Ashley Llorens: Artificial intelligence and robotics

[MUSIC] >> Can we start to set some audacious goals around, enabling as many people as possible on the planet to live a long, healthy life, creating an atmosphere of shared prosperity, and what is the role of AI doing that? To me this big, societal narratives should be at the top level of abstraction in terms of what we're talking about, and then everything else is derived from that. [MUSIC] >> Hi, everyone. Welcome to Behind the Tech. I'm your host, Kevin Scott, Chief Technology Officer for Mic

rosoft. In this podcast, we're going to get behind the tech. We'll talk with some of the people who've made our modern tech world possible and understand what motivated them to create what they did. So join me to maybe learn a little bit about the history of computing and get a few behind-the-scenes insights into what's happening today. Stick around. [MUSIC] >> Hello and welcome to Behind the Tech. I'm Christina Warren, Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft. >> I'm Kevin Scott. >> Today on the show

, we're joined by Ashley LIorens. Ashley is a scientist and engineer with a 20-year career in research and development of AI technologies at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and he recently joined Microsoft Research. Ashley is also a hip hop artist known as SoulStice, and one of his songs was actually featured in the Oscar-nominated film, The Blind Side. I know there are a lot of theories out there about why so many scientists are awesome musicians, and there's this whole part about mus

ic be mathematical and scientists being good at recognizing the rules of music composition. But I'm curious what you think, Kevin. >> Well, I think it's one of those mysterious things because you are absolutely right. There are a lot of programmers and computer scientists who seem to have serious interests in music, but I don't know many of them who are so serious about their music that they have a real recording career. I think that is one of many things that makes Ashley special. >> No, withou

t a doubt, and I can't wait to hear you both talk about his various areas of expertise and these dueling careers. Let's chat with Ashley. [MUSIC] >> Our guest today is Ashley LIorens. Ashley is a scientist, engineer, and hip-hop artist. He worked for two decades at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory developing novel AI technologies and served as Founding Chief of the lab's Intelligent Systems Center. He was recently nominated by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to se

rve as an AI expert for the global partnership on AI. Besides his career in engineering, Ashley actually began his career as a hip hop artist and serves as a voting member of the Recording Academy for the Grammy Awards. About a month ago, Ashley joined Microsoft as a Vice President, Distinguished Scientist, and Managing Director for Microsoft Research. Welcome to the show Ashley, and to Microsoft! >> Thanks so much, Kevin. Great to be here. >> So awesome to have you here at Microsoft. We always

start these podcasts by talking a little bit about where you got started. I know you grew up in Chicago. How did you get interested in I guess either music or technology? >> Yeah. Maybe we'll go in order and I can just create two contrasting scenes for you. My interest in music, growing up in Chicago South Side, Chicago South suburbs, just really immersed in music throughout my childhood. Hip hop in particular was always fascinating to me. Just the degree of storytelling, the beats, the sounds,

growing up in the east coast vibes, listening to artists like Nas, west coast artists as well. And it grew to be something that I went from being a fan of to something I really wanted to contribute to, especially as I was coming of age and wanting to express myself. The challenge with where we grew up and everything was we didn't really have many outlets for that energy at first, and so we did what we could. Just kinda put a visual in your head. We would go to Circuit City at the time or what ha

ve you. We had like a boombox with two tape decks, and that was the recording studio. We were so proud of ourselves because we figured out how to do multi-layer vocals, with a $20 mic and the two tape decks. You record on the one tape and then you play it back and record over yourself. Over some instrumental, you get the multi-track vocal. That was like our $75 studio setup. It grew from there. The contrasting scene, and of course we can come back to like the career trajectories and things. But

the contrasting picture that I'd love to paint is just around the intellectual curiosity that was really a family value for us. Really, both of my parents were teachers. My dad introduced me to two things early in life that really shaped my curiosity. One being theoretical physics. I was quite young reading books by like Michio Kaku and not really understanding what string theory was, but really just being fascinated by it. Then Marvel Comics was the other thing. The Infinity Gauntlet, something

that's been a topic of conversation within our family for a few decades, it's great to see it on the screen. And so I just was really driven by a curiosity of understanding how the world works. Again, not as much of an outlet for that curiosity. That brings me to a story about outlets. I actually ran one of my first electrical engineering experiments by peeling the paper off of a twist tie and then sticking it into an electrical outlet to see what would happen. Really, you had these two scenes

