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THE FUTURE OF HEALTH AND WELLBEING

We already have the technology to extend the human life span beyond 100 years and democratise healthcare in extraordinary new ways.

AT SOME POINT in our lives we all struggle not just with our mental health but also our physical health. After all, biologically speaking we humans were only designed to live to around the age of thirty, and societally speaking our minds were never designed to withstand the mental onslaught that we experience today – whether that’s from today’s lifestyles or the often overwhelming impact of being plugged into and aware of almost every event on the planet, no matter how big or small, and in this 311 Institute Future World Series we’re going to be taking a closer look at the future of health and wellbeing, and some of the revolutionary technologies that will help us keep our mental and physical health in tip top condition.

With more than 8 billion people living on our pale blue dot, which is growing at an average rate of just over 1 percent per year, and with an expected population of over 10 billion by the year 2050, it’s clear that in the future there’s going to be an even greater demand for health and wellness services of all kinds – that is if we’re all going to live long and happy lives.

Today various independent organisations estimate that about 13 percent of the world’s population, or almost 1 billion of those 8 billion, suffer from some kind of mental disorder, and that on a yearly basis a further 800 million people are affected by cardiovascular diseases, cancers, neurological, neonatal, and respiratory disorders – all of which is before we dig into the number of people who are affected by serious injury which, as far as records are concerned at least, is at least another 250 million people, with other diseases adding a further 400 million people into the mix.

The back of a post it note calculation therefore means that at any particular point in time almost 2.5 billion people on our planet “aren’t feeling well” – and that’s all before we think about the future impact that climate change, environmental destruction, pollution, poor diets, stress, and other factors, will have on our long term health and well-being.

When you dig into the data further another surprising fact is that in spite of an increasingly aging global population only 35 percent of people over the age of 50 suffer from some form of affliction versus 65 percent below the age of 50, and that out of all the age groups only the under 5 age groups have a seen steady and continuous reduction of their overall “disease burden” since 1990.

NEW DISEASES FOR THE NEW AGE

Since 1990 though, when countries started keeping more comprehensive health records, the kinds of afflictions we suffer from has changed significantly and noticeably. There’s been an enormous decrease in the number of people suffering from Diarrhoea and common infectious diseases, as well as from neonatal disorders and nutritional deficiencies, but while on the one hand the world can rejoice, on the other there’s been a corresponding marked increase in the number of people afflicted by new more so called “Modern Age” diseases including, unsurprisingly cancer, cardiovascular, and respiratory diseases – as well as, unfortunately and perhaps unsurprisingly given the pressures of modern day life, mental disorders.

OLD AGE BECOMES THE NORM

As for the big one though, life expectancy, well, except for what hopefully turns out to be nothing more than a blip in recent US life expectancy data, where life expectancy there fell for the first time since 1918, overall global life expectancy has surged from an estimated 32 years in the year 1900, when most records began, to an average of 72 years today with countries like Japan, South Korea, and the UK topping the global charts with average life expectancies in those countries of between 81 and 83 years.

Now though as we look to the future, and certainly in the West, more and more biotech and healthcare organisations are talking in terms of “Defeating death” rather than just “Conquering disease” with many of them believing they can reach what they term “Escape velocity,” the point where advances in healthcare will add more than a year’s worth of life to people for every year that passes, by the year 2028. And if recent sci-fi like breakthroughs are anything to go by then they could be onto something.

So, now, with our bases covered, let’s have a deeper look at what the future of healthcare, which is by far and away one of the most active sectors I track, has in store for us all.

TACKLING THE MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS HEAD ON

Today, it’s no surprise that the pressures of everyday life and an always-on society, where people are continuously bombarded by all manner of events which are often then distorted and intensified by internet disinformation, echo chambers, fractured and fractious leadership, and trolls, among many other things, including the recent pandemic, are taking their toll on people’s mental health.

Furthermore, take into consideration a world where the rate of change is accelerating and where everything, every cultural corner, every industry, and every part of society, is being disrupted and transformed at an unimaginable rate in previously unimaginable ways, with the omni-present spectre of global displacement and job automation casting long shadows, and you could easily argue that the mental pressure people experience is only going to increase from here on in and that a toxic cocktail is brewing. A cocktail that if left unchecked could soon turn into the mental equivalent of a Molotov Cocktail – with consequences, for the individual and society at large, to match.

