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The Current Transcript for October 7, 2019

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: If the food system can be sustainable and feed everyone, we probably will survive as a species, but if the food system falls apart, the civilization's not far behind.

LAURA LYNCH: From farmer's fields to oceans to laboratories, Lenore Newman considers all the ways the world may be heading away from the joy of cooking and toward what she calls culinary extinction. The future of food in half an hour. After that, the future of political leadership?

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VOICE: Anakin Skywalker. I was expecting someone with your reputation to be a little older.

LL: Star Wars showed audiences with cyborgs running armies and nations like this Sith general. Turns out academics say this could be more than a fantasy. But we start today with flesh and blood politicians, six of them on the debate stage tonight all angling for the loyalty of other humans: voters. I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current.

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Our panel of former parliamentarians gives the inside scoop on how federal leaders prepare for the big debate

Guests: Allan Rock, Olivia Chow, Gerry Ritz

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VOICE 1: You sir owe the Canadian people a deep apology for having indulged in that kind of practice with those kinds of appointments.

VOICE 2: Well I've told you and told the Canadian people Mr. Mulroney, that I had no option.

VOICE 1: You could have said I am not going to do it. This is wrong for Canada and you chose to say yes to the old attitudes and the old stories of the Liberal Party. That is not good enough for Canadians.

VOICE 2: I had no option. I was able.

VOICE 1: That isn't a vowel of failure. That is a confession of non-leadership and this country needs leadership. You had an option sir. You could have done better.

LL: If you're a Canadian of a certain vintage, you'll remember that exchange over patronage appointments between Progressive Conservative leader Brian Mulroney and Liberal leader John Turner. It's the kind of moment that can make an election. And tonight federal leaders are hoping to make that kind of impact or avoid that kind of blow. Six federal leaders will be facing off in a two hour English language debate. Joining me are three former MPs to share insight into what to watch for. Allan Rock was a Liberal MP from 1993 to 2003. He held several cabinet posts including Justice Minister and Minister of Health. He's in our Ottawa studio. And Gerry Ritz served as a Conservative MP from 1997 until 2017, including eight years as Minister of Agriculture. He's in our Saskatoon studio. Olivia Chow served as an NDP MP from 2006 to 2014 and she's with me here in our Toronto studio. Welcome everyone.

ALLAN ROCK: Thank you.

GERRY RITZ: Good morning.

OLIVIA CHOW: Good morning.

LL: Allan Rock let me start with you. How often do we really see those election defining moments like that one from by Brian Mulroney during the 1984 election?

ALLAN ROCK: They're rare despite their enormous impact and with six people on the stage it'll be even more difficult. But you know let me say something more generally about tonight's not as a liberal but as a Canadian this national campaign to date has really been disappointing and dispiriting. The U.S. style clash with personal attacks and wedge issues little substantive discussion that I hope tonight the sort of reset the campaign and I know there isn't time and place on the stage like tonight to have a substantive discussion, but hopefully they'll signal that in the balance of the campaign, will really talk about the issues that count to Canadians.

LL: Well Gerry Ritz, what do you think of that because with six leaders up there, there's five moderators, there's audience questions. There's not a lot of time for the leaders to actually make their cases. Do you anticipate a moment like that Brian Mulroney John Turner moment tonight?

GERRY RITZ: Well everyone always hopes for one, but it very very rarely happens as Alan says with six people in the debate five moderators. It's a bit of a circus. Canadians are starting to get tuned in. There's two weeks left. This could be the turning point as Allan says to start to focus more on policy. Everybody talks about that, but it's like going to a hockey game and saying I don't want to see a fight, but then standing when there is one. So it's a bit of a joke juxtaposition of politics as usual and what people say they really want.

LL: Olivia Chow what are you going to be watching for tonight?

OLIVIA CHOW: Well I'll be watching for people's personality to shine through because this seems to be where this campaign is going. Yeah, I think we are too obsessed with the horse race and polling numbers and all of those things instead of substantial issues and people's personality. Do we trust that leader to deliver what I need you know? What ordinary Canadians need? I think that's the key. And I think the question is trust.

LL: Okay. So let's talk about what your various leaders need to do. Allan Rock, Justin Trudeau. What would success look like for him tonight?

ALLAN ROCK: Well he has to play both offence and defence. I think it's important to maintain his composure because he will be the principal target of everybody on the stage demonstrate confidence without arrogance. He has to show he's prepared but not programmed and sort of go beyond the talking points. Stress the strengths of his his mandate and big the make the case that if Canadians vote NDP or. They're essentially voting for the Conservative Party. Incumbency has both pluses and minuses. But the big plus for an incumbent is that look I haven't been perfect. But you know about my government it's better than the alternative an untested leader of another party. And so I think that's the general approach he's got to take.

LL: Gerry Ritz arguably Andrew Scheer will be a target as well. What does he need to do tonight?

GERRY RITZ: Well I think he will be the primary target of all of the debaters and possibly some of the moderators, but at the end of the day he's proven his mettle. He's he's stood in there. He's been hounded for weeks on questions that he had answered early on. You know this is a turning point for him as well. I mean the whole campaign has been about affordability. He's got some great examples of the multitude of Canadians that are $200 from personal bankruptcy, insolvencies are up. The economy is not working. Our environmental plan isn't working. So there's a lot of fodder to go after Mr. Trudeau with. The problem is he will not have any tag team opportunities in my mind from any of the other leaders.

LL: And Olivia Chow what does Jagmeet Singh strategy. What does it need to be?

OLIVIA CHOW: Well I think he'll continue to connect with everyday Canadians and be genuine. I have his picture because we read his book off him sleeping on the floor with his dad is sick mentally sick dad in his university dorm. And how difficult it was. But he did he understand why he's in it. Right. He's in it to make everyday Canadians life better. So every time he I meet faced a racist comment or something really tough he responds with courage and with kindness compassion and he needs to contrast that with what Justin did and when when someone was yelling at him about doing something with mercury poisoning and crossing narrow he belittled them he he he he mocked them you know so I think if he could show why he's in it and contrast it I think it'll make a huge difference because at the end of the day it's not what you say, it's what you do, right? And who do you trust to fight for you to be on your side?

LL: Let me let me just stay with you for a moment. There'll be three other leaders on the stage. Yves-Francois Blanchet of the Bloc Qubecois, Green leader Elizabeth May and Maxime Bernier of the People's Party. How do you think they'll factor into this?

OLIVIA CHOW: Good question. I don't know. I just hope they don't talk against each other. It's hard to say but what I do know is the CBC poll tracker had Jagmeet's number, leadership number going up and he seems to be the only one doing that.

LL: But doesn't he need to fend off Elizabeth May? Isn't that where his constituency, where votes might lie for him?

