Bernard Marr
Technology can be amazing and can change the world in positive ways – take breakthroughs that have been made in medicine that save lives, for example or new developments in industrial automation that save us from having to risk our lives doing dangerous jobs or just waste them on routine and mundane activities.
However, it can also be scary – whether it’s worries about the privacy implications of computers and the internet or more existential fears such as robots taking over the world and damaging – creating emissions and pollution.
Sometimes, however, that fear and uncertainty are simply
caused by a lack of understanding. This isn’t always our fault, as new
technology is often first introduced to us by marketers or salespeople who are
more interested in selling it as a solution to our problems than explaining exactly
what it is and what it can actually do in reality!
So here’s a look at five breakthrough developments in
technology that have emerged into the mainstream in the last decade or so. In
my experience, most of them are still not properly understood and can cause a
lot of misconceptions! So I’ll try to give a super-simple explanation of what
each of them actually is, as well as clear up some of the common
misunderstandings I come across!
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
This is perhaps the number one most commonly misunderstood
technology and also one which causes a fair amount of anxiety! I’m certainly
not saying that it isn’t a cause for concern and that anyone seeking to use it
shouldn’t be cautious. But it isn’t about building robots that will one day take
our jobs or our planet!
The term "artificial intelligence," as it is used
today in technology and business, usually refers to machine learning (ML). This
simply means computer programs (or algorithms) which, rather than needing to be
told explicitly what to do by a human operator, are capable of becoming better
and better at a specific task as they repeat it over and over again and are
exposed to more data.
Eventually, they may become better than humans at these
tasks. A great example of this is AlphaGo, a machine intelligence that became
the first computer to beat a human champion at the game of Go. Go is a game in
which there are more possible moves than there are atoms in the universe.
This means it would be very difficult to program a computer
to react to every possible move a human player might make. This is how
conventional, programmatic games-playing computers, such as chess computers,
work. But by teaching it to play Go and then try different strategies until it
won, assigning higher weighting to moves and strategies that it found had a
higher chance of success, it effectively “learned” to beat a human.
Until a decade or so ago, most people’s understanding of AI
came from science fiction, and specifically robots as seen in TV shows and
movies like 2001, The Matrix, or Star Trek. The fictional robots and smart
machines in these shows were generally shown as being capable of what we call
"general AI," – meaning they could have pretty much all of the facets
of natural (human or animal) intelligence – powers of reasoning, learning,
decision-making, and creativity – and carry out any task that they needed to
do.
Today’s real-world AI (or ML) is almost always what is known
as “specialized” (or weak/narrow) AI – only capable of carrying out the
specific jobs it has been created for. Some common examples of this are
matching customers with items they might want to buy (recommendation engines),
understanding human speech (natural language processing), or recognizing
objects and items when they are spotted by cameras (computer vision).
Quantum Computing
Most people can be forgiven for this one. Gaining a
low-level understanding of quantum computing generally requires knowledge of
quantum physics which is beyond anyone who hasn’t studied the subject
academically!
However, at a higher level, there are also a lot of common
misconceptions. Quantum computers aren’t simply computers that are much quicker
than regular “classical” computers. In other words, quantum computers won't
replace classical computers because they are only better at a narrow range of
very specialized jobs.
This generally involves solving very specialized
mathematical problems which don’t usually come up as day-to-day business
computing requirements. These problems include simulating quantum (sub-atomic)
systems and optimization problems (finding the best route from A to B, for
example, when there are a lot of variables that can change).
One area of day-to-day computing where quantum computing
might supersede classical computing is encryption – for example, securing
communications so they can’t be hacked. Researchers are already working on
developing quantum-safe cryptography because there are fears that some of the
most advanced cryptographic protection used for security at government level
could be trivially defeated by quantum computers in the future. But it won't
let you run Windows faster or play Fortnite with better graphics!
Metaverse
The first place many people would have heard the term
“metaverse” would have been the 1992 dystopian sci-fi novel Snow Crash by Neal
Stephenson. And when the concept went mainstream in 2021 following Facebook’s
change of name to Meta, numerous articles linked it to ideas found in the
virtual reality (VR)-focused novel-turned-movie Ready Player One. But in fact,
the concept as it relates to technology today isn’t necessarily exclusively
about VR. And hopefully doesn’t have to be dystopian!