When it comes to tackling what many experts and people around the world are increasingly calling a mental health crisis and turning the tide there are a number of tall obstacles that we need to overcome.

Firstly, there’s the issue of identifying sufferers, secondly there’s the issue of correctly diagnosing their symptoms and their root causes, and then finally there’s the no small matter of providing the right point in time support and appropriate follow up treatments.

When it comes to the issue of identifying individuals who are struggling, for whatever reason, historically the responsibility has always fallen on their shoulders, or onto the shoulders of the people around them such as colleagues, family, and friends, who, societally at least, have hitherto been expected to be able to identify the symptoms and surface the issues so they can start getting the help and support they need. And while all this sounds perfectly reasonable lest we forget very few, if any, of the people involved in this first and arguably most crucial step aren’t trained professionals which in many cases then means that sufferers problems either go unnoticed or undiagnosed then, in a double whammy, they never receive the support they need, which can sometimes, unfortunately, have tragic consequences.

Once an issue has been identified being able to accurately diagnose it and its cause in order to prescribe the right treatment is also difficult – even for professionals. Then there’s the issue of what happens and how the people who are struggling fare when they’re out of arm’s length of the people who are there to support them.

Inevitably, when you look at the issues holistically the gaps in education, knowledge, resources, support, trained professionals, as well as other areas, are clear to see which inevitably means that far too many people fall between the cracks – some never to emerge again. Consequently, it is vital we use all the resources and tools at our disposal to close as many of those gaps as possible. And fortunately, as is often the case, technology provides us with a number of new tools and solutions which we can leverage.

Looking at how we can use technology today, let alone as it’s capabilities improve in the future, to identify or diagnose mental health issues and provide support there are a host of ground breaking innovations emerging that we can leverage, the vast majority of which are digital, powered by AI, and which can be easily accessed by the billions of connected people via their computers, tablets, smart assistants, smart devices, and even connected home devices.

Take, for example, the humble smartphone – a rich source of information if ever there was one. Today, we can get an accurate measure of your mental health by analysing the way you use it, the angles you hold it at, how often and how fast you pick it up, what you type and how fast you type it, the speed you scroll at, and all that’s before we discuss how we can use it to monitor your posture, analyse your voice patterns, and track your minute by minute movements, or use the camera to gather a whole host of interesting biometric data.

Many of these new AI powered tools are getting so good that they can detect everything from the onset of dementia and PTSD, all the way through to depression and even a person’s aptitude to suicide, and do it better, in some cases than even the best human experts.

Next, from a support perspective, some of these same AI powered platforms are using many of these same “privacy busting techniques,” which is a conversation for another article, to provide point in time Robo-counselling services, like Woebot, that cost little to nothing and that are always with you – no matter where you are. And, if a Robo-counsellor isn’t your cup of tea then you can always get in touch with a real human using a more conventional video chat or a tele-psychology system.

When it comes to some of the more serious conditions, however, things get sci-fi like very quickly with the arrival of new memory editing technologies that can erase people’s addictions, fears, and memories, as well as other technologies that can increasingly boost, re-juvinate, store, transfer, and re-write their very memories – much in the same way we edit word documents.

So, as you can see, when we look at how, in the future, we can leverage new technologies in new ways to deliver new outcomes, it’s no stretch to say that we’re on the cusp of a revolution that will benefit all of us.

REPAIRING THE HUMAN BODY

When you look back in time to humanity’s early ancestry it’s clear that we were built for one thing and one thing alone – survival, whether it’s our own survival or the survival of the species. From gathering and hunting for food in the forests and savannahs, to looking after and caring for one another, everything came down to this. And biologically our bodies were built to last on average thirty years, not eighty or a hundred as we all expect today, which is just one of the reasons, for example, why cancer, a new age disease, is now so prevalent in today’s society.

As humanity moves further and further away from its natural roots, whether it’s by artificially extending our life spans using medical technology, or from our connection with the land and the goodness of nature’s own larder, the effect on our bodies is clear to see – for both better and worse.

