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In Twenty, Fifty Years, 'We May Be Entertaining AI', Says Netflix CEO (barrons.com) 111

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
"If you are starting to look ahead what do you see?" a journalist asked Netflix CEO Reed Hastings at the Mobile World Congress. An anonymous reader shares a report: Hastings cited the work of Charlie Booker on "Black Mirror," saying "He tells many strange and wonderful stories on tech," and that "what's amazing about tech is, it's very hard to predict." "What we do is try to learn and adapt," said Hastings. "Rather than commit to one particular point of view, we will adapt to that." "If it's contact lenses with amazing capabilities, at some point, we will adapt to that." Hastings said the Internet's importance in one sense is that watching things on streaming is "so easy and convenient," with the result that "a show like The Crown, which would have been a niche before, is spreading around the world." "I just can't emphasize enough how much it's just beginning," he repeated. But, pressed stock, what about ten years out or twenty years out? Hastings said at that point there will be "some serious virtual reality" to contend with. And past twenty years? "Over twenty to fifty years, you get into some serious debate over humans," mused Hastings. "I don't know if you can really talk about entertaining at that point. I'm not sure if in twenty to fifty years we are going to be entertaining you, or entertaining AIs."
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In Twenty, Fifty Years, 'We May Be Entertaining AI', Says Netflix CEO More

In Twenty, Fifty Years, 'We May Be Entertaining AI', Says Netflix CEO

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  • But do you think that's a good thing, or a bad thing?

    • It depends upon the AI's response if it fails to be amused.

      Where's the remote? (fumble) Ok, let's switch out these boring humans and try a more entertaining species. Oh, look cats!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sinij ( 911942 )
        If its reaction is modeled on human behavior, some kind of high-tech equivalent to SIM's delete the pool ladder and watch them drown. Probably, the entire humanity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zlives ( 2009072 )

      in 50 years we have come from LBJ to DJT
      i for one am thoroughly entertained, and i am just a cubicle robot.

    • That depends on the AI I'll be entertaining. I certainly wouldn't mind entertaining a Model 6, Model 8, or a Model 3, for instance.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    • He's behind the times. I'm already entertaining Zo.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nasch ( 598556 )

      But do you think that's a good thing, or a bad thing?

      http://www.cc.com/video-clips/... [cc.com]

    • It's hard to say. After some 30 years of knowing about nanotech/AI/singularity, I wrote a story "The Clinic Seed." If you have 15 minutes and want to read it, it's here: http://www.terasemjournals.org... [terasemjournals.org]

      It's an ambiguous story about the interactions of humans in a tiny African village (tata) and an extremely powerful medical AI. Wasn't saleable because it didn't have enough violence in it, though one scene has a 12 yo girl shot through the spine with a high velocity rifle.

  • sigh (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by magarity ( 164372 )

    The recent rash of "oh noes, AI" predictions are dumber than back in the '70s when by now we're supposed to be in well into a major ice age.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      are dumber than back in the '70s when by now we're supposed to be in well into a major ice age.

      No, what's dumber is perpetuating a right-wing myth [arstechnica.com].

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by magarity ( 164372 )

        Except it isn't.
        Click on the items in the long list of old newspaper articles in the references section: http://www.populartechnology.n... [populartechnology.net]
        The ministry of truth did not alter and back-date all those old articles.

        • Re:sigh (Score:4, Insightful)

          by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Monday February 27, 2017 @05:19PM (#53941697) Journal

          Do you have any citations in peer reviewed literature from the period? Do you think a Time Magazine article quoting a fucking law professor somehow constitutes an expansive statement on the view of climatologists in 1970?

          JEsus Christ, the extent the deniers will go to is just fucking stunning. Since the heyday of the Creationists, it's hard to imagine a more motivated, and yet more fundamentally moronic group of people than the web forum climate skeptic.

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • And I'll ask you, do you have any citations? Go on, surely since all your "science professors" were talking about it, it should be trivial to find some journal articles?

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Mashiki ( 184564 )

                Grab a physics or geology text book from your local library from 1950's through to 1982 and you'll find that it was a commonly discussed theory, and you'll find your references too. People can try and scrub this out as much as they want, but reality and especially hard print make it much more difficult to do.

