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This year’s Web Summit, in Lisbon, revolved around artificial intelligence and a robot that sorts clothes.
Digit, a humanoid built by US firm Agility Robotics, demonstrated how far AI has come in just a few years by responding to voice commands – filtered through Google’s Gemini AI model – to examine a stack of colorful t-shirts. and place them in a basket.
It wasn’t a perfect demonstration, but the enthusiastic response, almost two years after ChatGPT’s launch, reflected the enthusiasm for all things AI that swept through Europe’s largest annual tech conference.
You couldn’t hear talk of a decline in the rise of AI over shouts of encouragement for Digit as he mulled different shades of clothing.
However, the voices of caution were there, discussing familiar topics such as safety, jobs and climate, as AI comes to influence a wide range of industries. These are some of the talking points from the AI event.
Job security
A key debate was: If AI is going to displace millions of jobs, will they be replaced by new roles for humans as technology creates new opportunities?
There was much discussion of entry-level jobs becoming victims of displacement. Speakers talked about how these jobs will be affected in professional industries such as law, finance, and even technology because AI tools, particularly AI “agents” that can perform tasks autonomously, will be able to perform jobs. relatively simple, such as the initial verification of contracts or handling queries from potential clients.
Sarah Franklin, chief executive of Lattice, a US technology company that provides a platform for companies’ human resources departments, said the shape of the workforce would change as a result. Entry-level jobs formed the basis of a workforce that shrank as people rose to management and executive roles, he said. “AI can make this more diamond-shaped, where entry levels are harder to reach.”
And he added: “The pace of innovation is surpassing that of education. “This is a dangerous future if we don’t invest quickly to ensure everyone is proficient in AI, especially entry-level workers.”
And then there’s the question of replacing those eliminated jobs. GXO, a US logistics company, uses Digit in warehouses to lift boxes and place them on conveyor belts. According to Agility Robotics CEO Peggy Johnson, a new role could be created in managing Digits teams doing physical work.
“Employees who previously performed this physical work appreciate the fact that they can delegate it to Digit,” he said. “Then it allows them to do a lot of other things, one of which is being a robot manager.”
the weather
The impact of AI on the climate, particularly through the energy-hungry data centers used to train and operate AI models, has sparked warnings that competition for energy supplies could pit tech companies against communities. .
“I think there are real concerns to be raised about the implications for the climate and the implications for local communities that also rely on these energy infrastructures,” said Sarah Myers West of the AI Now Institute, which produces research on AI policy.
He added that coal plants were being kept open to meet power demand for data centers in the US, while renewable energy resources could be diverted to artificial intelligence companies and related infrastructure rather than for public use. wider.
Microsoft President Brad Smith acknowledged the issue in a keynote speech.
“We can’t afford to just build data centers and consume electricity without considering what it means for a local community or for a country or for planet Earth,” he said.
Microsoft admitted this year that energy use related to its data centers was jeopardizing its goal of being carbon negative by 2030.
Startups were a feature of the summit and climate-oriented investors see the rise of AI as a source of demand.
Shawn Xu, a partner at US-based Lowercarbon Capital, a venture capital fund that invests in companies fighting the climate crisis, said data centers were “an opportunity to expand clean energy.” Lowercarbon’s investments include UK company InRange, which connects rooftop solar sites to data centres.
Edith Yeung, general partner at US venture capital firm Race Capital, said energy would be an investment focus next year. “By 2025, the AI strategy is an energy strategy. “It is a very critical pillar for the AI infrastructure.”
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Security
Despite all the AI push, the event brought prominence to Professor Max Tegmark, a leading voice in warnings about the technology’s unbridled development.
Tegmark, an artificial intelligence specialist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told a sizable crowd that the industry was at a “fork in the road” where it could develop artificial general intelligence (AI systems that match or surpass human intelligence). ) that resulted in a “fork in the road” There is a reasonable chance that we will all be dead within 10 years” or that we will live in a “dystopia” where humans are completely powerless.
Will AI replace creators?
Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight said creative professionals would be “on the front lines” of a battle between AI and humanity. However, computers would lose because they would not be able to create the unexpected, he said. The issue was highlighted last month when it emerged that British broadcaster ITV was advertising a £95,000-a-year job involving the use of AI to “shape the future of content creation”.
Knight described AI’s approach to creative work as “taking previous experiences, precedents, and presenting them in a different way,” and said the human approach to art sounded similar, but was “more than that.”
“When a creative human being creates something new, the reason it works is because they don’t expect it.”
Knight spoke alongside Marco Bassetti, chief executive of TV production group Banijay, which has launched a creative fund for ideas using AI.
“There are many things AI can do to improve creativity. “It can save a lot of time coming up with an idea,” he told The Guardian. However, he added, humans still had the advantage and compared AI to a tool that helps manufacture the finished product. “Just because you have a brush, it doesn’t mean you can paint.”
However, one experienced creative figure noted the emergence of AI products, like Runwaywhich can generate compelling video images quickly.
“I think we are going to see a huge negative impact on the WPPs of the world and on the large (advertising) holding companies. It’s not that they don’t understand what’s going to happen, but would their starting point really be, “I have 100,000 employees who have no AI experience”? No, it wouldn’t,” said David Jones, CEO of Brandtech Group, an advertising startup that uses generative AI to create marketing campaigns.
What’s next for the boom?
There was talk of a slowdown in the race towards increasingly powerful AI, after reports that initial tests of unreleased models had underperformed.
Recent advances have been more than enough to spur the launch of new companies, such as British biotech startup Healx, which uses AI to find cures for rare diseases, and Luminance, another UK company, which offers companies a model Custom AI to do legal work.
Kanu Gulati, a partner at Khosla Ventures, a California venture capital firm whose investments include ChatGPT developer OpenAI, said companies were emerging that, even if they didn’t build the models, were leveraging them. This was a key (and necessary) development for investors and technology companies seeking a return on their multi-billion dollar investments in AI advancements. “New business models can now be created,” said Gulati.