unfolding. I say sharing some of the same fundamental motivations driven by curiosity, passion for understanding people and technology, and really grew to passion for having an impact on the world in these two different ways. >> Yeah. It's so interesting that so many of the people that we chat with who have these large creative appetites, they're creative across a whole bunch of different dimensions like have that grounded in curiosity. Just this voracious curiosity about how the world works an

d why things are the way that they are. I mean, it's really funny this electrical outlet story. I did it exactly the same thing when I was four years old. It wasn't a twist tie and I forget what I jabbed in it, but I remember my mother screaming when there was this loud crack and her child was crying. And that sort of fearlessnes the accompanies the curiosty is-- --curiosity strikes me as something that you can certainly cultivate, but it's hard to create when it's not there. Whereas I do think

fearlessness, like you can work really hard to become more fearless, and part of how fearless you can be is your environment. >> Yeah, it's really interesting. I'm always careful not to take too much credit for a lot of just the things that come naturally. I feel really fortunate to have these fundamental drives and everything. I think as children, we're naturally driven by our curiosity to explore. The outlet story is a great illustration of that. I think as adults, a lot of times if you're not

careful, the world will cause you to unlearn some of those fundamental drives. I think part of the thing that I've learned is to just allow myself to be driven by my curiosity and to behave fearlessly in that way and to ask questions and not be afraid to fail. I think part of what I'm grateful for is just that I've managed not to unlearn those things as an adult to just behave childishly in that respect at this point in my life. >> Was your dad a physics professor? >> He was a math teacher with

just a passion for math and science. But yeah, he's a high school math teacher and a track coach. >> That's awesome, so awesome. I am just curious when you stuck that stripped wire tie into the socket, what did your parents do? >> You know, I got away with it. Nobody was really around and it was an immediate fascination with the explosion and the smoke-- the mini-explosion and the smoke that happened and then an overwhelming sense of guilt. I carried. I don't know if they're listening to this p

odcast at some point, they may be surprised to learn that this was an experiment that I conducted. >> That's awesome. It's really-- we were talking about this on the last episode of the podcast with Jacob Collier, who's also a musician who uses technology in interesting ways. One of the things that we were talking about is how you preserve the fearlessness when people are making themselves vulnerable by exploring. And having an environment whether it's your parents when you're a kid, or a set of

colleagues, or peers, or your company, or your institution that helps you, that doesn't give you just uncritical positive feedback like that's almost as bad as just overwhelmingly negative feedback, but they can figure out how to strike that line between saying, "Wow, this is awesome that you're exploring this curiosity, but here's some things that could be better." But man, you should be really proud of yourself for pushing in this way. Is that something that you got as a child or like somethi

ng that you had to learn over time? >> It's a great question. I think a lot about that as a parent of my own children, but also in terms of leadership in a science and technology organization. But yeah, as a kid, I mentioned this intellectual curiosity as a family value, I never really got the sense that I was asking too many questions or that stupid questions were a bad thing. I thought my parents did a really good job of creating that environment for us. I try to do the same for my kids. I jus

t get really used to saying, "That's a great question" and just encouraging the asking of questions and entertaining the questions. It's hard because there is a such thing as boundaries that you have to try to enforce as well, there is a such thing as what I say is going to go now even though I've entertained your thoughts and things. So striking the right balance there. But just like I try to do for my kids, I try to create that environment in a professional setting as well. Always leading with

, man, that's a fantastic question, let's take some time to explore that. Let's make sure we hear everybody's conflicting viewpoints before we go forward. But I say in a similar way, you do have to set a direction and go eventually, so it's that striking that balance. >> Yeah. It's like the two stages I think of creativity in a group like making sure that you hear everyone's voice and everyone feels free to be bold in their thinking even when they're vulnerable. It's super important, but then yo

u have to make a decision. We call that at LinkedIn disagree and commit. It's perfectly fine to disagree, but at some point you have to make a choice about what you're going to do and then everybody needs to commit to doing that. >> Disagree and commit, I like that. >> Yeah. You have all of this stuff that you are curious about as a kid. What's your school look like? Did you have a strong music program, strong science program? Who is helping you explore these things that you're super interested

in? >> Yeah, it's interesting. I'll try not to get too much into like local politics, but the way that school districts work in Illinois, where I'm from, is that one set of schools is supported by the tax base around it. It's not necessarily like a shared set of resources across schools. So you have big inequities in terms of the level of resources. I went to a school on the lower end of that spectrum just from a resourcing standpoint, so that was always a challenge as I was leaving the school.

