Category Archives: Futurist

The end of the world as we know it is near. And thats a good thing, according to many of the futurists who are predicting the imminent arrival of whats been called the technological singularity.

The technological singularity is the idea that technological progress, particularly in artificial intelligence, will reach a tipping point to where machines are exponentially smarter than humans. It has been a hot topic of late.

Well-known futurist and Google engineer Ray Kurzweil (co-founder and chancellor of Singularity University) reiterated his bold prediction at Austins South by Southwest (SXSW) festival this month that machines will match human intelligence by 2029 (and has said previously the Singularity itself will occur by 2045). Thats two years before SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Sons prediction of 2047, made at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) earlier this year.

Author of the seminal book on the topic, The Singularity Is Near, Kurzweil said during the SXSW festival that whats actually happening is [machines] are powering all of us. Theyre making us smarter. They may not yet be inside our bodies, but by the 2030s, we will connect our neocortex, the part of our brain where we do our thinking, to the cloud.

That merger of man and machinesometimes referred to as transhumanismis the same concept that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk talks about when discussing development of a neural lace. For Musk, however, an interface between the human brain and computers is vital to keep our species from becoming obsolete when the singularity hits.

Musk is also the driving force behind Open AI, a billion-dollar nonprofit dedicated to ensuring the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) is beneficial to humanity. AGI is another term for human-level intelligence. What most people refer to as AI today is weak or narrow artificial intelligencea machine capable of thinking within a very narrow range of concepts or tasks.

Futurist Ben Goertzel, who among his many roles is chief scientist at financial prediction firm Aidyia Holdings and robotics company Hanson Robotics (and advisor to Singularity University), believes AGI is possible well within Kurzweils timeframe. The singularity is harder to predict, he says on his personal website, estimating the date anywhere between 2020 and 2100.

Note that we might achieve human-level AGI, radical health-span extension and other cool stuff well before a singularityespecially if we choose to throttle AGI development rate for a while in order to increase the odds of a beneficial singularity, he writes.

Meanwhile, billionaire Son of SoftBank, a multinational telecommunications and Internet firm based in Japan, predicts superintelligent robots will surpass humans in both number and brain power by 2047.

He is putting a lot of money toward making it happen. The investment arm of SoftBank, for instance, recently bankrolled $100 million in a startup called CloudMinds for cloud-connected robots, transplanting the brain from the machine to the cloud. Son is also creating the worlds biggest tech venture capitalist fund to the tune of $100 billion.

I truly believe its coming, thats why Im in a hurryto aggregate the cash, to invest, he was quoted as saying at the MWC.

Kurzweil, Son, Goertzel and others are just the latest generation of futurists who have observed that humanity is accelerating toward a new paradigm of existence, largely due to technological innovation.

There were some hints that philosophers as early as the 19th century, during the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, recognized that the human race was a species fast-tracked for a different sort of reality. It wasnt until the 1950s, however, when the modern-day understanding of the singularity first took form.

Mathematician John von Neumann had noted that the ever-accelerating progress of technology gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.

In the 1960s, following his work with Alan Turing to decrypt Nazi communications, British mathematician I.J. Goode invoked the singularity without naming it as such.

He wrote, Let an ultra-intelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultra-intelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an intelligence explosion, and the intelligence of man would be left far behind.

Science fiction writer and retired mathematics and computer science professor Vernor Vinge is usually credited with coining the term technological singularity. His 1993 essay, The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Erapredicted the moment of technological transcendence would come within 30 years.

Vinge explains in his essay why he thinks the term singularityin cosmology, the event where space-time collapses and a black hole formsis apt: It is a point where our models must be discarded and a new reality rules. As we move closer and closer to this point, it will loom vaster and vaster over human affairs till the notion becomes commonplace. Yet when it finally happens it may still be a great surprise and a greater unknown.

But is predicting the singularity even possible?

A paper by Stuart Armstrong et al suggests such predictions are a best guess at most. A database compiled by the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), a nonprofit dedicated to social issues related to AGI, found 257 AI predictions from the period 1950-2012 in the scientific literature. Of these, 95 contained predictions giving timelines for AI development.