OLIVIA CHOW: No I don't think so. I don't think so because Elizabeth May has other problems like on abortion et cetera you know. But you know like no he really needs to focussed on when tough times you know Trudeau trusted his friends who put taxes in trust funds in Cayman Islands and as a result Canadians are maybe losing millions in lost revenue and we could take that money and support those indigenous kids instead of Justin taking them back to court or. ou know that's that's really when times are tough who can you trust to stand on your side. And if he keeps contrasting that, keep being genuine and I think he'll do fine.

LL: Allan Rock What what role do you think the other leaders will play?

ALLAN ROCK: Well I'd be interested in Gerry's view on this too, but from my point of view it's going to be interesting to watch this sort of differential targets as the night goes on. I think Andrew Scheer's main target has to be Trudeau, not the NDP because I think the more support the NDP has the better for sheer splitting the liberal vote and sure has to show that he's moderate and not scary the avoid the climate change discussion where I think he has a weakness and move toward the centre. I think Mr. Singh has to focus on Trudeau and the Greens share as well. But especially Trudeau and the Greens I think Jagmeet Singh has a lot of goodwill from the mature behaviour he's shown over the last weeks. He has to build on that. It's true first the Greens are concerned this is me as the only woman on stage tonight and she has personal qualities that have I think generated a lot of popularity for her much upside. But the question is is she credible. She has had parties had some stumbles during the campaign so as to Bernie I hope we hear a little from him as possible tonight. The trouble is with with all and of course the bloc has only one audience in Quebec. But the trouble with that many people on the stages is a danger of people talking over each other. And that's not good television. It's Canadians don't like it. I think viewers don't like it. So it's going to be tough to come out of that tonight having an opportunity to express a coherent thought.

LL: OK. Gerry Ritz, of those three other leaders, who do you think poses the biggest challenge for Andrew Scheer?

GERRY RITZ: Well as people that have been up on those debate stage, not at that level, but certainly it's all about the projection of your personality, the strength is there, the professionalism is there. I watched the body language in most cases because as everybody says everybody's talking over everybody else, certainly Mr. Trudeau has to be the target for Andrew Scheer. He's looking to replace him as prime minister sooner rather than later. There's a number of issues that he may key off on that the ultimate soundbite is always the target for everyone. But with six people up on the dais that's practically a zero percent chance. So there will be opportunities to get your your main party your main themes across you know with with Andrew's been talking about affordability. That's what they've been hearing at the doorsteps. People are not seeing any kind of economic stability in their lives and looking for that. So it comes down to basic pot pocketbook issues as former politicians of course we think at this point everybody's riveted on politics and probably 99 out of 100 people are saying I'm going back to school today. You know they settled that. So it's yeah it's one of those tried to capture the imagination of people to say things could be different.

LL: But Gerry Ritz, Maxime Bernier finished second in the Conservative leadership vote and he's going to be up on that stage beside Andrew Scheer pushing some issues that may appeal to the Conservatives right flank. Is that a threat for Andrew Scheer?

GERRY RITZ: Overall I don't think so. I've been you know I've known Max for years a personal friend. I've disavowed that friendship with some of the things he's done. You know they've run a campaign of stunts as opposed to anything else. You know I'm seeing some signs out here in Western Canada. There's a frustration. I know Jason Kenney was criticized for being in Ontario talking about you've got to get these pipelines or Alberta is going to make some silly moves and he's absolutely right. And I'm seeing that here that frustration is building and hopefully that can be focussed on October 21st.

OLIVIA CHOW: Well actually you're absolutely right. The West is actually very different than what Allan was talking about. Allan said that the main threat you know if you vote NDP will go to the oil help to conserve that which is not true in the West because the main threat on the West is actually the New Democrats and when you come to a pipeline like you know Trudeau decide to buy one anyway so you know for things that matter to people out west it's very different than what people are thinking in Ontario. And you know often what I see here is this obsession of you know based on fear you know if you would do this if you vote for that happen you would then then then you know to conserve together like a blah blah blah. You know I think it's important to shine through based on hope, hope for something better for our grandkids, hope for better for Indigenous children, you know rather than being obsessed with these fear things you know.

LL: Yeah. You remind us though that there have to be different messages almost for different constituencies. So let's talk about debate preparation, which is what's going on right now. Allan Rock you helped Jean Chretien prepare for the debate back in the day. What went into that?

ALLAN ROCK: Well I made a very modest contribution but I think basically as I mentioned, you want to be prepared but not just have your talking points, be able to be confident and have enough you know composure that you can respond to what's happening on the stage. Watch your body language to make sure you are communicating the confidence you need to show and then have in your in your back pocket in the back of your mind some lines that you've prepared in advance depending on the topic. Everybody wants the knockout punch. It rarely occurs but it's nice to have those simple lines in your head depending on the topic that you can express succinctly and powerfully at the right moment. And that will be the clip that survives the debate. And I think everybody wants to have those in their mind. But in terms of general preparation as people have said you want to communicate a personality that's attractive and you want to avoid bickering and you want to focus on the substance to the extent to which it's possible.

LL: Gerry Ritz what can't you prepare for?

GERRY RITZ: The unexpected of course. The curveball it comes out of nowhere. In debate preparation it's all about being firm in your stance but flexible in your responses. Any good comedian will tell you timing of the punch line is often more important than the punch line. And it's very similar in a debate to you want to work your list in a prioritized fashion because people do tend to to note. Or you also want to reiterate that that final point again at the end because people are just tuning in so it's a matter of capturing your audience not necessarily the folks up on stage with you you kind of forget that they're there and focus on the Canadians that are watching.

LL: Olivia Chow I'm interested in your perspective on this because you obviously were behind the scenes with Jack Layton preparing for debates. What goes into that preparation for a high stakes event?

OLIVIA CHOW: Well knowing all the issues of course. Being able to know in each of the question how to connect with people how to contrast and then you propose what your solution is. But ultimately is imagining the person that is watching this debate and what that person is struggling with and what matters to them and to connect with that person. That's the most important because everything else is secondary. And of course those lines are important as Allan has said.

LL: Is that when Jack Layton had to do? He had to memorize the lines to get them ready to deliver?

OLIVIA CHOW: Yes he did.

LL: Again and again.

OLIVIA CHOW: Absolutely and you know that line, you know sir you didn't.

LL: You had an option?

OLIVIA CHOW: That one. But if you don't show up at work, don't expect a raise, right? And they prepared ahead of time and you know the next day the NDP rode out the ads.

LL: It wasn't spontaneous?

OLIVIA CHOW: Well I think the Liberals and Conservatives have their lines, probably have their ads done. We have to campaign the literature already to roll out. I don't you know.

LL: But that's an interesting point you raise because.

OLIVIA CHOW: It echoes.