It's better now. But as I was leaving the school, it was in the process of losing its sports programs to debts and things like that. That was a tough environment. I would say I was still really fortunate to have some great role models. My math teacher, Mr. Amaro, I'm going to go ahead and call out the name, was really just a great champion and would push us hard. He was this gentlemen of Cuban descent that was from Florida and spoke with an accent, but was always positive. He would get to school

like 6:30 in the morning and would expect you to be there at that time if you are participating on his math team, which I did. There was my Spanish teacher and the principal that I got a chance to work with at student government. I would say maybe even in an environment that was resource-constrained like that, I think it's possible to have some fantastic role models. I feel fortunate there. >> When you are thinking about going to college and in college, how did you choose what to do since you'v

e got so many things you were interested in? >> It's funny because, when I think back to high school, because you're not really choosing a career at that point, you're choosing a major. So you find yourself in the guidance counselor's office, and it's like, "Hey if you're smart, you do math or science." I'm not sure that that's the right answer necessarily, but that's definitely a prevailing wind I felt. So it felt somehow more pragmatic to me to pursue that aspect just from a career standpoint.

It also jived with a lot of the intellectual curiosity that I mentioned. But I have always stubbornly refused to give up the creative aspects as well. So I took narrative writing courses, and a lot of courses on the creativity side too. I probably would have had a minor in those things if the engineering school had allowed it. I'd say that duality tracked me into my career. If you fast forward a bit to 2003, I was graduating from graduate school and starting a record label at the same time. My

plan was to just move into science and technology long enough to fund a record label, and then leave and go do music full-time. Because even having advanced to that point, after having gone through undergrad and gotten my masters and all, I still didn't really believe that a career in engineering was for me. I didn't have very many role models that were professional engineers and scientists, so I wasn't really sure if it was a place that I could be myself, be intellectually curious, and be entre

preneurial, and have an impact on my own terms. Those things were very important to me. So I set off, and what I found was, first of all, the opportunity to do both. I hung onto those things for as long as I could. For a good 10 years, I was doing both things. On the music side, just figuring out how to press records, vinyl records, and how to get my records into places like clubs in Tokyo, and then how to get myself into places like clubs in Tokyo to do performances. It took me around the world

and many adventures. But on a parallel path, I was really figuring out how to chart my own course within science and technology, how to be myself in doing those things, and really discovering a really cool career path right at the intersection of science and engineering, and having opportunities to be a principal investigator, even as a fairly young scientist for the Office of Naval Research and other sponsors. So publishing-- if you think, science, engineering, and music. Publishing papers and

academic conferences, going to-- flying overseas to do those conferences, but then leaving the poster session to go do a show at the club; presenting research in Prague and then doing a show in Prague. Then eventually being able to turn a lot of those scientific advancements into real-world technologies for the Navy and other sponsors. Just a tremendous set of adventures, as I reflect on it. >> What did you major in college? >> My undergrad was computer engineering. ECE is a joint college anywa

y, but my undergrad was computer engineering. Then my master's research focused on electrical engineering, digital signal processing. Then when I entered the professional environment, I immediately discovered machine learning, which eventually led me to artificial intelligence. It's interesting how, 20 some odd years ago, you could go through a whole degree without ever bumping into machine learning. I didn't discover machine learning until I got into my professional environment, but then I was

immediately hooked. Early in my career, I wouldn't have dared say I was into artificial intelligence, that's not what you said. You definitely didn't talk about neural networks at all, if you wanted to get your research funded. But as I advanced from machine learning for human systems, as decision support tools for humans to more robotics and autonomous systems, it naturally leads you to grander thoughts about artificial intelligence. You're creating an agent that's going to go out in the world

and perceive and understand its environment and act on the basis of its own perception. In my case, I spent a lot of time developing technologies for underwater robots, autonomous underwater systems. This is not a clean laboratory setting, this is the ocean. You're creating something that has to go out there and fend for itself in an open environment. It naturally leads you to grander questions about more robust and generalizable forms of intelligence, which it's been amazing to have an opportun

ity to think more and more about as I advance in my career. >> You and I probably were in school at the same time. I think I'm a little bit older than you are. But we were in school in the '90s, I'm guessing. >> Yeah. >> You're totally right. When I was working on my PhD, I dropped out, much to my advisor's chagrin. You are absolutely right. You just didn't mention neural networks if you wanted to graduate and get your papers published. So it's really amazing to see how much has changed just ove

