AI Outlook for the next 10 years with Gianluca Mauro, founder of the AI Academy

We recently published our Crossroads essay "The Future of AI". What we know about AI and what impact it will have on the German media and communications market in the next 10 years. With our interview series, we want to give you exciting insights from our expert interviews, starting with Gianluca Mauro, founder of the AI Academy.

Gianluca Mauro became passionate about AI during his study program in Silicon Valley. In 2018, he founded AI Academy, a company focused on helping people and organizations understand and apply AI through workshops, consulting, online courses, and his book "Zero to AI". Outside of teaching AI, he has been active in the field of AI ethics, leading an investigation for The Guardian and Pulitzer Center on how AI algorithms objectify women's bodies.

Where do you think we are now and where do you think we could be in 10 years' time?

I have been working with AI for almost 10 years, which means that I have seen many different phases. But there is one thing, that I have always seen: There is a delay between when a technology is ready – which means it's working pretty well – and when companies start to notice and deploy it. When I look back in time for example at computer vision, which is a different form of AI, it's been working quite well since 2015, but companies are still not using it in factories for instance. 

If I look specifically at the case of generative AI, I think that many things have not yet been sufficiently researched. ChatGPT for example is not perfect, but it's definitely already good enough to be useful. What I expect in the next three to five years is a lot more experimentation from a company perspective. I want to see more use cases and a tighter integration in the tools that companies use every day. 
 

What will happen to the European market if all the major AI companies are based outside Europe?

We have this idea that Europe is usually the one who regulates. The US innovates and Europe regulates. That's what happened with data privacy GDPR which is the strongest data privacy regulation. But look at what happened when the GDPR emerged as the first type of this form of regulation: most companies implemented GDPR on a global level. That standard spread around the world. I don't know if the EU AI Act is going to stay in its place or if it's going to expand to everybody. 

But Europe is not the only one that is regulating. And the reason why this is happening is because we know what happens when you underregulate Tech – think about social media. There's still fighting in the US now because they did not do anything about it. So, we know it's a big deal. This is number one. Number two: AI is a very big thing. The potential impact of AI is in the trillions of dollars range. Regarding these two points, there is a lot more fear. It is a massive strategic advantage of a global level, not only at a country level or even on a company’s level.