Tag: AI

Robotic Love

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Recently it was my daughter’s birthday. So I decided to write a poem about her as a gift.

Here it is:

Flora, a girl with a heart full of dreams. Turning thirteen, her future beams.

With a book in hand, she loves to read. Fantasy worlds, is where she likes to lead

Writing stories, her imagination flows. Creating characters, she knows and chose.

Drawing pictures, her talent is true. Artistic skills, she’ll always pursue.

Learning new things, her curious mind. Expanding her knowledge, she’s one of a kind.

With family by her side, laughter and cheer. Making memories, she holds dear

Playing piano, her fingers glide. Melodic notes, her heart resides.

Guitar sessions with dad, a special bond. Music brings them together, and beyond.

As she grows, her passions will bloom. A bright future, she’ll soon assume.

Happy 13th birthday Flora , keep shining bright – May your dreams take flight.

Of course, you already guessed that this was written by ChatGPT.

I’ll admit it isn’t the worlds greatest poem, I’ll call it serviceable, and better than I’d write. This is the prompt I gave ChatGPT to come up with it: “Make a poem, Make it rhyme. Let it be about a girl turning 13 whose name is Flora. Include the following topics; reading, writing, drawing, learning new things, hanging out with family, playing piano, having a guitar session with dad”.

So, I read this out to my daughter, who really likes it, and is quite emotional. She says; “It’s so beautiful! How long did it take? When did you write it?” I say; “Just now, took me about 30 seconds to generate using ChatGPT…”

Bonus: Free Interview of me talking about how ChatGPT works and if Skynet has arrived!

My daughter went from being moved to pretty disappointed. The poem hadn’t changed, just ‘where it came from’. She told me she liked it because I did it, not the words, and went on to say, it’s just not as good anymore. This is what we ought remember.

I knew this would happen, but I really wanted to see a real human reaction to Robot Love. (FYI – I wrote her something myself as well which I’ll keep private – I’m, not that evil).

I also told her why I did it and explained the new tech and pending impact of society. And she was totally cool with it and asked me to put the story in my new AI keynote, which I have.

Don’t get left behind: Get me in to deliver my mind blowing new Keynote Speech on How AI is about to change your industry.

Here’s the Business Insight: When it comes to creativity, the future won’t be about whether AI can do it (it will be able) – it will be about choosing if we want it done by an AI, or human. Increasingly, we’ll need to choose between efficiency or humanity. Your customer should guide you. Depending on the context, how something was made is as important as what was created.

—

Keep thinking,

Steve.

How A.I. just changed the Internet

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Welcome to 2023 – This year I’ve promised myself to post here every Friday – starting today of course.

The impact of ChatGPT has been well documented in the media. If you haven’t played around with it yet – then I strongly suggest you give it a whirl.

There have been many articles about which industries and jobs ChatGPT might disrupt. Here’s a much simpler way to look at it from the Sammatron: If your job or industry uses ‘words’ – it will be impacted.

It’s that simple. It will impact everything. Like the internet that came before it, ChatGPT brings inordinate opportunities for those who choose to embrace the new reality.

The internet is currently:

A Giant Filing Cabinet

Everything we see on the internet is made by someone, somewhere. Words, pictures and video, all of it. Our experience on the internet is basically asking services to find and serve up what we’ve subscribed to or what we’ve searched for in this giant filing cabinet of human creation. Even when it is live, it’s still us peering in the window of what someone else is making or doing. This is why search and social are so powerful. That’s about to change.

We are about to go from Search Engines to Creation Engines.

(Read the above sentence again, it’s that important)

Let me explain. Starting now – we will shift from asking the internet to find what we want to asking it to create what we want. We’ll be expecting it to answer exact questions to queries, summarise things, write for us, create images, pictures, stories, animations, rap songs and even write software code for us by literally asking it to create an app that does XYZ. We are about to see another level of technology democratisation beyond what anyone can imagine.

ProTip: Get me to come into your company and deliver my mind blowing new Keynote Speech on How AI is about to change everything.

The art of the internet will rely on our ability to work with Artificial Intelligence. We’ll need to cajole the AIs to create what we are after. We’ll need to become great at prompting and teaching AIs how to build what we desire, because when used correctly, AI should be a mind expanding tool. An addendum to our biology, not a replacement. We’ll need to learn how to literally ‘train the AIs’ like we might a train a dog. It will be about the symbiosis of using tools. From a business perspective, our attention should be focused on industries that can cut costs through large language models and AI-generated imagery. The business of words and images will have production costs cut dramatically.

Get Daily Inspiration on my Tik Tok – 4 million views & counting! – Follow me here

Our imaginations on what to ‘make’ will become increasingly important. Here’s a prompt we might give very soon: “Create a seven minute animated movie, in manga style. Let it star a seven year old girl named Mary (base her animation on this picture) and her magic pony, who saves the world from a climate crisis. Give me versions in English, Spanish and Mandarin.”