The AI predictions in the database seem little better than random guesses, the authors write. For example, the researchers found that there is no evidence that expert predictions differ from those of non-experts. They also observed a strong pattern that showed most AI prognostications fell within a certain sweet spot15 to 25 years from the moment of prediction.

Others have cast doubt that the singularity is achievable in the time frames put forth by Kurzweil and Son.

Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and Institute of Artificial Intelligence, among other ventures, has written that such a technological leap forward is still far in the future.

[I]f the singularity is to arrive by 2045, it will take unforeseeable and fundamentally unpredictable breakthroughs, and not because the Law of Accelerating Returns made it the inevitable result of a specific exponential rate of progress, he writes, referring to the concept that past rates of progress can predict future rates as well.

Futurist Nikola Danaylov, who manages the Singularity Weblog, says he believes a better question to ask is whether achieving the singularity is a good thing or a bad thing.

Is that going to help us grow extinct like the dinosaurs or is it going to help us spread through the universe like Carl Sagan dreamed of? he tells Singularity Hub. Right now, its very unclear to me personally.

Danaylov argues that the singularity orthodoxy of today largely ignores the societal upheavals already under way. The idea that technology will save us will not lift people out of poverty or extend human life if technological breakthroughs only benefit those with money, he says.

Im not convinced [the singularity is] going to happen in the way we think its going to happen, he says. Im sure were missing the major implications, the major considerations.

We have tremendous potential to make it a good thing, he adds.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

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Can Futurists Predict the Year of the Singularity? - Singularity Hub

In BriefRecent years have brought some rapid development in the areaof artificially intelligent personal assistants. Future iterationsof the technology could fully revamp the way we interact with ourdevices.

The following article was inspired by futurist John Smarts series on the future of personal AI assistants, aka Sims. In a paraphrase offuturist Stewart Brandhe notes, We are gaining superpowers, so we better get good at using them.

The world has filled up with digital clutter, millions of apps, websites, news sources, videos, messaging programs and social media platforms. Technology was meant to make life easier, to organize and make sense of things, to free us from drudgery, not fill it with more crap we dont want.

Help is on the way. A race is going on between the tech giants to be the first to come up with the last app you will ever need. A single program that will be incredibly easy for anyone to use and that can do everything you want it to do.

Siri, the first widely distributed AI assistant, is about five years old. Back then, in the good ol days of 2012, there wasnt much that she could do, at best if you yelled at her loud enough she might be able to tell you what the weather was like outside. Today there are a wide variety to choose from, the most intelligent are Amazons Alexa and Googles Assistant, and they have come a long way from their primitive predecessor.

AI assistants have grown up fast thanks in large part to the growth of a branch of machine learning called NLP, natural language processing. Rapid improvements in this field have enabled us to talk to our machines almost as we would a human. They can now play whatever song you tell them to, instantly translate almost any phrase you say into any language you want, andanswer just about any question you have.

And they are getting smarter every day. The goal of NLP is to get these machines to understand speech as well ashumans can.This has been a huge stumbling block for AI but once it gets passed thisthe entire field will take a giant leap forward. Combined with advances being made in other areas of machine learning, these assistants will eventually gain the ability to help you complete any task you can think of, relegating all the apps and programs that you use today into the background as they will simply become the abilities of your personal assistant.

Also, your Sim will be unique. Every interaction you have with the online world today is being collected and stored in giant data bases, eventually these sims will use all of this information to read through every email and message you have ever sent and check every website you have ever visited tolearn about your job, your likes and dislikes, your hobbies, and your relationships, all to try and figure out how best to help you. It will also learn about your preferences and your habits as you use it, adapting to your particular character traits.

When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone 10 years ago he was able to boldly proclaim that it was going to revolutionize how we interact with technology because he understood one thing about successful tools, they have to be easy enough for anyone to use. The user interface on the iPhone was moreintuitive than any piece of tech before it, allowing anybody to pick it up and use it. It only took a few years before everyone on earth had a similar smart phone in their pocket.

