Sir Tim Berners-Lee's Cannes takeaways on artificial intelligence
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a guest of media network PHD, addressed the Cannes Lions festival with his views about the impact that artificial intelligence (AI) will have on various elements of the world from driverless cars to global business.
Here are a few of his insights from the talk.
On machine translation
"Machines can do translation but they can't do it with logical thought in Russian – they can do it through using lots of shreds of information.
"They can convert without really thinking about it. It follows through, it is converted but it isn't understood. It doesn't really translate but it just repeats which is all you actually need."
On recognition and self-driving cars
"Cars can be programmed to drive in traffic and recognise road signs – however it is important that they recognise when a police officer steps into the road to stop traffic.
"Vision recognition is hard... but it is one of the things that will be used for a lot of things including recognising people's faces as they enter a football stadium."
Self aware AI
"Something that calls itself a sentient being has to have a whole lot of goals and be much more powerful... someone has to develop a goal based algorithm to achieve this."
Personal data
"My data to me is much more valuable than my data is to you. If you are an advertising company or insurance company you can find out much more abut my eating or fitness habits...
"For me, my fitness, my health and my eating habits are about how long I live which is really important to me... a virtual assistant would be much more useful if it had access to my personal data so I think we will see more access to personal data like calendars or running – apps that will run across your whole life."
The problems with the Semantic Web
"The Semantic Web is here but it's not evenly distributed."
On APIs
"Suppose companies had APIs. I could create a holding company, build a company and create an infrastructure, then I can take all my own software and once you create a company it can make itself and restructure itself and reproduce."
The rights of robots
"If robots are given the same legal rights as human beings then it's time to put the brakes on."
Check out The Drum's Cannes Lions hub for all the latest news and goings on from the festival.