March 14, 2024
Guest article by Patrick Benner, ARTUS interactive.
Of course, artificial intelligence (AI) is the defining theme of this year’s SXSW. While the impact of corresponding technologies was already apparent last year, the expected extent of the changes associated with AI is now becoming more than clear.
Every year people meet in sunny Austin, Texas for South by South West (SXSW) to look happily into the future and celebrate themselves a little. But there is a shadow on the big joint party this year. Because it is clear to everyone what Sandy Carter, veteran of IBM and Amazon, means when she says: “Your business will be disrupted, stop resisting!”. Namely, that artificial intelligence changes everything.
“We are all part of a big transition!” says Amy Webb, futurist and annual star speaker at SXSW. The coming changes would come with a violence that we have not yet experienced. Most recently, the industrial revolution and the invention of the Internet sparked technological revolutions, but each was based solely on a single invention. Now we are faced with a trio of the Connected Ecosystem of Things, biotechnology and artificial intelligence, which is shaping up to be a Technology Super Cycle.
Fear, uncertainty, doubt
With “What the FUD” and her breakdown of the acronym, Amy Webb gets to the heart of what many are feeling at SXSW: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Many leadership decisions are already driven by fear – often in order to secure one’s own business or job. We haven’t even talked about the big issues like climate change or the danger of a world war. AI could disrupt the world as a whole. She also paints pictures that seem as dark as the end of Game of Thrones. What if, for example, in the context of the Gaza conflict, a flood of artificially generated news and videos triggers a deepfake event? How quickly can we expose the fakes before real conflicts escalate on this basis?
While Peter Deng, head of ChatGPT at OpenAI, is certain that AI cannot be developed in a laboratory, for data protection advocate Yasodara Cordova, the idea of open source AI is about as comforting as a campfire in the living room. When the tech giants suddenly come around the corner with the magic word “open source,” we should listen twice. Is there really a desire to do humanity a service or is it just a desire to shirk responsibility?
Many open questions about AI will not be answered at this SXSW either. This also applies to the question asked by moderator Josh Constine to Peter Deng: “How does an artist feel whose works were used as training data for Chat GPT? Should he be compensated?” Deng’s answer boiled down to its essence: “That’s a really great question!”
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