LL: Especially with the proliferation of social media and Allan Rock, I wonder how much you think that changes what happens on the debate stage and how important that is.

ALLAN ROCK: Well it is terribly important. But you know a lot of people tonight will be watching baseball or hockey and as you say it's not every Canadian who's going to be frozen, you know glued to the screen. However the debate is an important milestone in Canadian elections. The debate itself is important. Equally important is the commentary the day after who won who lost. And so it's a milestone in the campaign. And I think both of my colleagues Olivia and Jeri know that in a campaign there's a moment which hasn't yet arrived. When people sort of start to decide they need. There's a moment of decision coming. This is an important part in leading up to that. And I think the debate and the commentary in the days to come on social media and in print and on television will be very important in contributing to the sense of who won this thing and you know where we're going. What we're going to decide.

LL: Gerry Ritz, what do you say to that?

GERRY RITZ: Well a debate is one tool. It's a very important tool. It can be the penultimate moment that creates the momentum moving forward. But as Allan said and I got a visual there, it's like a rock dropped in water. It's the ripple effect over the next two weeks or to the next debate when things might turn a page. So it's definitely a part of the solution when it comes to maintaining strong democracy. The key is to incite people to rally around and get out and vote. I mean our voting numbers are going down and down and down and everybody talks about how do we how do we get more people involved. And that's how you get the I'll call the minorities for lack of better terminology, but the people with a gripe how they actually get their voice heard is by taking part in democracy, not by withdrawing from it.

OLIVIA CHOW: Young people can actually vote now because on 5th to 9th you can go to your campus and actually vote there.

LL: OK you guys, 20 seconds each. What will you be watching for in the debate tonight? Olivia Chow.

OLIVIA CHOW: Those moments and what can be followed because for me there is really importance. So Hannah Drake, we're all following him. Jagmeet on Instagram. Let's get them to like his Instagram.

LL: Allan Rock?

ALLAN ROCK: Well I'll be watching. Mr. Trudeau and how he responds to the multi sided attacks that will come. I'll be watching for him to keep his composure. He performed so well in the 2015 debate. I'm looking for him to reach that standard of performance and come out tonight confident and and reassuring Canadians that he's ready for a second mandate.

LL: Alright Gerry Ritz, just like the debate, you have 20 seconds. What do you say?

GERRY RITZ: Well the wide angle shots are very telling, the body language of the other players at the same time you try to focus on what's being said and how it fits into the greater puzzle. Most of it I think will come out on the follow. The Instagram, the Twitter, the Facebook posts, as this is going on people are active and I'll be watching that as well.

LL: Alright. Thank you to all three of you. I expect you'll be breaking out the popcorn tonight and we'll all be watching.

ALLAN ROCK: Thank you Laura.

GERRY RITZ: Thank you Laura.

OLIVIA CHOW: Thank you.

LL: Allan Rock was a Liberal MP from 1993 to 2003 and held several cabinet posts including Justice Minister. He was in our Ottawa studio. Gerry Ritz served as a Conservative MP from 1997 until 2017, including eight years as minister of agriculture. He was in our Saskatoon studio. Olivia Chow served as an NDP MP from 2006 to 2014. She's in our Toronto studio. And you can watch all six federal party leaders face off in the English language debate tonight from 7 to 9 p.m. Eastern Time. The National's Rosemary Barton is one of the debate moderators. CBC's parliamentary correspondents are going to provide analysis during the debate on cbcnews.ca and the CBC News app and our radio debate special will be hosted from Ottawa by Chris Hall and Suzanne Bonner. Well coming up on Wednesday evening, The Current is hosting an election town hall event in Surrey, British Columbia to talk about the money in your pocket. Whether struggling to pay rent, keep kids fed or put another way to retire, Canadians are thinking about which federal party has the best plan to keep them afloat. That's why we are looking at issues of affordability that affect pretty much every Canadian. We'd love to hear from you if you're in the area. The forum is happening Wednesday, October 9th from 7 to 9 at the Westminster's Savings Theatre in Surrey. Tickets are free, but they have to be reserved in advance at cbc.ca/thecurrent. I hope to see you there. The CBC News is coming up next and then, author and geographer Lenore Newman shares her vision for a sustainable food system in our next half hour. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

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'Food is a keystone': How to save our favourite foods from extinction

Guests: Lenore Newman

LL: Hello I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

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LL: Still to come, we've seen enough movies with this theme: robots taking over the world. But should it move from fiction into fact? Some think maybe it's time to let the machines take over. That's in half an hour. But first, sowing the seeds.

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LL: My next guest is a culinary geographer and if you love food and travel, she basically has your dream job. In her latest book, Lenore Newman takes us on a trip around the world. But the story she tells is both delicious and troubling. After all, food is cheaper, more plentiful and more varied than ever before, but at the same time the spectre of extinction is threatening to radically change the menu. The book is called Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food. And Lenore Newman joins me from Vancouver. Hello.

LENORE NEWMAN: Good morning.

LL: I want to start with the story of a creature named Martha who died in 1914. Who is Martha?

LENORE NEWMAN: Yes. Well Martha in some ways is the ultimate last thing in that she was the last living passenger pigeon and she died in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo, but her species had already been gone for years and she was also the first animal to die where we knew for a fact that was it for the passenger pigeon.

LL: And why is that important?

LENORE NEWMAN: The thing about Martha that resonates so much is the passenger pigeon was the world's most plentiful bird. We think at least there were billions of them. When they flew across the sky it infamously grew quite dark and when they roosted they would cover you know tens or hundreds of acres with their nests and their eggs and we eliminated them fairly quickly. Once we had railways for fast travel to where they were roosting and telegraphs to tell hunters where they were and market places to quickly sell off the dead birds. And it is the most striking extinction in some ways because it happened so quickly from plentiful to zero.

LL: Well let's just pack it up a little. The passenger pigeons were food.

LENORE NEWMAN: Oh they were most definitely and the peoples of North America ate them before we got here, before settler culture got here. They were very important to the Iroquois Confederacy, in particular around the Great Lakes. And yet the hunting at that point wasn't at the level to really eliminate the bird because they only came in certain years, much like a salmon run. But once settlement had rolled out across the continent, we quickly started to eliminate them, mostly for food. And they were a cheap food, they were plentiful food. They kept a lot of people from starving just because there were so many of them. And even when the species started getting into trouble you could buy them for pennies apiece out the market.

LL: What kinds of dishes were made with the passenger pigeon?

LENORE NEWMAN: Well one of the more interesting ones is that torch here which course is a Canadian classic dish that actually was once made with passenger pigeon.

LL: It was?