On the one hand we can now all live longer more productive lives than we ever could before and spend significantly more time with our loved ones as we walk our mortal coil, while on the other our bodies are now having to try to deal with and reconcile the new paradigm we’ve created for ourselves.

Furthermore, as today’s biotech and healthcare companies, as mentioned above, and new healthcare breakthroughs help us approach aging’s “Escape velocity” and for the first time talk openly about “Conquering death,” as a society we are now beginning to reach the point where the age of 100 will be the new 60, and where living beyond the age of 120, let alone longer, could become not just feasible but commonplace. And while that will bring great opportunity, it will also unsurprisingly bring new challenges from a whole raft of quarters – both mental and physical, as well as cultural and societal.

In order to extend our lives to this degree though we need new healthcare technologies and tools – whether it’s to identify and diagnose disease, monitor and track it, or to develop new treatments and cures. And, as researchers and scientists everywhere work diligently it’s increasingly clear that many of the tools in our arsenal make even the most outrageous science fiction technologies look tame by comparison.

Firstly, when it comes to the initial identification and diagnosis of a persons ailment or suffering the continued digitisation and democratisation of increasingly powerful technologies including Artificial Intelligence and Machine Vision, combined with other technologies such as sensors and bio-sensors, that in some cases can now even detect disease in the air around us, now mean that it’s possible to turn common-a-garden smartphones as well as smart home assistants, like Alexa and Google Home, into increasingly sophisticated tricorder-like devices that in mere seconds, and in the comfort of your own home, can diagnose everything from the onset of cancers, dementia, diabetes, general disease, including COVID-19, heart disease, pre-existing genetic conditions, and even the impact of ambient noise on your hearing – all for starters. And when combined with digital telehealth and telemedicine services our devices can automatically close the loop and send all of our healthcare data back to a certified medical professional, a human, an AI, or a hybrid combination of the two, who can use it to create a tailored treatment plan.

Bring health focused wearables as well as Smart Tattoos, let alone brainwave reading smart tattoos, into the mix and the concept of the so called “Quantified Self,” and bringing in activity, blood pressure, brainwave, environmental, heart rate, metabolic, metabolite, postural, respiration, and sleep tracking data, becomes a breeze that, when combined with other data sets, provides us with even richer health insights.

In time the variety and volume of data all these different devices can gather and analyse will only increase, exponentially, and it won’t be long until they’re able to analyse your body’s health at such a granular level that they’ll be able to detect, analyse, and monitor abnormalities at the genetic level, as well as tell you how long you have left to live. And needless to say the earlier all these devices can detect health issues the sooner people can get the help they need – which will inevitably also help save countless lives.

Next, as we dive deeper into our future wormhole and beyond the activity of identifying and diagnosing of early stage conditions, and start looking in more depth at more serious conditions and how they’ll be treated the story becomes even more astounding with game changing breakthroughs and innovations not just in one area but many – in fact there are so many that it’s a challenge trying to figure out where to begin.

So, I’ll start here. When your car breaks down you take it into the garage who diagnose the problem and replace the faulty part, but it’s well known that the human body is one of the most complex machines in the known universe – with the human brain being an order of magnitude harder to understand and fix. While, from an evolutionary standpoint at least, this complexity’s done us proud when it comes to healthcare it means that when something goes wrong with us physically not only is diagnosing the problem more complex, but repairing it is a whole new level of complexity.

Today, however, we can replace roughly 70 percent of the human body with alternative parts, whether they take the form of artificial joints or prosthetic limbs, or whether they’re more complex in the form of heart and liver transplants. And, asides from the most basic prosthetics, which first appeared in earnest in the 15^th Century, none of these alternatives were available until the 1940’s onwards – a mere blink of an eye in the timeline of human evolution.

