Simen Frostad, Bridge Technologies: In the next five years, having real use of interfaces will be much more important

Simen K. Frostad, Chairman at BRIDGE Technologies, in TFT1957’s “2030: The year 2030: AI or engineer?”

1. How will the broadcasting industry and broadcast technologies change in the next 5 years?
2. If we model the world of broadcasting and broadcast tech in 2030, what role will AI play?
3. How will AI change your business segment? 
4. Which professions will AI displace in the broadcasting technology industry by 2030?

1. The show has been great. There’s been a lot of talk about the two-letter word on everyone’s lips—AI. Everyone is asking how it will change broadcast technology in the next five years. We don’t believe it will have a strong impact. First, you have to start with the essentials of broadcasting itself, which is interfacing with its users. Whether that’s going to be voice-operated or AI-operated in the future, who knows? In the next five years, having real use of interfaces will be much more important.

2. If we position ourselves within the mindset I mentioned earlier, you would think that AI has a future—and it does. We just launched our own AI bot, which uses our documentation as a model, allowing users to search and immediately get answers from it. This is one example of AI’s usability here and now. So, AI is quite useful for some purposes.

3. We do not believe that AI will dramatically change any trends in the business because first, you have to create value by providing the right metrics and essential information in context so the user can understand it. Maybe in the future, AI can perform more complex tasks, but don’t hold your breath—it’s still pretty young.

4. There are, of course, obvious professions where AI could have an impact. I’m talking about translations, the ability to do searches more effectively—these are areas where AI will contribute. We’ve had this for many years already; it’s called machine learning. This allows computers to better perform certain tasks. The industry will likely eliminate many mundane tasks that no longer need to be done manually, thanks to help from machine learning platforms. But these are just projections, and as we know, projections beyond 36 months are uncertain.

All the opinions of industry leaders can be seen in the survey “Year 2030: AI or Engineer?”.