Sims will be even more intuitive because all youll have to do is talk to them. Everyone from monks on the foothills of Tibet to the President of the United States will have one. And it will be far more than just your personal assistant. It will effectively be your doctor, your lawyer, your accountant, your travel agent, your instant messenger, your source of news, and any other service that relies on passing information from one person to another.

It will also be able to do much of your job for you, freeing up your time. However, depending on what you do, it wont take long for your boss to realize that his or her own Sim can also do your job.

Most experts say we are anywhere from 5 to 10 years away from having the technology in place and another 2 or 3 years after that for them to become widely distributed.

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Tech Giants Are Racing to Be the First to Develop The Last App - Futurism

Global futurist Rich Karlgaard: Trump economic plan will increase GDP growth rate Tuesday, March 28, 2017

by LYNDON FINNEY/The Trucker Staff

NASHVILLE, Tenn. Bits and atoms will play a big role in future economic growth in the United States, the publisher and editor-at-large told delegates to the 79th Annual Truckload Carriers Association convention Monday.

Since the end of the last recession, the economy has been growing, but slowly, at 2 percent a year, global futurist Rich Karlgaard said. [Former President Barack] Obama called it the new normal, but 2 percent a year is not normal.

Karlgaard pointed out that between 1933-40 after the Great Depression, the average annual GDP growth was 7 percent.

Peter Thiel (founder of PayPal) said it this way: The American economy is underperforming because it is out of balance. There are too many bits companies and not enough atom companies, Karlgaard said.

Why?

Among others, bits companies include Facebook, Google, Uber and Airbnb.

Karlgaard said Facebook had a market cap to revenue ratio of 20, Airbnb 18, Uber 15 and Google 7.

Among others, atoms companies would include Dana, Cummins, Delphi and GM.

As for market cap to revenue ratio, Delpi is 1.0, Cummins .9, and both Dana and GM at .3.

One reason President Donald Trump won the election is because he was favored by voters who live in the world of atoms and Hillary Clinton was favored by voters who live in the world of bits.

In addition to an accelerated ROI, another example of why investors are leaning to bits companies are the annual tax, trade and regulatory costs per employees.

For atom companies, the figure is $45,000, for bits companies it is $20,000.

Does Trump have a mandate to do something about slow economic growth, Kaarlguard asked rhetorically. Yes, and it is a mandate to fix the economy at a faster rate of growth and to fix non-residential fixed investment. If this is not corrected, the country is headed for 1 percent growth or a flat rate of growth.

He (Trump) could be bad or good, Karlgaard said. He will be unpredictable.

Investor Wilbur Ross and University of California economist Peter Navarro have studied Trumps economic plan, saying it will significantly increase America's real GDP growth rate resulting in trillions of dollars of additional revenues, according to a new study authored by Ross and Navarro.

When evaluated as a single integrated whole, the Trump plan is revenue neutral and fiscally conservative," Ross and Navarro wrote in the study.

Based on the study, Karlgaard listed what he said were Trumps priorities trade (more bilateral), regulation (radically reduce), taxes (reduce, simplify) and currency (cheaper dollar).

Karlgaard said Trump had assembled an economic team of rivals and that the team will fight and appear dysfunctional at times, but it will be motivated to improve economic growth, jobs and wages.

Karlgaard predicted that if Trumps first two years lead to faster growth, more jobs and higher wages, the Republicans could make significant gains in the Senate in 2019.

The GOP could have between 56-62 seats, which is veto-proof, because of the 10 most vulnerable incumbents, nine are Democrats.

As for the countrys economic future, Karlgaard had three observations.

First, keep an eye on U.S. population growth trends. U.S. business growth will occur in the south and west, around tech and financial centers, and in large university and capital cities.

Observation No. 2 is that home entrepreneurs can make a regions image in one generation. That occurred in Seattle. He displayed a billboard in Seattle that read Will the last person leaving Seattle turn out the lights. Now, Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks Coffee call Seattle home, just as does the Seattle Seahawks football team.

The third observation is that the country is headed into a long era of cheap energy because of incredible advances in exploration and drilling technology. Karlgaard said oil could be selling for $20 a barrel by 2021.

TCAs convention continues through Wednesday morning.

