Future vision - Do you agree?

[mreid]

Do you agree with this vision of the next 15 years? What would you add?


IN 1998, KODAK HAD 170,000 EMPLOYEES AND SOLD 85% OF ALL PHOTO PAPER WORLDWIDE.
Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went bankrupt.
What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years - and most people don't see it coming. Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on paper film again? Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore's law. So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a long time, before it became way superior and got mainstream in only a few short years.

It will now happen with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs. WELCOME TO THE 4TH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

Welcome to the Exponential Age. Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years. Uber is just a software tool, they don't own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world. Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties.

Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world.
This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.

In the US, young lawyers already don't get jobs. Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. SO IF YOU STUDY LAW, STOP IMMEDIATELY. There will be 90% less lawyers in the future, only specialists will remain.

Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, 4 times more accurate than human nurses.

Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans.

In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self-driving cars will appear for the public.
Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don't want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and can be productive while driving. Our kids will never get a driver's license and will never own a car.
It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% less cars for that. We can transform former parking space into parks. 1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide.
We now have one accident every 100,000 km, with autonomous driving that will drop to one accident in 10 million km. That will save a million lives each year. Most car companies might become bankrupt. Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels. I spoke to a lot of engineers from Volkswagen and Audi; they are completely terrified of Tesla. Insurance companies will have massive trouble because without accidents, the insurance will become 100x cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.

REAL ESTATE WILL CHANGE: Because if you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful neighborhood. Electric cars will become mainstream until 2020. Cities will be less noisy because all cars will run on electric. Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can only now see the impact.

Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. The price for solar will drop so much that all coal companies will be out of business by 2025.

WATER: With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter. We don't have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water as he wants, for nearly no cost.

HEALTH: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There will be companies who will build a medical device (called the "Tricorder" from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, you blood sample and you breath into it. It then analyses 54 biomarkers that will identify nearly any disease. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medicine, nearly for free.

3D PRINTING: The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from $18,000$ to $400 within 10 years. In the same time, it became 100 times faster. All major shoe companies started 3D printing shoes. Spare airplane parts are already 3D printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large amount of spare parts they used to have in the past. At the end of this year, new smartphones will have 3D scanning possibilities. You can then 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home. In China, they already 3D printed a complete 6-story office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that's being produced will be 3D printed.

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES: If you think of a niche you want to go in, ask yourself: "in the future, do you think we will have that?" and if the answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner? If it doesn't work with your phone, forget the idea. And any idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed in to failure in the 21st century.

WORK: 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enough new jobs in such a small time.

AGRICULTURE: There will be a $100 agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their field instead of working all days on their fields.
Aeroponics will need much less water. The first petri dish produced veal is now available and will be cheaper than cow produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces is used for cows. Imagine if we don't need that space anymore. There are several startups who will bring insect protein to the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat.
It will be labeled as "alternative protein source" (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).

There is an app called "moodies" which can already tell in which mood you are. Until 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions if you are lying. Imagine a political debate where it's being displayed when they are telling the truth and when not.

Bitcoin will become mainstream this year and might even become the default reserve currency.

LONGEVITY: Right now, the average life span increases by 3 months per year. Four years ago, the life span used to be 79 years, now it's 80 years. The increase itself is increasing and by 2036, there will be more than one year increase per year. So we all might live for a long long time, probably way more than 100.

EDUCATION: The cheapest smartphones are already at $10 in Africa and Asia.
Until 2020, 70% of all humans will own a smartphone. That means, everyone has the same access to world class education. Every child can use Khan academy for everything a child learns at school in First World countries. We have already released our software in Indonesia and will release it in Arabic, Suaheli and Chinese this Summer, because I see an enormous potential.
We will give the English app for free, so that children in Africa can become fluent in English within half a year...

[flatbutt]

I'll be dead by then.

[GH85Carrera]

One thing only runs computers and that of course is electricity. That article thinks somehow electrial production will be cheap. I really think that is pie in the sky thinking. Electrical distribution and production will be big, and require MORE hydrocarbon production than ever until we can figure out nuclear fusion. That is still a long way off. When everything needs MORE electricity the price will go up. There is no free ride to distribute massive amounts of electricity. It would be interesting to see a chart by someone smarter than I am to see just how much energy is used in the form gasoline and diesel alone worldwide. How will we ever make that much electricity.

Until true artificial intelligence arrives, then all bets are off. We can only hope we can program in Asimov's three laws of robotics into the core of all artificial intelligence.

