Modern Technology has paved the way for multi-functional devices like the smartwatch and the smartphone. Computers are increasingly faster, more portable, and higher-powered than ever before. With all of these revolutions, technology has also made our lives easier, faster, better, and more fun.
A New Era of Computing.
By 2025, quantum computing will have outgrown its infancy, and a first generation of commercial devices will be able tackle meaningful, real-world problems. One major application of this new kind of computer will be the simulation of complex chemical reactions, a powerful tool that opens up new avenues in drug development. Quantum chemistry calculations will also aid the design of novel materials with desired properties, for instance better catalysts for the automotive industry that curb emissions and help fight climate change.
Right now, the development of pharmaceuticals and performance materials relies massively on trial and error, which means it is an iterative, time-consuming and terribly expensive process. Quantum computers may soon be able to change this. They will significantly shorten product development cycles and reduce the costs for R&D.
5G will enhance the global economy and save lives.
Overnight, we’ve experienced a sharp increase in delivery services with a need for “day-of” goods from providers like Amazon and Instacart – but it has been limited. With 5G networks in place, tied directly into autonomous bots, goods would be delivered safely within hours. Wifi can’t scale to meet higher capacity demands. Sheltering-in-place has moved businesses and classrooms to video conferencing, highlighting poor-quality networks. Low latency 5G networks would resolve this lack of network reliability and even allow for more high-capacity services like telehealth, telesurgery and ER services.
Businesses can offset the high cost of mobility with economy-boosting activities including smart factories, real-time monitoring, and content-intensive, real-time edge-compute services. 5G private networks make this possible and changes the mobile services economy. The roll-out of 5G creates markets that we only imagine – like self-driving bots, along with a mobility-as-a-service economy – and others we can’t imagine, enabling next generations to invent thriving markets and prosperous causes
Artificial Intelligence.
There are lots of discussions going on about this huge “AI” thing and how many jobs will get lost because of AI.
People predict that AI will be a tool like Word or Excel. Reading this, I immediately see the picture of a manager delegating tasks to AI instead of people. I have a different view on AI. I think it will make us smarter and more efficient, relieving us of boring tasks. AI won’t replace but support us. AI gets great results in certain areas (e.g. identifying skin cancer), comparable to human doctors. But AI won’t replace a doctor. Humans will use AI and then be able to reach new levels. AI is not a single tool like Word. It is more like a database, built deeply into other tools. Imagine Word with a sentence completion function.
Or Excel with an auto-pivot functionality (ever tried to use pivot tables? They are cool and require a lot of learning!). You can focus on your thoughts and intentions and leave the rest to the tool. AI will be frictionless. There will be no big bang and it’s already here today! In 5 years, there will simply be a lot more tools and services using AI in the background, to provide a better and more convenient experience. We won’t have human-like robots, but instead a lot of AI. And, like today, we won’t notice. We just see tools getting more and more convenient,
like for example:
• Auto correction on smartphone keyboards
• Google search
• Spotify recommendations (impressive!)
• Outlook filters
AI will be part of most products and services already available today. While nobody talks about it, deep learning is already improving the services’ quality and will increasingly do so in future.
Loss Of Trust In Technology.
Digital technology provides tremendous opportunities for mankind, but we must never forget that people are always in the loop. They may be the user, customer, developer, administrator, supplier, or vendor, but they are part of the equation. When technology is used to victimize those people, especially when it could have been prevented, there is an innate loss in trust. As cyber-attacks worsen then Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) begins to supplant trust. Such anxiety towards innovation stifles adoption, impacts investment, and ultimately slows down the growth of technology. FUD is the long-term enemy of managing risk.
To properly seek the optimal balance between security, costs, and usability, there must be trust. As trust falters across the tipping-point, but dependency still exists, it creates a recipe where governments are pressured to quickly react and accelerate restrictive regulations that burden the process to deliver products to market. This adds to the slowdown of consumer spending that drives developers to seek new domains to apply their trade. Innovation and adoption slow, which affects both upstream and downstream areas of other supporting technology.
The ripple effects get larger and the digital society misses out on great opportunities. Our world would be far different if initial fears about automobiles, modern medicine, electricity, vaccines, flight, space travel, and general education, would have stifled these technological advances that pushed mankind forward to where we are today. The same could hold true for tomorrow’s technology if rampant and uninformed fears take hold. Companies can make a difference.
Much of the burden is in fact on the developers and operators of technology to do what is right and make their offerings secure, safe, and respectful of user’s rights such as privacy and equality. If companies choose to release products that are vulnerable to attack, weak to recover, or contribute to unsafe or biased outcomes, they should be held accountable.
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