?Part 2: The Transformative Impact of AI – How we will experience AI in our daily lives

As a keen observer of culture, society and more recently the impact of technology on consumer behaviour, I was completely blown away by AI2041– 10 Visions for our Future.

This fantastic book has 10 short stories set in 2041 – bringing alive the different ways in which AI will play a major role in our everyday lives. The context of an AI-loaded future creates the perfect setting to render heartfelt narratives of the human opportunities and issues that will consequently emerge. I am a big fan of the Netflix series Black Mirror – yet AI2041 goes a step further. At the end of each story, an analysis is presented on the tech featured in that story, the challenges, and the trends in shaping the tech towards the 2041 scenarios painted in the story and the benefits and risks of this tech.?

I put down some of the key insights and learnings in 2 parts

·??????Part 1:?The Foundational Constructs - What we must all know about AI (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/we-all-need-know-more-ai-deepak-subramanian)

·??????Part 2:?The Transformative Impact of AI – How we will experience AI in our daily lives

Part 2: The Transformative Impact of AI: How we will experience AI in our daily lives

1.??????Education is set to be revolutionalized by AI. It is unbelievable that the current system of classroom education is probably one of the remaining relics of British Colonialism (set up to ensure a steady flow of talent into the Civil Services to help manage the British Empire). In the future, AI will enable individualized learning – where virtual teachers can offer specialist inputs tailored to each student's needs. Leveraging Computer Vision and conversation AI, these virtual teaching assistants will adjust the learning inputs based on the energy, the skill, the interest and the capability of the student. In the future, the role of teachers will also undergo a massive change. Teachers will evolve to become mentors, focusing on stimulating a student’s critical thinking, creativity, empathy, and teamwork. They will also be the master architect in ensuring that the settings for the AI Assistant are in sync with the student's needs, dreams and potential. In this setup, the cost of education will also plummet and hopefully, we will see universal high-quality education accessible to all.

?2.??????Healthcare will be another area that will be massively empowered by AI. The digitization of healthcare records is well underway already. At the same time, wearable technology is also evolving to allow for real-time data availability on vital health parameters (think Apple iWatch). These two forces will enable massive breakthroughs in drug and vaccine discovery. The recent breakthrough of mRNA vaccines to treat COVID is one such example. I learnt that there are 4 steps to the discovery of new drugs, and it typically takes USD 1 Billion and several years to get through the development cycle. One of the key time-consuming steps is to understand how the 3D structure of a pathogen’s protein structure unfolds and this had been hitherto done by cryo-electron microscopy. As a result, only 0.1% of all protein unfolding. More recently, DeepMind’s AlphaFold has shown that it can match the accuracy of traditional models in designing 3D structures of unseen proteins and represents a breakthrough for science – in fact, experts say that AlphaFold has solved a ’50-year grand challenge in biology”. Precision medicine is set to explode versus the era of blockbuster drugs and complex surgeries will increasingly become automated with robots over time, leveraging XR. And nanobots will emerge to perform intricate surgeries to repair damaged cells, fight cancer and correct genetic deficiencies. Precision longevity will also emerge, leveraging AI to generate personalized nutrition, supplement, exercise, sleep and diet recommendations that use as inputs an individual’s regular stream of data.

?3.??????Mobility will also be transformed as autonomous vehicles will be a breakthrough powered by AI. It uses a neural network, instead of a human brain, and mechanical components, instead of hands and feet, to drive. This technology will mature as some of the technologies presented above also mature and will go through 5 phases of development: L0 (no automation), L1 (‘hands-on’, AI can do one task), L2 (‘hands-off’, AI can do multiple tasks but human oversight still needed), L3(‘eyes off, AI takes over driving but humans to be ready to take over when the AI requests), L4 (‘mind-off – AI takes over the driving fully but only in conditions that the AI understands) and L5 (‘steering wheel optional’ – no human needed for any driving environment). The convergence of 5G/6G networks, augmented roads (with sensors and wireless communications built into the road network) and usage of AR technologies will create safe L5 vehicles in the next 10-15 years. There will be a dramatic reduction in the cost of mobility with increased safety and convenience. Yet, there are some major ethical issues to be resolved including the accountability and liability frameworks in case of accidents.

?4.??????Defense and warfare will also take on a dangerous dimension as autonomous systems create Autonomous Weapons. This is sometimes called the third revolution in warfare, after gun powder and nuclear arms. The search for, the decision to engage and obliterate another human life without the involvement of a single human being. Drones and other Slaughter bots will be more easily available and much cheaper to buy. This will create some significant existential and ethical issues for humanity. Who is held accountable for such actions and who is to be punished for wartime transgressions - the weapon manufacturer, the software developer or the general who ordered the attack? The thresholds to start a war will drop a lot given the lower cost to kill and the weaker ability to pin down accountability. This will need nations to rally behind regulatory and legal frameworks around “Killer Robots” and will be a major political issue in the future.

?5.??????AI will have another fundamental impact on the future of jobs. It is estimated that by 2030-35, almost 40% of jobs will be displaced by AI. In white-collar roles, the displacement is brought about by the power of AI to detect very subtle patterns using a huge quantity of data. The impact on roles in finance, insurance, banking etc is obvious. Robotic Process Automation (or RPA), where AI is installed in machines and learns as the humans use the machines for their tasks, is already in place and will accelerate this development. When combined with robotics, blue-collar roles will also get displaced – for eg. Roles in warehouse management or roles on the factory shopfloor which require the performance of routine tasks continuously. Over time, other roles like those of cleaners, electricians, plumbers etc will also be impacted as robots take out their roles, especially in buildings that will be prefabricated with standard components. There will be significant productivity gains from the deployment of AI but there will be some big issues to address – increasing unemployment and wealth inequality and growing social inequality as our sense of relevance and meaning gets impacted by the impact of AI.

?6.??????The future of jobs for humans will be linked to roles that AI will not be able to master. These are related to creativity, empathy, or dexterity. So cognitive jobs that are highly creative and social (eg. caregivers, entrepreneurs, marketers) will be least displaced whilst roles that are highly routine and asocial (eg insurance underwriter, radiologists, telesales agents etc) will be mostly replaced. So also, with physical jobs – roles needing more dexterity and social skills (elderly caretaker, hairstylist) will be in demand whilst roles which are more mechanical and asocial (eg. Forklift driver, garment factory sewer etc) will be most displaced.

A New Future – for our children and grand-kids

It is possible to dream about a future Age of Plenitude. This will arise because of a revolution in 3 areas

o?Renewable energy (solar, wind, batteries) will make energy practically free

o?Synthetic biology will create inexpensive materials, leveraging circular production and creating more efficient yields

o?AI automated production will dramatically reduce the cost of making goods

So, the era of scarcity will be followed by an era of plenty – and this will mean a major disruption in many of the institutions and practices that are commonplace today. The Role of Money, the role of companies, the meaning of work, the role of incentives to drive resource allocation etc. We will need to create a new Social Contract – as AI liberates us from routine work, in a world where scarcity does not exist. We will have to give a new meaning to what it means to be Human.

So that brings me to the end of this sharing. I hope you found this useful and are as inspired to learn more about AI as I am.

Do let me know your feedback, thoughts and ideas.

Deepak