[stomachmonkey]

STEM, Science Technology Engineering Math

If we don't radically change our middle and HS curriculums immediately or extend public education a couple more years the US will quickly become a 3rd world country.

[widebody911]

They also make the assumption that said technologies would be allowed in those countries.

When was this written?

[GG Allin]

Every prediction of the future I've ever seen has been dead wrong.

[cashflyer]

You're just mad that you don't have a personal jet-pack yet.

[widebody911]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

STEM, Science Technology Engineering Math

If we don't radically change our middle and HS curriculums immediately or extend public education a couple more years the US will quickly become a 3rd world country.

Our problem isn't so much that we lack STEM graduates; it's that we lack cheap STEM graduates. We will become a 3rd-world country because everything will be outsourced, and the only jobs for locals will be "service" jobs. I see this first hand: right now, in my company, a group of about 50 people are being laid-off en-mass (me included). Among them are some of the top people in their fields - OpenStack, storage , cloud, network and virtualization technologies. The actual jobs are going to India, and they're expecting these guys to magically transfer all their knowledge to India before the door hits them in the ass. The guy I sit next to spends 4 or 5 hours a day on the phone literally training his replacement. I'm setting up continuous integration and build environments, and then copying them to lower-cost-geographies because they don't have the actual talent there, but they need the underlying infrastructure. The LCG people don't actually have the skillsets to do this, so we're building it here and copying it over. The assumption by management is once they get working environment, they can just clone it for other projects. We have 2 other developers who hired right out of school, and within a year are getting laid off. Yet this same company is claiming they can't find qualified talent here in the US and needs more H1-B allocations. This exact same scenario is going on at many other companies and has been for years.

So lets say we waved a magick wand and suddenly 50% of kids suddenly became STEM graduates. Then what?

[Rick Lee]

It reads like a bad Google translation.

I also don't see electricity getting cheaper anytime soon. Solar cannot survive without massive subsidies. That will change, but I don't know when. But as long as it needs subsidies to survive or compete, traditional electricity only has to keep pace with the post-subsidy price of solar. Take away those subsidies and solar becomes unaffordable, which certainly won't make electricity any cheaper.

[David]

I work on large turbines and pumps for the power generation business and I'd be surprised if we're not out of business in 20 years or less.

There was a recent article on solar power in Mexico where it's not being subsidized anymore and wholesale power price is about 4 cents a kwh. That's not too far off what a fossil fuel plant can make it for these days.

[uncle_scott]

Working in transportation planning, I can tell you that DOTs and Transit Authorities across the nation are planning and funding future investments in smart car technologies. Everything from automated vehicle technology to sensors at stop lights that talk to the cars and regulate traffic flow based on volumes. We also discuss the reality that large scale retail at a big box store could be a thing of the past in the near future. Online ordering with very fast and nearly free shipping already is making a huge dent in local retail sales. I can see a future with fewer person to person retail transactions and automated cars.

Some of the things on the list seem far fetched, but I imagine that many of the things we take for granted today would have seemed far fetched to a group of people 15-20 years ago...Technology marches on. Best you can do is try to keep up and not get lost in the pack.

[David]

Originally Posted by uncle_scott

Working in transportation planning, I can tell you that DOTs and Transit Authorities across the nation are planning and funding future investments in smart car technologies. Everything from automated vehicle technology to sensors at stop lights that talk to the cars and regulate traffic flow based on volumes. We also discuss the reality that large scale retail at a big box store could be a thing of the past in the near future. Online ordering with very fast and nearly free shipping already is making a huge dent in local retail sales. I can see a future with fewer person to person retail transactions and automated cars.

Some of the things on the list seem far fetched, but I imagine that many of the things we take for granted today would have seemed far fetched to a group of people 15-20 years ago...Technology marches on. Best you can do is try to keep up and not get lost in the pack.

So I keep wondering why with all the smart light systems in place in big cities now that they don't tie into Google maps that have real time traffic info to change the light timing?

[Scott Douglas]

I've always kind of looked at the death rate from autos as a modern day Darwin effect that helps with population growth.
What are we going to do with all those 'extra' people that aren't getting killed in traffic accidents.

[jyl]

Without parsing the details of the article, it seems to me that when AI, machine vision, and natural language recognition reaches a certain level, many administrative, clerical, transportation, and customer service jobs will become redundant. Robotics has already made many industrial jobs redundant, and before that mechanization made many manual labor jobs redundant.