As our timeline jogs along, however, and as the rate of technological advancement continues to accelerate exponentially previously dumb, and often clunky and uncomfortable prosthetics, will increasingly be 3D printed cheaply using custom lightweight materials that give users a comfortable millimetre accurate fit. They’ll increasingly incorporate advanced robotics and robotic control systems including plug and play Artificial Intelligence which will learn the users behaviours and provide automatic autonomous support, and they’ll be coated in either real 3D printed human skin or synthetic skins that give users back their sense of touch, and as we continue to unravel the mysteries of the brain and learn how to build more effective Brain Machine Interfaces (BMI) they’ll increasingly be mind controlled. All of which will help users, from the man and woman in the street to quadriplegics, regain some semblance of normality and help give them their lives back.

However, as advanced as future neuro-prosthetics will be the fact remains that they’ll still just be sci-fi like add-ons, even if they do in some cases provide users with super-human capabilities, and from a human perspective it’s always going to be tough for people to get used to wearing them.

Here too though we can already see breakthroughs in the field of Regenerative Medicine that would let people re-grow lost limbs and body parts in much the same way that many animals do. Recent advances include the discovery that the human genome has the inherent ability to regenerate body parts but that it “just needs turning back on,” as well as the development of a so called Silk Bioreactor, a piece of cloth with little more than a very special hormonal cocktail, that so far has been used to successfully regrow frogs limbs, and which researchers hope could one day allow humans to do the same.

When it comes to the matter of extending the human lifespan there have been plenty of other breakthroughs too. Breakthroughs that include the ability to 3D print, 4D print, and even just grow all manner of human organs and tissues on demand before they’re transplanted into patients that need them, including bones, brains, cartilage, corneas, hearts, kidneys, skin, and more. But why print any of these outside of the human body when, increasingly, we now have the technology to print them in vivo using Bio-printing robots.

Then there’s the development of new senescent drugs that, in trials, have extended the lives of rats by over a third, and which are now moving to human trials, as well as a whole host of gene therapy treatments that can, for the first time ever, have given doctors the ability to easily edit people’s genomes in vivo, or even via simple nebuliser sprays, to cure all manner of previously uncurable genetic diseases like inherited blindness, Cystic Fibrosis, Hunters Syndrome, as well as HIV.

But things get even stranger as we look further into the future with the development of new AI designed contagious vaccines, and drugs, autonomous robot surgeons capable of performing intricate human surgeries, including brain surgeries, and nanobots that can patrol the body for disease, drill into and kill cancers on sight, and swarm together to repair internal injuries.

Then, of course, there’s our ability to use genetic engineering to create designer humans that are immune to disease, the creation of the world’s first artificial humans, born and grown ex vivo without natural parents using the first completely synthetic genomes designed by AI’s, all of which is before we even begin to discuss our ability to turn people into disease fighting bio-computers running multiple genetic codes with six or eight base pair DNA, or our ability not just to 3D or 4D print “traditional” human organs on demand, but also specially genetically engineer and augment them with all manner of new fangled technologies to monitor them and keep them running, from new computing paradigms and electronics to new sensing systems and beyond. At which point science fiction looks positively tame by comparison, and at which point we have likely completely transformed what it means “to be human” and the human condition.

Oh, and just in case you do die you might also be happy to know researchers, tentatively, have several ways to bring you back from the dead – even if you died hundreds of years ago. And no, I’m not talking about putting your dead body into cryo – although that’s also, obviously, an option.

THE IMPLICATION OF 100 BEING THE NEW 60

Obviously, nothing today exists in a bubble and everything has an impact with ripples spreading far and wide. And, arguably, few other advancements will have as great an impact on our global culture, industries, and society as adding decades to people’s life spans.

Firstly, there’s the emotional and metal impact of realising that we’ll be able to spend more time with our friends and family, including being involved in the lives of many more generations, as well as the realisation that we have the opportunity to contribute even more to this world which, as the rate of technology development continues to accelerate, and as each of us increasingly becomes capable of changing the lives of billions, could itself have radical consequences for everyone and everything living on our planet. Image, for example, what the world would, or could, look like if Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos lived to beyond the age of 120…

And then there’s the impact that extending people’s lives will have on society and resource consumption as well as on food provision, government policy, healthcare, housing, investment planning and wealth management, and many other things besides.

