April 22, 2016 · Berlin, Germany ·
I just went to the Singularity University summit and here are the key learnings.
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 got bankrupt.
What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 year - 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 superiour 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 laywyers in the future, only specialists will remain.
Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, 4 time 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 licence 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 100,000km, with autonomous driving that will drop to one accident in 10 million km. That will save a million lifes 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.
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 you 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 amout 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-storey 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 countried 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 that 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.
How the world will look like in 2020:
In 2007/2008, the iPhone and Android phones were invented. Within 3 years, half the population of western countries were using smartphones. And 5 years later, half the population of most developing countries as well.
This exponential growth transformed our lifes tremendously, in just a few years.
And what happened with the smartphone will happen in a couple of other industries as well, over the next 3-5 years.
The following is an outlook into the world of 2020, in energy, education, artificial intelligence, robotics, self driving cars, medicine and jobs. The next 3 years will bring more changes to the planet than the last 10 years did.
It's the exponential growth that will make the world in 2020 so much different from the one today.
Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution.
Welcome to the Exponential Age.
Energy: Since 2016, solar is the cheapest form of energy in most countries (except in the Arctic).
Cheaper than coal, without the pollution.
By 2020, many coal plants will go out of business, if governments aren't making illogic decisions.
Yes, there will be jobs lost, but twice the amount of those jobs are being created in solar.
And since 2016, 50% of newly equipped solar powered homes also have storage batteries.
If you are looking for an investment: Solar is one of the best investment oportunities right now, especially solar cells on your own roof.
Education will be free or very cheap for everyone on this planet.
In courses like KhanAcademy.org you can learn anything that's being tought in school (and not only for English speaker, but also in many other languages).
On websites like Coursera.com you can learn anything that's being tought in university.
On 17-Minute-Languages.com you can learn many languages the fastest way (not only from English but you can also learn FROM 12 other languages).
Anyone on this planet with access to a smartphone can access all that. That's already the case in 2017, but in 2020 with global satellite internet and 10$ smartphones, even the poorest populations will use it.
Around 2020, every human will have access to world-class education for free that would cost over 100,000$ today.
Internet and phones: In 2019, at least three companies will be launching a global internet network, either by weather balloons (Project Loon) or a fleet of mini low orbit satellites (Oneweb).
This will bring a gigabit low latency mobile internet connection to everyone on this planet, for a very low price.
So by 2019, every farmer in Uganda will have a faster and more reliable internet connection that you are having today.
Artificial Intelligence (AI): Siri (Apple), Alexa (Amazon), Cortana (Microsoft) or Google Now are already good at basic questions. The quality will improve dramatically, so in a few years you will be able to get answers to complex questions.
From 2029, you will not be able to tell if the other side is a human or a computer.
Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. In 2016, 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 laywyers in the future, only some specialists will remain.
Watson also helps nurses diagnosing cancer, 4 time more accurate than human nurses do.
Robotics: A couple of companies already started to build robots for personal use. Some robots can already do complex tasks like unloading a dishwasher. On BostonDynamics' Youtube channel you can see what's already existing in 2017.
Pair that with a powerful AI, and you will have a personal butler 24/7 in your home in a couple of years from now.
Blockchain: The usage of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum will continue to grow exponentially. More and more shops will accept cryptocurrencies in the future.
Self driving cars: Around 2020, Uber (or a competitor) will place self driving taxis in all major cities on the planet.
In a city with a million people they will put around 5000-20000 cars on the roads.
That many cars are enough to replace ALL regular cars with self driving ones.
You will press a button on an app, a car will appear withing 30 seconds and it will drive you to your destination.
You will then get off the car and the car will leave on its own. You won't need to search for a parking spot, you can read or work during the ride, you will pay as little as for a bus ticket and because the cars will be all electric, and the ride will be silent. The ride will be 10x cheaper than in a taxi today, because labour is the biggest cost with today's taxis. Most people won't own a car anymore, because self-driving taxis are so much more convenient and cheaper.
Jobs: Because of automation, many jobs will disappear. But on the other hand, there will be completely new industries. From 2000 to 2015, the speed of automation was faster than in any time in history before. But surprisingly, more people have jobs now than in 2000, because the new industries demanded more jobs than even optimists expected. So my guess is that unemployment rates will continue to decrease.
