Future – Page 5 – Impact Lab

Automation, Automobiles, Future, Self-driving Cars

10 surprising ways driverless cars will change the world

September 20, 2018

When you think about the amount of time we spend behind the wheel today, whether in congestion or helping friends and family getting to and forth, being able to spend this time on other activities whilst on the move opens up a whole host of possibilities.

But not only will we have more free time, driverless cars also promise to make our roads safer and make our journeys faster.

Driverless cars are set to arrive on UK roads by 2021 according to the government and are predicted to change the face of personal mobility forever. Looking past the obvious benefits, Select Car Leasing have looked into the less predictable consequences of driverless cars.

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Future, Futurist, new technology, Upcoming Events

Countdown to the singularity

September 13, 2018

I asked the smartest people I know for their tech predictions for the next 20 years (2018 – 2038). What are the breakthroughs we can expect on our countdown to the Singularity?

I compiled 50 predictions in a document distributed to my Abundance 360 and Abundance Digital communities. If you’d like a copy of all 50 predictions, you can download them here. For fun, and context, here’s a dozen of those predictions.

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Artificial Intelligence, Farming, Farms, Food, Future

It’s the year 2038–here’s how we’ll eat 20 years in the future

August 30, 2018

A science-fiction look at the next two decades of food developments, from robot farmers to 3D-printed meals to government monitoring of your daily calorie intake.

It’s the year 2038. The word “flavor” has fallen into disuse. Sugar is the new cigarettes, and we have managed to replace salt with healthy plants.  We live in a society in which we eat fruit grown using genetics. We drink synthetic wine, scramble eggs that do not come from chickens, grill meat that was not taken from animals, and roast fish that never saw the sea.

Was this what we had in mind when we started seeking transparency, traceability, and sustainability of our food system many years ago in the early aughts? About a decade ago, we lived through an agricultural bottleneck caused by warm temperatures that caused plagues and diseases, which severely compromised the food sources we were cultivating and consuming. By the end, three quarters of the world’s food was derived from just 12 plant and five animal species. We learned from this mistake and started to embrace true biodiversity, grew meat in labs, and put robotics into farms. But the technological advances that have made clean, sustainable food possible have also created some horrifying scenarios.

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Energy, Future, New Discoveries, Space

This astrophysicist explains the surprisingly complex concept of ‘nothing’

August 27, 2018

Philosophers have debated the nature of “nothing” for thousands of years, but what has modern science got to say about it?

In an interview with The Conversation, Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, explains that when physicists talk about nothing, they mean empty space (vacuum).

This may sound straightforward, but experiments show that empty space isn’t really empty – there’s a mysterious energy latent in it which can tell us something about the fate of the universe.

Rees was interviewed for The Conversation’s Anthill podcast on Nothing. This Q&A is based on an edited transcript of that interview.

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Automation, City Planning, Future, Robotics

Cities will automate first. We should prepare now

August 17, 2018

Three robotic arms move brushes languidly across canvases as the glass eyes of cameras gaze ahead. The robots are painting a still life—lit with a tarnished black standing lamp—of a stuffed fox, a bird perched on a branch, a skull in the center, and a seashell to the side.

This summer in Paris, it is not only the clutch of international travelers filling the museums, but robotic visitors as well. The Grande Palais is hosting an exhibit called “Artistes and Robots” that features works created via artificial intelligence and robotic hosts. Elsewhere, AI-produced art is growing increasingly indistinguishable from the “real thing.” Since 2016, teams of programmers have competed in an annual RobotArt competition (here are this year’s finalists), and robot-made art will go on sale at the Seattle Art Fair this summer, alongside works that came solely from human hands.

This partnership between human and machine is what lies ahead as automation tools permeate our lives at a quickening pace. As many worry about the potential for robots to steal our jobs (or lead a violent overthrow of society), the reality may be more nuanced: They may end up being something more like creative collaborators, much like these robotic artists on display.