LENORE NEWMAN: Yes. The word tourtiere is actually derives from the French word for pigeon. And so your original tourtiere would be full of passenger pigeons and sometimes they would leave the feet sticking up through the crust, so you knew what was in there. And so a lot of pies. We roasted them a lot. That was very common dish. You'd get kind of a chafing dish full of little pigeons, but they're much larger than the pigeons you see in the city now. They weren't chicken sized by any means, but they're more like a duck.

LL: So what lessons does the passenger pigeon have to teach us about culinary extinction?

LENORE NEWMAN: Well we can draw a lot. Our technologies just totally overwhelm the ability of the natural world to maintain species numbers. And because they were a flocking species what it really tells us today is that we need to be very careful with our fisheries and we may want to consider not fishing in the wild at all because fish are very similar to passenger pigeons in behaviour they flock.

LL: Why should we even worry about culinary extinction specifically?

LENORE NEWMAN: Well there's there's a couple of reasons. The main one is there is a cultural region certainly in that our foods are like a language they tell us who we are. They are we we share our culture. And when we lose of food for example when the cod in Newfoundland decreased to the point where they couldn't be be fished commercially it knocks a cultural leg out from under the culture. And one of the other things is it's just a symptom of ecosystem collapse. And really if we can protect the foods we truly care about, what hope do other wild species have?

LL: Yeah I know we hold these things dear because I think about in France they have the word terroir which is how the earth gives flavour to food and it's very cultural and tied to French wines and foods.

LENORE NEWMAN: Yes exactly and imagine if your terroir is literally being destroyed piece by piece and one day you wake up and you don't have any wine grapes left because their genetics decayed too far or the truffles are gone because they were over harvested in the wild. And we could see a world where our food system is much impoverished to where it is now and people will notice those losses.

LL: Now as you write, we humans have a long history of actually loving foods to death. When do we start becoming such a threat to other creatures?

LENORE NEWMAN: Yes well our track record goes way back certainly right to the time of the megafauna and the time when we were nomadic. And if we look at the mammoth for example, I mean a very charismatic animal that you know certainly I know a lot of kids I hang out with the love the mammoths and stories of those kind of animals. We ate them to death. We followed them and killed them. And the mammoths really didn't have much of a chance against us once we invented weaponry because they breed very slowly. They take two years to gestate young and we followed them and hunted them until they were gone and if we look at the world, anywhere humans moved, the megafauna, those big animals disappeared very quickly. And the fact that we still have two of the six species of bison left is just pure fluke. Only a few hundred animals of the millions that once roamed the plains actually survived and every bison we have now is descended from that tiny little survival pool. But we don't go out into the Canadian wild and see mammoths, see sabre toothed tigers or giant armadillos or all the other creatures that we barbecued basically.

LL: But hat is it about human beings that makes it so dangerous to this species? Is it a hunting alone or is there something else that adds into it?

LENORE NEWMAN: We're very efficient. I think efficiency in a way is our great strength but also one of our weaknesses in that we're very good at killing and harvesting and harnessing resources. We're very bad long term thinkers. It's not in our nature to ask questions of if we keep doing this for a thousand years or you know seven generations or even 20 years. Where will we be. Those questions we really struggle with where as you know we're very good at getting dinner and I think there is an evolutionary effects there. If someone throws a baseball at you you've probably got a good chance of catching it. We're very good at that kind of thing. If climate change starts to impact your ecosystem, we're not so good at that.

LL: Now there are dire warnings in this book Lenore, but it's also clear that you love food. Why are you so passionate about food and eating?

LENORE NEWMAN: Oh I do and I do blame my family for that one. I grew up in a British Columbia fishing family. My dad and his three brothers and his father all had boats. And so I was in the food system right from the beginning and food was very much part of how we celebrated. You know as a family and we would go out and we would harvest clams and crabs and all the other wonderful things that you could literally just pick up free for the taking. And so I started early and as I trained as a physicist and Environmental Studies person I began to realize food is a keystone if we can get food right. If the food system can be sustainable and feed everyone we probably will survive as a species, but if food goes, if the food system falls apart, civilization basically is not far behind.

LL: How did growing up in a fishing family then shape the way that you thought about food later on and you think about food today?

LENORE NEWMAN: Well it definitely made me very aware of the natural world and we were already in, in the 80s and 90s beginning to have problems with stocks on the West Coast and the fish were getting smaller and less plentiful and you know they would be fished out of areas where they had traditionally been common. And so it sort of planted a bit of worry I suppose and it's definitely spending so much time in the natural world is why I became so interested in preserving it.

LL: I grew up in Vancouver as well and my father used to go out and capture sockeye salmon for dinner and it's not quite as easy as it used to be.

LENORE NEWMAN: No it isn't. And you know I kind of miss those.

LL: You've travelled all over the world as well and you've eaten some rare and special foods and I'm wondering what the most delicious thing is that you've been able to try?

LENORE NEWMAN: Oh now that is a very hard question. But I go to Iceland to a place where food was very scarce for a long time and where they're very dependent on ocean systems and the land and the special breed of cattle. And in the travel for this book I had this butter made out of Icelandic cattle milk and it was just very good. It had this sort of herbacious overtone and you know with butter you would, they sent me a big blob of butter and I thought well that's ridiculous, I'm not going to eat all this butter. And then like a half hour later the butter was gone. I'm like oh I'm going to regret that later. And you know I look at that and what made that so special and what makes most of the things special is they're about a place and when you travel the world you know sometimes things start to feel a bit the same, especially now the hotels are sort of all the same etc. But the food, the food is different everywhere and you meet people so passionate about it.

LL: So when you think about the foods that we've lost over the years and over the centuries, what would you have been most curious to taste?

LENORE NEWMAN: I would have been very interested to try the Roman Silphium, the most famous herb of Roman cuisine which came from what's now northern Libya and went extinct around the year zero. People raved about it and it was in know almost all of the dishes where we still have recipes leftover from Roman times. And so clearly it was very good, although the Romans also used a lot of fermented fish sauce and their tastes may have not been like ours, but I would love to at least try it.

LL: And I also see that you love pears.

LENORE NEWMAN: I do. And there is such an amazing fruit and at one time there were thousands of pear varieties and probably 90 percent of those are extinct now.

LL: And is there one that you again that would have just lit your fire? That you would have loved to try?

LENORE NEWMAN: I'm very curious about this one called the onsalt, which was described as being so creamy you could spread it like jam. You could just cut it open and spread it on toast. And we know very little about what happened to it. It was apparently it wasn't the easiest orchard pear and so breeds like the Bartlett out competed it once we stopped having to eat seasonally locally once we could ship fruit around the world it made more sense to grow the pear that travelled the best. And so these on salts are kind of lost to history and I think that's a shame. I did get a chance while researching to try second pears which are still common in the Midwest although not so much out here and they're very small. They're like little mini pears and they're very sweet. And I think really exploring those varieties reminds me how much richness there could be if we moved away from eating just a few varieties all year round.

