The BurbleBizarre quantum bonds connect distinct moments in time, suggesting that quantum links — not space-time — constitute the fundamental structure of the universe.
— Read on www.quantamagazine.org/time-entanglement-raises-quantum-mysteries-20160119/
Wow this is weird.
A recent report from PWC titled ‘Will robots steal our jobs’ summarised a number of investigations into the potential impact on jobs as a result of the rapid development and implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI, which in this context includes robotics and machine learning.) The report indicated that up to 30% of insurance and financial services roles could be impacted although exact numbers remain not surprisingly, elusive. Let me repeat that, up to 1/3rd of all roles in the insurance industry might cease to exist or have to change in a significant way.
That’s a pretty astonishing estimate. With some significant impacts.
Companies are going to undergo major transformations; changing what they do, how they create value, and how they deal with customers. And perhaps, the biggest impact will be on employees; how will they deal with this transformation?
As with all choices selecting the right take away coffee has taken on a level of complexity that was thought impossible only a few years ago. And so as I start off on my regular walk around the local park I am almost always sidetracked by what I’m going to order from my local cafe.
Now to be fair to them they don’t yet seem to be in the same league as Starbucks but there is enough to give me pause for thought. And as usual this time I managed to choose the iced coffee and after walking round the corner into a rain shower I immediately wanted the hot cappuccino.
And obviously this got me thinking about Jeremy Vine the UK BBC Radio Presenter.
If you read my last blog on trust and business you might be forgiven for thinking that the argument was built on a little hype on the development of technology. And of course there is nothing out there at the moment other than hype about technology.
But I thought this article from ZDnet which arrived in my inbox about the same time I published my last blog posting provides some additional support for my argument that business and society are about to under go some radical changes. Technology developments tend to take longer than we envisage and tend to disappear off in various directions before reaching any form of conclusion but even supposing that AI exceeds human capabilities in more than 125 years that is actually close enough to imagine.
For anyone born today with a life expectancy of around 100 years it is possible that we will see technology become more advanced than humans. That should not scare us but simply drive us on to do more and better things with technology.
Companies and businesses have a problem – Trust. Put simply there is a decline in how much trust is being placed in business by customers and society in general. And a business that isn’t trusted isn’t going to survive for long. But is trust that important?
I think so. Customers are spending more time researching the companies they buy from, and the fact that so much information is available on line, opens up a business to a lot more scrutiny than previously possible. As customers are subject to exponential levels of change they will look to anchor themselves through relationships based on trust.
Would you go to a Doctor you didn’t trust?
And businesses play a huge role in society, providing income and rewarding places to work, generating wealth and making tax payments to help governments support their chosen areas of investment. The problem is partly guilt by association. As Edelman reported there is a collapse in trust in 4 of the major institutions (Business, Government, NGOs and Media) in many countries around the world.
At the same time however, businesses face some challenges that while not specific to industry will have a large and potentially dramatic impact. The 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) is beginning to reshape what business is and what it does and how it does it.
And trust is going to be come one of the most important topics businesses will have to deal with.
Can sheep drive better than people?
I guess we will find out soon; when we get the hang of leaving the driving to the technology. When cars and lorries start driving themselves I guess we will be able to answer the question.
Is car even going to be the right word for it?
Legislators are struggling to keep up with the pace of change around cars that drive themselves and while I will take a bit more of a look at this aspect in later blogs I thought for this one I’d try and address what might at first appear to be a relatively simple concern. What happens when someone needs to take over the control of the car from the machinery.
In most of the cars being tested currently you need a steering wheel and a qualified driver waiting to take over from the electronics should the car ‘decide’ that there is something it doesn’t like or understand.
So that’s OK then.
Unless of course you’ve been doing the crossword and aren’t actually paying attention at all. Grabbing the wheel as your car decides it no longer wants to drive is going to really tax your reflexes, situational awareness (whatever that is), nerves etc. And of course that assumes you have actually learned to drive. What happens if the driver is new to the roads and on their first trip out? Or if you’re happily debating with your partner about the direction taking as obviously, being a man, you still know better than the technology.
Perhaps as your mind is wandering through the menu of the restaurant that you’re heading to the car will bong and simply say ‘over to you, I’m out.’ Your reply is like to be something along the lines of ‘Oh ####’ or some such at just about the same time as you disappear off the road and into the tree happy in the knowledge that the IT engineers will donwload the data and make sure that this type of crash can’t happen again.
Do you want a 17 year old with all their youthfull exuberance hoping that the car will hand them control? How will you persude the software that on no account is it to allow the car to be driven manually. Even if it has to commit the equivalent of electronic suicide.
What happens if you or the 17 year old have had a drink. If you breathe heavily inside your car after a night out could there be an argument that your car is intoxicated?
There is of course a huge argument in favour of cars that drive themselves. Not the least is the reduction in accidents and injuries that occur every year. According to the august sounding body the ‘Association for Safe International Road Travel’ 1.3 million people are killed in road accidents every year and somewhere between 20 and 50 million are injured, so the benefits of cars driven by computers that don’t sleep, play on their phones or simply forget to stop at traffic lights is huge.
But there is still a huge amount to learn about how these cars, and perhaps a lot more importantly, how humans will actually work with them; and what happens when the technology does simply have an off day.
Some of you will recall the made up, but strangely prescient, discussion between Bill Gates the then CEO of Microsoft and General Motors. In 2005 Bill supposedly compared car companies to dinosaurs while GM alledgly responded along the lines of software designed cars needing to be rebooted every couple of hours for no apparent reason. It seems to me that, where we are today it is the drivers who may need rebooting while the car quietly gets on with keeping you safe.
Until it decides not to.
Back to a theme of mine that I have blogged about before – Self Driving Cars. I am fascinated by the fact that people can see a time when you won’t need a steering wheel in a car and you’ll be able to get into a car and sit back and do anything you want. I can see a revolution coming in how people get around, work and interact with each other. With society relying so much on the car any change in how it works is going to have a profound affect.
In a small way Hanoi represents the future of the car. Last weekend found me and my family in a taxi trying to get from the airport to the hotel in the French Quarter of Hanoi. My son cheerfully described Hanoi as like Milton Keynes until we got into the center of the town which he then described as mayhem. In two years Hanoi has gone from a city that is all motorbikes to one that is being overrun with cars. And unlike bikes cars in Hanoi don’t swerve around you. And the point here is that cars being driven by computer, or robot depending on your view point, are much more likely to stop or steer round you than crash making towns and cities a much better place in the future.
Autonomous cars are coming and while there will be a long period of time before they come into their own there is one question we need to ask. Will they work?
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