Japanese researchers unveil their stunning “full body DeepFakes”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Pandora’s Box has been opened, and very soon you won’t be able to tell what content was created by a human, and what was created by a machine. I’ve been talking about the rise of realistic, people fooling synthetic content that’s created by machines...
Nvidia’s GauGAN turns your crappy sketches into masterpieces
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Increasingly AI is being used as a tool to help democratise creativity and unlock people’s creative potential. It’s long been known that I’m a crappy artist – despite my best efforts at school it was evident early on that I was just never cut...
Creative AI’s have learnt how to create their own video games
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF AI is getting increasingly capable at creating quality synthetic content, and that includes books, scripts, and worlds. Today we have AI’s building other AI’s and fake news stories, and AI’s that write their own code, and doing a better job of it than the...
New AI Fake News generator is too dangerous to release, say its creators
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF It will not be long before we cannot differentiate the difference between real content and fake content, and that has a myriad of very serious implications, none of which we are prepared for. There are several very scary AI’s in existence today, take for...
Futurist Keynote, London: Investing in the Exponential Future, SRP European Conference
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Incredibly powerful, and increasingly democratised, emerging technologies are transforming every sector faster than ever, and this can have dire consequences for investors if the mechanisms behind the change are not understood. Firstly, thank you to Amelie for inviting me to be the keynote for...
OpenAI develops curious AI’s that learn for themselves
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Today’s AI’s are force fed training information but companies around the world are trying to create AI’s that learn for themselves which will revolutionise the field. When playing a video game, what motivates you to carry on? This question is perhaps too broad to...
Futurist Keynote, Germany: Life in 2030, RWE
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF A lot has changed in the last ten years, and even more will change in the next ten. Are you ready? Firstly, a big thank you to Kathrin and the team for inviting me to be the keynote at this years RWE Leadership meeting...
Lexus turns to IBM to create the world’s first AI scripted advert
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF In time all adverts, and the majority of content, will be created by AI, and people won’t be able to tell it from the “real” thing. Over the past eighteen months or so I’ve been discussing how Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been becoming increasingly...
A creative AI designed NASA’s next spider-like interplanetary lander
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As humans we tend to believe that creativity is our exclusive domain, but AI is muscling in in a big way, and creative machines are improving all the time. Over the past couple of years I’ve been banging the drum, through my articles and...
A portrait created by an AI just sold at Christies for $432,000
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We’re told that machines can’t be creative, at least in the human sense, but nevertheless they can still “create” art – and sell it. A few months ago I wrote an article about a Google backed Artificial Intelligence (AI) based out of Germany that...
US Navy puts AI brains into its 3D printers to make them “creative and intelligent”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF By combining the power of AI with 3D printing the US military hopes to revolutionise how products are designed and made everywhere. One thing about aircraft, especially ones that fly from aircraft carriers, that are increasingly being turned into floating factories and flying fortresses,...
Futurist Keynote, London: The Future of Superyacht Design, SuperyachtNews
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As the superyacht industry hots up and competition intensifies superyacht companies have to work harder to stay at the leading edge of design trends. Firstly, I’d like to thank the team at RWD, a superyacht design company in the UK, and Feyi and Rory from...
This creative AI paints like the old masters
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We’re always told ai cannot be imaginative or creative, but human creativity can be cloned. Recently art made by Artificial Intelligence (AI) software has become a field in its own right and it’s become quite a niche market in certain circles. As a result...
DeepMind’s AI now has human like 3D vision
WHY THIS MATERS IN BRIEF As we come to rely on robots and automated systems more in our daily lives their ability to accurately perceive our world is crucial. If I showed you a single picture of a room it’s likely you’d be able to tell me about it...
An AI just wrote, directed and produced its own appalling film, but it’s the future
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Today AI’s that are involved in film production are, for the most part, really awful, but over time they’ll improve and one day they’ll go head to head with the best human directors. Benjamin is a genius who may have created a film that’s...
EU law makers are thinking of letting people sue robots
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As automation, in the form of autonomous hardware and software based robots, becomes more commonplace, law makers are debating who should be responsible for their actions. If a robot, acting autonomously, injures or otherwise wrongs a human, who will be held responsible? Some European...
Futurist keynote, London: The Future of Artificial Intelligence, British Museum
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF There is a risk that humanity is under estimating the impact that AI will have on the world, particularly in the criminal underworld, but if I could give you a single take away it would be this – AI’s capabilities are evolving at a furious...
Creative AI’s generate video from plain text
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Imagine not being able to program or code, but still being able to write a description or a script and have an AI create an HD image or video of it for you, this is the technology that’s now arriving. In 2016 an Artificial...
Microsoft’s newest AI is an artist with an imagination
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF There is a great tussle going on between people who believe AI can never become “creative” and those who do, but depending on how you define “imagination” Microsofts latest AI could prove the naysayers wrong. Ever since computer scientist Alan Turing first proposed his...
Nvidia’s newest AI turns sunny streets into snow filled ones in real time
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Leaps in computing performance are letting AI’s produce real time, photo realistic fake video footage that has a variety of applications, from training self-driving cars to helping create fake news. As everyone knows, or at least can suspect, the sunny weather in California is...
