Tech behemoths Google, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM and Amazon announced this week that they are teaming up to develop new standards for Artificial Intelligence (AI). It’s a much-needed move. Soon AI will change everything from warfare to our bodies. But we don’t want to become slaves to the robots, so how do we stop the Terminators?
Continue reading… “AI: A five-point plan to stop the Terminators taking over”
What will Iowa’s farms look like when the combines and tractors drive themselves?
How will Des Moines’ banking and insurance sectors fare when supercomputers run financial markets?
Where will Iowans live when a self-driving car can take them anywhere with the tap of a smartphone?
These are the kind of questions Thomas Frey ponders.
Continue reading… “Futurist Thomas Frey predicts farming drones, driverless streets”
Hackers have spyware in your mind. You’re minding your business, playing a game or scrolling through social media, and all the while they’re gathering your most private information direct from your brain signals. Your likes and dislikes. Your political preferences. Your sexuality. Your PIN.
Continue reading… ““Brain Malware”: How Hackers could get inside your brain”
Aptonomy Inc. has developed drone technology that could make prison breaks, robberies or malicious intrusions of any kind impossible for mere mortals.
Dubbing it a kind of “flying security guard,” the company has built its systems on top of a drone often used by movie-makers, the DJI S-1000+, a camera-carrying octocopter.
Continue reading… “Introducing the self-flying security guard”
“My name is Yoshiyuki Kawazoe. This is my hotel.” The University of Tokyo’s associate professor of architecture gestures behind himself to a flat, two-story building that doesn’t really look like a hotel. “Two-hundred people were involved in making this happen,” he says. “Experts in environmental design, engineering, architecture, robotics and construction … it’s their hotel.” The “Hen-na Hotel” will go down in tourist guides as the robot hotel, but there’s more being invested in here than just talking robots: The minds behind it hope the facility will change the world of low-cost hotels — and save the world. (Well, at least a little.)
Continue reading… “Ridiculous Japanese robot hotel is serious business – really!”
All futurists agree that consumer electronics of the future will be flexible, wearable and packed with sensors and antennas to perform a wide range of biomedical functions. This sound great, but unfortunately today’s production techniques are suitable for little more than flat, bulky and rigid devices.
Futurists are accustomed to launching headfirst into some very complex subjects, but even the most high-minded and enthusiastic of prognosticators may take a pass when it comes to dealing with the future of sleep. That’s no cop out, it’s just that we humans — those in the developed world at least — maintain such a complicated relationship with sleep.
Continue reading… “What “Sleep” Will Be Like in the future”
For many many years we have been living in the same places using the same tools, eating the same foods. All part of a very linear history of existence. However when looking at today’s world, you can see that technology is growing faster than our kids.
Continue reading… “Predict the future better by thinking exponentially”
Ray Kurzweil has made a number of predictions that have been surprisingly correct in the last few decades. His newest prediction, made at a medical technology conference, is that in a little over a decade solar dominate the energy arena. That may be difficult to believe considering it currently only supplies 2% of global energy.
Continue reading… “Ray Kurzweil predicts Solar Will Dominate Energy Within 12 Years”
The robots are coming! They’ll be taking millions – maybe billions – of jobs away with them. Yoram Yaakobi, head of the Microsoft Israel R&D center, says not to worry.
Continue reading… “Jobs for humans in the robot era: Big data deep divers, time hackers, and more”
The pace of business innovation continues to exceed our expectations and imagination especially, when it comes to the world of work. Not only is technology impacting how we work and interact with each other, it’s transforming what we actually do for work.
Continue reading… “How to find talent for jobs that don’t exist yet”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.