Click to learn more about author David Sweetman.
What was once the stuff of science fiction is now science fact, and that’s a good thing. It is heartening to hear how personal augmentation with robotics is changing people’s lives.
A paralyzed man in France is now using a brain-controlled robotic suit to walk. The connection between brain and machine is now possible through ultra-high-speed computing power combined with deep engineering to enable a highly connected device.
Artificial Intelligence is in Everyday Life
We are seeing the rise of artificial intelligence in every walk of life – moving beyond the black box and being part of human life in its everyday settings.
Another example is the advent of the digital umpire in major league baseball. The angry disputes of players and fans challenging the umpire and holding of breaths for the replay may become a thing of the past with deep precision of instant decisions from an unbiased, non-impassioned, and non-human ump.
Augmented reality and virtual reality are also becoming a must for business. They have moved into every aspect from medicine to mining across design, manufacturing, logistics and service and are a familiar business tool delivering multi-dimensional immediate insights that were previously hard to find.
For example, people are using digital twin technology to see deeply into equipment, wherever it is, and diagnose and fix problems, or to take a global view of business operations through a digital board room.
What’s Changed? Fail Fast, Succeed Sooner!
Every technology takes time to find its groove as early adopters experiment and find mass uses for it. There is a usual cycle of experimentation – fast failure, is a necessary part of discovering best applications for technology. We all saw Google Goggles fail to find market traction, but in its current generation, it is an invaluable addition to provide valuable information to people in the field, repairing equipment and needed expertise on site.
Speed, Intelligence, and Connection Make it Happen
The Six Million Dollar Man for business should be able to connect to the brain, providing instant feedback to the operations of the business based on actual experience in the field. It has to operate in the speed of a heartbeat and use predictive technologies. (Nerd Alert: Speaking of the Six Million Dollar Man, it should come as no surprise that the titular character has been upgraded to “The Six Billion Dollar Man” in the upcoming movie starring Mark Walberg.)
Think of all the stuff our brain is doing even as we walk, balancing our bodies as we are in motion, making adjustments as we turn our head or land our feet. Predicting where our body will be so that the weight of our limbs can be adjusted, the brain needs instant feedback from all our senses to make decisions in realtime that appear to be “natural.”
Business, too, needs systems that are deeply connected, predictive, and high speed, balancing the desire for movement to optimizing the operations to make it happen. That requires a new architecture that is lightning fast using memory rather than disk processing, using artificial intelligence to optimize decisions that are too fast to make on our own, to keep a pulse on the business and to predict with machine learning.
The fundamental architecture is different. It has to work together and be complete; it is no good having leg movements from one vendor and head movements from another. In a world where speed and sensing has to cover the whole body, it needs to work in unison.
We can’t wait to see how these new architectures will change the world.