The fact is that no one yet knows exactly what the metaverse
will look like, as it doesn't exist in its final form yet. Perhaps the best way
of thinking about it is that it encapsulates a collection of somewhat ambiguous
ideas about what the internet will evolve into next. Whatever it is, it’s
likely to be more immersive, so VR, as well as related technologies like
augmented reality (AR), could well play a role in it.
However, many proto-metaverses and metaverse-related
applications, such as the digital game platform Roblox or the virtual worlds
Sandbox and Decentraland, don’t yet involve VR. It’s also likely to be built
around the concept of persistence in a number of ways – for example, users are
likely to use a persistent representation of themselves, such as an avatar, as
they move between different virtual worlds and activities.
Users will also expect to be able to leave a virtual world
and come back to it later to find they are still in the same “instance” – which
is not the case in, for example, the virtual worlds that many people are used
to exploring in video games, where the entire world might be reset when a new
game is started.
Once it is a part of our lives, it’s possible that we won’t
even call it the metaverse at all – just as no one really uses the term
"worldwide web" anymore. This is nicely illustrated by Apple CEO Tim
Cook saying he doesn’t think the idea will catch on because “the average
person” doesn’t really understand what it is. However, he does believe that
individual technologies that are part of the metaverse – such as AR and VR –
will be part of the internet’s evolution.
Web3
Web3, as it is most widely used today, refers to another
idea for the "next level" evolution of the internet, but one which is
tied to concepts involving decentralization, blockchain technology, and
cryptocurrencies. This is confusing because another group of ideas exists,
which is labeled "web 3.0", proposed by Tim Berners-Lee – the man
often referred to as the father of the World Wide Web.
As with the term "metaverse," both web3 and web
3.0 refer to what the internet may evolve into. And although the ideas are
somewhat related and not necessarily mutually exclusive, they each describe
different things! Confused? Don’t worry, so is everyone else!
Specifically, though, web3 looks forward to an internet
where power and ownership aren't centralized in large corporations that
ultimately own the servers where data is stored, and software programs are
executed. For example, many believe that large social network companies like
Facebook and Twitter hold too much sway over public debate as, ultimately, they
get to control who does or doesn’t have a voice. A decentralized web3 social
network would, in theory, be controlled by its users and operate as a true
democracy, with no Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk figure with the capability to
cut off anyone who they didn’t think should have a platform.
A metaverse-oriented internet could be run on web3
principles – decentralized - but wouldn’t necessarily have to be. Likewise, a
web3 internet could be organized as a metaverse (with immersion and avatars as
key features) but, again, wouldn't have to be. Hence the ideas are compatible
visions for what the internet could become but are not necessarily related.
5G
The arrival of a new generation of mobile internet
technology has brought with it its own fair share of misunderstanding. This
includes concerns about its possible impact on health. Many people were worried
that high-power radio waves emitted by phones or transmitter masts could lead
to health problems, including cancer. However, hundreds of studies carried out
around the world by governments and independent research organizations have
failed to turn up any evidence that this is true.
It's also a common misconception that 5G is a singular piece
of technology or standard that was implemented, and now we are just waiting to
see the results, which will mainly be faster internet on our phones. In fact,
5G is an evolving standard. Most of the infrastructure in place today relies on
a slower form of 5G which effectively "piggy-backs" on the existing
4G LTE infrastructure. True, “stand-alone” 5G is gradually being rolled out,
which will enable it to reach its full potential in the coming years.
This will include enabling many more users to connect within a limited physical geography, such as a shopping mall or sports stadium, in theory eliminating the connectivity problems that often occur in densely populated locations. The real potential of 5G internet is not merely faster data transfer but a mobile internet that allows us to transfer new and exciting forms of data in different ways to create applications that do entirely new things.
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Bernard Marr is a world-renowned futurist, influencer and thought leader in the fields of business and technology, with a passion for using technology for the good of humanity. He is a best-selling author of 21 books, writes a regular column for Forbes and advises and coaches many of the world’s best-known organisations. He has over 2 million social media followers, 1.7 million newsletter subscribers and was ranked by LinkedIn as one of the top 5 business influencers in the world and the No 1 influencer in the UK.
Bernard’s latest books are ‘Business Trends in Practice: The 25+ Trends That Are Redefining Organisations’ and ‘Future Skills: The 20 Skills and Competencies Everyone Needs To Succeed In A Digital World’.
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