SXSW 2024: With great promise comes great peril.

Exponential change is coming fast - and it will blow your mind.

AMD and Nvidia both announced breakthroughs that will power generative AI to soaring new heights as it begins to make massive gains in the amount of data it can process. In coming months, AI will start to ask us what we are trying to accomplish and then organize an assignment for a whole suite of tools, making them work together for us. Movies and games will be rendered with quantum leaps in verisimilitude and speed.

Futurist Amy Webb says we’re at the beginning of a supercycle where AI, connected devices and biotech converge and stun us with their new power and pervasiveness. Within a decade, we will be growing our computers with high speed, low energy organoid computing. Already, scientists have generated a computer from living tissue that can play Pong. Fake news is a prototype for tomorrow’s fake events. AI will allow malicious players to create entire cascades of real-looking social media videos, live reporting, news releases that will flood our systems – potentially even trigger wars – with real-looking manufactured information before we can even discern it’s false.

Google scientist Ray Kurzweil’s singularity – the moment when machines become sentient – draws nearer and nearer. He’s confident that by the end of this decade we will start anti-aging in earnest. Instead of losing a year, we will gain a year for every year we’re alive and immortality will no longer a pipe dream. By 2045, you will be able to capture your entire brain in zeros and ones.

Venture capitalist Tara Tan captured predictions on the future of brain computer interfaces (BCI) with three leading scientists. In 5 years: non-invasive implants with medical benefits. In 10 years: with passive sensors, BCI can become a hands-free control system – all you will need is a mental intention. In 50 years: the brain that we have is no longer our primitive brain – we will have symbiosis – the next kind of brain..

The future of humanity is at stake.

What does it mean to be a human being? How do we hold our baser instincts in check? How do we not let ourselves be dominated by fear and greed?

The product manager for Tinder, Hilary Paine shared the progress her app is making into steering users to IRL contact rather than going into obsessional virtual whirlwinds and in using AI to discourage users from harmful dialog. At her side was non-profit Responsible AI advisor Amanda Lawson who came from a human rights background to begin acting as a privacy, safety and dignity activist for platform owners - something everyone in the industry should learn from.

AI powered humanoid robots were featured in presentations from both Hanson Robotics and Apptronic to not only perform mundane tasks but to provide caregiving and dialog. Both of their developers were committed to embedding human compassion traits into the AI protocols of their robots.

And for us ordinary humans, not yet augmented by AI cognitive protheses, Charles Duhigg gave us all a vision for becoming what his new book title calls Supercommunicators: a masterclass in deep listening that elicits the experiences and dreams of those we converse with in everyday life. We’re all going to need a lot more of this humanism in the days ahead.

It’s time to end the “two cultures.”

In 1959 British chemist and novelist C.P. Snow warned us, in his iconic “Two Cultures” essay that scientists and intellectuals had started to create two separate cultures. But SXSW talks offered multiple signs of hope for the modern melding of Art and Science.

Poet Ada Limón shared the poem that will be engraved on NASA’s Europa Clipper as it sails to Jupiter’s second moon to search for signs of life.

Artist Yemi A.D. literally danced with Apollo the robot.

The Daniels gave us all the human and tech insights that shaped Everything, Everywhere, All at Once that debuted at SXSW two years ago and went on the win Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

Visionary design tech thinker John Maeda talked about the power of handmade and showed us his new series on Linked-In: Cooking with AI.

And legendary cyberpunk writer Bruce Sterling talked about his creations in bamboo and discarded wire as “analog punk.”

We need critical thinking, now more than ever.

“We can’t look to the Tech Messiahs to upload us into the Great Digital Rapture,” as Amy Webb put it. They’re all about seizing more and more space and even their “effective altruism” smacks of simple authoritarianism.

And while hype builds awareness and premium, unchecked by critical thinking it leads to ruin. Just ask the investors in Juicero, Theranos, WeWork and ATX, says Noor Naseer of Basis Technologies.

Jack Conte, founder of the ever-immense Patreon marketplace of creativity sounded off: the age of the algorithm is over; the age of the creator has begun. If all we learn to do is dance for TikTok, whither human creativity?

And, speaking of TikTok, just as Congress was preparing a bill to force China to divest TikTok, Scott Galloway, conversing with Kara Swisher, showed a roadblock message that appeared on his son’s TikTok, saying “Act now to save TikTok,” with the action button connecting him to his Congressperson’s office number. “The People’s Republic of China, seeks to turn your children into foot soldiers for their campaign to divide America.”

?So, what does it all mean for marketers?

Noor Naseer reminded marketers: you’ve got to develop a deeper perspective and be clear on what you want to accomplish if you want to transcend the hype cycle and not simply run with the herd.

Viral video creator Michael Krivicka reminded us of what people most want to see from your brand: something insanely surprising that isn’t just a heavy-handed commercial.

Apple’s Design Director James Taylor showed us the re-purposing of the 20-year-old Silhouettes campaign for Air Pods, reminding us of the power of radical simplicity. “Make it simpler, and, when you’ve done that, make it simpler again.”

And does it even need to be said? The purchase funnel model is dead and buried and its funeral was brilliantly officiated by Edelman’s Courtney Miller. More than 50% of all consumers today are first experiencing a brand directly through purchase and only then seek to learn more about they’ve bought.

What’s the biggest threat to your job? It’s not AI says digital guru Ian Beacraft. It’s poor leadership. So take charge of your personal brand and your capabilities stack. No one is going to do it for you.

Finally, for brands, remember your biggest opportunity is to design experiences that shape and inform your product quality. United is looking at the plane as an airborne marketing platform (and doesn’t foolishly charge for WiFi). Whole Foods is ensuring that store architecture and product mix to reflect each local community. Hyatt looks at its hotels as vehicles to deliver enhanced well-being.

We are creatures of constant awe.

So as we contemplated the great promise and the great peril of the Cambrian explosion of modern science and technology at SXSW, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that poet Ada Limón nourished our souls by reading the poem that will be engraved on the Europa Clipper as it sets out to seek signs of life on Jupiter’s watery second moon. It included these words:

?“We are creatures of constant awe,

curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,

at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.

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And it is not darkness that unites us,

not the cold distance of space, but

the offering of water, each drop of rain,

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each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.

O second moon, we, too, are made

of water, of vast and beckoning seas.

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We, too are made of wonders, of great

and ordinary loves, of small and invisible worlds,

of a need to call out through the dark.”