r the past 20 years, and even accelerating over the past 10. But I do want to go back for a minute and chat about this interplay that must have existed between your professional career and your music career. Did they benefit each other? >> Yeah, that's a great question. It was an interesting journey to discover the inter-play. I would've said something like, not so much, at the very beginning of that journey, but I think the intersections have presented themselves to me over time, and they've be

en really satisfying to see. On the music side, especially as an independent artist with a very low budget, you had to really be convincing to convince people to work with you for little or no money, or at least up front. So you have to develop the skill of creating a pitch for yourself, a story that people would buy into, a vision for where you were going. Then as the executive producer of an album, you're a project manager. It needs a budget, it needs milestones. You know you're going to have

roles and responsibilities if you're ever going to get anything out into the world. It's interesting aspects of those things, obviously, transcend both. Then from a technology standpoint, if you think about audio recording and audio engineering, it's engineering. It's frequency selective signal processing, it's filters, it's gains and amplification, and all kinds of things. So I definitely think from a technology standpoint, from a project management standpoint, and I'd add another dimension too

, just communications and storytelling really transcend both. Over time, again, a lot of these intersections have presented themselves, and I realized, even without knowing it at the time, that each was benefiting from the other. One of the things that's been fun about my music career, figuring out how things happened and how things get done. At one point, it was just a curiosity, like, how do I get things into music and TV? Just another challenge. What I discovered is that there's these agents,

and they bring opportunities. What you have is you have movie editors, video editors, a lot of times they get to the end of their production, they have these reference songs in there. At some point, in The Blind Side, they got to the end, and there was a scene that they had 50 Cent's "In da Club." They're like, well, we ain't paying to license this song. So then they put out the call to all the agents. So my agent comes to me and they said, we need a replacement for 50 Cent's "In da Club." I ca

ll my guy in Ohio and I'm like, "Okay. Let's put something together." So I made two songs for them. One was That Thing. It's not really my voice, it's me replacing that song. It's my physical voice, but not my voice as an artist. But it was still fun. That one wound up in The Blind Side. The second one I made for that spot to replace the 50 Cent song was one that actually wound up in 50 Cent's "Power" a few years later. It was the two things I made to replace 50 Cent in the reference contract. >

> That's awesome. >> So it's a cool story. But no, I didn't meet 50 Cent or anything like that. >> It's fascinating that you said that. One of the reasons I try to explain this stuff. I love-- I love to learn about stuff. The process of learning for me is almost better than the end product that I end up in. That whole idea about figuring out how all of this craziness works behind the scenes, that sounds so appealing, more appealing than the song itself. >> That's exactly right. That's the fun of

it for sure. >> It's interesting, do you ever feel that it's easier for people to engage with, or maybe even have more curiosity about the music work that you've done versus this machine learning work that you're doing? Yeah, given that everybody understands music. It's just something innate in us, we are musical, we appreciate music to the degree of being a fan of musical art forms and fans of the people who create it. But you don't really have that with technology in the same way. >> Yeah, it

's interesting. This was actually something I really worried about at the beginning of my career and I have to confess. I actively tried to keep my music out and work separate, and I was not very forthcoming about the music side of what I was doing at work. Because I wanted to be taken seriously as a technologist. I was already someone who was from an underrepresented demographic. From that standpoint, being a black person, a black male in science and technology so to add that dimension too, I w

as like, "Okay, let me just focus on the science and the tech when I'm at work." But even that, over time, I grew to realize that I can bring my whole self and present both sides. But it was easier as I had a track record of scientific and technological accomplishments to back it up. It was hard when I was a blank slate coming out of college. For better or worse, I'm not sure what the right and wrong of that was, but I did wind up, for example, if you go on YouTube, you'll find the clip of me do

ing a hip hop duo with the Director of the Applied Physics Laboratory at one of the All Hands addresses and so that was the big coming-out party at work for the hip-hop side. On the technology side though, 20 years ago or 15 years ago, you say you're doing machine learning. People are like, "Oh, what's that? That sounds curious. Machines learn? I never heard of that." Now it's a little different. People know what AI is, when you say you do AI, machine learning, they're like, "Oh, tell me more. I

