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Smart Hollywood Keynoter: AI is Neither Utopian nor Dystopian

LOS ANGELES — When President Obama wanted his administration to have a serious conversation about robotics and artificial intelligence, it was Dr. Eric Daimler he turned to for guidance on the conversation.

The former Presidential Innovation Fellow within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and founder and CEO of SpinGlass.ai, brought the same message to Obama that he did to attendees of the Feb. 27 Smart Hollywood Summit: AI and machine learning will unlock new possibilities for both individuals and organizations, but it’s nothing like what Hollywood has made it out to be.

“I wanted to shift the conversation of AI away from either a utopia or dystopia,” Daimler said. “All of us citizens need to be engaged in the conversation of AI. The [AI] action doesn’t improve on its own, the execution doesn’t improve on its own.”

His presentation — “No Terminator Apocalypse: The Real Revolution in AI and Robotics and its Impact on the Entertainment Industry” — contained many of the same themes he brought to the White House: urgency in needed in understanding the possibilities of AI, and how Hollywood businesses need to adapt it, or risk obsolescence.

“I’m going to say AI is underhyped. Every business is an AI business. If you don’t think this way now, you will soon. We need AI, the improved production it gives us,” Daimler said. Already the promise of automated vehicles and what AI brings to the table with food production can literally save human lives. And while media and entertainment may not be a life-or-death industry for AI, the data aspects alone can revolutionize the industry, he said.

“Probability matters in AI [applications] because it’s important because it’s what’s being used to predict behavior,” he said. “[The] great thing about AI is you can have an infinite number of ‘people’ involved in predictive behavior.”

He said Hollywood companies are beginning to treat the advantages of AI as a “commodity of prediction” and that they should look to use the technology to collect a lot of data, “and then collect some more.”

As for the path forward with the technology, AI is not something to be feared, he said. If you haven’t begun using it, now is the time, he stressed. “Hopefully we can turn AI into less of a mystery, and get more involved.”

This year’s Smart Hollywood Summit was produced by MESA’s Smart Content Council with sponsorship by IBM Watson, MarkLogic, EIDR, Hammerspace, human-I-T, Independent Security Evaluators (ISE), KlarisIP, Testronic, FilmTrack, OnPrem, Mediamorph, RSG Media, Vistex, Vubiquity and Bob Gold & Associates. To register click here.