Ashot Gabrelyanov: ‘As soon as computers learn to joke, that’s it, mark my words’
Creator of LifeNews talks about the death of American media empires, dominance of Facebook and AI
Ashot Gabrelyanov is the ex-executive director of NewsMedia whose owner is his father. He is also the creator and former CEO of LifeNews channel. Now the guy is living in the U.S. where he is looking for new partners for Babo platform, because 'it would be difficult' to do it in Russia. In Kazan, the son of the one and only Aram Ashotovich gave a lecture called Fight for the Internet. How Facebook Kills Media Empires Using Cats, spoke about AI and told about how he was at a meeting of BuzzFeed in New York and why 'cat apocalypse' jeopardizes the world.
Evil corporation of Facebook
Large American media holdings don't have any future. Having demonstrated a photo of sad entrepreneur and media magnate Rupert Murdoch on the slide, Ashot told this man was an image of the future media for him. But now such huge media corporations as BBC, NewsCorporation simply stopped meeting challenges of the modern time. He put an example of The Daily that Murdoch invested 30m in and closed in a year because of the unpopularity of the resource. He tried to transfer the newspaper to iPad, but the consumers did not appreciated it. Myspace is another example. They bought it for $580m and sold for $30m.
Here Ashot showed merry Mark Zuckerberg and called Facebook evil corporation in a good sense. 'The society gradually knuckled under it, maybe by stealth,' the speaker thinks.
As for the novelties, he put an example of quick news. Media resources have to share a part of their advertising revenue to place it. Facebook's video transmissions whose traffic is three times more than the traffic of Periscope that was created for this purpose. According to Gabrelyanov, this feature of the social network has a potential to place ad videos that will take the living of TV channels away. So Facebook just needs to purchase the rights to broadcast sports events.
Speaking about the weakening positions of large media holdings that now doesn't have the time to follow new tendencies, he told, for example, about Washington Post that spend much money and human resources in order to create a quality content. However, as time goes by, BuzzFeed, which published videos about cats, started to hold the lead.
'The occupancy of the office in the centre of Washington is about 30%. And silence: nothings happens at all. When I talked to them and asked about development, according to their conversation and talks of other media corporations, I understood development is not their goal. Their goals is to save what they have today. Those who are smarter invest in different start-ups.'
So, kidding, Ashot called the current situation in the media market where cats and other funny videos go viral than serious materials 'cat apocalypse'.
Our future lies with 'Lol', 'Win', 'Omg'
Continuing the topic of the necessity to change quickly, Nokia was mentioned. In the old days, the company was an absolute monopolist in the marker. 'McDonald's is expected to face the same fate. I think it will disappear because it doesn't correspond to the trend growing in the society – healthy food, sport.'
In Ashot's opinion, our future lies with emotions because now it is difficult to cause emotions of a person who consumes a large amount of information. Nowadays BuzzFeed added a feature that allows to choose an interesting sections on the site. For instance, there are such categories as Lol, Win, Omg, etc.
Pornographic sites were called one of the well thought out companies on the Internet. They can adjust to a person's needs and have a big volume of statistic data.
Neural networks
Ashot also told about his computer elaborations in neural networks, which are built according to the principle of work and organisation of biological neural networks. Due to these elaborations, it is possible to identify a certain image out of total amount of images. 'It solves a journalist's problem while seeking for a certain location of the content the person needs'. So, a computer, not an editor in the office, is looking for a necessary photo.
In the speaker's opinion, computers will help the journalists in the future. For instance, news editors are not needed any more, programmes will fulfil their functions. In other words, robots will substitute information journalism.
'As soon as computers learn to joke, that's it, make my words. Sense of humour and wit is a sign of high level of intelligence. I think when computer learns to joke, no one will laugh.'
As for the artificial intelligence, the speaker noted if it has been already created, it is likely people don't know because it is smarter. If scientists are trying to study and understand, it pretends not to be AI. 'It's so clever that learnt to lie. It is possible,' the guy opines. But, as he said, in this case, a human being has a chance to survive where there is no Internet.
'There was not any church, so my grandmother used to go to mosque'
Now Ashot Gabrelyanov is temporarily living in the U.S. According to him, he met with all large heads of media holdings in New York in a year in search of partners. No one was going to talk to an unknown person, of course. This is why the young entrepreneur called the offices and said he had talked to their head but lost a letter or a digit of the phone number. So, he got personal contacts of the editors of companies. BuzzFeed was the only company he did not manage to visit. The entrepreneur got there without any invitation. The editor was surprised with his insistence, and Ashot even asked him to let him be present at an important meeting of the company.
The speaker was continuously asked questions at the lecture. Some of them were personal. For example, somebody asked Ashot about his faith. He answered he was baptised when he was a child in Derbent – where his grandparents lived.
'There was not any church there, so that my grandmother used to go to mosque – she needed to pray. Once the priest came, baptised me, and my grandmother stood close to him saying: 'Allahu Akbar'. The priest did not have a clue of what was going on.' As the entrepreneur said, he doesn't believe in church and thinks everyone has their own attitude to religion. Gabrelyanov tells the more he reads about the organisation of the human brain the more religious he becomes.
He was asked about patriotism and why he flew to the U.S. in particular. In answer to it, Ashot told he will live in Russia with pleasure and thinks there are many potential possibilities for development. 'I would like us to change the situation. I think we are able to do it. I will try to do my best to create technologies that will move and push our economy'.