Up until now, our communication with machines has always been limited to conscious and direct forms.
Whether it's something simple like turning on the lights with a switch, or even as complex as programming robotics, we have always had to give a command to a machine, or even a series of commands, in order for it to do something for us.
Communication between people, on the other hand, is far more complex and a lot more interesting because we take into account so much more than what is explicitly expressed.
We observe facial expressions, body language, and we can intuit feelings and emotions from our dialogue with one another.
This actually forms a large part of our decision-making process.
Our vision is to introduce this whole new realm of human interaction into human-computer interaction so that computers can understand not only what you direct it to do, but it can also respond to your facial expressions and emotional experiences.
And what better way to do this than by interpreting the signals naturally produced by our brain, our center for control and experience.
Well, it sounds like a pretty good idea, but this task, as Bruno mentioned, isn't an easy one for two main reasons: First, the detection algorithms.
Our brain is made up of billions of active neurons, around 170,000 km of combined axon length.
When these neurons interact, the chemical reaction emits an electrical impulse, which can be measured.
The majority of our functional brain is distributed over the outer surface layer of the brain, and to increase the area that's available for mental capacity, the brain surface is highly folded.
Now this cortical folding presents a significant challenge for interpreting surface electrical impulses.
Each individual's cortex is folded differently, very much like a fingerprint.
So even though a signal may come from the same functional part of the brain, by the time the structure has been folded, its physical location is very different between individuals, even identical twins.
There is no longer any consistency in the surface signals.
Our breakthrough was to create an algorithm that unfolds the cortex, so that we can map the signals closer to its source, and therefore making it capable of working across a mass population.
The second challenge is the actual device for observing brainwaves.
EEG measurements typically involve a hairnet with an array of sensors, like the one that you can see here in the photo.
A technician will put the electrodes onto the scalp using a conductive gel or paste and usually after a procedure of preparing the scalp by light abrasion.
Now this is quite time consuming and isn't the most comfortable process.
And on top of that, these systems actually cost in the tens of thousands of dollars.
So with that, I'd like to invite onstage Evan Grant, who is one of last year's speakers, who's kindly agreed to help me to demonstrate what we've been able to develop.
(Applause) So the device that you see is a 14-channel, high-fidelity EEG acquisition system.
It doesn't require any scalp preparation, no conductive gel or paste.
It only takes a few minutes to put on and for the signals to settle.
It's also wireless, so it gives you the freedom to move around.
And compared to the tens of thousands of dollars for a traditional EEG system, this headset only costs a few hundred dollars.
Now on to the detection algorithms.
So facial expressions -- as I mentioned before in emotional experiences -- are actually designed to work out of the box with some sensitivity adjustments available for personalization.
But with the limited time we have available, I'd like to show you the cognitive suite, which is the ability for you to basically move virtual objects with your mind.
Now, Evan is new to this system, so what we have to do first is create a new profile for him.
He's obviously not Joanne -- so we'll "add user."
Evan.
Okay.
So the first thing we need to do with the cognitive suite is to start with training a neutral signal.
With neutral, there's nothing in particular that Evan needs to do.
He just hangs out.
He's relaxed.
And the idea is to establish a baseline or normal state for his brain, because every brain is different.
It takes eight seconds to do this, and now that that's done, we can choose a movement-based action.
So Evan, choose something that you can visualize clearly in your mind.
Evan Grant: Let's do "pull."
Tan Le: Okay, so let's choose "pull."
So the idea here now is that Evan needs to imagine the object coming forward into the screen, and there's a progress bar that will scroll across the screen while he's doing that.
The first time, nothing will happen, because the system has no idea how he thinks about "pull."
But maintain that thought for the entire duration of the eight seconds.
So: one, two, three, go.
Okay.
So once we accept this, the cube is live.
So let's see if Evan can actually try and imagine pulling.
Ah, good job!
(Applause) That's really amazing.
(Applause) So we have a little bit of time available, so I'm going to ask Evan to do a really difficult task.
And this one is difficult because it's all about being able to visualize something that doesn't exist in our physical world.
This is "disappear."
So what you want to do -- at least with movement-based actions, we do that all the time, so you can visualize it.
But with "disappear," there's really no analogies -- so Evan, what you want to do here is to imagine the cube slowly fading out, okay.
Same sort of drill.
So: one, two, three, go.
Okay.
Let's try that.
Oh, my goodness.
He's just too good.
Let's try that again.
EG: Losing concentration.
(Laughter) TL: But we can see that it actually works, even though you can only hold it for a little bit of time.
As I said, it's a very difficult process to imagine this.
