LIVE FROM CES 2017, LAS VEGAS: AT&T’s Developer Summit kicked off with celebrity speaker and Hollywood actor Joseph Gordon Levitt urging radical transformation across the internet ecosystem, warning that its current state could have severe impact on people, society and industry.

Levitt, an actor famous for a number of big screen roles, is also a technology entrepreneur, and founded HitRECord in 2004.

It is described as an open collaborative production company, giving people the opportunity to create content and get paid for it.

Levitt argued to the packed crowd at AT&T’s annual event here in Vegas that there are three things wrong with the internet today, describing them as “three pillars limiting our ability to be creative”.

He explained that the current faceless “crowd” contributing to the internet must transform to become communities, something which HitReCord advocates by encouraging people to collaborate on different projects.

He also takes argument with the supposed “free culture of the internet”, arguing that if someone creates something, they should be compensated.

He said that, today, it is mostly a few technology giants that are cashing in from the internet.

These companies are in many ways “decentivising creativity”, because of the free culture surrounding the web.

The trend, he argued, has already “decimated” the music and journalism industries, and other industries are also at risk.

“If someone does some work, creates some kind of intellectual property and then that intellectual property is able to generate any kind of money, they deserve to be paid,” he said.

Finally, Levitt wants the notion of “socialising” to evolve and become more about collaboration.

Given his views, Levitt further poured cold water on the notion that computer generated intelligence (such as AI) could one day replace human creativity.

AT&T developments
Thaddeus Arroyo, AT&T’s recently appointed business solutions head, then took to the stage to discuss the company’s ongoing efforts around IoT, connected cars and smart cities.

With connected cars, the company announced a partnership with Honda to bring 4G LTE and Wi-Fi connectivity to its vehicles in the US and Canada. It said it is also working with Delphi and Ford to develop a new platform for Vehicle to Anything (V2X) technology.