Virtual/augmented reality: You will be wearing Augmented (blended) Reality glasses all of the time.
You will be able to read your emails or surf the web on any surface you look at. This means, you don't need a screen anymore, so screens will more and more disappear. If you wear Microsoft Hololens in 2017, you can see a hologram of other people in Augmented Reality. That's a 3000$ device and after one hour of wearing it, it becomes uncomfortable - but devices like that will be 10-100x cheaper and less heavy in the next years, so you can wear it all day.
And if you see the hologram of someone sitting at your kitchen table and that person sees your hologram sitting at his kitchen table, and you are having a conversation, that will be very similar to meeting someone in person. Which means that teleportation kind of becomes a reality.
Drones will be circling the skies all of the time. Construction sites will be monitored from drones all of the time. In agriculture, drones will fly over the plants and measure the need for water, fertilizer and pestizides. They will send this data to the machines that deliver water and fertilizer, so the plants will never get too much (which lowers the production price) and too little (which will result in more and better crops, which lowers the production price again). So because of drones, our food will be cheaper and better. Systems like that are already in use in vineyards since 2015, which resulted in a better quality of wine and which also lowered the price for expensive wines. In 2020, these systems will be used on most farms.
And because drones will be cheap, you will not only have it in rich countries, but also in developing nations.
Health: Most forms of cancer will be curable by 2022. If you have cancer, a doctor will take some of your cancer cells, build a virus that fights those (and only those!) cells and injects it into your bloodstream. Eleven days later, you will be cured.
Two leukemia patients have already been cured this way in 2016.
Engineered T-Cells will also regrow parts of your body. You can regrow your skin after skin burns. And you can regrow nerves, so paralized people will walk again. Some aspects of aging will be reversable from 2027.
You will monitor your health all of the time. You can already measure your heart rate all the time with fitness trackers like the Fitbit (invented around 2015). In 2020, you will also measure your blood with a device that you can attach to your phone. That way, you will know months in advance if you will be having a heart attack or cancer.
Alzheimer will be curable from 2021. One company is working on high frequency ultrasound waves that unblock the brain's arteries; another company is working on an Alzheimer's pill. Both companies have already proved that Alzheimer's is curable in mice and sheep.
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 that one year increase per year. So we all might live for a long long time, probably way more than 100 years.
Artificial organs will be available from 2025.
Around the year 2033, all bacterial and viral diseases, as well as cancer, will be eliminated.
Shopping: Amazon already opened a supermarket without cash registers. You walk in, you take what you need and you walk out. Sensors and cameras automatically measure what you take and put everything on your credit card.
Meditation: Since 2015, the worldwide revenue in the meditation industry grew to more than 1 billion USD, and it's growing exponentially.
Around 80% of today's millionairs meditate. Not in the old woo-woo way, but cool and modern, using apps like Omvana or Headspace. More and more people do it every day, because even 5 minutes will give you huge benefits. It will become mainstream in the upcoming years.
Quantum Computing: A quantum computer works completely different from today's computers. Normal computers use transistors: Double the amount of transistors, and you double the amount of calculations you can do at a time.
But a quantum computers calculates in quantum states, called "qubits". A qubit can have both 0 and 1 at once. For every single qubit you add, you double the capacety of the computer. So a 51 qubit computer can do double the amount of calculations than a 50 qubit computer. Quantum computers will surpass supercomputers by 2019. While a supercomputer needs a warehouse, a quantum computer is the size of a fridge.
Politics: Because AI will be getting so much better, there will be fact checking services by 2020. These will tell you in real time if a politician is telling the truth.
By 2022, there will be devices that can tell you with 99% acuracy if someone is lying.
Imagine combining that during politial debates.
3D Printing: You can now 3D print 10x faster than last year, with hundreds of materials to choose from. Some materials only exist as 3D printed materials, like carbon fiber reinforced plastic. You can print walls of a house, or furniture, with 20% of the cost of normal materials. You will soon be able to print a lot of everyday's goods in your home.
The future is going to be amazing.
Written by Udo Gollub.