"AI is the new electricity. Just as 100 years ago electricity transformed industry after industry, AI will now do the same."
So said Stanford computer scientist Andrew Ng, quoted by SRF's Patrick Arnecke in the latest issue of tech-i magazine. With AI, machine learning and related topics cropping up just about everywhere these days, the time is ripe for our quarterly magazine to take a closer look.
Dive in!
Patrick Arnecke's excellent article reviews the current range of tools and applications that are or might be relevant for media – and he encourages you to dive right in by trying some of the tools for yourself. The article includes suggestions on where to start.
Elsewhere in the magazine, Jean-Pierre Evain outlines several different ongoing EBU activities related to AI. It is not, as he says, a new topic by any means, and there are numerous projects, events and working groups where Members can both contribute their expertise and find support and advice.
Digging in the data
Following his recent presentation at the Production Technology Seminar 2018 – EBU Members can access videos here – Conor Ryan of RTÉ's investigative journalism unit writes about their experiences with data journalism. "Rather than investing in data to tell us a story", he says, "we tried to bring data together to point us to many stories." They learned many valuable lessons along the way. Read about them in the article.
Also: Spectrum, Voice Activation, Radio and Audio
Other highlights of issue 35 of tech-i include a report on "the other spectrum battle", where broadcasters are keeping a close eye on regulatory developments around the highly valued C-band; a review of the current specifications eco-system for High Frame Rate; and the latest insights into audio-on-demand from the EBU's Media Intelligence Service.
David Wood turns his attention to voice activation; RTÉ's Director of Transformation and Technology Richard Waghorn features in our regular "In the spotlight" section; and you can find out what the radio industry can learn from Italian lasagne chefs!