Covid-19 is turbocharging the pace of change so new technology is now expected to be adopted in just a few years, which was predicted to take over a decade to become mainstream. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, "We've seen digital transformation worth two years in two months." Technology and product cycles usually take years to conquer the inherent skepticism and reluctance of customers before they go into the mainstream. This was before many of the obstacles to their quicker acceptance were swept away by coronavirus.
Is 2020, 2030?
Speaking about automation, it is rapidly being developed in various fields to meet the public's needs. Few of the latest trends we can see and utilize now are:
Online Shopping and Robot Deliveries
Digital and Contactless Payments
Remote Work
Distance Learning
Telehealth
Online Entertainment
3D Printing
Robotics and Drones
As of now, it is for the public's 'needs'. Who knows, this could become a practice post COVID.
Did we expect to witness this rapid evolution in our lifestyle in 2019, last year?
Absolutely not! The technological development graph has witnessed a steep slope following the gradual one. Food delivery services have now proposed to deliver anything we request. Does this mean the downfall of having showrooms and shopping centers? This is similar in all the industries that seek customers at their periphery.
What will we see in the near future and further?
For the ease of performing any desirable task, we humans rely on technology and the demand for its advancement has always been increasing, and now at a very high pace. With reference to the latest services above, we can infer that everything and everything can be done from home, right from ordering anything online by looking at the actual product itself through holographic projection from home, to performing risky operations through remote control of medical robots. Who knows! Humans might reproduce On-The-Air. Acts we consider 'exploitation of science' become legal.
This gives us the fact that human traveling for work is gradually being reduced. Even if we did, we'd prefer our private cars to today's public transport. An increase in vehicles running on petroleum-based fuel leads to air pollution and fossil-fuel overconsumption. Vehicle producers would need to turn to a greener approach to solving all of these issues. The public transport sector would encourage people to use it by introducing concepts that buttress physical distancing. Hence, the vehicles might look different than now.
Urban densification occurs. Place of stay and work will have very close proximity to each other and thus reducing travel for work. This requires a rethinking of the design of built spaces. Buildings will look different.
Humans get smarter and lazier and would expect everything to happen with a click of a button. Here is where artificial intelligence takes over the world. As seen in the movie 'Wall-E', artificial intelligence would become the primary performer in everything. Every task performed for the benefit of humans relies on AI. It could just be in the form of a computer or it could be a humanoid robot. All we need to do is just sit on the couch and relax while our personal AI bot performs everything on behalf of us.
From Stone-age, middle-age, and so on, we will enter the 'Artificial-Intelligence-Age'. The concept of 'money' will change. We won't require money. All we need is a form of energy to make our personal AI machines work. In that case, we might have to consider these machines as new species on Earth since they are almost as smart as humans ourselves.
Conclusion
This evolution of AI seems interesting still has got its own downsides. COVID-19 has triggered the acceleration of research and development of AI by 2 folds. What we expected to witness in 2030, will be live in 2020 or 2021. Has this acceleration led us to something which we should be excited about? or is it the opposite? Depends on how we refrain from exploiting the technology.
Blog Author
Naveen S Kumar
Creative Director & Co-founder
MedCuore Medical Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
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