And the great thing about it is that we've only given the software one instance of how he thinks about "disappear."
As there is a machine learning algorithm in this -- (Applause) Thank you.
Good job.
Good job.
(Applause) Thank you, Evan, you're a wonderful, wonderful example of the technology.
So, as you can see, before, there is a leveling system built into this software so that as Evan, or any user, becomes more familiar with the system, they can continue to add more and more detections, so that the system begins to differentiate between different distinct thoughts.
And once you've trained up the detections, these thoughts can be assigned or mapped to any computing platform, application or device.
So I'd like to show you a few examples, because there are many possible applications for this new interface.
In games and virtual worlds, for example, your facial expressions can naturally and intuitively be used to control an avatar or virtual character.
Obviously, you can experience the fantasy of magic and control the world with your mind.
And also, colors, lighting, sound and effects can dynamically respond to your emotional state to heighten the experience that you're having, in real time.
And moving on to some applications developed by developers and researchers around the world, with robots and simple machines, for example -- in this case, flying a toy helicopter simply by thinking "lift" with your mind.
The technology can also be applied to real world applications -- in this example, a smart home.
You know, from the user interface of the control system to opening curtains or closing curtains.
And of course, also to the lighting -- turning them on or off.
And finally, to real life-changing applications, such as being able to control an electric wheelchair.
In this example, facial expressions are mapped to the movement commands.
Man: Now blink right to go right.
Now blink left to turn back left.
Now smile to go straight.
TL: We really -- Thank you.
(Applause) We are really only scratching the surface of what is possible today, and with the community's input, and also with the involvement of developers and researchers from around the world, we hope that you can help us to shape where the technology goes from here.
Thank you so much.
Restaurants and the food industry in general are pretty much the most wasteful industry in the world.
For every calorie of food that we consume here in Britain today, 10 calories are taken to produce it.
That's a lot.
I want to take something rather humble to discuss.
I found this in the farmers' market today, and if anybody wants to take it home and mash it later, you're very welcome to.
The humble potato -- and I've spent a long time, 25 years, preparing these.
And it pretty much goes through eight different forms in its lifetime.
First of all, it's planted, and that takes energy.
It grows and is nurtured.
It's then harvested.
It's then distributed, and distribution is a massive issue.
It's then sold and bought, and it's then delivered to me.
I basically take it, prepare it, and then people consume it -- hopefully they enjoy it.
The last stage is basically waste, and this is is pretty much where everybody disregards it.
There are different types of waste.
There's a waste of time; there's a waste of space; there's a waste of energy; and there's a waste of waste.
And every business I've been working on over the past five years, I'm trying to lower each one of these elements.
Okay, so you ask what a sustainable restaurant looks like.
Basically a restaurant just like any other.
This is the restaurant, Acorn House.
Front and back.
So let me run you through a few ideas.
Floor: sustainable, recyclable.
Chairs: recycled and recyclable.
Tables: Forestry Commission.
This is Norwegian Forestry Commission wood.
This bench, although it was uncomfortable for my mom -- she didn't like sitting on it, so she went and bought these cushions for me from a local jumble sale -- reusing, a job that was pretty good.
I hate waste, especially walls.
If they're not working, put a shelf on it, which I did, and that shows all the customers my products.
The whole business is run on sustainable energy.
This is powered by wind.
All of the lights are daylight bulbs.
Paint is all low-volume chemical, which is very important when you're working in the room all the time.
I was experimenting with these -- I don't know if you can see it -- but there's a work surface there.
And that's a plastic polymer.
And I was thinking, well I'm trying to think nature, nature, nature.
But I thought, no, no, experiment with resins, experiment with polymers.
Will they outlive me?
They probably might.
Right, here's a reconditioned coffee machine.
It actually looks better than a brand new one -- so looking good there.
Now reusing is vital.
And we filter our own water.
We put them in bottles, refrigerate them, and then we reuse that bottle again and again and again.
Here's a great little example.
If you can see this orange tree, it's actually growing in a car tire, which has been turned inside out and sewn up.
It's got my compost in it, which is growing an orange tree, which is great.
This is the kitchen, which is in the same room.
I basically created a menu that allowed people to choose the amount and volume of food that they wanted to consume.
Rather than me putting a dish down, they were allowed to help themselves to as much or as little as they wanted.
Okay, it's a small kitchen.
It's about five square meters.
It serves 220 people a day.
We generate quite a lot of waste.
This is the waste room.
You can't get rid of waste.
But this story's not about eliminating it, it's about minimizing it.
In here, I have produce and boxes that are unavoidable.
I put my food waste into this dehydrating, desiccating macerator -- turns food into an inner material, which I can store and then compost later.
