AI in media #aboutlastnight — Ghent 25/10
Last Friday we joined some 300 students in Ghent for the Digital Economy day hosted by Samsung, at the beautiful University Aula. For the occasion the ancient temple of wisdom was transformed into a sexy blue event location. Really funny to see all these young bright minds trying to grasp their future after having just woken up, being in a party place again.
As a 40 year old i could only admit that it is them, generation Z & soon Alpha, that are going to change the world into AI. They are growing up with this new technology language. Old farts like me will eventually get stuck in nostalgia of street fighter 2 and screetching modems… but until then …
Fredo De Smet, Aaron Wils & prof. Lieven De Marez agreed that the sweet spot of university, corporate & public broadcaster is the place to be to find new solutions in AI. Jim Stolze took the stage and briefly explained to the crowd what this AI revolution was all about. Human evolution, the next chapter. After that Mieke De Ketelaere (Program Director Artificial Intelligence, IMEC) explained the big abstract AI word more in depth. Especially the current difference in human & machine ability. In some cases machines are already better, in others humans still have the advantage. Read more in this samsung column about why this is so important. Or look at our newshost Wim De Vilder suddenly deepfaking arabic, because you’re half way through this read and you deserve a break :-)
Time for some breakout sessions of which ours focused on media of course. Tom van de weghe, expert journalist who spent a year in Stanford studying AI, explained ‘How to make your newsroom AI ready’. He clearly holds the key for future news organisations. You can find a dutch column on this here. Use AI to translate it, use deepl.com. It’s better than Google Translate, maybe even AI :-) Serious street credibility on this guy as he got beaten up in China defending freedom of speech. More about that incident here.
After this Fredo did a Q&A with Tom Van de Weghe & Jonathan Berte (CEO robovision) with a deep dive in deep learning. Concluding that the social aspect of this revolution was only in its baby years. But who would you trust the most ? The current governement or an AI one? Jonathan chooses the AI one … Shock treatment for a story of hope and opportunity.
But still I wondered … What is already working ? Jonathan’s company got tired of writing specific software to automate and wrote a framework that just helps you train some AI recognize simple patterns. Sounds easy and quite useless, but in fact isn’t. Slowely but surely these are the first steps in the biggest revolution of our time: The augmentation of our intelligence. Robovision is already possible to smarten up more complex industry processes. Check their tullip robot here, changing the way these companies work since the industrial revolution.
It gives you a good idea where we are at: The level of a 2 year old apparently. Doing simple repetitive tasks with one simple purpose. Like putting a spoon in your mouth over and over and over again … Lots of these spoon jobs can be found in media too. But no real software to be found yet, only small solutions for small problems in subtitling, camera taks, etc … More useful would be training software or a framework on top of existing or emerging media services … Anyway most important is why you want to do it of course. Really try to avoid the cost-efficiency benefit reason and find business gold. It’s insulting to the potential AI really has in my opinion.
You really want to grasp the cultural impact of AI ? Please go out and get ‘The Game’ by Allessandro Barricco and sit down with your downward dog at your autumn fireplace. This historian makes up a map of the last 2O years of technological & cultural evolution. He uses a river and *SPOILER ALERT* after a few turns ends up in the AI delta *END SPOILER ALERT.* Really interesting and fun read. Know your history, so you can maybe predict the future. Maybe the future will be ruled by Kitty AI ? A new digital AI fuhrer that helps you on a personal basis ? Wir schaffen das …
What’s next ? Follow Jonathans example and get your hands dirty. Start doing simple things. Start using their framework. Augment and automate your world step-by-step using their AI app store. Democratize it, share it and do no harm. If you get bored go to an AI algorave. Dance with robots … in the end we will be joining forces ;-)