hear about this stuff all the time." That, plus the fact that technology is forming such a profound substrate of our whole human experience now. I think people are just more naturally engaged and curious about technology because it's such a part of our lives, whereas it started more so the kind of arts and music was something that people relate to. Now, I don't necessarily see a difference in terms of the level to which people are engaged in these two things. >> I think this whole notion of nar

rative, the thing that you were talking about a minute ago was really important. You just got in your musical career that you are telling stories and you understood as a young professional that you had to tell a story about yourself. I think with technologies like machine learning, narrative is also really important because they're complicated. If you go all the way to the bottom, just in terms of how they're implemented, the complexity of these things is very high. But the narrative is really i

mportant because it's such an important technology and it is having such a profound impact on what the future is looking like every day as it unfolds. That people need to be able to understand how to engage with it like, "What do I think about this technology? What do I think about policy about this technology? What do I think about my hopes and my fears for the future of this technology?" Have you thought much about the story of AI? >> Yeah, absolutely. Maybe there's a couple of sides for this.

Many sides, but maybe two sides I'll pick to explore there. One is absolutely the idea that AI is taken us in a bold new direction as a society and I think it's more important than ever that we can engage around these policy questions and really around the directions of AI. Definitely outside of computer science and across disciplines. We do need to create narratives even more than that. I think we need to create directions that we agree on, that we want to take this technology. A lot of times

I think people are discussing AI as something separate from human beings and human intelligence. I think we need to be thinking of these two things as complimentary. What are our goals for these things? Can we start to set some audacious goals around enabling as many people as possible on the planet to live a long, healthy life, creating an atmosphere of shared prosperity, and what is the role of AI in doing that? To me, these big societal narratives should be at the top level of abstraction in

terms of what we're talking about and then everything else is derived from that. I think if we're going to just let 1,000 flowers bloom and see where we land on this thing. I think we could wind up with some really unintended consequences from that. >> Yeah, I really, really agree. I think too, if you have the wrong narrative, you could have unintended consequences as well. One of the things that I have been telling people over and over again over the past handful of years is just a useful devic

e about thinking about the future of AI is that AI, especially its embodiment in machine learning, is a tool and just like any other tool that people have invented, it's a human-made thing and humans use it to accomplish a whole wide variety of tasks. The tool is going to be as good or as bad as the uses to which we put it. And it's just very, very important I think for us have a set of hopeful things that we're thinking about for those uses of AI as we have our anxieties and both are important.

It will certainly be used for bad things. But as with any technology, the hope is that there will be orders of magnitude more positive things and good things that people will attempt to do with it than the bad and part of how we get to that balance of good versus bad is the stories that we're telling ourselves right now about what it's capable of and what to be wary about. >> I think that's right on point. We can even ask yourself, what does it mean to behave intelligently as a species? I actua

lly think we're getting to the point where we can start asking ourselves and holding ourselves to some standard there. If you just think about artificial intelligence at a low level from an agent standpoint, I think intelligence itself has the ability to achieve goals, to set and achieve goals. Then what do you have to do? You have to be able to have some understanding of the world around you through some mechanisms of perception. Whether that's our human modalities or other kinds of modalities.

You have to decide on a course of action that best achieves your goals and then you have to carry it out like these are the things you do to be intelligent. When you extrapolate that to us as a species, because one of the hallmarks of human intelligence is our social intelligence. Our ability to collectively set, pursue goals, and things like that. As you can see, I'm cursed now to see everything through the lens of intelligence, this is just how my lens on the world. But I think it's helpful,

I think it's useful. I think in order to behave intelligently as a species, we have to do some of these things that you're talking about, setting some bold visions and directions and figuring out how to organize around those. >> Yeah, when I was a kid, the thing that really inspired me, I think, to become a scientist were the stories that I was reading. I grew up in the '70s and '80s. You had a whole mix of things. I read a bunch of science fiction that was techno Utopian. These future worlds th

at had a bunch of technology, some of which now exist, some of which will probably never exist. People living these crazy interesting lives full of drama in these futuristic worlds, and then you had some dystopian things as well. I always think about these two different portrayals of AI. There's Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and then there's the Terminator from the Terminator movies. The latter is the anxious depiction of AI. What happens if you build machines that get out

of control? The Commander Data version of AI, I think, is really, really interesting because, I don't know whether you've watched the Star Trek: Picard series, which is the recent thing with Patrick Stewart and Data again, played this very, very important role in the story that they were telling. The interesting thing about Data is even though he was an android, he was an artificial intelligence, he was always the thing that the writers in Star Trek use to shine a spotlight on humanity. In some

