PHD launches book on the impact of AI and invites Sir Tim Berners-Lee to share his views at 11am, Salon le Cote, The Carlton Hotel, Cannes

When will Artificial Intelligence exceed Human Intelligence? What shall we do with it, and what will it do with us? Will nations use AI in a cyber-war which becomes very destructive? Will AI sneak up on us without us noticing?

These are just some of the questions Sir Tim Berners-Lee, computer scientist and inventor of the World Wide Web, will address for the first time in a seminar titled ‘Sentience: The Coming AI Revolution’, held by media agency PHD Worldwide at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, today (Tuesday 23rd) at 11am at Salon le Cote, Carlton Hotel.

PHD also previews its latest publication today, which bears the same title as the seminar and looks at the impact that AI will have upon the world of marketing. Sentience: The Coming AI Revolution and the Implications for Marketing will officially launch in July, with all proceeds going to Unicef.

Says Mike Cooper, CEO, PHD Worldwide: “The impact of AI will result in a radical reorganisation of advertising and marketing.  AI applications will be largely ad-supported, meaning that marketing will be one of the first disciplines disrupted by AI.  In the future, brands will be marketing to an algorithm, not to the prefrontal cortex.

“In Sentience, we have tried to peer beyond what we know. To scope out a commercially realistic view on the potential products we will be using and the advertising and data models that will likely support them.”

Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak are leading figures that have recently give their views on the impact that AI will have, which according to Stephen Hawking, “could spell the end of the human race”.

Today delegates at the Cannes festival will gather to hear the founding father of the web give his views on the impact AI might have, including:

– The way in which AI-based techniques are playing a role in particular parts of our activity, like – driving, translating, negotiating, diagnosing.

– The way in which the web of data is part of an accumulation of machine-understood data, which connects together more and more, proving a common knowledge base for intelligent systems.

– The questions about the singularity. Big topics like, when will artificial Intelligence exceed human intelligence? Or will AIs take over from humans and constitute a threat to us?

Berners-Lee’s speech will be live streamed after winning the ‘Lions Live’ public vote, which sees one seminar a day selected for live viewing on Cannes Lions’ You Tube channel during the week of the festival.

PHD has also partnered with the official Cannes Lions app to bring delegates a ‘soft AI’ experience through the ‘See & Connect’ functionality, offering personalised recommendations based on delegates’ profiles. The app also provides a free excerpt of PHD’s latest book Sentience.