AI startup Respeecher re-created James Earl Jones Darth Vader voice for the Disney+ series Obi Wan Kenobi. On May 17, as bodies lined up in the rain outside the Cannes Film Festival Palais for the chance to watch a short film directed byPedro Almodvar, an auteur known most of all for his humanism, a different kind of gathering was underway below the theater. Inside the March, a panel of technologists convened to tell an audience of film professionals how they might deploy artificial intelligence for creating scripts, characters, videos, voices and graphics

A newly published AI algorithm has been used to estimate coastal fish stocks in the Western Indian Ocean with 85 percent accuracy. (Courtesy: Wildlife Conservation Society) INDIAN OCEAN A newly published AI algorithm has been used to estimate coastal fish stocks in the Western Indian Ocean with 85% accuracy.

Superstorm Sandy flooded the emergency room at the former Coney Island Hospital in South Brooklyn.

While studying John Singer Sargent's paintings of wealthy women in 19th-century society, Jessica Helfand, a former Caltech artist in residence, had an idea: to search census records to find the identities of those women's servants. "I thought, What happens if I paint these women in the style of John Singer Sargent?' It's a sort of cultural restitution," Helfand explained, "reverse engineering the narrative by reclaiming a kind of beauty, style, and majesty." To recreate a style from history, she turned to technology that, increasingly, is driving the future.

We could be looking at one of the most significant technological innovations in human history, Hawley said. And I think my question is, what kind of an innovation is it going to be?