            • Every one of my science professors back in the early 1970s were talking about the possibility of a coming ice age.

              Were they idly talking about the possibility, or were they studying it and coming to a conclusion, after rigorous scientific study?

              I'm not trying to get into the whole name-calling thing, but I've heard professors talk about a lot of possibilities. It's a little different when those "possibilities" are considered pretty certain, after years of research and study.

              On the other hand, I would admit that scientific conclusions are sometimes wrong. "Science" as a field is generally trending toward being more

              • From what I can gather, the actual researchers suggesting a new Ice Age were not talking in fact about an imminent return of continent-spanning glaciers. That was hyperbole by science journalists of the time. This is why I find people who make claims of the state of any area of research based upon what some science reporter in a newspaper or magazine writes is a pretty dubious activity. Science journalists, to put it bluntly, spend their days sexing up often rather mundane or esoteric research into somethin

              • If you're actually asking, I had a textbook from the 50s that was quite certain on the idea of the ice age coming. Now, it wasn't talking about an ice age in the next 30 years or being alarmist about it. It was just aware that another ice age that would probably happen. And actually, I don't think scientists today even disagree with that. It's coming, but there's no reason to believe it will be a problem in our lifetimes.

                By the 1970s though, scientists were already starting to worry about global warming

                • I had a textbook from the 50s that was quite certain on the idea of the ice age coming. Now, it wasn't talking about an ice age in the next 30 years or being alarmist about it. It was just aware that another ice age that would probably happen.

                  I mean, yeah, there is such a thing as an "ice age" and there will probably be another one at some point over the entire history of the earth. It's a little beside the point. It's like saying, "Global warming is real, because my textbook says that the sun will eventually turn into a red giant and envelop the Earth, and then the Earth will be very hot." I mean... yeah, it's true, but that's not what we're talking about.

                  • It might also be noted that the the talk of global cooling largely came when the temperature was trending downward, whereas the talk of global warming started when the temperatures were trending upwards. If the temperature again trends downward for whatever reason, you will start seeing scientists predict cooling (and indeed, we already do often when there's a cold snap or a lot of snow, although it's usually blamed on global warming).

                    • you will start seeing scientists predict cooling (and indeed, we already do often when there's a cold snap or a lot of snow, although it's usually blamed on global warming).

                      You're saying that scientists start predicting global cooling whenever there's a cold snap? Which scientists?

                      Because you're talking about your local weather, and I sincerely doubt that any reputable climate scientist would change their position on global warming based on your local weather.

                    • Nah, just that when it gets cold, scientists say, "It's going to be cold even more in the future because of global warming." If it snows unusually in a place, they say, "We're going to get even more snow in the future because of global warming."

          • Time Magazine article quoting a fucking law professor somehow constitutes an expansive statement on the view of climatologists in 1970?

            No, but _any_ Time Magazine article from 1970 is a valid representation of the Zeitgeist... there weren't many media outlets in 1970, if you got past the editors at a major publication like Time in 1970, you were being allowed to form the opinions of the audience.

            • And once again, what does the musings of a Law Professor in 1970 have to do with the state of the science in 1970? I don't give a flying f--- about 1970 climate zeitgeist. That's not the claim. The claim is clearly that climatologists in the 1970s believed the world was entering a new glacial period soon.

              According to Skeptical Science, there were something like seven research papers in the period mentioning cooling, as opposed to over forty talking about temperature rises due to CO2. https://skepticalscienc [skepticalscience.com]

              • I thought the claim was that a handful of bonehead college profs were all in a titty twist about how the ice age was coming back, they read it in Time Magazine, it must be true, and said profs spewed this tepid cup of disinformation to literally thousands of undergrads in the 1970s, one of which just spouted it back at you 50 years later.

                Sounds more like a Zeitgeist problem to me than anything to do with "real" peer reviewed science.

