Antoine Blondeau worked on the project that became Apple's Siri. Today he runs Sentient Technologies, the world's best-funded AI company. He was previously COO of Zi Corporation, whose predictive text software has been embedded in hundreds of millions of devices.

Antoine will be speaking on the Main Stage at our flagship event, WIRED2015 on October 15-16. He will take part in the session, "When technology gets ambitious", alongside Gabor Forgacs, Ryan Weed and Daniel McDuff.


Bringing the WIRED world to life, WIRED2015 showcases the innovators changing the world and promoting disruptive thinking and radical ideas. There will be around 45 speakers over the two-day event, presenting stories about their work in science, design, business and many other fields.

Can you give us some hints about what you're planning to talk about at WIRED2015?

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Sure, I'd be happy to. My talk centres around the role evolution has in creating a new frontier in artificial intelligence -- what I like to call evolutionary intelligence. Up until now machine-learning experts have been very focused on trying to recreate human intelligence. But what if we think bigger than that? What if we could scale AI to an unfathomable size, a size so big that it would leapfrog anything else out there and be able to solve some of the world's most complex problems?

Next, imagine if this massive AI system could evolve and adapt to its environment like living species do, to get better at the tasks it's presented with.


The possibilities of such a system would be extremely exciting. "Evolutionary Intelligence agents" would evolve by themselves -- trained to survive and thrive by writing their own code -- spawning trillions of computer programs to solve incredibly complex problems such as those in healthcare, energy, finance and e-commerce.

This is possible, and is happening today. I'll reveal all in my talk.

What would you like to achieve by speaking at WIRED2015?

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I'd like to leave people with a greater understanding of what AI is and is not and get them thinking about where it will help us humans and be valuable in society. There has been a lot of scaremongering going on in the industry about the potential threats that AI may pose to humankind -- but I stand with Yann LeCun on this. We're not even remotely close to being there.


What we are close to is breeding "intelligent agents." But let's not think about this as Terminator-style robots, instead think of specialised computer programs which write their own code and make decisions, solving specific problems, and leveraging massive amounts of data no human could possibly fathom. These agents elevate our status as humans, they make better decisions than we can, or they present us with outcomes to help us see more, decide better and act faster. Siri is an intelligent agent, so perhaps people are getting used to this concept.

Who are you looking forward to hearing and/or meeting at WIRED2015?

The diversity is great! I look forward to meeting the panellists on the "Complex world" panel, as international relations and societal issues are potentially helped by AI in the mid- to longer term. Other themes, such as "Designing the interface," "Turning data into understanding," "How ideas are born," "The power of music," are very relevant to some of what we do -- and I will be an eager listener.

Where do you see the AI software sector in five years' time? What advances and challenges might be in the pipeline between now and then?

Five years from now, we'll see AI take a bigger role in making decisions, creating pre-emptive solutions, and delivering insights. Society will become much more efficient as a result. Think logistics, e-commerce, healthcare, finance -- in all these domains and others, we'll start to see massive gains from AI. We'll be able to leverage AI systems to help get things to where they need to go faster and cheaper, we'll be able to enable people to see and buy things they weren't even aware existed or even knew they wanted, we'll be able to help predict fatal diseases before they get past the point of no return. We will have full-blown AI-based investment firms.



What's next for Sentient Technologies?

To make ever better decisions, we need AI systems that perceive more of the world, that have better senses. At Sentient, we're preparing for this future by beginning to allow our AI platform to gather information using vision, hearing and reading. I'll be touching on this more in my talk but it gives you an idea of where we're headed. The combination of Evolutionary Intelligence and other AI disciplines such as Deep Learning on a scale like ours is extremely exciting and powerful.


What's next for Antoine Blondeau?

In the next year, I will be very focused on continuing to attract top talent to the Sentient team, as we have seen incredible momentum in the number of top AI and business experts who have chosen to join our company in recent months. I will also drive us to expand the commercialisation of our products with our customers. We are on a great path now, and I am super excited about the year to come!

WIRED2015 takes place on October 15-16 at Tobacco Dock in London, E1W. Last year's event sold out, so secure your place now. WIRED subscribers save 10 per cent on tickets. We also have a limited number of half-price tickets available for startups and registered charities. For more information or to register, please visit http://www.wiredevent.co.uk/wired-2015.