LL: How do you reconcile your love of food with the destruction that human appetites have caused?

LENORE NEWMAN: Well there's a little bit of depression some times. And I will say I'm vegetarian these days, partly because of this book and my partner is vegan and has a lot of good arguments and when I look at say the Bluefin tuna, I remember very clearly first trying raw bluefin tuna in it being a really critical experience and sending me down this road. I wouldn't eat one now. They're too rare and I think we all have to curb our appetite a little bit and it's not always easy. And I love a good steak as much as the next person, but when I see the damage that cattle are doing to the world, the cattle on Earth now graze an area bigger than the continental U.S. So we need to cut back.

LL: Which foods then are at the greatest risk of extinction today?

LENORE NEWMAN: Right now anything harvested from the wild is at immediate risk. Basically all fish species. Some of the rarer foods like the French and Italian truffles from the wild are at risk, vanilla because it involves a lot of effort. We often hear about bananas, but the real truth is bananas aren't going to go extinct. There's a lot of wild banana stock left to breed from, but they could get very expensive. Bananas are cheap compared to say a star fruit or a mango because we have a really good cloned variety that is grown right around the world. It's called the Cavendish and it's really struggling because all the bananas are the same. And so if we lost that variety bananas might become as rare as star fruit.

LL: So how much diversity have we lost in the plant world?

LENORE NEWMAN: Oh that's a number we don't quite know. And if we're a little frightened that it's getting much larger very fast if we look at say the clearing of the Amazon to provide area to grow cattle for example. We're losing plants we don't even know in great quantity. What we do know is we've lost about 90 percent 80 to 90 percent of our cultivars, which are the subspecies of food crops and that's a very big loss.

LL: Can you give me an example of what you mean by a cultivar or a subspecies?

LENORE NEWMAN: OK. So imagine I walk into the grocery store and there's probably Granny Smith apples, Red Delicious, maybe a Macintosh as well. Those are all cultivars of the apples species. And I may have had thousands of varieties of apples to pick from at one time and now I've lost 80 to 90 percent of them and that's right across the board. Cucumbers, lettuce, cabbage. We often think of cabbage as it kind of comes in three varieties, Napa, green and purple and there used to be hundreds of them. And people would pick the one they liked best and we still have a bit of that in tomatoes. If you grow tomatoes, a lot of people do heirloom tomatoes. They pick the one they like best, but we've lost a lot of those species and they're gone.

LL: But help me understand this when it comes to plant species because if we can replenish our supplies of the very narrow kinds of lettuces or radishes or apples by growing more, what do we risk by growing such a small variety of them?

LENORE NEWMAN: Well and that's definitely the good news is we can go back to a more diverse genetic base especially with plants what we risk is if we're only growing one variety of bananas for example if they fall out of the food system we lose all the cultural associations we lose all the industry with those food the food just kind of falls off the map. And even if we then manage to breed something that's suitable it may not to return to the same the same quantity. People like variety is sort of a take home message from this book and so we need to protect that variety.

LL: You talked a little bit earlier about changes that you think need to be made. What other things should we do to make our food system more sustainable?

LENORE NEWMAN: Well there's definitely a few things we can do as individuals. Anyone with a bit of a yard or a balcony garden should plant some bee friendly plants and don't use chemicals that are going to kill bees because we need bees for about a third of our plant crops and they're under constant stress. And this year for example in America 40 percent of the hives died from colony collapse and related disorders. And we need to keep those bees up and flying and so everyone should consider ripping out a bit of their lawn if they have one and planting some bee friendly plants. I do feel that the future is plant based. Going vegan is one of the best things you can do for the climate and for the environment for the biodiversity of the earth. But you don't have to do it. You can go a little bit. You can spend a few days a week eating plant-based foods and there's a lot evidence that it's healthier for us anyway.

LL: You also write about advances in what they call cellular agriculture, which is lab grown meat, lab grown dairy. How close are we getting to all of that becoming a reality? I mean I know we have beyond meat now.

LENORE NEWMAN: Oh it is very exciting and I think one of the things that I sort of came to slowly was realizing that both looking to the past in terms of local eating and seasonal eating is important, but we also have to look to the future and the next generation of genetictTechnologies can really help us feed the world while using a lot less land. And the cellular meat is a little ways off, the burger and if that is still you know a few years off, but right now a company called Perfect Day is selling ice cream that is made with dairy proteins that were not made from cows. And they actually have a truck driving around L.A. selling it right now. And what they do is exactly what we do when we brew beer. We take yeast except we engineer the yeast to produce dairy proteins instead of alcohol and then we just brew the bases of milk and we add in a bit of water add in a bit of fat. Suddenly we have dairy substitute that. Is completely equivalent to milk. You can't tell them apart if you taste them. Damn you tasted them. Yes. And it's it's a little freaky. It's a bit like with the impossible burger. The first time I ate one I was like are you sure this isn't a beef burger? Are you sure? And it's a bit like that. I had at one point some yogurt that had been made with these proteins. I couldn't tell it apart.

LL: And that's not being mass produced yet?

LENORE NEWMAN: Not yet, but they're very close. The dairy will come first because it's easier. There's still some pretty big technical problems to address in the cellular meat, but the plant-based substitutes such as Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat are getting better every day. And one of the interesting things we see a bit of pushback people saying well it's not as healthy or maybe it's too salty, well it's a technology. So they can keep evolving it and every tim. Beyond Burger issues a new Beyond Burger, it will be better. Whereas cows just keep being cows.

LL: Alright. Well when you think about the future that awaits us, if we don't make these kinds of changes, I'm wondering what scares you? What keeps you up at night?

LENORE NEWMAN: Oh I don't even like to think about that too much because it's I think right now anyone who does work around climate change, we're all a little scared. We're on track for a four or five degree increase in temperature, which would be catastrophic. The World Food System would probably collapse and we would have mass migration. We could have mass starvation. That's the worst case terrible scenario, but I will admit I remain pretty hopeful. We are getting better at better at producing more food on a smaller area. We could move to a future where we're putting a lot of marginal land back into wilderness, so we could protect some of this biodiversity.

LL: So that's the beginning of the next thing I wanted to ask you about because it would be nice to end on a point of optimism here. If we do make these kinds of changes, tell me what kind of future you foresee.

LENORE NEWMAN: If we eat more plant based foods, we shift our farming techniques to be intensive, more indoor farming, that kind of thing, I think we could very quickly hit the point we called peak farm land, where we're using as much farmland as we ever will and we can start putting some of the farmland that isn't that greater is a bit degraded, we can put it back into wilderness. In a way I'd like to call it kind of the return to the garden where much of the earth is green and wild and we can go out in it and look at all the wonderful species wandering around and we can eat better and more healthily and more diversely than ever before and I'm a bit of a dreamer. I do think that future is still possible, even though there's days I listen to the news and have to you know go back to bed and pull the covers over my head.

