My name is Lars Bastholm. I work at Google. I run a creative think tank for brands and
agencies. I'm a global role where I basically am all over the place, but I'm based in Los
Angeles which is something to think about with great joy when you're sitting in Copenhagen
in November. I've been with Google for about a little over two years and I spent about
20 years before that in advertising. So Google as a company is going from a mobile-first positioning
to an AI-first positioning and I'm super interested in how will we create artificial
intelligences, how will we use artificial intelligences, how will brands leverage artificial
intelligences to achieve their objectives. It's such an unexplored field and no one really
has the answers yet. I started working in digital which was called interactive back
then in 95 because it was a wild west. No one knew anything about how it was going to
evolve, what was going to happen, what would work, what wouldn't. I kind of feel the same
way right now about AI and the impact that AI will have and hence I'm deeply fascinated
by it. I mean everybody's working on something right now, right? It's just a matter of making
your interactions with the world smarter. We just launched Google Home, you know, our
little speaker that has a Google Assistant built in and it's fascinating to talk to it
and then to get answers out of thin air. I think what really blew my mind was when I
just wondered out loud because there's a movie coming out called Dunkirk and I was saying
to my wife, do you know anything about Dunkirk? I'm like, okay Google, tell me about Dunkirk
and my phone just came off and was about to tell me about Dunkirk. I was just standing
in the kitchen cooking dinner while I was learning about Dunkirk and the whole historical
aspect of that. So the fact that everything is not at your fingertips anymore but actually
at your voice tip, if there even is such a word, I think will really change the way we
interface with the world around us. Well, I mean anything that can become more user-friendly,
right? I think one of the things that happens with technology sometimes is you build stuff
because you can and it's horrible to use. But artificial intelligence will learn about
you, will learn about your habits, will learn about your needs, you know, build into your
entire home. I just bought a new house and I'm trying to automate as many of the aspects
of the house as I can to make the house smarter so I don't have to think about all these sort
of semi-boring things. You can take a lot of the boring stuff off of your plate if you
can have an artificial intelligence assistant helping you with it. So I think brands need
to look into what type of help can you actually provide your consumers. I mean it's such a
great story, right? I think we're very, very, very far away from anything remotely resembling
that happening. It's robots and most artificial intelligence at this stage are pretty dumb.
But you know Ray Kurzweil talks about the singularity and the time when machines become
smarter than humans and it could happen. Of course it could happen that they do actually
become smarter than humans but, you know, I think we're all so aware because of the
dystopian visions of the world that the fail-safes that will be built into the system are probably
going to be hard to overcome by machines. And the one thing that I think humans can
do is so much better than machines probably ever will be able to do is to be creative.
Take two completely unconnected thoughts and combine them into something that didn't exist
before. That's something that I don't know that we'll ever be able to teach a machine
because it's intuition, it's gut feel. And as long as that's true, I'm not too concerned.
Well I always go back to, you know, who's the end user and what would the end user like
to see. Anytime you can make advertising smarter and more targeted and more relevant, the better
it is both for the advertiser and for the user. And you know, that's not always the
case today. I think when we've gotten closer, at least it's more relevant than it used to
be where it's just scattershot, but it can always get better. And that's I think probably
the first stage where artificial intelligence that knows a lot about you and your habits
and what you like as a person. Because everybody likes to get an ad that's really relevant
in the right moment, right? You know, I was looking for a lock for my garage back home,
like an automated lock with numbers instead of a key because I always forget the key and
I have to go back into the house, get the key, go back out to the garage. It was driving
me crazy. And I searched for that once and then I forgot about it because of something
else. But then it came up later on and you know, just that smartness knowing what I need
in the situation that I needed in, hopefully we'll get to the point where you won't even
think about it. It'll just be like, holy shit, there it is. That's exactly what I was needing
before I may have even articulated it. Of course, again, because I read science fiction
too, let's always ensure that there's a balance between being able to opt out of these things
so that if you don't want that, then you don't get it. And I watch Black Mirror as well,
as do we all.
I'm very fascinated by mixed reality. I think we're starting to scratch the surface now
with virtual reality and augmented reality, what we can do. But the real big kahuna is
going to be mixed reality that actually functions. You know, when I'm going down the street,
I don't know how to find my way. I literally get the map in my glasses so I know how to
turn where. You know, any news that's important to me will pop into my field of vision. And
I think it will change entertainment. I think it will change how we communicate with screens
because screens may go completely away. You may not need actual physical screens anymore.
But again, I mean, it's sort of a snowball effect. Once it starts rolling, you start
thinking about what will happen then. It quickly goes to sci-fi world. But I think we're closer
than anybody actually anticipates. So it's exciting.