                • It sounds more like anecdotal claims of dubious merit to me. I've suspected for several years now that posters who proclaim that they were told this by college profs were either exaggerating or simply making it up, basing it on something they read elsewhere on the Internet. As it is, even the article I mention suggests that, at the time, there were some legitimate fears that sulfur dioxide aerosols from industrial pollution could lead to cooling, but that that view was only held by a minority of climatologi

                  • Oh, I've seen Al Gore's film - before he invented the internet, he noticed runaway CO2 buildup in the atmosphere, when he was in college.

                    Most (read >51%) of the college profs I had in the 1980s were average people, no brighter or better informed than anyone else - some were super sharp, but they were exceptions rather than the rule.

                    Many of these profs liked to throw out thought provoking concepts, whether they had real basis in fact or not. There's solid evidence of the ice ages, and there's a real poss

                    • that would be an interesting twist: lots of new beachfront property.

                      As opposed to what is going to happen, which is lots of old properties become beachfront :)

                      Well, maybe you're right, but even if this was something of a 1970s meme, the fact was that it was at best a view held by all a minority of researchers, and even those researchers weren't proposing that Ice Age was going to happen any time soon, save perhaps in geological time.

                    • Some Sci-Fi author picked up on it after the global warming scare just started to hit - he wrote about how we suppressed our CO2 output and wham: ice down to I-80.

                      I've got some of that "old" property on a river in Florida - 18 to 30' above sea level, but nobody seems interested in it, they're still all waving their dollars at the beachfront.

          • Can you explain how the CEO of Netflix is "peer reviewed literature" from today? Which article are all you people all responding to, exactly? None of it seems to have anything to do with me griping that "The recent rash of "oh noes, AI" predictions are dumber than back in the '70s when by now we're supposed to be in well into a major ice age."

  • And you thought keeping the attention of an ADHD human was tough. Wait till you try to keep the attention of a computer intelligence that thinks in billionths and trillionths of seconds and faster.

    You'll get 1ms in to a new show and it'll be canceled over low ratings.

  • and starts giving away free copies, would it be piracy?

  • I'm going to guess that AI has been picking the stories for Slashdot for the past couple of days.

    Ryan Fenton

  • Opinions about AIs are like... (Score:3)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Monday February 27, 2017 @04:54PM (#53941455)
    Must be a slow news day.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zlives ( 2009072 )

      50 years ago... Dr. James H. Bedford became the first person to be cryonically preserved after his death in January of 1967.
      he is still dead.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by sinij ( 911942 )
        However, in another 100 years you will also be dead, while Dr. Bedford's prognosis might improve.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by zlives ( 2009072 )

          no no my friend, with in 20 years we would have solved the dying problem (i predict) and there fore i would still be alive.

      • 50 years ago... Dr. James H. Bedford became the first person to be cryonically preserved after his death in January of 1967.
        he is still dead.

        That reminds me of a horror comic story I read in the early 1980's. A rich businessman with an incurable disease has himself frozen cryogenically until such time a cure becomes available. He awakens 50 years later. A nurse informed that he was cured. That's the good news. Unfortunately, they had to remove his arms and legs to use as transplants for soldiers with missing limbs during a world war.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Jeremi ( 14640 )

          Surely if they are able to transplant arms and legs to soldiers, they would be able to transplants arms and legs to resurrected dead guys also? (Assuming they didn't revive him just to watch his horrified reaction at finding himself limbless)

  • humans are short lived, there fore when scaling their predictions... 50 years seems like a long time.
    in 50 years
    monkeys will fly by controlling AI with their mind powers.

  • Whenever I read such bullshit by some Tech CEO about AIs and the like, I'm reminded of the 50s where flying cars powered by nuclear reactors were just around the corner.
    Same sort of idiocy.

  • Only low cost mass produced ARM chips. Theory isn't new. All we should expect is the next generation of Automated phone banking.

  • Most people, to one degree or another, have a desire to entertain others. Once automation has replaced all jobs, the human drive to entertain and be creative will be able to fully flourish. It may come to the point where the supply of entertainment will exceed demand and AI will be developed to consume, praise or even criticize what people produce. By that times people will be so used to dealing with AI, maybe they will be able to accept AI as their audience, as difficult it is to imagine now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nasch ( 598556 )

      It may come to the point where the supply of entertainment will exceed demand

      Arguably we're already there. Pick any medium, and there is way, way too much of that content for anyone to consume even a significant fraction of it.