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Global futurist Rich Karlgaard: Trump economic plan will increase GDP growth rate - The Trucker

Photo: Under Armour

Under Armour will release its latest line of footwear on March 30 featuring the sportswear brands 3D-printed technology.

The Under Armour ArchiTech Futurist, which will retail for US$300, is a variant of the original Under Armour Architech, which was unveiled in early 2016, and released in limited quantity. (Richard Branson was spotted rocking the Architechs in 2016.) The upcoming release features fit-centric innovations that deliver the signature Under Armour feel and underfoot technology that redefines support, you are about to feel all-powerful.

article continues after advertisement

RELATED: Shoe review: Under Armours improved SpeedForm Gemini 3 goes the distance.

It should be noted that although the ArchiTech Futurist is not marketed as a run-specific shoe, the use of the 3D-printed midsole technology hints at future use in Under Armours running footwear. The ArchiTech Futurist with its heel stability solution is a multi-use shoe versatile enough to handle some kilometres while also tough enough to provide support when strength training.

Photo: Under Armour

Whats most striking on first look is in place of a traditional lacing system, the ArchiTech Futurist utilizes a compression sleeve around the ankle to keep the foot securely in place. A zipper along the top of the foot allows for additional support and a snug fit. The high-top look is becoming increasingly popular in the running world.

RELATED: Under Armour becomes title sponsor of Vancouvers Eastside 10K.

The heel, which Under Armour says provides infinite cushioning and support, is particularly prevalent in the below photo.

Photo: Under Armour

Fortunately for Canadians, the shoes will be available online via Under Armour, which offers cross-border shipping from the United States. The shoes will go live online at 6 p.m. on March 30.

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Under Armour reveals new ArchiTech Futurist with 3D-printed midsole - Canadian Running Magazine (blog)

The address by futurist Edie Weiner, last Monday, gave us a thought-provoking context for the budget presentation by Prime Minister Andrew Holness the next day. New Yorker Edie Weiner is the principal of Future Hunters, which for over 40 years has been using data to predict future developments, with impressive results.

At an event presented by the Jamaica Chapter of the International Womens Forum (IWF), she challenged the roomful of leaders to rethink education, to capitalise on Jamaicas youthful population, to respect them so that they in turn will respect our environment.

Ten years ago, she says her high-calibre clients were so impressed by her guidance that they wondered how she was getting it so right. She explained that her team uses 30 different thought processes to arrive at their recommendations. Learn more at http://www.thefuturehunters.com.

Most important of all, she says, is to recognise your educated incapacity, as you can know so much about what you already know that you are not looking outside. She observed that educated people tend to acquire so much knowledge that they hang on to it like an expensive piece of luggage. This is backward, as she pointed out that, while we are hanging on to these brand-name bags, someone is racing into the future with their futuristic backpacks.

Therefore it was encouraging that in his budget presentation (well worth the read at http://jis.gov.jm/contribution-prime-minister-andrew-holness-201718-budget-debate/) Holness recognised the huge potential the global market has for outsourcing. He noted: The first segment to have been established, and the largest in relative terms is the information technology outsourcing (ITO) segment, where activities are focused on providing information technology support Currently, the market for ITO services globally is US$76 billion. The second segment is the business process outsourcing (BPO) segment, which is linked to the outsourcing of administrative services and back office tasks...The global market for BPO services is US$38 billion. The third segment is the knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) segment, which involves knowledge-based services, including research and development, innovation, design, testing, business consultancy, legal services, accounting, medical, and biotechnology services among others that require highly skilled personnel and involve more value-added activities Knowledge process outsourcing is the fastest-growing segment in the industry, with an average growth rate of over 8.6 per cent compared to the industry average of 4.1 per cent. Jamaica is well poised to do well in this segment.

While these are great plans, we should heed Edie Weiners warnings that the rapid advance of technology is creating disruption. She noted that what was described as a recession in the early 90s was actually a result of the new disruptive technology. This was not a recession, she said, it was a fundamental global revolution.

She says, when asked the question What should children be studying now to be assured of employment?, her answer is that they should become plumbers, electricians and stone masons. Weiner urged an emphasis on critical thinking in education, stating, In the future no one will be paying for smart. They will pay for the intelligence that enables you to figure out things that you have never seen before.

