Exclusive: Grasping AI’s tech savvy future

With AI continuing to dominate headlines, futurist and former Google executive Steve Brown offers a keynote presentation for this year’s SOTIC event. Neill Barston speaks exclusively to him on the potential of the hottest technology on the planet

The next five years are going to be as significant as the last 50,” says Steve Brown boldly, speaking on the furious ascent of AI as it integrates at pace into many spheres of industry. The futurist and former Google DeepMind specialist offers an engaging appraisal of just how far the fledgling technology has travelled in a short period of time to a position of global digital dominance.

As the British-born, US-based keynote speaker explains, the level of investment being rapidly poured into AI’s advancement over the next couple of years amounts to a cool $600 billion. This startling figure alone is likely to convince anyone sceptical over whether such tech is a mere fleeting novelty, or that it’s already here very much for the long-term. From driving fundamental advances in science, medicine and wider technological capabilities, through to considerable potential within manufacturing fields, the breadth of its capability continues to be hailed as truly gamechanging, ushering in a new dawn of discovery.  Watch our video version of the interview below.

While its teething issues have been well publicised in its tendencies to create its own data if knowledge gaps exist, its overall prospects appear extremely strong. Clearly, as with any emerging tech, there are of course always early proponents willing to blaze a trail. This is being seen by the likes of Chat GPT. The social media tool is approaching around the second year mark, and shows no sign in its phenomenal growth rate.

As the industry specialist notes, users are rapidly engaging it to assist with everything from back room administration tasks and customer service operations, creative design work, some caution over its appropriate use must be considered carefully.

For his part, speaking exclusively to Confectionery Production, Steve appears on engaging form, and is full of praise for the SOTIC audience as some of the nicest people he’s ever worked with.

“AI is advancing so quickly, and will bring so many new capabilities, that it will help humanity to discover new drugs, streamline operations of businesses and enable us not have to do tasks we don’t want to do anymore. “It’s just going to expand our ability to think and do more. So, there will be massive productivity gains, and boosts to GDP globally. It will push the forefront of scientific discovery quite dramatically,” explains Brown of the fast-rising tech trend.

His passion for his subject is clear, and recalls that ever since his earliest days growing up in Loughborough, UK, working with technology felt very natural. As he enthuses, his father worked in a physics department and would often bring computers home for him to play with. Moreover, as a child of the Star Wars generation, there was no shortage of science-based inspiration at hand. Notably, it remains his passion to this day, having greatly enjoyed his recent spell with Google, as well as his consultancy work engaging with a number of businesses advising and speaking on AI best practice.

Rise of agentic AI

As Steve notes, while many people have now encountered generative AI that is designed to offer human-like responses in conversation with platforms such as ChatGPT, it’s set to gravitate to the next level with what is known as Agentic AI.

“Agents are smart autonomous pieces of software. So this is AI that has agency – the ability to do things on your behalf. You can give it a complex tasks, break that down and figure out the right way to solve that problem and off and execute those things, as it is given tools to do so.

For example, it could use the browser of your computer to make things happen – when you take an agent that is going to have the ability to handle complex tasks, and to reason and do work for you, and you take that agent and put it inside a robot, that takes it to the next level, and there are some companies that have made some incredible breakthroughs in this just within the past twelve months,” explains Steve, who illustrates his keynote with some powerful imagery and videos showing just how these robotics are now playing out in real world manufacturing operations.

With AI still very much in its infancy, the technologist adds that the capabilities of related robots will only become increasingly diverse, becoming a standard feature within not only manufacturing workplaces, but also domestic settings as well. Perhaps the most startling statistic to be placed our way is a projection that within the next two decades, there could be anything up to eight billion such industrial and domestic robots in operation.

But according to Brown, his own view is that this “It’s more likely to be around the one billion” figure, with the first anticipated to come on stream for factories before 2030. “I live and breathe this stuff for my job every day, but it even amazes me. We’re seeing the rise of a new class of robots – they’re not industrial robots that have built our cars or made our candies over the years, these are humanoid robots.

They move, pick things up with amazing dexterity, you can talk to them and issue them commands and they can talk back to you and explain their reasoning. “Historically, you had to train robots through telling them that they had to, for example move a hand down or grasp as a step by step training. But now, a robot can watch a human, practice something itself and learns. Once one learns, they all learn. That’s the big breakthrough. They are pretty incredible,” says Steve, who explains that one of the core areas for testing such robots at present, is their safety certification, which stands of paramount importance for compliance purposes. Indeed, with the broader topic of robotics dominating global headlines of late, leaders such as Elon Musk and Bill Gates assert, we may not be far off an age where many industries are leaning towards being ever-more highly automated. Does this necessarily mean there will be few jobs available in the near term?

“My advice to people is that if you want to remain robot proof, you have to double down on your humanity,” says Steve, believing we will find a balance with its use through people recognising what they do best and running with that as a key strategy for staying relevant in an ever-more technological advanced world. Another issue regarding the emerging tech centres on its regulation as the fast developing software behind it is leaving many governments around the world trailing in its dust to catch up.

On this, Steve notes that developing common standards surrounding the use of AI is perhaps desirable rather than it being forcibly regulated. This will undoubtedly require a spirit of collaborative working, which he believes is possible to achieve. “This is probably the most important and powerful technology that humanity has ever invented, and every company needs to learn how to harness it,” he comments of the incredible potential at our fingertips that is continuing to evolve at a remarkable rate.