Exponential intelligence
We chase achievement. Any assist will be embraced. We demand understanding. Artificial intelligence will be here to help. In the future, not knowing will be unacceptable and nearly impossible. With constant access to the world’s knowledge base, we’ll know more than ever, shift whom and how we trust and change decision-making from a personal deliberation to a collaborative and connected feedback loop.
Where is the world headed?
We’ll see a dramatic shift of expertise toward the wisdom of the crowd.
We’ll trust diverse opinions over the individual expert. We see this already with easy access to synthesized knowledge. CrowdMed, Wonder, Kaggle, InnoCentive, Pass The Idea, and countless other digital-age crowdsourcing platforms democratize expertise in even the most sophisticated topic areas.
Artificial intelligence will help us make smart decisions.
Robots and intelligent devices will instantly interpret diverse information sources. A deep learning robot will be able to make all sorts of decisions:
- Find patterns in medical data to help doctors make smart diagnoses
- Pinpoint fashion trends by scanning what people are wearing at music festivals
- Recommend city traffic patterns based on air quality and congestion
- Help teachers customize instruction based on individual students’ learning paces
- Learn what viewers don’t like about a TV ad that causes them to change the channel
Additionally, connected devices mean that AI can equip us with real-time recommendations incorporating remarkably personal measures and drawing on traditionally human variables (like emotion and desire). For example, AI will be able to intervene before we get a craving for unhealthy food or could help us craft a more persuasive sales pitch. AI is already mimicking us, as evident in Facebook’s AI chatbots, and beating us, as evident in Google’s Go champion. Its expansion will have profound consequences on our personal lives and business growth.
Traditional education will get more accessible through democratized platforms and more open expertise.
Udemy, Coursera and other massive online learning platforms expand knowledge’s reach. Open educational resources diminish the demand for costly textbooks and further democratize access. Dynamic learning modules adjust based on a student’s expanding skills, giving many the personal attention required to progress. The future will be created by many who are just now getting access to education.
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2700
The number of software projects within Google that used deep learning in 2015.
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2025
The year CPUs will reach the same level of processing power as the human brain (if Moore's Law continues).
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90%
The accuracy rate of IBM Watson in diagnosing lung cancer (compared to the 50% average diagnostic accuracy rate for human physicians).
How will Dawn respond?
She’ll gain achievement:
more knowledge, more capabilities, more possibilities
Dawn knows everything. Or, she at least has access to the knowledge. She’s surrounded by artificial intelligence. An intelligent machine composes a first draft of the data analysis report she needs to complete.
At one of her gigs, her hours are supervised by a “robo-boss,” who ensures she bills her client accurately. The robo-boss completes her data-driven performance review, too.
At home, an algorithm determines what show will be best for her to watch, based on her current mood, past favorites and friends’ preferences. She is surrounded by help in reaching certain life goals, like losing weight or saving money. If she goes off her diet, she’s given permission for her personal AI to step in (she just has to have the discipline to pay attention).
Dawn got her first performance review from a machine.
What year does Gartner predict that more than 3 million global workers will be supervised by a robo-boss?
She’s always upskilling, as her career advisor calls it, taking virtual courses to keep her talents top notch.
If she doesn’t know something, she’s also just a tap away from instant crowdsourced expertise.
Surrounded by crowd wisdom, smart things, deep learning artificial intelligence, connected robots and accessible education, Dawn is living in an ecosystem of intelligence where her knowledge expands exponentially.
Dawn is Ivy League educated, but has never stepped foot on an Ivy League campus.
Coursera offers more than 2,000 online courses from top universities, for free or at a low cost. In a study of nearly 52,000 Coursera global users, what percentage reported that completing a Coursera course benefitted their career?
… but she’ll also gain self-doubt:
what is she for?
She’s a bit indecisive. She can’t make any decision without perfect information. She also has lingering doubts about whether or not she’s actually smart, or if she just knows where to get the right information. Either way, she has the right information, so she’s usually pretty confident in her decisions. And the world is getting smarter by the second, with machines learning from each other, data informing the future and huge portions of the global population now able to participate in education.
Dawn gets the information she needs instantly.
Approximately how many questions does Siri answer per minute around the globe?
It’s already happening
(a future-oriented scenario built exclusively from companies operating today)
Dawn finds a strange-looking bug bite on her right arm. She uploads a picture to CrowdMed, where an algorithm will aggregate and filter suggestions from hundreds of medical experts and generate a detailed diagnostic report. Now at ease, she continues her SQL coding course on Coursera. She knows from Watson, her AI-decision support assistant, that having the badge from completing a Stanford University Coursera class will up her prospects in the gig market by 23 percent. As her emotion-tracking wearable Feel senses her stress levels going up, it pings her Amazon Echo to start playing her favorite acoustic tracks.