Our unattached youth

Weiners advice should be taken on board as the Government develops the employment aspect of their commendable HOPE Programme. It is estimated that there is a pool of approximately 120,000 to 130,000 young persons, between 15 and 24 years of age, who are not in school, not in a programme of training, and are unemployed, noted Holness. While a considerable portion of the unattached would have other institutions which keep them engaged and supported, such as their family, their church, community activities or sports, a significant proportion of them have no structure, order or guidance in their life.

Many of them would not be in institutions long enough to develop character and good citizenship, positive attitudes and skills to assist them in negotiating the challenges of life, said the prime minister. We see them on the street corners every day when we are going to work, and we see them at the same place when we are coming home. They are at home every day becoming increasingly hopeless and frustrated These are the most productive years in the human life cycle and we cannot afford to lose the productive value of our human resource. This is also the age group that is most affected by crime and violence. With so many unattached youth, we should not wonder at the mindlessness and cruelty of recent crimes; the tragedy at Moncrieffes, a respected landmark on Old Hope Road is horrifying. I believe we should incentivise more students to become social workers.

We have seen the transformation of such communities as Grants Pen and Trench Town when young people have been offered training to make them employable. Being sensitive to their immediate needs, when we led the partnership of the Stella Maris Foundation with HEART Trust/NTA, we established the Norma Chang Daycare Centre so that young women could have a safe place to leave their children while they attended classes.

As we consider Weiners reminder that the fastest period for brain growth is between zero to three years old, we congratulate the previous and current boards of the Early Childhood Commission in the Ministry of Education led by Professor Maureen Samms-Vaughan and Trisha Williams-Singh. Both women continue to collaborate as they have a healthy respect for what each brings to the table academic understanding of the issues and sound organisational skills. Thus, the certification of early childhood institutions is being accelerated to give those precious young minds every chance for healthy development.

The prime minister noted that several educational bodies would be merged: The services would be more effective, have greater reach, and enrol more numbers if they were streamlined and coordinated. The Government has therefore decided to merge HEART Trust/NTA, the NYS [National Youth Service], JFLL [Jamaica Foundation for Lifelong Learning], and the Apprenticeship Board into a single entity, he said. The streamlining of technology for the public sector should promote greater efficiency at less cost for this and other such mergers.

Lets drop that expensive but burdensome baggage of old thinking we have Bolt as our symbol of the world-beating speed we can achieve with our own home-grown talent and strategic application.

Congrats, Ian Boyne on Profiles 30th

Congratulations to Ian Boyne on the 30th anniversary celebration of his inspiring series

Profile. I had written a column on Ian some years ago, as I felt he deserved some profiling too. This was his kind response when I asked him to share memories of the personalities he had featured: I am humbled that you are thinking of paying some attention to my work in your Profile-newspaper-version column, that breath of fresh, inspiring air in print journalism I would say Derek Walcott was perhaps my most impatient guest, asking me abruptly over 20 years ago to cut the pre-talk and just get to the taping. Berthan Macaulay I found almost intellectually intimidating when I interviewed him almost 25 or so years ago. His brightness was dazzling. As to aha moments they are too numerous to single out. Thank you for your weekly positivity booster, Ian. So uplifting!

lowriechin@aim.com

http://www.lowrie-chin.blogspot.com

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A futurist, a PM, a path for Jamaica - Jamaica Observer

At last years AMUG, athletic wear manufacturer Under Armour won the Advanced Concepts Technical Competition with the UA Architech, a line of shoes that featured a 3D-printed midsole. This year, Director of Design & Manufacturing Innovation at Under Armour Alan Guyan gave the crowd a sneak peek at the companys next design in the series, the Futurist.

The UA Futurist is Under Armours most recent shoe design featuring 3D-printed midsoles. (Image courtesy of Under Armour.)

Guyan explained at AMUG that the concept behind the Futurist is that it combines the past, present and future of the company. The idea is that our company is a little under pressure, Guyan said. Youll see this wrap on top of the shoe and on the inside of the shoe youll see a seamless heel cut out. Thats kind of our present. We actually mold the bottom of the shoe. And, of course, our future is 3D printing.

