by Victoria Wagner Ross, Featured Contributor
THERE ARE several key variables meeting in a perfect storm this decade. First, there is the technology advancements to the Internet of Things (IoT) and push to AI. All around us the designer wearable tech is becoming a common place item. Wearable tech will be an everyday selection.
Connectivity will push closer as Zuckerberg’s connectivity lab continues to connect everyone on the planet with the Internet. He will establish drones to fly overhead and maintain connections for the cell phones and computers. If you live in the jungle- it is no problem. You can be connected. Zuckerberg has connected people in the Philippines and Paraguay this year.
When Facebook purchased Ascenta, a small UK-based company, it did so because its technology advanced founders had created the early Zephyr, a solar-powered unmanned aircraft. The FB connectivity lab has many of the world’s leading experts in aerospace and communications technology, including from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and Ames Research Center. Zuckerberg plans to connect the world from this lab.
Amazon has spent billions of dollars the last few years setting up the delivery service by building warehouses across the US to achieve faster service. The devices such as Kindle Fire, video and music streaming to play on the new Amazon device and Dash, the user friendly service that scans your empty cupboard and notifies you to place a grocery order are intricately connected for a satisfied consumer. Amazon delivers on Sunday.
The last piece in the merchandising model is the smartphone. Amazon has 250 million customers and in June bundled its Amazon Premier Service to streaming music. In a new model for the merchandising world in which Amazon plans to rule there is the smartphone to link it all to you.
A new release, “The London Futurists” and their lead editor David W. Wood published their study this year in which they devoted one of the chapters to Artificial Intelligence. A key component to AI is to ask when it arrives, will we like it.
I did an article last March on the future of AI and that question, which was quoted in Wired: “Bill Gates outlines the mindset of A.I. for jobs in the future,”
Mindset is the key. Technology is moving us to 2025 more rapidly than some expect. A new generation of artificial intelligence systems will perform some functions that humans do with ease: see, speak, listen, navigate, manipulate and control. That can hold enormous consequences for tasks like facial and speech recognition, navigation and planning; the biometrics age is fast developing facial, iris, and palm sensory recognition and voice characteristics… Instead of merely being programmed to do a series of steps, algorithms have been applied.
Last year, Google researchers were able to get a machine-learning algorithm, known as a neural network, to perform an identification task without supervision. The result was identification of a cat. Last December, The New York Times published that project in an article “Brain like computers learning from experience.”
Bill Gates was insightful at The American Enterprise Institute when he spoke about the future in 20 years. The mindset of the government and people has not adjusted to view the future even though technology is exploding this decade. He gave some very simple, basic human advice that a person should choose their future careers and endeavors by their passion. That is good advice and a very human approach to meeting AI and the future.