LL: I like the optimistic part of that. So I think we'll leave it there. Lenore Newman, thank you so much.

LENORE NEWMAN: Great. Thank you.

LL: Lenore Newman is the Canada Research Chair in Food Security and the Environment at the University of the Fraser Valley in B.C.. Her new book is called Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food. She raises some things that Jonathan Safran forwarded in our conversation last week about his book, We Are The Weather. You can check that out too. Find it on our website cbc.ca/thecurrent, Twitter @TheCurrentCBC, Facebook or with the CBC Listen app. Now to tell you what's coming up in our next half hour, we need to visit the planet, Beta 3, Star Trek's Captain Kirk and Dr. Spock have been down and facing Landu, the reclusive dictator appearing as a projection.

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[Clip from Star Trek]

LL: And of course laser beams reveal that Landru is actually a computer. Here on Earth, some think there's actually a case to be made for more leaders just like Landru: less human, more machine. That is coming up in our next half hour. I'm Laura Lynch. You're listening to The Current.

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Could a robot be prime minister? Machines will soon be smart enough to run the world, says futurist

Guests: Zeger van der Wal, Zoltan Istvan, Kerstin Dautenhahn

LL: I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

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VOICE 1: Believe it or not, I watch my words very carefully. There are those who think I'm a very stable genius. Okay? I watch my words very very closely. And to have somebody get up and to totally fabricate a conversation that I had with another leader and make it sound so bad, it was so evil.

VOICE 2: Three years ago more people voted to leave the European Union than it ever voted for any party or proposition in our history. Politicians of all parties promised the public that they would honour the result. Sadly, many have since done all they could to abandon those promises and to overturn that democratic vote.

LL: U.S. President Donald Trump railing against an impeachment inquiry. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson in defence of Brexit, after being told his suspension of Parliament wasn't lawful. Two world leaders facing consequences for their actions in office. They're only human after all and some are starting to wonder if we might be better off if we took the human element out of politics altogether in favour of something more like this.

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[Scene from 2011: A Space Odyssey]

LL: That's right. What if we let robots like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey takeover for world leaders? Would we be better off? One of the people thinking about how this might work is Zeger van der Wal. He's an associate professor of public administration at the National University of Singapore and the author of The 21st Century Public Manager. We have reached him on a train pulling into a station near Amsterdam. Hello.

ZEGER VAN DER WAL: Hello. Good morning.

LL: So really could robots do better than our current leaders?

ZEGER VAN DER WAL: Well that's the million dollar question, right. So about a year ago I wrote an op-ed together with my co-author. And we were kind of extrapolating current trends and developments in the area of A.I. and algorithms and big data already supporting policymaking and public sector decision making and rather provocatively you know ask the question what if very high level decision making would be largely made by robots, software or let's say you know human politicians being supported by data on machines, rather than flesh and blood policy advisers.

LL: And you came to the conclusion what?

ZEGER VAN DER WAL: Well our conclusion was that there's a couple of things to keep in mind here. Big questions basically concerning democracy transparency and equality. So you know assume that a country like China or the U.S. or Japan Canada fairly developed advanced countries would actually be able to program policy decision making to perfection. Twenty years from now what would happen. And if they would negotiate a deal that much less developed countries who would not have such capability she would have a sort of Czech government robo golf sitting at one side of the table and a much less capable government at the other side of the table. In a sense I guess it would exacerbate inequalities that are already present. The second issue is is of course democracy. So would we be willing to really outsource decision making or political preferences and how they are prioritized to non-humans even partly.

LL: Let's clarify this for listeners. When you say robots, are you talking about a physical robot sitting at a table like Terminator maybe or more about artificial intelligence that goes along with the technology in the form of computers?

ZEGER VAN DER WAL: I mean it could be both. I think to determine it is quite an illustrative examples from many of our childhoods I guess, where we had Terminator or we actually had Skynet right, a sort of software program essentially governing the world and provoking war and so on. But I think a more realistic option frankly is to think about how data algorithms software that are already being used to a large extent in policymaking let's say in the area of social welfare or insurance or even in predictive policing and investigation and so on would be you know put to use at the very highest level of diplomacy foreign policy decision making and allow public leaders to really in a way outsource much of their own deliberations and even value trade-off to machines.

LL: It's interesting you just said the word values and I'm wondering how you program values because you say remove all human elements from this, but there's still humans programming the artificial intelligence.

ZEGER VAN DER WAL: Exactly. And that's also where potential biases come in. So there's this interesting research for instance that shows that many algorithms and software programs use today in commerce and politics and so on have a gender bias inherently sort of baked in because they are mostly programmed by males. And so you start wondering then if you again, if you take that one or two steps further whether already existing biases and prejudice, perhaps a degree of eliteism in governmental decision making would be exacerbated when we would outsource it to programs that will be programmed, probably not you know in a democratic or deliberative way, but just by the technocratic experts. So I think that's also one of the key objections many people would have against this broader science fiction sounding idea. But I have to add that it's probably in a way less of a science fiction story than it may seem. You know if we look at China today for instance, the country is already employing on a massive scale A.I. to in a way spy on their citizens, but also predict their behaviour. Assess their behaviour also in a kind of normative sense. I don't know if you're familiar with the the so-called social credit system in China.

LL: Go ahead.

ZEGER VAN DER WAL: So this is a system that was introduced by the Communist Party China just a few years ago and it essentially gives credits or takes away credits to every citizen in China based on particular online, but even now physical behaviour. So it's essentially a way of the government to say to you well are you a good Communist Chinese citizen or not. And this social credit system is now for instance linked to online dating sites. So you can see a potential dating candidates you can tell whether they've you know, they've scored 100 or 200 or 400 points on their social credit system and thus whether they are considered good citizens, patriotic citizens and so on. But it goes much further. I've seen in Shanghai recently with my own eyes, let's say you would cross the street when you would jaywalk when the traffic light is red. And there would be a screen on one of the skyscrapers, essentially projecting a picture of you and saying hey you just crossed a red light. We'll take, we'll deduct some of your Social Credit.

LL: But professor that's one thing, it's another thing entirely to be thinking and maybe this isn't, you don't carry this far, of a robot having the power to push the nuclear button.

ZEGER VAN DER WAL: Exactly. That's right. But I'm just saying this is already where we are. If you just take it one, two, three steps further, it's not unthinkable that we would end up in a situation where perhaps not physical robots in the sort of Terminator or HAL kind of sense, but at least programs, algorithms making important decisions for us.

LL: What inspired you to look at robots as potential political leaders in the first place?

