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Artificial intelligence, the connected internet of things and biotechnology are converging into a “super cycle” that will impact every segment of our economy, for better and for ill, according to the “2024 Tech Trends Report” from the Future Today Institute (FTI).
Each one of these technology segments is now a General Purpose Technology (GPT) with the same ubiquity and utility as electricity, the report found. Each one has the ability to “radically shape our economy and society,” but now they are converging and accelerating everything.
“The wave of innovation we’re experiencing is so potent and pervasive that it promises to reshape the very fabric of our existence,” CEO Amy Webb writes in the report. “From the intricacies of global supply chains to the minutiae of daily habits, from the corridors of power in global politics to the unspoken norms that govern our social interactions.”
The FTI report covers a whopping 695 technology trends including AI, the metaverse, robotics and Web3 across 16 industries including entertainment, sports, news and information.
It is the three macro trends that dominate, and the catalyst is AI.
“GPTs already connect in some way to every other technology that exists,” Webb explained in a presentation at SXSW. “It connects to science, to space exploration, it connects to sports, to every business to every single person and every facet of our daily lives in ways that I think are exciting, and good, and absolutely terrifying.”
The Transition Generation
Here’s the problem: the people in charge making decisions that govern our future are stuck in the glare of the headlights.
“Uncertainty is crippling our leaders,” Webb said. “They are now making decisions out of fear and the fear of missing out.”
Speaking to the SXSW audience, she said, “You don’t know what to do about AI, you don’t know what to think about AI. A lot of you haven’t even started digital transformation, because it’s costly and expensive and it takes time. You’re worried if you can hit your revenue targets, and if you’re still going to have a job. And by the way, we haven’t even gotten to supply chain issues and climate change and geopolitical problems and the threat of a third world war.”
She characterized this era of uncertainty as “Generation Transition,” in which we are all a part.
“Our society is going to look very, very different after this transition has completed its cycle,” she said.
“The foundation of the tech super cycle is the next era of computing and it’s going to be embedded into every single thing that we do, all of the time, and all the products and services that you use.”
Accountability in AI
The AI section of the FTI report is enormous, reflecting the seismic impact the tech is having on everything. There are more than 100 trends. It’s 150 pages long and covers languages, trust, security, and regulations.
Accountability, or the lack of it, is going to continue to be a huge issue. “Bias is still not table stakes,” she said. “Fixing this problem is challenging and enormous, because the models have already been built.”
“We keep hoping for change but we’ve put the wrong incentives in place. The incentives are in place for speed and scale, because that’s where the money is. The problem of bias is not going to get better. It’s going forward, it’s going to get worse.”
A second AI trend is a shift from having to prompt AI tools with literal descriptions of what you want, to something a lot more esoteric. OpenAI’s Sora points the way.
“In two years, you’re not going to need specificity anymore,” Webb predicted. “Instead, you’ll just start with a very broad general concept, you will brainstorm alongside an AI to continually iterate and refine until you get whatever it is you want; a concrete framework, technical specifications, a new business plan. You don’t even have to start with that fully formed idea anymore.”
Where AI links into the “connected ecosystems of things” is data. If AI is the “everything engine” that engine is going to need data. And lots of it. “Sometime in the next two years, AI will have run out of the internet,” Webb said. “We will have used up all of our high quality text and data, which will slow down AI is progress.” So companies are inventing new devices to sell to us so they can get more data in.
“The problem is that most of the training data that we’re using to train AI is online (Wikipedia, Reddit, books, spreadsheets, etcetera). AI can’t actually interact with normal real people. So we don’t just need more data going forward, we need more types of data. Which means that large language models aren’t enough.”
A Constellation of Sensors
What’s coming next are large action models which pull in sensory data, and visual data from anything with a sensor connected to the internet.
“We’re about to be surrounded by millions of sensors that are always on and also always on us,” Webb said. “They can collect multiple streams of data at once.”
The constellation of sensors includes wearables, XR devices, the Internet of Things, the home of things, smart cars, smart offices, smart apartments, sensors everywhere.
