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A full social life with
Alexa awaits – but your
AI butler could one day
turn super-sleuth in a
criminal investigation
too. “By giving AI a
long-term memory and
improving its contextual
analysis and reasoning,
you get to the point fairly
quickly where you can
have a conversation,”
Griffin tells Stuff.
“There are lots of
people doing it – Google,
Microsoft, IBM, the
usual suspects – but
realistically, this time
next year you will see
Amazon saying you can
have a chat with Alexa:
asking it follow-up
questions like why
something is the way
it is, or how to make
something.”
Take a look at me now
Talk is only half the story,
because Griffin claims
the biggest impact we’ll
see is AI plus machine
vision. “Those two
technologies combined
change everything,
because it means you’re
giving smart devices
better than human sight,”
he says.
“Then the camera on
your laptop, tablet, phone
or TV can monitor your
behaviour, health and
mood, to tell you if you’re
about to have a heart
attack, or if you’re
enjoying the movie
you’re watching.”Turn it on again
“It can assess your
personality, character
and intent for criminality
and figure out whether
you’re lying with greater
accuracy than a
polygraph. Effectively
that’s Alexa giving you
a medical or a psychiatric
assessment at home, or
even questioning you as
a suspect – and it can do
this now. The only thing
holding it back is the
issue of privacy: who
wants Alexa always
watching?”
All this stuff means
adoption is likely to be
gradual if at all, so you
may notice your AI butler
staging interventions first
to gain your trust.
“Let’s say you ask
Alexa to play you a song.
If Amazon wanted, it
could say: ‘I’ve noticed
your voice is a little
deeper than usual,
I think you’re getting the
flu, would you like me to
video-call the doctor?’
You then sit in front of
a screen, get assessed
and are issued with a
prescription – and this
is two weeks before you
actually get properly ill.”Griffin’s been working with one of
the world’s biggest film companies
on the future of movie-making
(tough gig). It’s set to heavily
involve VR and AI, and it’s giving
the Oscars people a headache.
“The Lion King was made entirely
in VR and the Oscars have no idea
how to classify it, because it’s not
real and it’s not animation,” he
says. “All they really used was
a 20x20m studio. The team went
to Africa, figured out what they
needed and created the entire
savannah in VR back home.”Land of confusion
But AI film-making is where it gets
really interesting. “We’re increasingly
using AI to create synthetic content.
Think text generators like OpenAI
that can write the news, synthetic
audio like Google Duplex, and AI
musicians being signed by Sony.
“Then there’s AI creating video.
We will get to the point where you
press a big button, go ‘Make me a
blockbuster Marvel movie’ and off
it goes... but first about 70 different
AI disciplines have to mature.”
That means machines grasping
what a story is – plus emotions, the
laws of nature and more.
“To give you an idea, three years
ago decent ‘deep fake’ tech was at
the back of a lab and you needed
a bunch of experts to do anything
with it. Now you can get it free
in an app. And all these fields are
accelerating at a similar pace.”How do you fancy being placed
in the centre of a football match
while it’s being broadcast on
TV, or taking on the world’s best
athletes from your sofa? If that
sounds a bit Ready Player One,
that’s because it kind of is – thanks
to VR, haptics and 5G.
“Let’s start with footballers,”
says Griffin, “I could take the video
of a Premier League game, convert
it using Samsung or Nvidia tech
into a 3D VR simulation on an HTC
Vive and put a player straight back
into the game to analyse where he
went wrong. I could then combine
that with AI rendering and a haptic
Teslasuit, so if he did something
different the AI could compensate
and we’d see the results.
“Using the same VR tech running
over 5G I could ‘sub’ you in: put you
in a Teslasuit and VR headset, pitch
you against top-class footballers
and see how you do – in a game
that’s actually playing on TV.”Follow you follow me
And if you actually want to work up
a sweat – just without leaving the
house because, you know, light
drizzle and all that? Griffin says
electromagnetic floors are on the
way, allowing you to run in every
direction while using VR, without
the need for a treadmill. That
means running a marathon
but always staying in one room,
perhaps pausing every so often for
a Pot Noodle. Sounds alright to us.