The implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the Communications and Content industries....

What was until recently a bit of a geeky backwater - is making dramatic impact...

Be very careful who you sit next to!   If it’s Elizabeth, then you may find yourself agreeing to write something for our newsletter – as happened the last time we saw each other at Stationers Hall.

Liveryman Bob Harris is not only a Warden and distinguished member of our own Company, but also a Stationer (having been a pupil at Stationers Company’s School), and had invited a number of us to an evening at the Stationers Company Hall, where a panel would be discussing the implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the communications and content industries.  Incidentally, Bob makes the point that Company members, who are eligible to attend cross-livery events like this, enjoy a benefit of which we don’t generally take anything like full advantage.

AI, of course, has swept into the news recently with Alpha Go (developed by Deep Mind, Alphabet’s London-based AI group) using reinforcement learning to quickly get to where it can beat all-comers (including its own predecessor) at Go and even Chess. It’s interesting that this is all based on what was until recently a bit of a geeky backwater - Neural Networks - but the availability of far more data, better algorithms and faster gaming processors have made dramatic differences.

Anyway, we were promised a lively and entertaining take on AI from a panel comprising an academic, a geek, a journalist, a publisher and a philosopher of the internet - and after a generous reception that’s what we got. 

If, by the way, you haven’t been to Stationers Hall, do take the next opportunity. 

Although the discussion was introductory, we soon got to some meaty questions such as replacing journalists with automatically generated copy (e.g. from Wordsmith), the steady transfer of informational power (and wealth) to those who have gathered our data and what, if anything, should we be doing about it.

If anyone wants to discuss this in our own forum, do let us know.

There have been some great articles recently, looking at AI and the complexity of assessing its economic impact, which might help trigger an informed discussion.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth has succeeded in getting an article.   [Wot cheek!  Ed.]

PM David Peregrine-Jones