What we’ll remember from the 2017 Web Summit

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS NOT YET READY

TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD

Most of the AI systems that exist today are trained based on a set of data.

Therefore the system only learns based on this narrow data, and it performs a

lot less when put in front of real users.

This is called overfitting.

We need to move beyond supervised learning based on limited training data.

GOOGLE IS BECOMING A SUGGESTION ENGINE

Google knows what you want better than (& before) you do and adapts its

search suggestions based on searches from similar people, your location,

device, browser history,…

By the time you reach consideration stage, it’s already too late to be convinced

by other players in the market. This means marketers must either capture

attention before the awareness stage or compete unaided in the consideration

stage.

SOON WE’LL ALL TALK TO OUR FRIDGE

With systems such as Siri, Alexa and Amazon Echo, we are fast moving

towards a voice-enabled world. Soon these technologies will also be available

in our cars.

There are already stories of kids who grew up with these kinds of technologies

and try to talk to the fridge in the kitchen. They are confused when it doesn’t

work. For them it is the new normal.

More information: ibmtjbot.github.io

BUILD YOUR OWN TJBOT

TJBot is an AI cardboard robot powered by IBM Watson. This open source

project can be laser cut or 3D printed and then brought to life using the

available recipes.

You could put a voice interface onto TJBot and give it the ability to understand

emotions, train it to wave, help your kids spell words or learn it to shine a LED

light. The possibilities are endless!

NAVIGATING CITIES USING AR

AR City is the future of travel and navigation. Using Augmented Reality, the app

helps you navigate with 3D directions.

As you travel, you’ll see the names of streets, buildings and points of interest

appear on top of the map.

FACEBOOK BOTS TO THE NEXT LEVEL

Facebook will soon enable companies to communicate directly with their

customers on their own websites using the Facebook customer chatbot plugin.

This plugin will streamline your support chat. Customers can easily switch with

your website and their Facebook page: the conversation will not be lost but

updated at all time.

LIFE IN 2030 WILL BE BETTER

Robots will augment our jobs. This means most jobs will not disappear but the

context will change. The vast majority of people will get more attractive jobs.

Be in charge of your own skills will be key. Soft skills will get more important as

we don’t want to delegate all our human touchpoints to robots.

TECH WILL HAVE A MAJOR IMPACT ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Former US vice president Al Gore stated AI, machine learning and IOT are

trends that will help future generations more easily preserve the planet.

The tech community is helping us to displace fossil fuels to generate electricity

from new and sustainable sources. Investing in our planet will soon be a

undisputable differentiator.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ECONOMY

SingularityNet is a decentralized, open market for AI technologies using smart

contracts (blockchain).

Anyone can insert their AI modules and benefit from other’s.

This is the start of an intelligent, global brain that all systems & robots can tap

into. What if we could integrate this in humans as well?

More information: singularitynet.io

THE FUTURE OF LEAN STARTUP IS A BRIGHT ONE

The basics are simple: from day one your startup is a faith-based company. At

the end of the day, your strength will be in how fast you can turn faith into facts

and lean is the series of logical steps to achieve that with a limited amount of

time, money and people.

The strength of it is being applicable for every business in every industry.

STARTUP JOURNEY PITFALLS

- Finding a product-market fit is the start of the lean startup approach, not the

end of it.

- Believing in its own truth without ground.

- Ending up chasing money instead of chasing customers.

- Reflecting on intentions: why did you choose to become an entrepreneur ?

What is to be your own boss or to change the world?

ICOs TO FOSTER ENTREPRENEURSHIP

ICOs potentially allow entrepreneurs to bypass venture capitalists, keeping the

strategic direction in the hands of the founders. These are an encouraging new

way of funding for start-ups, but at the cost of funding coming with supervision

and advice.

THERE’S A THIN LINE BETWEEN MARKETING GENIUS AND

MANIPULATION

Attendees listened at the same time with admiration and disgust to Brad

Parscale, the digital director of the Trump presidential campaign, who gave us

insights on how they hyper-targeted up to 150.000 (!) different adds per day on

Facebook, spent $100.000.000 on the platform and raised $280.000.000 for the

campaign.

Facebook kindly offered help and assisted the Trump team alongside the data

experts of Cambridge Data Analytics.

We were left with some ethical questions like where to draw the line between

being a marketing genius and an outright manipulator, and whether it should be

allowed to use social platforms for political campaigning. We’re sure this is just

the start of the debate.