The reality of AI, VR and Trump: lessons from Web Summit 2016

by Wayne Brown, COO Grey Group UK

So, last week I made my way to Web Summit 2016 — drawn in by the seemingly endless Facebook advertising, a ‘two-for-one’ ticket offer and location change to sunny Lisbon. Thankfully, I was extremely happy that I made the trip.

In today’s app-based, wearable tech world, the idea of a ‘Web’ summit seems a bit anachronistic. You rarely hear someone give websites their full name, and my children have probably never even heard of a thing called the world wide web. But the reality is that Web Summit is an incredible technology conference. Tech Summit would be a more appropriate name for it, but the brand is well-established and, as I found out, has great following — over 50,000 people were in Lisbon to attend.

The experience itself was impressive, and from the moment you enter the first of three main halls, you can feel a palpable buzz from the fleet of start-ups lined up with their modest stands, my particular favorite was Decentral Fund in the FinTech area — ‘the first social hedge fund platform focused on high-return crypto assets’. This is in stark contrast to the feeling you get on entering the Centre Stage, which feels more like arena concert packed with 15,000 raucous fans… only you’re not seeing Beyonce, you’re seeing Sean Rad, inventor of Tinder.

Unless you had a fleet of people spending every hour at all eight conference stages, plus meeting every start-up, it’s impossible to summarise the entire conference. But when it comes to the key themes, while there were no huge surprises, there were some interesting developments.

The rise of the thinking machines

Artificial Intelligence of some kind featured in almost every keynote or panel discussion I was able to attend. The compelling opening presentation came from Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s Global CTO (and it’s always good to hear from someone from Facebook who is not actually selling Facebook, but rather making Facebook). While he demonstrated its existing power, he also highlighted its limitations — arguing that while their tech might be deeply intelligent, it currently doesn’t have common sense. However, what was staggering was the speed of advancement — for example neural net applications, that had previously needed Deep Blue-sized computational power, are being recreated on mobile handsets within 12 to 18 months. While these are currently being used in trivial and fun ways, like creating real-time video filters on Facebook, it doesn’t take artificial intelligence to imagine this leading to the potential displacement of white collar workers and with far-reaching socio-political impacts (more on that later!) as well as merely a better search function on Facebook.

One real world application that captured my attention was the disruption it was likely to cause to the car industry — which was already gearing toward a future not of selling cars, but selling mobility as a service. There was speculation that some might end up as makers for a small niche audience of real car loyalists, while the bulk of them are left manufacturing moving white boxes for the technology companies who have mastered driverless car software.

In some panel discussions, of course, people were going even further and claiming that we were currently in the business of creating the very thing that would bring about the end of the human race. Cheery stuff. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to have a quiet moment of concerned reflection on what that might mean for my children’s future.

Virtual Reality a reality

Slightly less concerningly, we also had the usual hype about VR. There was a sense that the VR experience, driven by advancements in hardware and software componentry, was finally catching up with the initial vision for VR; that VR was getting close to realising its iPhone moment — that moment when a game-changing piece of hardware comes along (like the iPhone) and forces you to consign your PalmPilot (RIP) to the back of your cupboard never to be seen again.

While we are already realising how immensely powerful VR can be in transporting people directly into our world and in generating new levels of empathy, now there’s more. For example, Schroepfer, again, shared the amazing work of a team of researchers in Brazil, who are using VR to partially restore neural control as part of a rehabilitation programme for the paralysed.

He also showed how Facebook planned to incorporate VR into their platform, helping them realise their mission to connect everyone with the people they care about, even if they are thousands of miles away, and make it seem as though they are there with you in the room. Or as I christened it, Facebook Live on Steroids.

This was all then Trumped

Then, in the middle of the conference, a different reality hit — reminiscent for me of the Brexit news breaking during the excesses of the Cannes Lions advertising festival. Unexpectedly for most, Trump won.

Through the haze of ‘Night Summit’ (the organised pub crawls around the lively Barrio Alto region of Lisbon), it was becoming increasingly clear that Trump was picking up key battleground states. By the morning of the second day, it was confirmed.

Now, if you are reading this blog, it isn’t wildly presumptive to assume that you are unlikely to have been happy about this happening. Equally, if you were at Web Summit, you were also unlikely to be happy about this. If you are at Web Summit, you are embracing change, you lean into the future, you are driven by a desire to see the potential of technology to disrupt our way of life, and you view all of this positively. The result, however, served to underline — in much the same way that Brexit did — that there’s a whole wide world out there, with many people who are scared, bewildered and completely unprepared for the implications of the new software-driven revolution. There’s a new reality, where developed economies are deindustrialising, and already beginning to consume less resources, including labour. These same people are looking for new leaders, with different ideas, who promise to improve their lot.

Maybe now is the time for the all the accumulated brainpower and expertise at an event like Web Summit to turn its attention to bigger problems in the world, rather than merely making themselves billionaires by helping people to get taxis quicker or making it easier to hook up. If not, you can be sure we’ll have a lot more Trump moments.

And if not, then let’s hope we all get rich selling crypto assets.

Wayne Brown is the Chief Operating Officer at Grey Group UK and was previously the Managing Director of GreyPOSSIBLE. He has also worked at TBWA\London on John Smith’s, Apple and McCain and Lowe Howard-Spink on the global Smirnoff account, Orange, Direct Line, Saab, Coca-Cola and HSBC.