Netflix CEO: Our future audience may be AI lifeforms – USA TODAY

Founder and CEO of Netflix Reed Hastings smiles during a keynote at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Monday, Feb. 27, 2017.(Photo: AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Twenty to fifty years from now, when youre starting to get into some serious AI, Reed Hastings isnt sure whether Netflix is going to be entertaining you or entertaining the artificially intelligent bots.

The Netflix founder and CEO opined on the future during an interview on stage at Mobile World Congress here.

Whats amazing about technology is its really hard to predict, he says. What we do is try to learn and adapt rather than try to commit to one particular view of whats going to happen. And if virtual reality takes off well adapt to that, if it becomes contact lenses that have amazing powers well adapt to that.

Hastings appearance at the mobile industrys signature trade shindig was largely focused on Netflix experiences globally. Last January, Netflix expanded to 130 countries and is now just about everywhere, with one big exception China. About half of Netflixs nearly 100 million streaming members are international.

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The company has been on a roll lately. In January, Netflix (NFLX) easily beat Wall Street earnings forecasts, boosted by international subscribers. The stock is trading at $143.41, not far off its 52-week high.

Hastings discussed the appeal behind the companys international push.

If youre a filmmaker in Spain or Italy youre excited about Netflix because it can give global reach for your film. Hastings said hes seen strong mobile usage throughout Africa, Middle East, Asia.

Indeed, Hastings doesnt think theres anything uniquely American about the Netflix viewer. I dont know if I would call it an American experience. Its on a mobile phone, its on a Samsung TV. Fundamentally, the Internet is the most global medium weve ever seen and were trying to continue to learn how to do things well on the Internet.

Hastings says Netflix is investing heavily around the world on network servers, and improving the connection. Five or ten years from now the quality of Netflix on all of your devices will be just incredible and we dont know exactly what that is. But we know that the Internet is allowing new experiences to get created.

Meantime, Netflix is offering more content with a distinctly international flavor.

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For example, a Spanish show called Cable Girls is a 1920s period-piece about the original women hired to work telephone switchboards in Madrid. The sci-fi series 3% is produced out of Brazil.

We want to give global producers a global audience to entertain, Hastings said.

Netflix spent the first couple of years delivering mostly Hollywood content. Now the company is developing relationships with producers in Turkey, Korea, Japan and elsewhere.

The most surprising thing has been the tastes of people around the world, Hastings says. The story of the Internet is connecting people everywhere, and the role that we play in it is around stories of all types.

And he believes binge viewing appeals everywhere. The original binge view was the novel that you stayed up late to read or read on the beach at your leisure.

The Internet has brought back binge viewing to human beings and its just a much better way than watching a show every week. And youre going to see most linear networks convert to binge viewing, and thats very exciting.

Whats unknown right now is whether the audience binge watching many decades from now will be mostly robot or human.

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow USA TODAY Personal Tech Columnist @edbaig on Twitter

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