Peter Diamandis is the founder of the XPrize Foundation, a foundation that offers large cash prizes to incentivize technological solutions to big problems.
Peter Diamandis, an entrepreneur and futurologist, is also a co-founder of Singularity University, a Silicon Valley-based nonprofit that offers training in futurology. In his new book out tomorrow, “The Future Is Faster Than You Think,” Peter reiterates his thesis: the (already rapid) pace of technological innovation is about to increase enormously.
The future is faster than we think
Diamandis' book contains a sort of "roadmap" that shows in which direction things will go over the course of the decade that has just begun. Because, yes, in the next 10 years we will be reinventing every industry on this planet, with huge changes in terms of longevity, food or economy.
To be precise, says Peter Diamandis: in the next decade we will have more progress than in the last 100 years.
Communication networks, sensors, robotics, augmented reality e virtual, blockchain e AI they are improving exponentially. And they improve each other, being branches that complement and intertwine.
The number of people with access to technology is increasing, so we are able to solve more problems. There is also more capital available than ever before (in too few hands), which means more radical ideas are being funded, which in turn leads to more breakthroughs.
And the cost of “attempts” is also falling: the number of experiments underway in the “Silicon Valley garage” is exploding.
Transport between now and 2030
Car ownership will be a thing of the past. We will transform the garage into a rumpus room and the driveway into a flowerbed. After the morning breakfast we will go to the door of the house, ready to board the autonomous vehicle waiting for us.
Our AI assistant will know that we go to work, it will know where we go, and it will also know that we have had little sleep. In the car soft lights and quiet music, and some time for us as we arrive at our destination.
Shopping between now and 2030
The boring routine purchases will be managed by the AI assistant, with our supervision (if we want, otherwise it will do it alone). To buy clothes, we will enter a virtual reality shopping center where we will watch a VR parade of 100 copies of us, avatars wearing different clothes, to let us decide what we like.
If we choose an item, it will be sent to us in our size previously registered in the system. If we want advice, well, the AI assistant will show us an avatar of us dressed according to current trends, or perfect for a particular occasion.
Health between now and 2030
Artificial intelligence galore here too. We will have annual MRI scans covering the entire body; it will become negligent not to use AI in diagnosis. AI will save money and lives.
With neural interfaces we will be able to connect our brain to a computer by the mid-30s. Neuralink, Elon Musk's company that I told you about here, is making revolutionary progress: its technology has been studied in primates and the plan is to to begin human trials this year.
Many of the technologies mentioned in Peter Diamandis' book are already present today, albeit at an embryonic level. Longevity drugs, cell-based meat, computer-brain interfaces and others.
And the dangers?
There are fewer threats than opportunities, Diamandis says. The jobs that can be created in the future are superior to those that are being lost, and this also has positive implications with respect to the fear that artificial intelligence will overwhelm us. The real opportunity won't be AI versus humans; it will be the AI with The Humans.
The real danger is us humans. Our way of reacting to the speed of change that is coming. When things move too fast, we tend to say “Stop!”, but there is no gain in this: for example, cities and towns that ban Uber may not implement some technologies. And this will produce an economic disadvantage in the long run.