TECHNOLOGY: CHANGING THE WORLD WE LIVE

 

Google Robot



The talk today on Bloomberg during Street Smart, was about how technology is in the process of COMPLETELY CHANGING the world we live in.

Again I want to mention Peter's Law:

 "THE BEST WAY TO PREDICT THE FUTURE IS TO CREATE IT YOURSELF".

 

 This is what Joseph Sitt (Thor Equities Founder & CEO) had to say about the transitional era of technology that we are living in right now:

 

"We are about to hit technology 3.0.  We are now in the second or third age of technology.  Until now it was about technology changing the physical, and physical processing, and automating it.  So in things like manufacturing making it much more efficient and lowering the cost of production. P.S. (he said) that does hurt the jobs.  We are about to go through the MEGA CHANGE. It is going to be about robotics.  It is going be about mental technology.  And part of all that wealth that THE FAT CATS, the Googles, etc., are going to have BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of DOLLARS to invest and will invest it by buying robotic companies."

"Google buys 8 robotics companies in 6 months"  MoneyWatchDecember 16, 2013.

Robotics, of course, is not the only interest of the planning your future scenario.  Google acquired the well known futurist, Ray Kurzweil, a year ago to engineer their AI projects.  This is what was said about Kurzweil's project with Google:

"It’s all part of a rapidly evolving integration of human and artificial intelligence, which the author, scientist and inventor refers to as the Singularity. “We’re going to expand who we are. We’re going to become more non-biological,” Mr. Kurzweil said. The biological capabilities of the human mind are improving at a linear rate, while the non-biological capabilities of technology are increasing at an exponential rate. He predicts that by 2029, artificial intelligence will have human-like capabilities, which he refers to as the Singularity. Mr. Kurzweil says he doesn’t believe this will lead to a dystopian future, because those capabilities will be widely distributed among a wide variety of actors, rather than a small group of “evil corporations.”  BUT HE ADDS:

"Technology, Mr. Kurzweil conceded, always has been a double-edged sword. “Fire kept us warm … and fire burned down our villages!”

Ray Kurzweil believes that innovations in biogenetics and nanotechnology are creating a new future for humanity, leading toward a future event he calls the Singularity, in which man and machine finally merge.

More on Google's Kurzweil and "predicting the future!" http://www.ryot.org/googles-ray-kurzweil-predicts-future-believe/527265  and just a note from the webpage that hosts this piece:

"RYOT NOTE: It’s mind-boggling to imagine these actually becoming reality. One of the ways to ensure that technology continues to advance in the future is by educating younger generations. Youth For Technology marries education and technology, by partnering with low-income communities in the U.S. and with rural communities in developing nations to teach the youth how to use technology to solve problems."

And then there is Google's latest acquisition, DeepMind.  We aren't sure what this is yet.  But it sounds intriguing to say the least.  This is what the Economist had to say:

"As machine learning leaves the lab and goes into practice, it will threaten white-collar, knowledge-worker jobs just as machines, automation and assembly lines destroyed factory jobs in the 19th and 20th centuries. For example, the technique has been applied by researchers at Stanford University to tell whether a biopsy of breast cells is highly cancerous, something that until now has required a human expert to assess."

But one of the founders of DeepMind had some DEEP CONCERNS over possible misuses of this technology:

"Another of DeepMind’s founders, Shane Legg, has predicted that artificial intelligence running amok will be the biggest existential risk to humans in this century. Its founders have asked Google to set up an “ethics board” to consider the appropriate use of machine learning in its products. The creator of “Evil Genius” is ensuring that his new overlord sticks to its motto, “Don’t be evil”.

This is more examples of what is called DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION as explained in my last post, Disruptive Technologies could be coming for your job.  Also see who are the "Fat Cats" are that have billions and billions of dollars for investment in designing our future and their Brave New World in my post called Davos World Economic Forum: the times they are a changing.