“You ask Google stuff you’d never ask your mother.” That struck a chord. It starts your imagination churning even before Google’s Michael Lorenc, head of industry — ticketing and live events, launches full bore into a description of how Google is coming up with the answers. More importantly, Michael detailed how artificial intelligence (AI), described as the science of getting computers to act without being explicitly programmed to do so, is developing.
We’ve all seen it in action. He demonstrated by asking Google the name of the coach at a major university, followed by “how tall is he?” without repeating his name. He went on to ask, “Who is his wife? Does she have any sisters?” By the time he was done, we had a very personal profile of the coach and his family, the result of a “conversation” with Google.
Michael was the final keynote at PACnet ’17 in Newport Beach, and he was indelibly entertaining. AI is a key to self-driving cars and Google’s self-driven car has now completed 2.3 million miles all alone. And it’s still facing new hurdles. He showed a photograph of the car’s encounter with “a grandmother in a wheelchair chasing a dog with a broom.” Grandma had the broom. How do you “program” the car to react to that?
Machine learning can only go so far. AI is the future. Computers are competing with humans in games. AI. Programmers are “challenging” computers to see what they can do without being told. “It’s creepy but cool,” Michael admitted.
Google Photo is an example. Michael showed proof Google recognizes his son in photos even as his son ages. That’s intuition, isn’t it? You can hold the phone up to the Eiffel Tower and ask “how tall is it?,” and the phone knows what you’re talking about…and has the answer. Phones are being taught to recognize diabetics through retinopathy, no doctor needed. Think what that could mean in third world countries without an adequate number of health professionals.
Logic, sequence, intuition, translation, diagnosis. The Great AI Awakening is upon us. Yes, it will eliminate some jobs, just like Fax machines eliminated Pony Express, he quipped, seriously adding that Google is aiming to offload some of the tactical work to computers, leaving people free to apply creative energy. He looks at it as the computer doing things for you so you can do something else. He’s also waiting for the three-day workweek for Google humans; let the computer do 24/7.
Sports and entertainment, though, that’s a face-to-face business. Right? We’re never going to be replaced by computers. We’ll just put them on stage. Like e-sports, we’ll find a way to make it “live.”
God grant you many years to sell tickets to AI-powered events.
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FROM THE EDITOR
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