All of which leaves us with only one question: What would you do differently with your life today if you knew you were going to live to 120 or beyond? You better get planning …

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Automated and autonomous technologies threaten hundreds of millions of jobs across a wider variety of sectors than ever before, but with great disruption comes great opportunity.

PEOPLE HAVE HELD debates about the future of work for centuries now that have always grown in intensity and urgency when society draws closer to a tipping point like a new industrial revolution – as we are again today with the arrival of the so called Forth Industrial Revolution, also known as Industry 4.0.

In the past debates raged about the impact of mechanisation, mass production, and automation as the world headed towards the first, second, and then third industrial revolutions. Now that we’re headed towards the forth, which will be characterised by the adoption of cyber physical systems and new exponential technologies in the workplace, such as, but not limited to, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, and robotics, that will re-shape the future of both manual and cognitive labour, those debates are raging like never before.

On the one hand all these debates, whether they’re at the government level, or even a work group level, agree that the implications of the forth industrial revolution on tomorrow’s workforce will be monumental with reports from the White House and European Union parliament respectively stating that “ … [in the future] it is to be expected that machines will continue to reach and exceed human performance on more and more tasks,” and “ … AI and  automation will affect every strata of European society.”

So, as we near this tipping point all this prompts us to ask the questions:  What does all this mean for the future of work, and how do we prepare ourselves and our children?

In this Future of Work special feature, which is part of the 311 institute’s Future World Series, I’ll be taking a  closer look at both of those questions, lifting the hood on some of the technologies fuelling the new jobs revolution, such as the rise of new creative machines that themselves threaten over 30 million human jobs alone and over $2Trillion worth of GDP, and looking into the steps we can all take, as a society, to create a fair and prosperous future for all. As ever though what I’ll be highlighting below is just the tip of a very big iceberg so if you have any questions then, as always, feel free to reach out.

AUTOMATED OR AUTONOMOUS

When it comes to the future of work there are two words that keep appearing time and time again in almost every debate and report. I am of course referring to the words “Automated” and “Autonomous.”

While it goes without saying that the two are very different at the same time it’s also quite easy to muddle them up so before we proceed I think it’s worthwhile doing a quick recap to make sure we’re all on the same page, especially as when it comes to the future of work both words will be increasingly relevant, and the technologies that fuel them will become increasingly disruptive.

Autonomous systems are both automated, meaning they don’t require any human intervention in order to complete their task, and autonomous, meaning that they are capable of independently interpreting different inputs, making their own “decisions,” and then carrying out the corresponding actions or tasks in response.

An example of an autonomous system, and there are many, could be a self-driving car that takes in information about its environment and then carries out the appropriate corresponding actions to make sure its occupants get from A to B safely. Meanwhile, an example of an automated system, and again there are many, could be the automatic processing of an expense request without the need for a human to intervene or supervise it.

Needless to say, as we head into the future our workforces will be affected by both of these in different ways and will have to adapt accordingly. The rise of these systems will also mean we’ll see a significant increase in the number of decisions and transactions that are performed and processed solely by machines rather than humans – whether that’s in the form of high frequency trading bots, or again, a self-driving car that decides on your behalf when to hit the brakes.

Not only does this latter point have further implications for the workforce, including the amount of “faith and trust” we put in these systems, for better and worse, but it also has significant implications for the governments and regulators who have to try to get their collective heads around the risks associated with all these new systems on everything from ethics, reliability, safety, and transparency, as well as their impact on the economy, jobs, and even national security.

DEMOCRATISING ACCESS TO EXPERTISE

The fact that there are debates raging today about the impact these technologies will have on the future of work and the potential “carnage” they’ll leave in their wake, with some academics suggesting they’ll wipe out up to 50 percent of jobs, is unsurprising. What is surprising though is the lack of solutions to mitigate their impact on the workforce, which is something I’ll delve into later on, and the fact that no one has discussed the other side of the equation – the upsides. After all, with every disruptive threat there’s always a disruptive opportunity, for example, the decline of physical printed newspapers gave rise to a whole category of new jobs and opportunities, but this time round there’s a whole lot more to unpack.