ZEGER VAN DER WAL: Well I mean you showed of course, I guess not by coincidence the clips of Johnson and Trump. I think we're living in an era where we have leaders of very important countries, often being accused of being you know fairly irrational, discrediting academic scientific evidence. So it makes people think and maybe in some cases even dream or fantasize about a more technocratic governance system than the one we have today.

LL: Alright we will leave it there. I thank you for talking to us from the train. Sometimes you sounded a little robotic yourself because of the connection, but I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.

ZEGER VAN DER WAL: I'm very much a human being, Laura. No worries.

LL: Thank you. Bye bye.

ZEGER VAN DER WAL: Thank you.

LL: Zeger van der Wal is an associate professor of public administration at the National University of Singapore. We reached him on the train near Amsterdam. Zoltan Istvan has a vision of this. He's a futurist and a former 2016 U.S. presidential candidate for the Transhumanist Party. In a nutshell, transhumanists believe in using technology to modify and enhance their intellect and bodies as long as it doesn't harm anyone else. He is in Mill Valley, California. Hello.

ZOLTAN ISTVAN: Hi Laura, how are you doing today?

LL: Fine, thank you. During your presidential campaign, you spoke about a robot in the Oval Office. What were you imagining that would be like?

ZOLTAN ISTVAN: Well we ultimately think that you know it's probably going to happen someday. You know at some point we're going to create a machine that's better than the human brain and that machine is going to be better at running the planet and running the world and that's that's simply going to happen. So the question is do we try to get there quicker or do we take a long time to get there because we're kind of afraid of machines and you know those of us in the Transformers community think we get there quicker.

LL: So some people might be listening to this and thinking this that sounds outlandish. Why do you see this as realistic.

ZOLTAN ISTVAN: Well I mean just you know take autonomous cars for example. It's a known fact that they crash a lot less than human beings. And even though some you know there's still some ongoing tests you can rest assured that around the world as soon as we implement autonomous cars there's going to be a lot less deaths due to driving. And you know the same thing can be said you know earlier with your question about pressing the nuclear bomb button stuff like this almost every single action that a human does a machine can almost certainly do dramatically better. It's statistically better. And so when you talk about you know running a country we talk about governing for the greatest good. A machine is going to have better algorithms and especially it's going to continue to prove over time with less personality idiosyncrasies and things like that. So you really have an opportunity here to maybe get what we can you know see as is true leadership for the very first time and perhaps everyone's lifetimes.

LL: I'm curious to know when you talk to American voters about this on the campaign trail, how did they respond?

ZOLTAN ISTVAN: Well you know they responded sceptically of course and you know it does seem like a science fiction idea. But you know if you talked to people 50 years ago and you talk told them we were going to be doing FaceTime podcasts with six people on the same connection all around the world, they also would have been very sceptic. I think people underestimate how fast the microprocessor is evolving. It may not be evolving at the speed of Moore's Law anymore, but it's still growing dramatically faster and better all the time. And if you take that out just even 10-25 years, I mean we could have machines, the smartphone you're holding could be literally you know something like a super machine in just 10-20 years time that is smarter than our own brains.

LL: How would democracy change though in this world of robot leaders?

ZOLTAN ISTVAN: One of the very interesting things is not only just having an A.I. leader, but so you know I live in California, there are numerous companies that were working on brain wave technology like Elon Musk's neural link and whatnot and so they want to connect our brains, our thoughts directly into kind of an A.I. hive mind. So there's this very good chance when you're in this robot president is campaigning you might be campaigning right in your living room. In fact right in your mind you would have a direct contact directly with your president. And that's where it becomes very interesting because it's not like you're just seeing somebody on TV it's you can ask personal questions to this area you know if you've seen the movie her you know that the the A.I. kept on you know hundreds and hundreds of relationships ongoing at once. Well you can rest assured in the future in A.I. we'll be able to keep on you know millions and millions of you know close relationships with its its voter space and you know that's where this becomes really interesting is a really direct relationship with a potential A.I. political leader.

LL: OK. I want to bring someone else into the conversation here. Kerstin Dautenhahn is Canada 150 Research Chair in Intelligent Robotics and the Director of Social and Intelligence Robotics Research at the University of Waterloo. And that's where she is today. Hello.

KERSTIN DAUTENHAHN: Hello Laura.

LL: When you hear about robots taking over for world leaders, what's your initial reaction?

KERSTIN DAUTENHAHN: Well I think there's a misunderstanding a little bit on what it would mean that A.I. or robots can be better than people. A.I. is certainly very good enhancing vast amounts of data. So for example recognizing one face in a million different faces or collecting data on people's habits and then recognizing patterns. So this is indeed what machines are very good at, but what machines are not very good at is common sense and general intelligence. So for example, machines lack compassion. They lack empathy they have and I think it was hinted at before in the discussion, moral values or generally a human perspective on things. Of course someone might argue well OK these are all rules. We can all program it, but at the end of the day AI is being programmed by people and the same ways that bias people in when they interact in the real world will be translated into these these programs. So I'm of course someone who is very passionate about AI and robotics. But we need to maybe be realistic on what machines are good at and what humans are good at. And I would definitely not want political leaders to be to be robots. Why what what what are the biggest what are the biggest dangers of having robots leave government if you if you talk to cognitive scientists people who study what human intelligence actually is and I do I do not mean you know are solving precise tasks doing maths doing calculations identify patterns. I mean human decision making this very much depends on our our bodies our our brains the way how we developed the way how we interact with the environment. So for example the neurobiologist Antonio Damasio he has many many years ago started a lot of discussions on the role of our emotions and the importance of emotions in decision making. This orphan this distinction being made between emotions of humans being bad because it makes us sometimes do some irrational things and machines that do not have emotions and they will have a much better picture. But if you if you look at how the human brain actually works and if you talk to people studying human cognition then what you what you realize is that our intelligence our ability to make decisions complex decisions not just is this a face among a million other faces or computing algorithms as quickly as possible if it is about making these common sense decisions which is what political leaders have to do because they are they are dealing with incomplete information they have to make quick decisions they have to make predictions and that's what people are very good at and it is because we are human beings. Of course humans make mistakes and I can completely understand why these days people wish there were better humans but robots I mean this is myth. You know one day robots will just become better than us humans are flawed. They've always been flawed. Robots will become better than us. No, I think humans are pretty pretty pretty pretty good in what they're doing and they can certainly be complemented by A.I. in areas where the ice is very good at.

LL: OK. Zoltan Istvan, what do you say to Kerstin Dautenhahn's scepticism?