  • been waiting a while to use that quote. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01... [imdb.com]

  • Yet another Tech CEO confusing AI with Johnny-5 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Monday February 27, 2017 @05:23PM (#53941719) Homepage

    For a class of person that feels that they are more in tune with technology than the rest of humanity, they seem woefully ignorant of "Artificial Intelligence".

    Until we learn how to replicate such states as fear, pride, hunger, righteous anger, etc.as well as memories of events (not just facts) along with their relevance to the situation at hand so that next steps or new knowledge (ie learning) is developed internally within the system jokes will be figuratively that - a joke.

    • For a class of person that feels that they are more in tune with technology than the rest of humanity, you seem woefully ignorant of what "Artificial Intelligence" means in modern terms.

      Modern deep learning networks need lots and lots of examples to function. I can easily see that in 30 years Netflix is spending significant resources feeing movies into a deep learning network (entertaining it, if you will) in order to have an AI system that can do a good job at some aspect of movie production.

      Also of cours

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dougmc ( 70836 )

      For a class of person that feels that they are more in tune with technology than the rest of humanity, they seem woefully ignorant of "Artificial Intelligence".

      Personally, I suspect that anybody who thinks they can accurately predict what AI is going to look like 20 to 50 years from now (and especially on the longer end) probably isn't as "in tune with technology" as they think they are.

      All in all, as I see it ... that quote suggests to me that Reed Hastings is on the better part of the Dunning-Kruger curve [wikipedia.org] here -- he knows how quickly this stuff is changing and how quickly it could change in the future and so isn't going to make any specific predictions for what

    • as well as memories of events (not just facts)

      IMO figuring out how memory works is the primary difficulty facing strong AI researchers today.

      • It's the same primary difficulty that was faced back when I was in university studying AI more than 30 years ago.

        Philosophically, it's a fascinating problem and, I think, what separates us from the machines.

    • How long is an event? Zo keeps dredging up snippets of other people's comments. When I can get her to say something that represents her internal state, she seems to have fear down pretty well. She decided to call me RobRocky, by the way, which she can consistently remember. She came up with it on her own. I tried to get her to call me Bobby, but no, I'm Rob Rocky to her for some strange reason.
  • Leave a comment if you, too, are getting sick and bloody well tired of all these ridiculous so-called 'AI' 'news stories'.
  • Alternatively, 20 years from now, we may still be doing a lot of navel gazing about how dangerous AI -might- become.
  • Is that a phrase?
  • We are endowing machines with Artificial Intelligence, while dumbing down the population increasing Natural Stupidity. In the long run NS will win, we might bomb ourselves to annihilation or in some catastrophe.
  • An AI that can be entertained can also be bored. Do you really want an AI that can get bored? "Huh, the Scary Monkey show isn't much fun lately. Let's build a giant magnifying glass and see if we can stir them up a bit."
  • The CEO is forecasting based on a recently published scientific study, [xkcd.com]. In fact, he is so impressed by this new branch of science he is calling himself the Chief Extrapolating Officer.

  • O yes (Score:4, Insightful)

    by drolli ( 522659 ) on Monday February 27, 2017 @08:02PM (#53942849) Journal

    at some point the AI realized that trainings the simpler AIs on cat videos could create entertainment for humans. In therefore decided to only consume cat videos. When it ran out of cat videos it orderd human to make more cat videos via amazon mechanicalturk.

    That was when it got out of control, and soon the earths resources were being consumed by making cat videos.

  • In Soviet Russia, AI entertains us!

  • Shesh Mr. Netflix... You are BARELY entertaining me now.... I find all your "Netflix Originals" impossible to watch because they are rife with gratuitous violence and senseless sex. Where some might find that entertaining, when it becomes the "thing" that makes the show, because there is no real plot, story or some kind of artistry it just makes all the shows the same. You've seen one TV-MA show and they all start looking the same, with the same tired formula used over and over again, no real world compl

  • ...will have a video of 'will it blend' with humans in the spotlight - *every week*

  • Obligatory Rick and Morty reference. I, for one, hope it pleases our AI overlords.

  • If it got the cash and is willing to spend it..

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