On the one hand we have technologies that are helping companies automate workers and tasks, but on the other we are also reaching the point where we can use those same technologies to democratise access to expertise and skills – for you, for me, and, well, for everyone. And no matter how you slice or dice it that’s globally significant so let that sink in for a while.

Just in the same way Google democratised access to information, AI and behavioural computing will help us democratise access to expertise and skills, and I’ve plenty of examples to choose from, so let’s run through a couple of examples. I’m going to start off in the past with an example that’s close to home for many want-to-be entrepreneurs.

Back in the 1990’s if you wanted to create a website then, frankly, you had to know how to write CSS, HTML, or Java, but today in order to create your website all you need to know is how to drag blocks around a screen, upload images and text, and how to hit the publish button. Boom, you’re done. But did you have to learn CSS, HTML, or Java? No, because in this case new software and user interfaces have helped democratise website development.

Bringing the same principles forwards to today if you want to create your own art then all you need are your crappy art skills and a copy of Nvidia’s GauGAN. Draw your crappy sketch and watch GanGAN, an AI, turn that sketch into a photorealistic image.

Now, in this case we’ve democratised creating artwork and imagery. But now think about it, this new tool is great for you because it lets you create your own artwork and imagery, but it’s not so great for the artist or photographer who you’d normally have paid to create them for you. Therefore, whether you see this new tool as a disruptive opportunity or a disruptive threat depends on your point of view – and where you generate your income from.

Turning our heads now to other examples of democratising access to expertise and skills: Want to write a blog, a book, or a movie script but can’t be bothered or don’t have the skills? Well, then try OpenAI’s GPT-2 AI. Want to be a popstar? It’s just a mouse click away. Want to develop a life saving drug? Have a chat with the great guys and gals at Insilico. Want help fighting your parking ticket, need emergency housing, or just need help claiming asylum? Try DoNotPay’s Robo-Lawyer for free. Can’t write code to save your life but would like to develop a world beating app? Well, Google and Microsoft are coming to the rescue with their nascent Robo-Coders DeepCoder and Bayou. And as for developing your own AI? Well, thank Google again for that with their AutoML product that lets you easily create basic AI’s.

As you can see from just these few, but significant, examples in the future tools like these will not only help democratise access to expertise, but increasingly they’ll also let you just “dip into” and use any skill you want. Furthermore, because of these tools sophistication you won’t have to be an expert or have had training in any of these disciplines in order to create anything from contracts to software, drugs to movies, and of course websites – the systems will do all the heavy lifting for you.

All of which then leaves me with just this one question: If the same technologies that can make you and others around you redundant can be used to democratise access expertise and skills, then what does that ultimately mean for you, or for society? And in answer to that question now just imagine being able to tap into any expertise or skill that you need and figure out what that means for your own potential in the future.

So, we’ve looked at some of the upsides of these two new trends, so let’s turn our attention to the potential downsides and then onto how we protect ourselves against them.

BLUE COLLAR JOBS

People in blue collar jobs are no strangers to the rise of automation, having experienced its effects first hand many times over the past century or so with the rise of new automation, mechanisation, and mass manufacturing technologies. By the year 2030 though, and in spite of the fact that many blue collar workers may feel they’ve already seen automation claim the bulk of their jobs, consulting company McKinsey & Company predicts that up to 800 million global blue collar workers could be replaced by robots.

So just how is this possible, and what jobs are at greatest risk? After all, if we look at today’s modern factories, for example, where robots out number human workers multiples to one it’s difficult for most people to see how those factories could be automated any further – let alone turned into what’s increasingly known as “dark” manufacturing facilities where, as the old joke goes, the only human left standing is the one feeding the dog who’s guarding the robots …

The fact of the matter though, especially when it comes to the factory floor, is that the robo-descendants of those big hulking automatons aren’t just an incremental improvement on what came before – they’re exponentially better. And that’s before we discuss the impact that other complimentary exponential manufacturing technologies such as 3D printing or 4D printing, which both help accelerate the rate of disruption thousands fold, will have on the sector.

