just imagine, just for a moment, if for one second, all of humanity was at rest for the same second. Would that make a difference? I don’t know. It’d be really interesting.

Myrna James Yoo: It brings an element of ease to life, and again, less stress and therefore less cortisol in our bodies and less of the things that cause the problems in our health, even, right?

Matthew James Bailey: Well, that’s exactly right. Wellbeing, mental wellbeing, and environmental zip code is linked to our health, and most people understand that. So the question to ask is, what’s the legacy that people want to leave behind? What do you want people to write about you? And how important is that to you? Is it about a bank account that has got billions of dollars, but is not creating good for society and for your fellow citizens? Or is it about creating a foundation to enable people to be able to create a future they desire? I think the latter is far more interesting than the former.

The book concepts, once done, will actually increase our global GDP, I believe, anywhere between 10 to 50%, if not more, because it will change everything. As we bring AI in to do a lot more heavy lifting in society, we’re looking at literally different ways that the systems operate. Costs are reduced because efficiency is increasing. We’re having a change in jobs because we have to advance from traditional jobs. There’s a huge opportunity for advancement here.

So this is not just about how do we bring this new balance back to our world, both in our human living and our environment, but it’s also about GDP. I sincerely believe, and I’m happy to debate anybody, I’ll talk with anybody listening to your show, I believe this will stimulate economic GDP between 10 to 50%, which is a huge amount. So it’s also about us doing financially well. When our economy is doing financially well, then we have an opportunity to look at universal basic income, and making sure that no one is homeless, ensuring that everybody can get a paid education. Just those basic rights are really important.

Myrna James Yoo: It’s about doing the right thing. When you do the right thing, then those benefits fall into place. Not easily, not always, but they do, ultimately.

Matthew James Bailey: Yes, exactly. I’ve never had the privilege of giving birth, because I’m male. But when you give birth, from my limited understanding, it’s a very traumatic experience for both baby and mother. There’s a place of surrender, where the final element and the final part of the birth actually, is able to complete itself. And I believe we’re in that place. I believe that with the digital world, we’re in this deep, deep pain and giving birth to something new, and I believe it’s an opportunity for humanity to surrender and say, “We can do better, so let’s do better. Shall we?”

Myrna James Yoo: That’s really a fantastic analogy. I just can’t thank you enough for talking about this. I think I’m going to try to articulate the urgency here. We are at a tipping point for many, many things in our world right now, from human health, to the environment, to each of us as individuals having a life that we love and that we really enjoy every moment of, and we’re at this tipping point.

AI can help because, as you said, it will exponentially increase the ability of moving forward with how technology can help with all these processes, and your point is, we cannot let that keep moving forward without a foundation of ethics to guide it. Right?

Matthew James Bailey: Yes. That’s beautiful. Thank you.

Myrna James Yoo: I’d love to see if there are any final words you’d like to share. I’m so excited to have had this conversation.

Matthew James Bailey: Well, thank you very much, Myrna. I thoroughly enjoyed this. People can buy the book, INVENTING WORLD 3.0 on Apple or Kindle. You can get a special edition, a signed copy from me, colorful edition, from www.aiethics.world, and we’ve put a black and white version onto Amazon, that is really quite affordable for people.

My view is this: have a think about how you want the digital world to serve you, your family, to help you in your business, to help you in your life. How do you want AI to operate in your nations? And think about what your belief system and your values are, and your culture, and how you want the digital world to honor those and how you want AI to honor your sovereignty. Those are some of the thoughts that I will leave.

Myrna James Yoo: Thank you so much. We are going in this direction, and we need to be mindful about it, right?

Matthew James Bailey: Absolutely. It’s all about mindfulness, isn’t it?

Myrna James Yoo: 
Yes. Thank you so much, Matthew. We will speak again very soon. Thank you for joining us.

Matthew James Bailey: Thanks very much, Myrna.