Then many professional jobs will become redundant. Take, for example, pathology, a highly skilled medical specialty. It won't be long before software can interpret biopsies as accurately as the average human pathologist, requiring only a few experienced humans to handle the most difficult cases. Not fiction: there are already devices that image and analyze skin moles and lesions to look for skin cancer, and they are as accurate as human dermatologists.

The "trades" won't be a refuge. Plumbing, for instance, is not intrinsically very difficult. Many people could become competent plumbers, if they chose to undergo the training and were willing to endure the hard work and apprenticeship. Maybe today they prefer to become insurance agents. But when AI systems are perfectly capable of asking questions and pricing insurance coverage, those people might be willing to become plumbers. When there are 10X as many people competing for plumbing work, the earnings of plumbers will collapse.

I can see, in a few decades, a clamor for laws prohibiting further advances in certain types of automation. It will become a populist issue, pitting tens of millions of workers against a small number of corporate and wealthy interests.

The argument of the latter will be, as it is today, that whatever lowers prices and improves service for "consumers" is good. This argument has been used successfully for decades. Maybe it will eventually lose its power. I wonder, for example, if a congressman proposed a law requiring all customer service calls, chats, emails, support requests originating in the USA to be handled by persons physically located in the USA . . . would it pass? I think it just might, today.

it used to take 300 man hours to build a car, now it takes 30. That's 90% of production line jobs gone - in theory, anyway. Are we, overall, better off? Maybe, maybe not.

[Scott Douglas]

It's funny you should mention car production John. I'm currently reading FORD, The Men and the Machine by Lacey. It is really interesting reading how the first production line was first brought into existence and how it effected society back then.

[rcooled]

So, we're looking at a future in which far fewer people are working to build cars, farm the land, staff hospitals, sell things in stores, etc. A future where almost all manufacturing will be done by intelligent machines and education takes place outside the classroom, thus eliminating the need for school buildings, teachers, school boards, and other supporting infrastructure. A future in which anything that still needs to be made by humans will be done in locations having the lowest overhead costs. Considering all of this, one question arises: With so many jobs being eliminated by technology, how the hell will the ever-increasing populations of the First World earn a living in the future?

From the article: "If it doesn't work with your phone, forget the idea." I saw evidence of this recently when I attended an awards presentation for an entrepreneurial workshop held at a local university. Ten student teams made the final cut and each presented their concept for developing and marketing a new product. Not one team presented anything that would exist in the physical realm. Every new product idea dreamed up by these students was based on a phone app. Welcome to the future...

[Crowbob]

Originally Posted by GG Allin

Every prediction of the future I've ever seen has been dead wrong.

Yeah. Microwave ovens, Dick Tracy watches, electric cars, and nukular submarines will never happen.

Almost all of the OP is based on digital electronical stuff.

A few EMP's will wipe out most of it, albeit temporily.

[KNS]

Originally Posted by rcooled

A future in which anything that still needs to be made by humans will be done in locations having the lowest overhead costs. Considering all of this, one question arises: With so many jobs being eliminated by technology, how the hell will the ever-increasing populations of the First World earn a living in the future?

That crossed my mind as well. Is this the nucleus of a collapsing society?

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by David

I work on large turbines and pumps for the power generation business and I'd be surprised if we're not out of business in 20 years or less.

There was a recent article on solar power in Mexico where it's not being subsidized anymore and wholesale power price is about 4 cents a kwh. That's not too far off what a fossil fuel plant can make it for these days.

Germany set renewable as a goal after Fukushima.

I believed then if anyone could do it the Germans could.

The 4th Largest Economy In The World Just Generated 90 Percent Of The Power It Needs From Renewables | ThinkProgress

[Deschodt]

>nukular submarines

Pretty sure those will never happen... No such thing as nukular anything, yet ;-)

I agree with Thom, I've seen the same outsourcing thing happen over and over in every IT organization... Teaching your job to someone that barely speaks english leaves a special taste in your mouth... The catch though, is that 2 years down the road - invariably - the outsourced staff shows itself to be either incompetent, raise their prices, too slow, too buggy, don't deliver as advertised, or "All of the above". Customers (external or internal) get pissed off, trend is reversed... No matter, the genius in charge already got his bonus.... Same with customer service with an indian accent - works for some, usually a big no-no internally.

But you can now reasonably "speak" to a phone (called your bank lately?) with almost any inquiry and cut the middleman quite effectively. No questions things are changing, good luck to our kids as far as figuring out a career plan... Gotta think of stuff that are hard to outsource (ironically I went into IT for a big hospital thinking no way these guys would want remote support, has to be on site and quick, right ? .... 6 month into the job, they are also outsourcing ;-)