Economic agents enabled by blockchain technologies : a third layer to the web - BAM Marketing Congress 2017
The second day of the BAM Marketing Congress 2018 was closed by Nell Watson, a futurist thinker that blew us away with the possibilities of Machine Intelligence, with economic agents enabled by blockchain technologies. She sincerely believes Machine Intelligence has the potential to change our world for the better. This is not just science fiction. It is real and it is happening as we speak.
“Intelligence is now a utility”
In the 19th century we got running water in our homes. In the 20th century we learned how to install electricity in our homes and technology brought light into our life. People have constantly been building technologies that fundamentally change the way we live. Well, Nell Watson believes that today we are entering a similar age when it comes to Machine Intelligence. More exactly, in this century, intelligence itself is becoming a new utility. It is coming to us in a virtual pipe. However, we don’t seem to notice it. Think about it: a lot of us are active on Pinterest, which uses algorithms that help us choose similar furniture, sweaters or dresses to the ones we say we like. It is funny though how we think of it as ‘just a tool’. Well, it is not just ‘a tool’, it is amazing Machine Intelligence!
Why now?
The world we live in is drowning in data. It is estimated that in all of human history up to the year 2000, we created about 5 Exabytes of data. The same amount of data was created every 10 hours in 2010 and every 2 minutes (!) in 2017. It is not that strange if you think about the number of videos uploaded to YouTube every minute or the tweets and social media posts sent into the world every day. However, this incredible amount of data, combined with the computing power to process data, enables machines to learn faster and in ways that weren’t previously possible.
Machines are becoming creative
Machines are learning at a speed we cannot keep up with and soon they will be helping us to create new combinations. Again, this might sound as a futuristic oddity but it is already happening today. We are just not noticing it.
For example, IBM’s Watson can be used to invent new drink and food recipes based on ingredients in your fridge, creating crazy combinations we would never come up with.
Another case exemplifying the creative power of machines is the Neural Storyteller, an algorithm that creates stories out of images. You just upload a picture and a story will be created. Yes, by a machine. Today we can already put financial data or even sport data into machines and they will create financial articles and sport articles using that data, written in a way that is meaningful to us, humans.
Moral machines
As we work ever closer with machines, we need to be sure that we can trust them. In order to interact with us as partners, colleagues or even as counselors, machines need to understand human values. For machines to participate in our society they need to be able to understand ethics. Just like children, they need our guidance.
Nell Watson truly believes that one of the most important tasks for the world today is to help machines understand moral human values. We need to moralize machines so Machine Intelligence can be safe and fun for everyone in society.