The 3D-printed TPU heel is meant to provide support and spring. (Image courtesy of Under Armour.)

At $300, the shoe series is Under Armours most expensive to date, but it also represents the companys largest batch of shoes with 3D-printed parts to date. With each shoe series, Under Armour has quadrupled production, starting with 96 pairs for the original Architech, followed by 410 for the next 3D-printed shoe series. The company will manufacture the Futurist in a batch of a little over 2,000 pairs, with sales beginning March 30 and with other sales occurring throughout the year, according to Guyan.

To sign up to be notified when the Futurist shoes go on sale, visit the product page.

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Under Armour Debuts Futurist Shoes with 3D-Printed Midsoles ... - ENGINEERING.com

Flavorwire Interview: Futurist Author Daniel Pinchbeck on the Planet, Consciousness, and His New Book, 'How Soon Is ... Flavorwire In his just published work, How Soon Is Now, author, speaker, and thinker Daniel Pinchbeck known for his 2002 book Breaking Open the Head and 2012's The Return of Quetzalcoatl undertakes a review of the current state of humanity, of consciousness ...

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Flavorwire Interview: Futurist Author Daniel Pinchbeck on the Planet, Consciousness, and His New Book, 'How Soon Is ... - Flavorwire

The idea of big data is compelling be it in uncovering hidden shopping patterns of your customer, predicting the next election or deciding where to focus your advertisement spend.

With all the steam coming out of the big data hype machine, marketers seem to lose their view of the big picture. In many cases, big data is overwhelming for everyone not being adata scientist and only useful if you can retrieve actionable insights and have the resources and authority to execute in real-time.

Are we as marketers ready for this and equipped with the necessary tools, infrastructure, and resources to fully leverage big data? Or are we at the risk of jumping on the band wagon too early, and stumbling into the pitfalls?

Big data is data, and data favours analysis over emotion. It is hard to imagine data capturing emotional qualities we all value and need as marketers to appeal to our customers, and read their reactions. There is always a risk of misinterpreting the patterns shown by big data and drawing causal links where there is in fact merely random coincidence. Sales data may show a rise following a major sporting event, prompting you to draw a link between sports fans and your products, when in fact the increase is due to more people in town. This could be equally dramatic after a large live music event or a shift in public holidays.

Small data, on the other spectrum, is data in a volume and format that makes it accessible, informative and actionable. It can be nonverbal signals, gestures, likes, hesitations, and speech patterns. Small data connects people with timely and meaningful insights that can either be derived from local sources or big data but then it needs to be packaged in order to be accessible, understandable, and actionable for everyday tasks.

So how can we work with both big and small data and maximise our investment rather than diluting it? Maybe it is a matter of defining your objective first and put this into perspective to what kind of brand you are marketing.

Kevin Roberts, previously CEO of the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, is a firm believer that great brands have two advantages. Firstly, they evoke respect for their technological performance, durability, and effectiveness like for automobile or engineering companies. And big data can support the decision making process on where to focus your next investments. And then, there are brands like Disney, Coca Cola or Apple that evoke love and emotions. The question marketers need to ask themselves is if big data can help to increase the love for these brands.

Big data can analyse the existing behaviour. But it will not tell you what is not there yet and what might be the key to the heart (and wallet) of the consumer. In a world when everything is available 24/7 with a click, shopping in a brick and mortar environment mainly has social benefits as it gets consumer off their screens.

Even though most of us continue browsingthe web and our social media channels while shopping, stores provide a community feel. In addition to that it serves the need of tactility, the human desire to feel a garment or product which is why a number of online retailers start opening pop up stores all across the globe.

The last mile of big data is where value is created, opinions are formed, insights are shared and actions are made, by non-data scientists, on a daily basis. By simply focusing on big data and letting data scientist analyse them, marketers are at the risk of missing those crucial moments of observing their customers and uncovering something new and valuable about them, their brand, or a need that they did not even know was there.

If you really want to understand your consumer, big data will offer a valuable but incomplete solution and in the long run the pre-occupation with big data might prevent you from gather high quality insights. As marketers, lets aim to do a better job collecting and verifying insights we already have and discovering their meaning in the contest of the challenge or task at hand.