KERSTIN DAUTENHAHN: Well I think this idea that humans are very good is where most people such as myself would say, no not really. We think biology is frail. We don't like making decisions based on emotion because it always ends up in total chaos. And that's why we want pure reason, pure statistical analysis and even if the picture is incomplete, a statistical analysis of that would make a much better decision than something that comes out with emotions. I mean frankly the last thing I want is Trump to be emotional as he's making decisions with the military and things like that or some of the other leaders around the world. What we want is just pure rationality and applying that for the greater good of the greatest amount of people. That's really the only way forward and I like this idea that robots won't become or AI won't become smarter than human beings as you know I understand it's the wishful thinking of it, but if you just take this out. Let's forget the 25 year window about 100, 200, 300 year window, I mean there's no question that the biology is just sort of doomed. The ones and zeroes is better and frankly beyond AI. That's probably only going to last 10 or 15 or 20 years. There's other ages beyond that, quantum intelligence or whatever else it might be. It's best to just try to evolve and keep up with it.

LL: Now Zoltan Istvan, you actually interact with robots now in your daily life. Is that true?

ZOLTAN ISTVAN: Yes I have a five-year-old and nine-year-old daughter and we have a 4 foot robot that they both merried and so we have very you know a lot of and I've also been all around the world interviewing a lot of robots as I write for a lot of media outlets.

LL: And how is the, what is the emotional bond, if there is any, with the robot in your family?

ZOLTAN ISTVAN: It's very close. You know it's definitely helped my children to learn English and speak things. You know it's because the robot, I think a lot of it has to do also with size. Our robot was so tall that it was definitely quite a bit larger than both my daughters as they were growing up. So they just became very fond of it and you know very close with it and I think they see it as a real friend. And I could easily and I wrote an article recently about will my daughters one day maybe marry some type of robot or artificial intelligence? Now I understand that you're incredibly complex and weird ethical question, but the reality is if you have a machine that's smarter than people, let's say in 30, 40, 50 years then that's going to be a real possibility and you know frankly there are people around the world already doing that.

LL: But who makes the decisions in your family? The robot or the parents?

ZOLTAN ISTVAN: No no of course we do because there's no robots that are sophisticated enough, but if you just look at the trajectory of the development of A.I. you can say you know wow in 10, 20, 30 years this might be a very different kind of game. We might have machine intelligence that just simply makes better decisions than people.

LL: OK. Kerstin Dautenhahn I want to talk to a little more about this idea of forming emotional bonds. Can humans ever form enough of an emotional bond with a robot to vote for one?

KERSTIN DAUTENHAHN: Well I mean it's mainly a one sided story. Of course people might get the impression that they are attached to the robot or that the robot, the way how it talks to them that the robot seems to like them. But I'm a very big fan of Sherry Turkle at M.I.T. who has written a lot about relational machines and how any interaction with robots and it also includes A.I. and chat bots, it's only one-sided. So we might get attached to to a machine, but there's no equivalent within the machine, within its brain, within how it operates, within what it is that actually returns this relationship.

LL: Is there any chance that that will develop over time? That we actually will be able to reproduce empathy in machines?

KERSTIN DAUTENHAHN: If again, if you talk to scientists, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, there is no such thing as pure rationality. We are what we are and we make decisions the way we do because of emotions. Emotions are not bad. Without them we would be, we would not have developed all these cultures over the past thousands of years. So emotions are very important in our decision making and it's important to show compassion, to show empathy. There's nothing like that in robots. Of course you can program robots to look you in the eye deeply and say oh I love you so much, but this is fake. And that would be a fake relationship and I'm very much in favour for real relationships. I don't think there's anything wrong if people have a robot in their house. I'm surrounded by robots in Waterloo every day and they might get attached to it in the same way people might get attached to their car, but we should not believe that these relationships we have with the robots are real. The relationship is in our mind. It is a one-sided relationship.

LL: Zoltan Istvan, how do you see a robot's lack of empathy affecting its ability to be a political leader?

ZOLTAN ISTVAN: Well you know I think ultimate empathy can be programmed in and I think you can program a robot where if you hurt it bad enough, maybe the robot would even kill itself, jump off a bridge, even though the robot had also been programmed to want to live and love life. So I think everything, you know the human brain is three pounds of meat. That's really what, just three pounds of meat and we can recreate that and we probably will in the future. When we're talking about political positions and even the presidency and things like that, we simply can create a machine that thinks better than any president or world leader that we've ever had. And once we get to that state, again I don't know when it's going to be, it could be 30 years, could be a hundred years, but once we get to that state we're going to have leadership that's been unparalleled in history. And I think it's going to be really really good for humanity.

LL: So if the day ever came when you could vote for a robot, I guess you would? Would you Zoltan?

ZOLTAN ISTVAN: Yes I would. As long as I believe that you know it was true, is authentic, it was making the best decisions for my family and I and my community, I would absolutely do that.

LL: Kerstin last word to you. What about if you could vote for a robot?

KERSTIN DAUTENHAHN: I would certainly not vote for a robot because as I said there's no such thing as pure rational decision making.

LL: Alright. I thank both of you for this discussion. It's been interesting.

KERSTIN DAUTENHAHN: Thank you.

ZOLTAN ISTVAN: Thank you so much.

LL: Kerstin Dautenhahn is the director of the Social and Intelligence Robotics Research Lab at the University of Waterloo. She is in Waterloo, Ontario. And Zoltan Istvan is a futurist and former 2016 U.S. presidential candidate for the Transhumanist Party. He won't be running in 2020. He is in Mill Valley, California. That is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. 28 years after Dr. Seuss' death, his longtime publisher and art director, Kathy Goldsmith, talks to Tom Power about the previously unpublished children's book, Dr. Seuss Horse Museum. That's coming up next. Now we were just talking about the pretty serious spectre of having robots in charge, some speculating it might be a step up from some of the leaders we've gotten now. But if you're not keen on the presidential robot idea, how about using them for something a little more fun? Here is social roboticist Heather Knight with part of her TED Talk. I'm Laura Lynch. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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VOICE: Some people in the last decade or two have started creating artwork with technology. With my new venture, Marilyn Monroebot, I would like to use art to create tech. We've got the robot. In his head is a database of a lot of jokes. Now each of these jokes is labelled with certain attributes. So it knows something about the subject and knows about the length, knows how much it's moving. And so it's going to try to watch your response. I actually have no idea what my robot is going to do today. So let the robot stand up comedy begin.

VOICE 2: Hello TED women, it's an honour to be here. You guys are looking good out there. Ready for some jokes? Here's the first one. Right. So a doctor says to his patient I have bad news and worse news. The bad news is that you only have 24 hours to live. That's terrible, said the patient. How can the news possibly be worse? I've been trying to contact you since yesterday. Question. Why is television called a medium? Anyone? Because it's neither there nor well done. But to be completely honest with you, I kind of love television. Any of you like television? I find it incredibly educational. Actually, as soon as someone turns it on, I go into the other room and read. You've been a great audience. Thank you.

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Oct. 7, 2019 episode transcript

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