Part robot, part flesh – glimpses into the future of humankind
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File picture of a garment factory: Will machines replace humans?
Gory as it may sound, tomorrow’s humankind could be part robot, part flesh. A life of surveillance; a life of being tracked; clothes that would trace an individual’s behavioural patterns; nothing is private and sacred anymore with the new technology and the fourth industrial revolution.
The Internet Of Things (IOT) and the tech boom are becoming masters in the world as an older generation of workers, parents and families come to grips with a technology that is not only driving them crazy but also concern about the dangers that are lurking around with lifestyles controlled by machines.
Learning it the hard way is one example last week when millions of c0mputers across the world were hacked with security companies scrambling to prevent further damage.
In today’s context, the key is to use technology for development and advance mankind but not allowing computers to dictate lifestyles, business, the economy and trade.
While it is not easy to predict the future – a task left to a growing new generation of futurists just like the late space scientist Arthur C. Clarke -, today’s tech boom is creating exciting new products and creations and encouraging an innovative economy.
These were some of the interesting ideas, thoughts and what the future would be that emerged during a recent conversation in April between Business Times Editor Feizal Samath and Richard Celm, Program Director at Startupbootcamp IoT & DataTech based in Melbourne, who was visiting Colombo.
Excerpts of that conversation
with Mr. Celms:
There are some very interesting start-ups in the world. For instance during a programme in Barcelona there were some startups in industries that I hadn’t heard of. Polish start-up Cyberous Labs uses a sound card to authenticate access to your application instead of passwords. Basically what it does is to authenticate your identity through your mobile phone, open up your app and say “I am here”. The mobile app then sends a message to the server, the server sends a message to the phone, the audio file will be encrypted and sents a message to the computer to establish that it was you who was trying to authenticate your identity.
Sometimes you meet people who talk to you about strange and weird stuff and inventions. You don’t know whether they are crazy or brilliant.
In the energy and new tech boom what if power fails (across the world)? That is unlikely to happen because you can be producing energy (solar power, etc) and selling it as well. In future the need for a huge coal power station and uranium power station will disappear.
A more interesting question is around cyber security. At the moment we store information centrally like in the cloud. Increasingly we are going to put away more stuff – IBM calls it the fog – and instead of central servers’ you going to have information stored elsewhere. As more and more things are stored in the IOT then security becomes a problem. In the next five to 10 years the challenge is how do you secure these super highways (with sensitive information) particularly when the number of devices of information collected is huge?
Health: The new manthra will be on preventive health not reactive health. As a company we are looking at health technologies. The question is how can we prevent illnesses and secondly what can we do better at understanding how our bodies work.
Developing products depends on how freaky you want to go – like watches or wearables that will alert you (on failing health signs). The next level is embedding technology into your body. Think about it – before you get a heart attack, you get palpitations, unusual rhythms and a chip in your body will emit a signal, an alert.
Moments later a technologist is by your side in an ambulance – while you are walking on a street totally unaware – and he tells you “you should get in as you are dangerously close to get a heart attack in 30 minutes”. The wearables or embedded technology connected to an external emergency system has informed the emergency unit that a client is in danger. Such technology is very close to being developed.
Futurists talk of computers becoming as smart as people. Computers will become the most dominant creatures on the planet and AI will cause a massive risk to humanity. Humans will become part robot, part flesh. Digital chips would be floating in your bloodstream basically finding problems in your body to fix them before infection or illness sets in. This could happen 25 years away from today.
Driverless cars are coming. Some 20 per cent of workforce in the US are people who drive cars and trucks but when driverless cars arrive, what do we do with all those job?
We are going to have serious problems in the next 10 years in the discussion on jobs and the future of jobs. The next 20-30 years will change the way we structure the world. If you look at the way people voted in the Brexit issue and Donald Trump, they are scared of the changes that are happening.
4th industrial revolution: This development will be very disruptive and displace jobs. Doctors are bound to lose their jobs. The reality is that doctors make mistakes but computers won’t. For example computers might have information about an outbreak of dengue fever in a particular area. Computers will then talk to other computers; so rather than going to a GP (general physician), the computer will tell you want to do (at home)!
Human error against computer error in health: Are there studies to show the percentage of error in doctors versus computers? The issue is that we are socially conditioned in the world we live in at the moment (guided by humans) and not socially conditioned for a future world guided by technology. More people died from accidents than man-made terrorism but the latter is the one that attracts attention.
It’s the same with driverless cars. Driving is probably one of the more dangerous things we do anywhere. There is a bigger probability of killing a person by your own driving than a driverless car. Problem is that the impact of that is still not socially acceptable (driverless cars).
Business: The barriers to entry for business are eroding. The people who always had the money are no longer able to protect that easily. For example a 14 year-old kid can create a product that can easily destroy an industry and businesses within a country. This could never have happened 10-20 years ago because to go against a powerful business needs thousands of dollars and power. Now all you need is a laptop and a connection to the Internet. That was never the case before. The barriers are crumbling.