Built using new materials, equipped with increasingly agile, dextrous, fast, and sophisticated human-like joints and grippers, powered by new actuators, servos, and energy systems, and fuelled by sci-fi like AI, Machine Vision, and sensor systems, the new generation of hyper-connected robots, that even have a sense of touch and can feel pain, are nothing like their forebears which, in evolutionary terms, are their Neanderthal equivalents.

Furthermore, these new robots aren’t just flexing superior hardware, they’re also sporting superior “intelligence.” No longer just individual units these robots can collectively connect to the cloud and tap into the equivalent of a centralised “AI brain” that gives them a Hive Mind-like capability that, once trained to do a new task, whether it’s by learning it themselves, being trained at speed in a virtual world, or even via a human operator who is training them telepathically, means that once they’ve conquered a new task they can instantly pass that knowledge onto the rest of the collective. The result of all this is, of course, that where traditional robots were once dumb, single task automatons these new breed of robots are intelligent, adaptable, and agile multi-taskers.

Ultimately though these robotic systems, that combine both hardware and software into ostensibly a “single package,” and that encompass everything from autonomous brick laying machines and construction vehicles, as well as autonomous cleaning systems, cooking systems, mining systems, recycling systems, and, of course, manufacturing systems, means that disruption, at every level of the blue collar stack, is just getting started in earnest again.

The continued automation of blue collar jobs using technologies like those described above though is just one tip of the iceberg because when we discuss the rise of robots and robotic systems the hardware element is just one piece of the jigsaw puzzle.

Take away the hardware elements and you now have a completely different kind of robot – a software robot. Again, fuelled by some of the same connected technologies listed above, namely AI, Machine Vision, and new sensor systems, these software only robots are already showing themselves to be more than capable of either fully automating or partially automating higher level blue collar work including, but not limited to, aircraft mechanics and law enforcement officials through to project managers, and professional drivers of all kinds, from car and truck drivers to pilots and train drivers, as well as security guards, and shop staff. As you can imagine though, the list goes on and on, and the share of jobs threatened by automation of this kind will only increase over time as all of these technologies and systems develop.

WHITE COLLAR JOBS

It’s probably fair to say that people working in white collar jobs have, largely, not been exposed to the same type of disruption bestowed upon their blue collar cousins. After all it’s hard for a doctor, lawyer, or a musician, to be replaced by a mechanical robot, or a tractor. That said though, as I’ve talked about previously while white collar workers have little to nothing to fear from what we think of as traditional robotic systems, namely those that are hardware based, they do have a lot to worry about when it comes to the adoption and development of new software based robots and autonomous systems.

That said though if you’re a dentist or a surgeon though then over the longer term hardware based robotic systems, albeit in highly specialised forms, will disrupt your profession too as so called Robo-Surgeons learn to autonomously implant teeth into dental patients, conduct routine surgeries, and then, in time, even conduct neurosurgery. All of which is before we discuss the impact that nanobots capable of autonomously travelling through your bloodstream to identify and kill cancerous cells and perform “routine body maintenance,” or being able to use 4D print human organs, or use synthetic biology turn humans into biological supercomputers, will have on jobs in the medical field over the longer term.

Bringing the focus back to software based robots though at the moment it’s increasingly difficult to see any white collar field or job that won’t be affected by them in one way or another.

Take for example the creative industry, an industry that employs more than 325 million people globally and contributes over $6 Trillion to global GDP where we are already seeing AI’s being used to automatically and autonomously create an increasingly diverse and sophisticated array of synthetic content, from art work, games, and literature, to imagery, movies and movie scripts, music, and more. Add to this the emergence and rise of life-like digital humans and now you’re automating customer service agents, movie stars and pop stars, sales people, social media influencers, and even stunt men and women. Ouch.

It doesn’t stop there though. Thanks, ironically, to our own human ingenuity the technology behind these “creative” systems has been re-purposed to help us automate product design and innovation, and the innovation and R&D jobs that go along with it.

So far companies have used these creative machines to help them automate the development of new products that include everything from aircraft parts, battery design, cars, computer chips, fashion lines and furniture, and even the house, to anti-biotics, drugs and vaccines, lunar rovers and rocket engines. Yet again though this field, and the disruption to global jobs and society, is only just getting started.