As  I’ve previously written, the ability to determine what was made by a human or a machine will be increasingly difficult to differentiate. Likewise, an entirely new species of startups and business opportunities will emerge. It’s early, so it’s time to get started.

– – –

Keep Thinking,

Steve.

Robot Love

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

We don’t just have a relationship with technology, we use technology to find relationships. Newspapers, video dating, website matching services and apps – and to the most direct of all – Tinder.

The reason Tinder works is simple. It replicates human behaviour in the real world. The moment someone walks into a night club they look around at the faces of people and say to themselves, Yes, No, No ,Yes, No, No, No, No Yes, Yes. And the people they are looking at are doing the same thing back at them – assuming of course they are both looking to meet someone. But in the actual nightclub there is that awkward discovery process of trying to work out if the other party feels the same way. Which then becomes the business model of the nightclub – Sell people drinks for that few hours of the discovery process.

One of the core functions of the alcoholic drinks was to make people look better, and feel more confident. Well, technology has managed to do replace this as well – let’s just say that instagram filters are the new beer goggles!

Technology has a way of replicating what we do in the real world, and in doing so, it creates competition in business which are non traditional, even hard to align. Beer volumes may decline due digital photo filters. Insights like this are very difficult to report in a corporate market share update.

In the not too distant future – things could get even weirder. People developing serious relationships with humanoid robots – Robots which look, feel and act, just like humans. The vote 50 years from now might make gay marriage seem so minor as we vote on whether or not humans and robots can get married!

–

Happy Valentines Day.

You’re the Movie Star Now

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

If you think our self-obsessed society couldn’t get any more obsessed with our self image, then hold on tight. We’re about turn this gig up to eleven. While we rarely admit it, everyone’s favourite topic is themselves. Now, if you could imagine for a moment what celebrity culture mashed up with self-obsession might look like, then you’ve taken a sneak peak at what’s next – Everyday Movie Stars.

No, I’m not talking about low-quality, bottom-feeding, Reality TV melodrama. I’m talking about Big Budget Films From Hollywood starring you. The GIF above is from a face-swapping app coming out of China call ZAO. This app utilises deep fake technology to allow anyone to impose their face onto any video – including those with celebrities. Mind you, this is a ‘free’ (for the price of your personal data) app on a smart phone – and it’s quite impressive. Now, imagine what could be done a couple of years from now with improved AI, deep fake algorithmic improvement and even better camera technology. It isn’t hard to see where this is going. You, me and everyone else will be able to slot ourselves into any movie we please. We’ll sit down on a Friday night with our popcorn to watch ourselves in an Oscar-winning performance on Netflix with no noticeable difference. That’s next level narcissism, but I promise you it will happen within the decade.

In the first instance, we’ll probably have to go to the cinema and watch ourselves through augmented glasses and pay a premium for the privilege. With enough imagination, disruptive technology like this always represents new revenue opportunities. Technology has a way of democratising everything – and it’s about to democratise starring in high-budget Hollywood movies. But every shift in tech has losers too. It makes me wonder whether the stars of Hollywood will have to step aside as Joe and Jane Average are patched in via AI. Don’t worry Leo, I think it’s pretty safe to say most people would rather star with you, than replace you. Besides, who we are ‘in the movie’ with is just as important as how good it is.

– – –

Bonus content:

Short video interviews featuring me discussing:

 

Smart Contact Lenses & the Future of Sport

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

People seem to be in perpetual fear that technology will take away all the jobs. The bit they always miss is that for every job tech takes away, it invents two. The classic examples of technology inventing new work and new industries are in sport and entertainment. Given it is Football Grand Final week here in Australia – let’s explore where football viewing is heading next.

In the future, watching football, or any sport, will be a much better experience than it is today. Firstly, we’ll have an augmented reality layer on the screen. Not only will you be able to turn on live stats of your favourite players or teams, you’ll also be able to turn them off too. Camera angles won’t dictated by the broadcaster – they’ll be chosen by the viewer via the broadcaster. There will be cameras literally everywhere. There will be super-speed high-definition recording on the goal posts, on the ground and even from the ball so you can watch it sail through the goalposts. You get to choose which replays to watch and when – it will be total director control from the comfort of your sofa. But if you want to get more involved in the game, here is where it gets really cool.

Utilising the latest technology in ‘smart reality contact lenses’, you’ll be able to get the players’ view of the game live while the game is in progress. Log in before the game and you can immerse yourself in exactly how Dusty Martin, Christiano Rinaldo or Russell Wilson experience it – watching the match from their eyes. Of course, you’ll pay for the privilege. It’ll also make sense for players to market themselves to be exciting enough for viewers to log onto, as they’ll be paid per fan log in. But if that’s not close quite enough – then don’t forget to don your football haptic suit. It’s a suit you can wear while watching the game which allows the wearer to to feel in real time the bumps and tussles the players feel on the field. The suit will raise your temperature to match the players’, give you the same palpitations as their heart beats and hear their on-field verbal communications. How is this be possible? These haptic suits can link to players’ uniforms which will be threaded with tiny electronic components to send real-time data across the web using IoT technology. The experience of sport and entertainment in the future will be so real it can almost get dangerous.