“This is the network of interconnected devices that communicate and exchange data to facilitate and fuel the advancement of artificial intelligence. We’re about to see a Cambrian explosion of devices.”
One of the more obvious ones is Apple Vision Pro. Even if it is not an immediate hit with the public, Apple’s launch has jumpstarted vigorous XR headgear development from Meta and Samsung, Google, Qualcomm and more.
Webb calls them “face computers,” a deliberately unattractive name for what she believes will be their nefarious use by Big Tech.
“It is a computer that you are strapping to your face… designed from your point of view to help you interact with the world differently. From my point of view, they’re being designed to read your intentions. They can do that in part by reading and predicting the movement of your pupils.”
She isn’t the first commentator (Cathy Hackl is another) to point out that the valuable, vast and intensely private data that these XR devices are going to be hoovering up
“Companies are highly motivated to build large action models and to get more types of data in. What’s coming is a battle for face supremacy. Companies vying to get you to wear their hardware. There’s no reward for the company with the most secure, most privacy assured device.”
Digital Merging with Organic
Enter biotech, the third big trend in the self-reinforcing super cycle. Webb makes the logical but still disturbing connection that the next stage of AI is the merging of digital supercomputers with human tissue.
“Biology processes information in a way that silicon can’t. In other words, if we’re trying to build machines that can think and behave like we do, we literally need to make them more like us.”
As much as last year was a big year for AI, it was actually a much, much bigger year for biotech — only we hear less about that.
Webb paints this scenario as fact, not sci-fi. “Sometime in the next decade, AI will be working alongside an organoid intelligence. An organoid is a tiny replica of tissue that functions and is structured like the organ.”
Scientists already work with stem cells in the lab and can grow meat from a tiny amount cells. It’s a short step to making an organic computer.
Researchers in Melbourne already have. “In 2021 they made a miniature brain that works like a computer,” Webb said. “They attached it system electrodes and then and then they taught it how to play Pong [the old school video game]. Organoid intelligence or O-AI uses brain cells for information processing, leveraging their inherent capabilities beyond silicon-based systems. What is on the horizon, my friends, are bio computers made out of human brain cells.”
Researchers at the University of Sydney have made a device like a cap that can record your brainwaves and convert them into text using an AI model. Theoretically, you can send a though as a prompt to Mid-journey. You could hook the device to a 3D printer.
“Which means that going forward, the command line is your thoughts.”
It may take a while before O-AI can compete with traditional computers using AI but its coming, if you believe Webb.
Eventually, biological computers are going to be faster, more efficient and more powerful than conventional computers today. They will take a fraction of the amount of energy in order to operate. She predicts. “Biotechnology will move us past silicon-based computing systems.”
Techno Optimism or Techno Authoritarianism?
And guess who is going to be in charge? Scary thought… Not you or I.
“The technology super cycle is concentrating power right now among a dangerously small group of people who hold significant power and influence in society, in government and politics, in our economies, Because they control our tech resources, because they’ve amassed great wealth and because they control how we communicate ideas with each other.
Webb warned that the “tech messiahs” are going to try and save us from the technology super cycle. “They call it effective altruism or techno optimism. But from the outside, it looks a heck of a lot more like free market techno authoritarianism. And I’m not okay with that.”
Another scary thought. How about an AI that could predict when you will die? Danish researchers have already built it. It may not be accurate today, but in short order it could be.
“If I’m a bank, considering whether to give you a 30-year mortgage for a house that you want to buy, it seems like I might want to build a large death model. Something like that might come in handy.”
Can anything be done? Like other liberal or perhaps techno pessimist commentators Webb doesn’t have a concrete answer beyond hope.
“We don’t have to submit. We don’t have to give up our agency. We can support each other through this great transition,” she insists.
“We don’t need someone to save us. We just need to do better planning for the future. Our elected leaders need to look forward, not backwards. I don’t care how old they are. You need to you need to establish a Department of Transition. We are Gen T. You need to do this.”
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