I compost it in this garden.
All of the soil you can see there is basically my food, which is generated by the restaurant, and it's growing in these tubs, which I made out of storm-felled trees and wine casks and all kinds of things.
Three compost bins -- go through about 70 kilos of raw vegetable waste a week -- really good, makes fantastic compost.
A couple of wormeries in there too.
And actually one of the wormeries was a big wormery.
I had a lot of worms in it.
And I tried taking the dried food waste, putting it to the worms, going, "There you go, dinner."
It was like vegetable jerky, and killed all of them.
I don't know how many worms [were] in there, but I've got some heavy karma coming, I tell you.
(Laughter) What you're seeing here is a water filtration system.
This takes the water out of the restaurant, runs it through these stone beds -- this is going to be mint in there -- and I sort of water the garden with it.
And I ultimately want to recycle that, put it back into the loos, maybe wash hands with it, I don't know.
So, water is a very important aspect.
I started meditating on that and created a restaurant called Waterhouse.
If I could get Waterhouse to be a no-carbon restaurant that is consuming no gas to start with, that would be great.
I managed to do it.
This restaurant looks a little bit like Acorn House -- same chairs, same tables.
They're all English and a little bit more sustainable.
But this is an electrical restaurant.
The whole thing is electric, the restaurant and the kitchen.
And it's run on hydroelectricity, so I've gone from air to water.
Now it's important to understand that this room is cooled by water, heated by water, filters its own water, and it's powered by water.
It literally is Waterhouse.
The air handling system inside it -- I got rid of air-conditioning because I thought there was too much consumption going on there.
This is basically air-handling.
I'm taking the temperature of the canal outside, pumping it through the heat exchange mechanism, it's turning through these amazing sails on the roof, and that, in turn, is falling softly onto the people in the restaurant, cooling them, or heating them, as the need may be.
And this is an English willow air diffuser, and that's softly moving that air current through the room.
Very advanced, no air-conditioning -- I love it.
In the canal, which is just outside the restaurant, there is hundreds of meters of coil piping.
This takes the temperature of the canal and turns it into this four-degrees of heat exchange.
I have no idea how it works, but I paid a lot of money for it.
(Laughter) And what's great is one of the chefs who works in that restaurant lives on this boat -- it's off-grid; it generates all its own power.
He's growing all his own fruit, and that's fantastic.
There's no accident in names of these restaurants.
Acorn House is the element of wood; Waterhouse is the element of water; and I'm thinking, well, I'm going to be making five restaurants based on the five Chinese medicine acupuncture specialities.
I've got water and wood.
I'm just about to do fire.
I've got metal and earth to come.
So you've got to watch your space for that.
Okay.
So this is my next project.
Five weeks old, it's my baby, and it's hurting real bad.
The People's Supermarket.
So basically, the restaurants only really hit people who believed in what I was doing anyway.
What I needed to do was get food out to a broader spectrum of people.
So people -- i.e., perhaps, more working-class -- or perhaps people who actually believe in a cooperative.
This is a social enterprise, not-for-profit cooperative supermarket.
It really is about the social disconnect between food, communities in urban settings and their relationship to rural growers -- connecting communities in London to rural growers.
Really important.
So I'm committing to potatoes; I'm committing to milk; I'm committing to leeks and broccoli -- all very important stuff.
I've kept the tiles; I've kept the floors; I've kept the trunking; I've got in some recycled fridges; I've got some recycled tills; I've got some recycled trolleys.
I mean, the whole thing is is super-sustainable.
In fact, I'm trying and I'm going to make this the most sustainable supermarket in the world.
That's zero food waste.
And no one's doing that just yet.
In fact, Sainsbury's, if you're watching, let's have a go.
Try it on.
I'm going to get there before you.
So nature doesn't create waste doesn't create waste as such.
Everything in nature is used up in a closed continuous cycle with waste being the end of the beginning, and that's been something that's been nurturing me for some time, and it's an important statement to understand.
If we don't stand up and make a difference and think about sustainable food, think about the sustainable nature of it, then we may fail.
But, I wanted to get up and show you that we can do it if we're more responsible.
Environmentally conscious businesses are doable.
They're here.
You can see I've done three so far; I've got a few more to go.
The idea is embryonic.
I think it's important.
I think that if we reduce, reuse, refuse and recycle -- right at the end there -- recycling is the last point I want to make; but it's the four R's, rather than the three R's -- then I think we're going to be on our way.
So these three are not perfect -- they're ideas.
I think that there are many problems to come, but with help, I'm sure I'm going to find solutions.
And I hope you all take part.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)