The writer isKatharina Pohl, former head of marketing at Cotton On Asia.

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The Futurist: Putting equal importance on the big and the small - Marketing Interactive

The data center's role in our economy will be transformed by technologies like AI, virtual reality, voice assistants, autonomous vehicles and robots, according to futurist Steve Brown. (Photo: Google)

SANTA CLARA. Calif. Everywhere Steve Brown looks, he sees new technologies transforming our world. Brown envisions a future in which artificial intelligence, virtual reality, voice assistants, autonomous vehicles and robots will disrupt nearly every aspect of our economy. A growing universe of connected things will send huge amounts of data across ultra-fast wireless connections, all converging on the data center.

A lot of the fabric of modern life is fully reliant on data centers, said Brown, the former Chief Evangelist and Futurist at Intel. There are going to be huge new workloads and huge new demands on the data center.

Brown, who is now the CEO at Bald Futurist, addressed the critical role the data center industry will play in the coming technology revolution in a keynote at the recent Open Compute Summit. Speaking to a room full of technologists building hyperscale infrastructure, Brown reinforced the need for data centers to scale to scale for the coming data deluge.

Youre going to see a lot more smart devices and smart spaces, said Brown. Were going to be seeing a lot more endpoints sending information into data centers.

In nearly two decades at Intel, Brown saw first-hand how new technologies can evolve and have global impact. Hes one of the creators of the ATX motherboard form factor, which became the global standard for the PC industry. Not surprisingly, his projections align with Intels vision for a data-driven world with the data center at its center.

You can see that the capabilities of the cloud and the data center will expand over time, he said. You can expect to see new and expanding workloads in the data center.

In his talk at Open Compute, Brown outlined the multiple ways in which emerging technologies will drive growth for the data center industry.

The hyperscale sectors massive investment in machine learning will create services that will enable advances in applications for both industries and consumers.

Steve Brown, the former Chief Evangelist and Futurist at Intel, describes the transformative impact of new technology during a keynote at the Open Compute Summit in Santa Clara. (Photo: Rich Miller)

With AI and machine vision, we are making leaps forward, and youre starting to see more advanced robots and autonomous machines, said Brown. Its no longer robots one day. Its robots next week. These robots will be sensing the world, and talking to each other. Their data has to go somewhere. This will place a load on the data center. Massive amounts of data will be spurting out of these autonomous machines so we can learn about them and train them.

Brown is among those who see voice interfaces as an ascendant trend, predicting that Apples Siri and Amazons Alexa are the first wave in a broader trend of virtual assistants that can hold conversations. Were moving toward a voice first world, said Brown. This is clear.

He noted a Gartner projection that 20 percent of smartphone interactions will be voice driven by 2019. Many businesses will embrace conversation as a service voice-enabled interfaces field requests for new services.

As weve previously noted, the emergence of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) as mass-market technologies would place enormous demand on wireless and data center infrastructure. Although current adoption of VR and AR remains limited, Brown believes the technologiy and product offerings will improve rapidly to create a compelling, immersive experience.

VR and AR are currently in their infancy, he said. You will see virtual reality and augmented reality become the primary digital interface. This will change the demands on the data center.

Brown is particularly keen on the disruptive potential for volumetric 3D video, which employs multiple cameras and LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging, a sensing method that uses a pulsed laser to measure distance) to create an experience akin to the Star Trek Holodeck. Heres a look:

The challenge is that volumetric 3D video requires 3GB of data per frame. Yes, per frame.

Think about the demand as you try to stream volumetric VR from the data center, said Brown. Its going to be quite a lot of demand.

As endpoints multiply and become distributed, ultra-fast wireless will super-size the capacity of data moving across the network to data centers for analysis and storage. The coming 5G wireless standard, which is currently under development, will dramatically accelerate wireless connections. When 5G arrives, Brown predicts it will lead to a proliferation of dumb end points devices that are low-tech but use connections to cloud platforms to deliver high-value services.

