Page 99 - The EDIT | Q2 2017

Thoughtleader
to build and leverage that capability will be the ultimate source of our continued success.
The other technologies that will most shape the future of PHD’s product are mixed reality, voice- recognition and VPAs.
New ways of seeing and engaging with the world
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is going to happen in years rather than decades. Once machines can do this they will be able to devise whole media and comms recommendations based on the parameters set out in a brief. Will this mean they are able to develop strategies? Absolutely. Making the best decisions towards
a desired goal based on a set of conditions is what a strategy is! If this makes you nervous, then good — it should. Writing in the Guardian about AlphaGo’s defeat of Ke Jie, Tim Dunlop noted that
“After Copernicus, we had to accept that the Earth wasn’t the centre of the universe. After AlphaGo, we have to accept that we are no longer the smartest creatures on the planet”.
For media agencies like ours, who ‘owns’ AI is the most interesting question of all — because the companies developing AI are all in our back yard, from Google and Facebook in the US to Baidu and Alibaba in China. It’s the big media platforms we’ve dealt with for years that are now developing and owning AI capabilities. When the future of AI is written, we will come to realise that it was pretty much entirely advertiser-funded.
Unless you’re already one of these big AI developers it’s unlikely that you ever will be. They have the first-mover and now incumbent advantage to make products and services that other companies could only dream of developing — like personal assistant devices such as Google’s Home or Amazon’s Echo.
Don’t be too despondent though. ‘Owning’ AI is a bit of a misnomer. Speaking at the PHD Predestination session at Cannes last year, Kevin Kelly reiterated his observation that AI is like electricity — it will flow into everything and enable anything. Who ‘owns’ electricity? Well everyone does and no one does.
In the future, we will buy AI from companies like Google just like we buy electricity from an energy company now. We can’t make it ourselves, but it’s very widely available, at a cost.
PHD’s future product will be no more limited by our not owning AI than lighting homes was limited by electricity. But what we must have is exponential ambition... we need to invent the modern agency’s equivalent of the lightbulb — so we can leverage the potential of AI now that it’s here. Our ability
Virtual reality has grabbed all the attention recently, but whilst VR is great in certain contexts, it’s not convenient for use in lots of everyday situations. Instead, technologies that enable us to layer information over the real world will be the ones that transform consumer behaviour, expectations and therefore PHD’s product.
This new ‘mixed reality’ will transform how we see data and content. Imagine what the search industry looks like when you can layer information (like prices) over real-world places (like shops). Imagine never having to remember anyone’s name ever again, because it hovers — along with other profile information — next to them in mid-air. Imagine
the crazy idea of owning a TV when any surface can become a screen of whatever size you want. Imagine seeing a sunny day not in colours of the visible spectrum from violet to red but as ultraviolet light. Imagine seeing not what a street looks like but what it used to look like. Imagine seeing how
a country feels right now. Imagine never having to look up directions ever again.
Imagine how our very perceptions and understanding of reality will blur.
The implications of this for consumer behaviour and marketing are obviously profound. Layering augmented data and content onto the world — whether that’s to convey relevant information or
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THE EDIT ISSUE 06 | Q2 2017