Superflux founder Anab Jain on using technology to turn the blind into super-seers

Anab Jain wants to give blind peple super-sight. She tells Rosamund Urwin why she's ready for a robot revolution 
Superwoman: Anab Jain
Matt Writtle
Rosamund Urwin23 June 2016

Anab Jain wants to help turn the blind into super-seers. Her brainwave was that technology could not only give them a semblance of their sight back but help them see in spectrums invisible to the ordinary eye: ultra violet and infrared. “The idea is that people would go from being blind to feeling super-sighted,” she says.

Jain, who co-founded tech firm Superflux with designer Jon Ardern, came in when scientists hit a hurdle. A protein had been found in an algae which, when injected into a human in the form of a virus, made dead cells light-sensitive. Researchers realised it could help those who had lost vision as a result of the degenerative disease retinitis pigmentosa.

When injected into dead retinal cells, the virus made them light-sensitive. With the addition of an opto-electronic headset, the cells would then be able to read and process information: “It’s like plugging a Scart lead into your brain.”

There was a problem, though. “[The researchers] thought blind people would like their vision back in any form, but it turns out they would rather be blind than get their vision back like this. They’d seen the world before, and they didn’t want it reduced to an outline.”

The prosthetic vision device Jain designed

Superflux worked with Dr Patrick Degenaar from Newcastle University to consider what else it could do — and came up with seeing in different spectrums. Using thermal imaging cameras (which allow you to see heat), Superflux made a film showing how previously blind people would be able to see the world. “It’s not high-resolution. It could be blurry but they are able to see the world in new ways.” A handset would then enable users to dial into the type of vision they wanted.

I’ve met 39-year-old Jain at her office in Bermondsey’s converted biscuit factory. She was born and went to university in India, where she studied film-making at the National Institute of Design. After moving to London, she worked for Nokia and for Microsoft Research, including on an ecological robot project. “You put organic waste in the fuel cell and they leave behind a trail of poo. It’s smelly. I’m sure they’ve sorted that out now!”

Superflux “designs tools that help people ask the right questions”. That can mean both physical and conceptual tools, looking at “changes in society through the lens of a specific technology”. A particular focus is robotics: “What happens when machines start making decisions autonomously?”

On Saturday, Jain is speaking at the Southbank Centre about the impact robots will have on the workplace. She points to Oxford University research that estimated 47 per cent of jobs in the US will be handed to machines.

“Every time a new technology comes, there are job losses — but they’ve always created more jobs than have been lost,” she says. “This is the first time there are more job losses than jobs created.”

Superflux does consultancy work for industries including insurance (focusing on the impact of self-driving cars) and finance, where there are jitters about robo-advisers replacing asset managers. “It shakes their business models... [There’s an estimate that] 90 per cent of Wall Street jobs will be taken over by AI.”

Jain says the question isn’t “will robots take our jobs?” (they will) but “what happens afterwards?” And that, she believes, is linked to the debate about whether states should provide a universal basic income: “It’s a great idea [but] the details make or break the thing.”

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The second dilemma she believes humanity faces is the degree of agency we give robots. “We can control that. I want that to be a broader discussion —across countries, not just some governments and a few companies. Technology labs need to be more transparent. What are they building? What is [Google’s] Deepmind doing?” I ask if governments should regulate that. She nods. “Regulation is key — we need [governments] to be informed to make the most flexible regulations.”

Artificial Intelligence is getting smarter: shifting away from programming and towards training. “Coders will soon ask ‘where’s my job?’ because they start by coding, but then [the AI] feeds on data. So the robot makes a lot of choices.”

AI is still “specific task-oriented”, Jain explains, but the future is not about telling it what to do: “It’ll be able to do things you didn’t train it for. And then there’s ASI — artificial super-intelligence. It’ll keep training itself. By 2060, the difference between the human and the ASI will be like a spider trying to understand a human’s mind. We’ll be that spider.”

One way we spiders might find ourselves interacting with our new superiors is sexbots. Jain feels views might shift from our current aversion. “It’s what porn was to the internet. Many cultures have no problem with sexbots. In Japan, they’re huge. If you’re lonely, and there’s something responsive, and intelligent...” her voice trails off.

But it wouldn’t feel like a free choice, I say. “That’s good, isn’t it?” she jokes. “Sometimes the most annoying things about our partner is the choice. People might say ‘this suits me just fine, it keeps my life simple’. Everyone’s aspirations of relationships are different.”

There are some debates Jain finds simpler, including the EU referendum. “Please don’t let it be Brexit. Everything in this world is increasingly about collaboration — by cutting ourselves off, we are isolating ourselves. And I have no faith in what [the Leave campaign] are proposing for afterwards.”

Follow Rosamund Urwin on Twitter: @rosamundurwin

Anab Jain is taking part in a debate examining the role of artificial intelligence in ‘The robots are coming: The future of work’ this Saturday at the Royal Festival Hall, as part of Southbank Centre's Power of Power festival. southbankcentre.co.uk

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