Why put the intelligence in the device if you can access it at high speed over a wireless connection? said Brown. Youll see a lot more dumb end points, because latency to the cloud is simple.

As an example, Brown pointed to educational products from Cognitoys, which leverage speech recognition capabilities of the IBM Watson cloud to allow plastic dinosaur toys to conduct educational conversations with children. Heres a look:

When 5G comes, well see more endpoints like this, said Brown. With the reduced latency, the cloud moves closer to the edge, and youre much more likely to use the cloud to bring intelligence to products and services.

At Data Center Frontier, we track how these technologies will impact the data center. We write about whats next for the Internet, and the innovations that will take us there. Browns presentation at Open Compute builds upon many of our expectations about the future, and he emphasizes that the transformation will impact businesses as well as consumers.

I would contend that every business in the world is becoming mission critical, said Brown. Every company will be a data company, because if they dont, they arent going to be competitive. You will see a lot of industries gathering more information and analyzing more data about their customer.

The types of computing are changing, he added. Being able to embrace new architectures and bring them into the data center will be critical. The workload growth the data center community is facing is enormous.

This future will challenge the data center communitys ability to scale and keep pace with demand for compute and storage capacity. But Brown believes that this contains a great opportunity as well.

You have a big challenge, but its an exciting one, said Brown. The world economy is standing on your shoulders. Youll have many new businesses that need to come and use your type of businesses. The world is going to look to you for help and to interact with technology in whole new ways.

I write about the places where the Internet lives, telling the story of data centers and the people who build them. I founded Data Center Knowledge, the data center industry's leading news site. Now I'm exploring the future of cloud computing at Data Center Frontier.

Link:
Futurist: New Tech Will Drive Enormous Demand for Data Centers - Data Center Frontier (blog)

Were going to get more neocortex, were going to be funnier, were going to be better at music. Were going to be sexier. Were really going to exemplify all the things that we value in humans to a greater degree.

Those are the exact words of well-known futurist and Director of Engineering at Google, Ray Kurzweil, in an SXSW (short for South by Southwest) interview a few days ago. He is talking about the singularity, of course. And compared with the ominous predictions of other notable personalities, Kurweils outlook seems much more appealing.

The singularity (or technological singularity) is defined as that moment when as a result of technological advances, artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, and establishes itself as the new super intelligence. Simply put, its that time when machines become smarter than any human.

Theres no denying that were heading towards that direction, and that were moving closer and closer towards singularity. As Kurzweil said: Its here, in part, and its going to accelerate.

While some have predicted that it will happen by 2045 2047, Kurzweil says it will happen sooner by 2029 to be exact. The question is: should we be frightened or should we be excited?

Maybe the influence of sci-fi movies has a hand in it somehow. But its hard not to be terrified of the idea that robots will one day threaten our existence. And when that fear is echoed by well-respected critical thinkers like Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates, the prospect of such future becomes even more real and terrifying. Which is why Kurzweils perspective is such a welcome change.

For starters, hes saying that its unrealistic to believe science fictions version of the singularity of one or a few super AIs taking over the world. Because we dont have just one or two AIs; we have billions. And the way were interacting with AIs right now is inconsistent with the sci-fi version of the future were imagining. Specifically, Kurzweil cites patients with Parkinsons disease who have computers in their brains. Think about it the computer is there to help the patient and not take over his/her mind, right?

Thats how it all starts. And because the natural course is for technology to improve and not deteriorate, Kurzweil envisions that instead of taking over, AI will help make us smarter. They may not yet be inside our bodies but by the 2030s we will connect our neocortex, the part of our brain where we do our thinking, to the cloud, he said.

Once we have uploaded our brains to the cloud, it will supposedly allow us to spend less time on lower-level types of mental tasks, and spend more time on higher-level ones, those that have to do with creative thinking like art and music.

Ultimately it will affect everything. Were going to be able to meet the physical needs of all humans. Were going to expand our minds and exemplify these artistic qualities that we value, he adds.

AI and human intelligence, not AI versus human intelligence. It definitely sounds much better, right?.

References: Futurism, SXSW

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Google's Leading Futurist Predicts The Singularity's Arrival Within 12 ... - Wall Street Pit