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Alternative Transportation, Aviation, Driverless vehicles, Future, Transportation, Travel

4 futuristic transport methods that will change how we travel around the world

August 15, 2018

Since the invention of air travel, the world has felt like a smaller place – it’s now possible for pretty much anyone to fly around the globe, learning about different countries and cultures. It’s pretty amazing.

But some companies aren’t satisfied with this – they want to make the world seem even smaller, with faster, more efficient and more comfortable methods of transport.

Ever dreamed of exploring the Australian Outback but been put off by the long flight? A Virgin Galactic flight from London to Sydney might take two hours within the next decade.

Here are four methods of futuristic transportation that are going to change how we travel around the world.

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AI, Future, Futurist, Hot Issues

Humanity confronts a defining question: How will AI change us?

August 11, 2018

What will happen when we’ve built machines as intelligent as us? According to the experts this incredible feat will be achieved in the year 2062 – a mere 44 years away – which certainly begs the question: what will the world, our jobs, the economy, politics, war, and everyday life and death, look like then?

Fortunately, Toby Walsh, Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at UNSW has done the research for us.

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AI, communication, drones, Future, new technology

A world-leading technologist on what the year 2038 will look like

August 8, 2018

Currently Senior Maverick at Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly helped launch the magazine and was its executive editor for its first seven years. He has written for The New York Times, The Economist, Science, TIME, and more, and is the bestselling author of The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future. He recently sat down with Srinivas Rao on the Unmistakable Creative podcast to discuss the surprising changes that society can expect in the next 20 years.

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Big Problems, brain-computer interfaces, Future

Disrupting death: Technologists explore ways to digitize life

August 5, 2018

New technologies are opening the door to near-everlasting life as well as a myriad of ethical and philosophical questions.

Technologists are working on a variety of ways to avoid death — including uploading your brain to a computer.

Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and beyond are attempting to disrupt what has long been seen as one of the only inevitabilities of life: death.

Computer scientists and artificial intelligence specialists are developing programs that allow people to theoretically avoid death, opening the door to near-everlasting life as well as a myriad of ethical and philosophical questions.

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Analysis, Automation, Employment, Future

Will you be employed? Skills demanded by the changing nature of work

August 2, 2018

In 1997, Garry Kasparov, one of the greatest chess players in history, lost a chess match to a supercomputer called Deep Blue. Some years later Kasparov developed “advanced chess,” where a human and a computer team up to play against another human and computer. This mutation of chess is mutually beneficial: the human player has access to the computer’s ability to calculate moves, while the computer benefits from human intuition.

This is the future of work – not just machines replacing humans but also machines augmenting humans. The future is: Human & Machine.

However, our collective imaginations (say for instance in Hollywood) continue to be gripped by dystopian visions of machines replacing humans wholescale. Researchers are paying attention to these ideas. One paper suggests that around 47 percent of US employment is at risk of automation.

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Engineering, Future, new technology, Robotics

MIT researchers create an aerosol spray loaded with nanobots

July 27, 2018

AEROSOLS FOR GOOD. You may have sworn off aerosol sprays in the ’90s when everyone was talking about the hole in the ozone layer, but a team of researchers from MIT has found a use for aerosols that could be good for both the environment and our health. This spray contains nanobots, tiny sensors with the potential to do everything, from detecting dangerous leaks in pipelines, to diagnosing health issues. They published their research in Nature Nanotechnology on Monday.

NANO-SCALE SENSORS. Each sensor in the aerosol spray contains two parts. The first is a colloid, an extremely tiny insoluble particle or molecule. Colloids are so small, in fact, they can remain suspended in a liquid or the air indefinitely — the force of particles colliding around them is stronger than the force of gravity attempting to pull them down.

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Analysis, Employment, Future, Science & Technology News

These are the 5 “super skills” you need for jobs of the future

June 25, 2018

Work is changing, so to stay ahead you’ll need to master these skills that you probably didn’t learn in college.

Chances are your job description has changed over the past five years. Or maybe your role didn’t even exist a short time ago. The workplace of today and the future looks quite different due to technology, the economy, the environment, and politics, according to the Institute for the Future (IFTF), a not-for-profit think tank that helps organizations plan for the future.

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