sense, he was the most human character in the show and they use his artificiality as this plot device to explore what our human nature is. I think that gets to what you were just talking about. I think AI may tell us an awful lot about who we are. >> Yeah, I think that's right and I want to seize on the theme of dystopian thinking because you and I were talking previously about the utopian thinking, setting goals. I do think it's even increasingly important to do that dystopian thinking, to do i

t in a way that's constructive. Coming from the Federal Science and Technology space and advising within the Department of Defense and those kinds of circles, it's easy to get focused on really hyperbolic types of concerns like the Terminator and Skynet and all those things. I'd like us to do more dystopian thinking, but I do like us to also ask the right questions, to take that mirror and reflect like you were saying with Commander Data. If you think about the mirror, there's a series on Netfli

x that I love called Black Mirror. This is the reflection. I think these are the kinds of concerns we should really be thinking seriously about. Ways in which people will use technologies in a way that hurts people, whether through positive intent or negative intent. I love the kind of Twilight Zone-esque ways in which the best intentions are turned into unintended consequences. At least things like the Killer Bees episode, as a cautionary tale on autonomous systems or the episode where the brai

n-computer interface that the gentleman was using imprisons him in his own mind. Those particular questions may not be the right one, but that way of thinking, the dystopian thinking, but really asking the right questions, I think is important for us as we move forward. >> It's an interesting ethical dilemma I think, thinking about where the line is between inaction and safe-guarded action. The safest thing to do in life is to stay at home and don't come into contact with anyone else. You can su

rround yourself in this bubble of safety where you really can't do much. You can look at almost any substantial technology that we've ever built and if you let your imagination run wild, you are going to be able to imagine a huge number of bad things that you can do with the technology. If you let that imagination paralyze you and convince you not to build a technology at all, not to leave your house at the beginning of the day to engage with the rest of humankind, you miss out on these incredib

le things that help us become more human I think. Then solve really important problems, like they help us be healthier, and live longer, and have much higher quality of life that supports a larger population on the planet. If you just stripped away even the past 50 years worth of technological developments, the world would be in a terrific amount of trouble, which is something we often forget. It's that framework that you use to decide on how you balance positive action versus inaction and like

not get paralyzed in one way or the other. >> I think it's right. I think you articulated the trade space there very well. I don't know the right answer. >> Neither do I. >> This is the trade space to be aware of and always conscious of. I also think we need the right dose of humility about our understanding of the world and ourselves. We still have so much to learn, even about the ways that our own bodies and minds work, much less the very rich interconnected ecological systems that we live ins

ide of. I was actually moderating a panel at the National Academy of Sciences about science communication and the communication around uncertainty in science. I'm not an expert in this area, but the discussion was about genetic manipulation and doing things like putting genetic manipulations out into populations of say insects or something to cause some population-level change. The idea of making a change like that in an ecological system that's so interconnected, and the repercussions, and the

unintended consequences that could happen. I'm not saying it's necessarily the right or wrong thing to do, but certainly, I think we need to approach it with the right dose of humility and to be humble as we explore that trade space that you just laid out there. >> Yeah. Look, I think that notion of humility is extraordinarily important for so many reasons. Maybe one of the more important reasons we need to have humility is just that we need to make sure that we're not drinking our own Kool-Aid,

so to speak, that we're not overconfident about what it is we think all of our technology and all of our science is telling us. One of the things that I've tried to push back on a lot over the past 12 months is folks who are trying to take all of their incredible IQ and all of their incredible energy and apply it to helping with the pandemic. It's this horrible thing and we've got this tremendous sense of urgency. Even though we have that urgency, I've tried really hard to help us or to encoura

ge people to not throw away our scientific process. The scientific process is so valuable because it's only allegiance is to truth. That process of finding the truth is incredibly messy. Even when you think you found truth, you probably haven't. Just constantly reassessing what you think you believe and how you arrived at those beliefs is integral to the way science works. It's unforgiving. If you insist dogmatically that this thing is true and you just haven't used all of this apparatus of scie

ntific rigor that we built up over the centuries, things will spectacularly fail. I think that humility, we really have to not think that we understand more than we do and we certainly shouldn't be insisting that we've found truths we really haven't proved out. >> Yeah, it's so important. Maybe this is a great segue into aspects around diversity and inclusion because I do think that can really be a super-power for us if we leverage it because like you said, it's so messy getting from our subject

