At an August 22 seminar at the Contessa Gallery on Main Street in Southampton, attendees were treated to a multi-event presentation focusing on the intersection of artificial intelligence, art and investing. The free program was presented by Hamptons Masterminds and co-sponsored by Dan’s Papers.
The seminar shared space at the Contessa with an exhibit entitled Dalí’s Dreams: A Surreal Journey through the Mind of Salvador Dalí, a fascinating sampling of the iconic artist’s work that is running through September 8 and should not be missed.
Dalí’s dreamscapes provided a fitting backdrop for the event. In its heyday a century or so ago, the surrealist movement shined a light on radical new possibilities and ways of thinking in the art world. Today, AI is poised to profoundly reshape the worlds of art, commerce, science, technology and more — and to fundamentally change broad swaths of our culture as we know it. Maybe the Dalí on the walls meshed so effectively with the presentation because when people think about AI, their thoughts often turn to the surreal.
Individual seminar sessions included an overview of AI and augmented reality with digital artist Daniel Kramer and a wide-ranging survey of the current and future capabilities of the technology and the investment opportunities it presents with Eric Bravick, Head of AI at CryptoOracle Labs and CEO of The Lifted Initiative in San Francisco.
Bravick, who describes himself in his Linkedin profile as an “engineer of thinking machines, a mad scientist and a decentralization advocate,” began by stressing the importance of presenting AI in a positive light.
“I promise I’ll only mention the Terminator a couple of times during this presentation,” he quipped.
Bravick explained that the current thinking around artificial intelligence as a concept has radically changed in the last couple of years.
“As it has entered the public consciousness, we need to reset a little bit about what we’re all talking about when we talk about AI,” he said, noting that the term AI has evolved into a catch-all phrase for multiple variations of the technology.
Bravick explained that AI has become a “roll up term” for at least four separate types of technologies: narrow machine learning algorithms (facial recognition technology, for example); expert systems (such as medical diagnostics); decision support systems (financial planning, for example); and large language models (ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.).
He briefly discussed each AI variation, noting that “expert systems are now far better than doctors at most diagnostic tasks (reading a CAT Scan or an MRI, for example, or detecting diabetes in a patient). “If they’re doing it correctly, doctors are now just reading the output of expert systems,” he said. “Because the process is much more accurate and much faster.”
He referred to interpretative AI large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT as gateway drugs — technologies that got the general public talking and thinking about AI en masse. He also focused on debunking some of the extraordinary claims that invariably crop up around AI in general and LLMs in particular.
“You think the LLM knows physics because it can answer physics questions,” he said. “But it doesn’t know anything about physics. If you give it a novel physics question, it gets it wrong every single time.”
Speaking partly as an AI investment advisor and partly as a tech philosopher, Bravick made sure to hammer home the idea that although AI is a world-changing technology that will generate tremendous innovation — and tremendous wealth — it is not capable of human-like thought.
“It’s super important for all of you to understand that it doesn’t reason; it doesn’t think; it doesn’t know the answers to these questions,” he said. “So don’t be fooled by the doomsayers and the people who want to confuse you or take advantage of you or maybe get you to invest $100 million into their new startup.”
Bravick urged attendees to come to terms with the idea that in the AI era, big data can be both more dangerous and more beneficial to humanity than ever before.
“AI combined with bad human actors makes every problem worse,” he noted in a presentation slide, citing the danger of harmful memes and disinformation on a massive scale.
On the other hand, “AI combined with good human actors makes every solution better,” he added, pointing to advancements in material science, medical diagnostics and environmental studies.
When considering AI as an investment, Bravick is extremely bullish while also recognizing that investing in AI requires a certain leap of faith.
As is the case with most paradigm-shifting technologies, the ultimate winners and losers in the AI space have not yet fully emerged. For that reason, he suggests that investors find as many ways as possible to get in front of the technology. That strategy includes “betting broadly across the AI space, even in the absence of specific knowledge” and “joining teams that are as close to the space as possible.”
“More value will be created in the next 30 years through AI than in all of human history up to this point,” his presentation stressed. “But that value will be unpredictable and unevenly distributed.