But if you think about it – this is the trajectory we’ve been on for a long time. We go from hearing about a football match on radio, to watching a replayed match on a black and white screen, to live HD with slow motion and stats to actually becoming the players. Technology always brings us closer to something far away and allows us to experiences things we otherwise wouldn’t. The opportunities for innovations like this is sport and all forms of entertainment are really limitless.

These possibilities will create jobs, revenue and companies which are yet to exist. The unbelievable part is the technologies already exist to make it happen. My only question is – what are you waiting for?

We’re the ghost in the machine

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Worried about being taken over by robots? Here’s another thought: We are becoming robots. We’re merging with machines.

I know this sounds scary, but the patterns of technology tell a story of what’s next. The future is so often written in the past. If you consider the evolution of computers, we can remember machines once as big as a room have now become a small piece of glass that slides into our pockets, which is also a billion times more powerful. Pods go into our ears, wires come out of our pockets and some crazy people are getting chips inserted under their skin too. Think of computers like this:

We used to go to the technology to use it – in big Government and military institutions.

Then the technology turned up on our work desks.

Eventually it appeared in our homes.

Later, it got small enough to carry in bag.

Suddenly, it can slide into everyone’s pockets

and now we wear it, insert it under our skin and it never leaves our side.

Our world is changing so quickly that we have collectively discovered a way to evolve outside of our bodies with technology to cope with the world, until we of course figure out a way for the technology to enter our bodies. Which will turn us into cyborgs.

Every day we already see humans augment their senses (smart phones, smart glasses, wearables, watches and earpods) all enhancing our cognitive ability. Simultaneously technology is being developed to create ‘fake bodies’ we can wear in the form of exoskeletons so we’ll be able to run faster, be stronger, work harder, move for longer periods or play totally different and weird sports we can’t even imagine yet. The trend isn’t us versus the robots – it’s us evolving into them.

I’m the first to say that I’d never get a chip installed for pure convenience reasons, All that to just open a door to log into a computer, no thanks. But If I could gain all of the utility of a smart phone, by having upgradable technology permanently plugged into my brain so I can think and react in real time like a super human – then sign me up. I’d much rather that than competing with AIs as an organic human to try and survive on this revolving orb.

This is already happening. The technology is getting smaller and smaller, and metaphorically attaching itself to our bodies – and so it is inevitable that it will enter our bodies. We’ll also eventually figure out how to breed progeny with the upgrades to humanoid already installed from our parents – let’s call it DDNA (Digital DNA). Information technology will merge with biotechnology and it will operate on the nanoscale. So if technology is getting under your skin… well, you haven’t seen anything yet.

It does raise some serious concerns – change always does – but this will most significant in our history. It could well end up as a split in our species, akin to the chimpanzees who chose to leave the trees and cross the savanna. We may well end up with a two-breed reality of Neo-Humans and Sapien-Luddites. And just like every revolution – those with all the advantages will be those with access to greater financial resources so they can ‘upgrade themselves’.

In the short term, the thing I worry about most is coming much sooner than this. For the first time in history – humans will become a hackable animal. Already large technology firms can know where we are, where we are going, where we’ve been, what we think, what we want, what we value, whom we support, who we care about, how we feel and all manner of activities and emotions. And this isn’t just click through patterns. It’s now also achieved by observing our unique biometric outputs such as facial expressions, and heart rhythms. Now that large technology corporations and Governments have infinite processing power, data and biometric measurement, they can predict and even manipulate human choices on a level much deeper than ever before possible. Now imagine the possibilities with external algorithms and computational power running through our bodies.

Eventually these biotech algorithms will understand us, better than we do. If we are accessed somehow by a bad actor with nefarious intentions, it’s not a stretch to imagine a person acting against their own will – or even worse, for them to believe it was their own personal intention. While this might sound alarmist, let me bring this back to a human level. Always remember that we are the ghost in the machine. The machines will always be a manifestation of us. We design them, we build them, we hack them and so they fully reflect the good and bad of the human condition. And if we don’t want to be hacked in our cyborg era of living, then it’s best we put in collective effort now to stop those manipulating us through a simple screen.

—

Thanks for reading & stay rad, Steve. 

What to teach your kids (& yourself) – My TED talk

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The most common question I’m asked in my work is this: “What do you teach your kids?  How do you prepare them for an unknown future?” It really is the question. It’s also the topic of a TED talk I did this year in Melbourne.

In the talk I tell the story of how society shapes children, and systematically removes their entrepreneurial spirit – something all humans are born with.

In a world where our future is super unknown – there are some things we do know: We’ll need to be economically independent, manage our own careers, constantly upgrade our skills and embrace inevitable technologies like robotics. You will need to Outgrow Your Job – the title of the talk.

Rather than writing about it – please invest the time to watch it here. It’s a 14 minute video which will change how you see the world. And it might give some cool ideas on how to make your kids future proof.

Oh, and remember to share it with someone whose future you care about!

thanks, Steve.