ive observations, even of experimental data, much less a world experience, and everyone, even when you try to be unbiased, you bring all that inherent worldview into everything that you do. In some of these cases, I think our only hope is to integrate over enough of those conflicting worldviews to try to triangulate on what is objectively true or at least the closest we can get there. There are so many aspects of diversity to really be focused on, demographic diversity, etc. But you definitely n

eed people that think differently, that have different lived experiences, etc. How do we create pipelines of those folks into these fields? How do we create safe spaces for people to think differently and pursue their careers differently? There's just so many aspects. But I think if we get it wrong, we're dooming ourselves, I think, to the kinds of groupthink that happened when you're not integrating, so to speak, over a lot of these differing worldviews. >> Yeah. I could not agree with you more

. The things that I've seen be most successful over by a couple of decades as professional in technology have been places where you have exactly what you said, that diversity of experiences, that diversity of perspectives, that diversity of backgrounds, and a real diversity of thinking. Who knows how many wonderful things that you can dream up of or how many things you can inspire in others because you are both a musician and an engineer? Having more of that I think is just so valuable. There ar

e infinite wonders in the world that we will never discover, which is maybe one of those optimistic slash depressing things to say. We won't even get to the interesting part of that infinity unless everybody is bringing the best that they have to figuring out what the future is. >> Yeah, I think that's right. Even as our technologies advance, etc., I think the kinds of global challenges that we have to step up to are getting greater and greater. If you take this simulation that we're all involve

d in and you fast-forward it enough years, the statistically improbable things that we are afraid of, they come to fruition in the pandemic is an illustration. I do think we have to figure this out and get to the point where we're activating our collective intelligence in the best possible way. >> Yeah, and I think that if you think about some of these things like preventing the next pandemic or making the impact of the next pandemic less than every one that came before them, or climate change,

or dealing with the demographic inversions that are happening in the industrialized world. Population growth is going to slow down, in the US, and Europe, and China, Japan, and Korea. It will start to slow down in India, and then it's going to start booming in Africa. The thing that we know is that population growth is the thing that implies the growth of ingenuity and creativity and whatnot. How you can start investing now in Africa so that as that population explodes over the coming decades, a

ll of those energetic young people are going to be equipped to help all of us old folks figure out how to solve some of the big challenges that we've got facing us. >> Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. Again, I'm not an expert in everything that I'm curious about, but it also seems to me that a lot of our economic systems are predicated on this notion of expanding population. >> Yeah. >> There's some interconnectedness there. As these population trends start to invert, like you're saying, w

e need to do some serious thinking about how our economic markets and things allocate resources and all that. So there's some really substantive and fundamental things I think we're going to need to be rethinking here. >> Yeah. You've mentioned it a couple of times, actually, one of the things that we should, with a tremendous amount of urgency, be focusing on is how you can use machine learning to help with healthcare and aging. I read this article last year in the New York Times about the elde

rcare crisis in Maine, where there just aren't enough people to help take care of the aging population there. So it's not a wage thing or anything else like, for no amount of money you can hire enough people to take care of all of the elderly. This is going to play out everywhere soon. I think in Japan they already are seriously thinking about the technology that has to be built to help make sure that, you can have the elderly living a dignified life in their later years. You still are able to p

ick up the slack in productivity in the population because you have fewer workers than you've ever had before. And you preserve the ability of what workers that you do have to be able to do their jobs, do the creative things that they are doing to build the future of those societies, without being completely consumed with taking care of their parents and older relatives. The only thing that sorts that out is technology. Otherwise, you have a collapse in the quality of life because there just are

n't enough people to do all of the work. >> Absolutely. Then there I think we have a really amazing opportunity in automation and autonomous systems, where AI and robotics meet. The ability to ingest data and do analysis, make decisions, but also to carry those decisions out whether they're in, we have a lot of automation emerging in factory settings and controlled environments. But I think a lot of the challenge comes in these more open environments, these less structured environments, environm

ents with people and really making robotics and automation work in those kinds of settings. I'd just love to see more and more people, more and more of our intellectual capacity thinking about some of those challenges in a human-centered way. >> I could not agree more. So we're almost up on time here, and so I think the last thing I like to ask everyone is what you do for fun or in your spare time. It's a weird question because I think almost everyone I chat with like things that their work is f

un and they don't have much spare time. But I ask the question anyway. >> Well, so I'm definitely one of those folks. I'm definitely one of those people that thinks my work is fun. But I love being a father. I love hanging out with my kids, and in pandemic times, it's been all about video games and virtual social experiences through video game platforms have been just the thing that has kept the social fabric together, among our kids and their friends' circles and everything. So I'm someone who

grew up on video games and had a Nintendo, an Atari and all those things, so I love games. Then just getting into whatever my kids are into in general, which right now is these virtual games, which I'll be honest with you, that those kinds of platforms and I'm not so crazy about, but I love spending time with my kids, I can just again, make a point to get into whatever they're into. >> So what are your kid's favorites? >> They're into Roblox right now, and Adopt Me is a game in Roblox, and Piggy

