Exploring Growth Industries For the 2020's And Beyond
Change is challenging and often vilified by the masses as new trends begin to take hold. Take the internet, for example. At the turn of the millennia, many were still skeptical of this novel technological advancement that purported to connect millions of people and businesses around the world. So much skepticism existed that in 1998 Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman famously noted, "by 2005 it would become clear that the internet's effect on the economy is no greater than the fax machine's."
In 2007 Microsoft CEO and Harvard Alum Steve Ballmer laughed at the idea of the iPhone as a trend-setting invention, noting that its lack of a keyboard would not make it a good "email machine."
Both of these highly intelligent and distinguished leaders in their fields got it wrong. Perhaps it was fear of change. Or perhaps they couldn't wrap their heads around the ideas and trends that would materialize.
We all get it wrong sometimes, and what should have been obvious from the get-go only becomes apparent in hindsight.
As we inch our way into the 2020s, several new trends have begun to emerge, most of them powered by the backbone of the internet. We're going to reject some of them as implausible, as humans always do, until such time that we personally adopt them. Or perhaps, like some have turned out to be, they are just fantastical ideas that will never materialize.
Whatever the case, here are some of the ideas and inventions that may become global trends and change our lives in this decade and beyond.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
If you've spent any time online in the last several months, then you've no doubt come across talk of ChatGPT, a large language mode (LLM)l that has been touted by some as the future of artificial intelligence.
While this novel technology may not necessarily be sentient, many have suggested that the application is intelligent in the way it can communicate with us. As noted by Shreya Johri, ChatGPT is a data-driven model. In its latest iteration, it has been taught to answer questions and carry on conversations. It uses reinforcement learning and user feedback to "answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, and challenge incorrect premises."
The amazing thing about this technology is that we're just half a year into its release, and many are already predicting that LLM technology stands to impact and potentially replace jobs currently operated by humans in the fields of coding, law, medicine, and even education.
What's more, with machine learning, natural language models, and advancements in neural network development, there is a real possibility that at some point in the next couple of decades, we'll see the emergence of a true artificial general intelligence, or AGI. In essence: machines that may believe they're alive.
It has been suggested that even these early models of ChatGPT and LLM's are already showing signs of AGI:
"In all of these tasks, GPT-4's performance is strikingly close to human-level performance and often vastly surpasses prior models such as ChatGPT. Given the breadth and depth of GPT-4's capabilities, we believe that it could reasonably be viewed as an early (yet still incomplete) version of an artificial general intelligence (AGI) system."
The Terminator and Matrix movies come to mind, but so, too, does the idea of benevolent AGI, a term coined by A.I. researcher Ben Goertzel, founder of a decentralized A.I. ecosystem dubbed SingularityNET.
AI and Robotics for the Betterment of Humanity
Goertzel is afraid of artificial intelligence developed and controlled exclusively by governments and corporate conglomerates. Instead, he has focused his efforts on building artificial intelligence that can help humanity rather than destroy it:
"Any other problem humanity faces - including extremely hard ones like curing death or mental illness, creating nanotechnology or femtotechnology assemblers, saving the Earth's environment or traveling to the stars "” can be solved effectively via first creating a benevolent AGI and then asking the AGI to solve that problem."
Healthcare stands out as one sector that will benefit from advancements in AI, AGI, and LLM.
In the field of diagnostics, technologies can provide solutions to complex problems. With machine learning algorithms capable of analyzing large amounts of data quickly and accurately, doctors can make diagnoses faster than ever before. For instance, Google's Healthcare Natural Language API uses machine learning to extract information about diseases from medical records.
But what if we could monitor this data in real time?
Wearables such as digital watches with biometric sensors are already making this possible. And with data being fed into "the matrix" every millisecond of every day, machine learning models are digesting this information and identifying patterns.
What if they could predict the onset of disease before its even detectable by contemporary medical diagnostic methods? Or perhaps your device can alert you that you are minutes away from a heart attack or stroke? This type of technology, while it does have its privacy concerns and drawbacks, is a significant trend that is likely unstoppable over the next decade.
Further, imagine a world where those of us in need, rather than having an in-home nurse or spending time in a facility, can have an LLM-trained robotic A.I. companion by our side 24/7. Hanson Robotics is already developing such robots, and the only thing that's really left to do is give them the right kind of "brain" to be not just a diagnostic android but a caregiving, benevolent automaton.
Integrated Remote Medicine
But before we have robot assistants walking down the street with us or supporting our needs inside of our homes, we'll see the emergence of artificially intelligent medicine online.
How many of us already perform a Google search when we're feeling under the weather?
We plugin in our symptoms, click search, and a plethora of results appear purporting to provide us with a diagnosis.
As of this writing, the search results are primarily driven by individual pages of content from websites like WebMD or Healthline, but in the very near future, we'll be chatting directly with a language model-driven "Chat Bot" designed to synthesize the data from these and other sources to provide us the best assessment for what may be ailing us.
According to a recent Op-ed in the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, large language models like ChatGPT are highly accurate when it comes to assessing data inputs from self-check tests online.
"When the researchers later tested ChatGPT's ability to diagnose examples of patients' symptoms, the AI was highly accurate, similar to physicians' level of accuracy."
Chatbots are significantly more advanced than a basic self-test you take online. Rather than a handful or two data points, they will utilize peer-reviewed medical documents, clinical research from resources like the National Library of Medicine, and individual opinions provided by licensed medical professionals from around the world. They will review and parse thousands of videos and pages of documents publicly available online, digest social media user feedback, cross-reference product benefits, and assess the validity of learning resources provided by hundreds of service providers and product manufacturers.
Combined with wearable tech data, these artificially intelligent chatbots will offer not just information to the consumer but also diagnosis. Moreover, they'll make it easier for doctors to determine what's happening and what treatment options are available.
While purely A.I.-driven medical visits are many years away, the technology will likely become a first step in the process. No more delays getting an appointment or spending valuable time in a waiting room. You'll start your medical journey online. Once you've gone through this initial AI review, the chatbot's assessment will next put you directly in touch with a medical professional who will review your "results" in real-time and appear right in your virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) enabled headset to discuss your treatment plan in a live, 3-dimensional environment called a metaverse.
You may even have the opportunity to discuss your options with multiple professionals at once, giving you a second, or even third, opinion that offers solutions from conventional doctors, integrated medicine professionals, and wellness coaches. In a single session, you may find yourself armed with advice like which medication to take, optimal exercises for your age and weight, the herb or natural alternative you should take on a daily basis, what veggies to add to your diet, and what foods you need to reduce in order to balance specific nutrient levels in your body.
But this promising technology won't just be for humans. In the near future, even our furry friends will be wearing digital wellness tracking devices. Or the chips that we already put inside of them to track their locations or ownership will come integrated with biometric sensors. So when our dog or cat is feeling ill, we'll know about it "“ sometimes before even they do. We may even be alerted in our VR/AR device by their veterinarian that they are experiencing unusual levels of pain due to aging and that we're advised to seek medical support. These alerts will come complete with suggestions for medication recommendations or how much your dog needs to take of a particular natural medicine based on their therapeutic need and body weight.
What comes next?
Some or all of this may sound fantastical, but the reality is that we will soon live at least a portion of our lives in a virtual reality powered by artificially intelligent machines. Consider how much we already work remotely, pay our bills digitally, and interact with our friends online.
With the introduction of machine learning, large language models, metaverses from the likes of Facebook, and the bridging of the physical and virtual worlds with devices like Apple's upcoming Vision AR/VR technology, the world is sure to change. Whether it will be for the better remains to be seen.