. I don't know if you've seen those. It's those things and it's like, well, I guess I have to get into these things to spend time with them. Sometimes I can't come into their room. I have to come into the virtual server to see them. But I sometimes try to pull them back towards more console-oriented games too, because that's my sweet spot. >> It's really fascinating, I've got a 10-year-old and a 12-year-old. The 10-year-old is like a legit Roblox tycoon. He's learning all sorts of stuff about ec

onomics and he has this facility with virtual worlds that will go with him the rest of his life. It's really fascinating to hear that your kids are into that too. It's an interesting shift. >> Yeah, and a sign in at times for sure. >> Well, thank you so much, Ashley, for taking time to chat with us today. I'm so glad that you're here at Microsoft and just can't wait to be able to work more with you over the coming years. >> Likewise, Kevin really appreciate the opportunity, had a lot of fun toda

y. >> Awesome. [MUSIC] >> Well, that was Kevin's conversation with Ashley LIorens and I was so fascinated by everything you talked about. First of all, he is brilliant. And as you were saying at the top of the show, it's really rare that you see someone who has achieved parallel careers in two very different fields. Not that there might not be, as you said, a mysterious connection between music and between computer science. But they are on the face of it, how they work very, very different. I th

ink that's just so stunning that someone like Ashley exists, honestly. >> It's so great to see him have the success that he's had in both of these things that he has passion about. I think a lot of us get pushed into one direction or the other fairly early in our career. Like I know you for instance, you're a computer programmer and you are a writer and a journalist. Those are also two things that look very different from one another on the surface, and I'm guessing that through your career and

I'm guessing Ashley had this as well, and I have my own experience with it, like you get encouraged to, ''Oh, you got to focus, you got to focus. You've got to pick one thing.'' I always love seeing people like Ashley where it's no, actually don't have to pick one thing. I'm going to do both. >> No, I totally agree, and you're exactly right. I think most of us, we do have one thing that we either have to pick or we have to focus more on. I love that he's had these parallel careers. But it was re

ally also interesting to me hearing him talk about how at the beginning he tried to keep his music life separate from his technology work because he wanted to be taken seriously. I'm glad he doesn't have to do that anymore, that he can share his full self. But it also makes me think, in technology, people really need to be a lot more open-minded about the different backgrounds and interests people have. >> I could not agree with that more, when he said that it really, resonated with me because a

little bit of it I'm guessing is imposter syndrome and you feeling very uncomfortable early in your career about whether or not you belong in the place that you've chosen to be. Part of it is legitimately, these professions have these notions of, this is what it means to be a blah. Whether it's a medical doctor or a lawyer or a computer scientist, academic programmer at a tech company. The reality is if we were just much more open about things and encouraged people to be their authentic selves

early on and help them understand that we all feel like imposters at some point or the other, that maybe we'd have more people doing more interesting things. >> For sure, and I mean, I think it also, and this is really evident in the work that Ashley does, it's so important in AI to have different perspectives. I think that's why it's amazing that we have someone like him who is an expert on that area, who also has different perspectives, then other people might, who come into this because of hi

s curiosity that he was talking about that he's had since he was a kid. I have a feeling that you would need to be curious to be able to do the things that he does. You need to have that sense of asking why and wanting to learn more, and I love that. >> For sure. I agree, it is critically important in technology in general, and particularly with AI, like these things that are going to have a high degree of influence over what the future looks like. You just really need a diverse set of people he

lping you build those things. Just because the technology itself has so much impact, like you want it to be in the hands of as many people as humanly possible. >> For sure. Well, I love the conversation and I can't wait to see what Ashley does now that he's at Microsoft. >> Me too. >> That's it for today's episode. Thank you so much to Ashley for joining us today and send us a message anytime at behindthetech@Microsoft.com, and be sure to keep listening. >> See you next time.