Unlike the blue collar sector though, where in order to automate the majority of jobs we need to use a wide variety of different exponential technologies in combination, the white collar sector is going to be much more heavily impacted by the accelerated development of just two exponential technologies – AI and Machine Vision. And there are no sacred cows, even to the point that today we’re also seeing the first signs of data scientists and software developers being automatable and automated, as well as doctors, lawyers,  scientists, teachers, and so many more.

As you can see therefore and to be clear, when it comes to job automation we are nearing a new tipping point, and as the government reports state, it will affect every one of us in one way or another – whether or not we are prepared for it.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

All this disruption, to individuals and jobs, to society, and to sovereign economies, then begs the question: What can we do to protect ourselves against being impacted by all this disruption?

Well, fortunately we have some answers for you, answers that don’t just involve the introduction of Universal Basic Income (UBI), or so called Robot Taxes like the ones already introduced in South Korea, and you can read more about that in another of our Future World Series specials – The Future of Education and Training.

The post Future World Series – The Future of Work appeared first on 311 Institute.

The post Future World Series – The Future of Food appeared first on 311 Institute.

We already have the technology to eliminate up to 70 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, so what is it and what’s stopping us from hitting climate targets?

TODAY, GOVERNMENTS, COMPANIES, and tens of thousands of experts around the world all seem to agree, in some cases grudgingly, that in the next fifty years the natural world and humanity will spend most of its time lurching from one cataclysmic event to another.

In fact, if everyone is to be believed then by the year 2050, as the world’s population surges past the 10 billion mark, there are so many cataclysmic events, from the devastating impact of climate change that includes dramatic increases in desertification, forest fires, sea levels, soaring global temperatures, and storm events, through to significant increases in energy poverty and actual poverty, famine, inequality, and war, that it’d be hard for any one of us to think of these as being more apocalyptic events than mere catastrophic ones.

Of course, using either one of these two words, apocalypse or catastrophe, in a conversation about the future should be enough to make most people shudder and want to change it, which then prompts us to ask the question: Can we change this and create a better future for ourselves and the planet, or is this version of the future inescapable? And that’s what I’m going to look into during a series of special features as part of the 311 institute’s Future World Series, and in this special future I’m going to take a closer look at the Future of Climate Change and how, through the combination of human ingenuity and technology, we could potentially solve it.

SETTING THE STAGE

Today there are more reports about climate, climate change, and the future of climate than you can shake a rainforest full of sticks at, so when it comes to discussing statistics, in my opinion at least, it’s pretty much pick a report to quote and run with it, and if you don’t like that approach then just Google your own and then come back here.

One such report, which emerged last year and was widely reported by more credible organisations was one by Breakthrough in Australia, and it doesn’t mince words, warning that “climate change could bring about the end of civilisation as we know it within three decades.”

Endorsed by a retired Australian admiral the report’s authors say “in our opinion we need a war-time like response [to climate change] in order to avoid a doomsday scenario,” and then go on to add, “the report speaks, in our opinion, a harsh but necessary truth.”

Of course, whether you agree or disagree with this point of view is entirely down to you, but irrespective of the severity of many of today’s predictions, and despite some people putting their heads in the sand, in the countries I travel to, and the people I speak to, we can all see the seasons changing and new environmental patterns emerging – whether it’s stronger and more regular hurricane and storm events, more intense fires, a dramatic increase in the rates of desertification and higher tides, or the bleaching of the world’s coral reefs, to name but a few. The upshot of all this is that there is something we can all be certain of – the climate and local weather patterns are changing, and we then all turn to science for the answers.

In the Breakthrough report the authors sketch a scenario where by 2050 more than half of the world’s population faces 20 days a year of lethal heat, crop yields globally drop by a fifth, the Amazon ecosystem collapses, the Arctic is ice-free in summer, and sea levels have risen by at least half a meter.

In the worst case they add, “the scale of destruction is beyond our capacity to model, with a high likelihood of human civilisation coming to an end.”

The report also states that by 2050 more than a billion people could be displaced by climate change – something that we’re already seeing happen today as different countries, faced by drowning cities and territories, like Jakarta and the Maldives, and even populations in the United Kingdom, make the tough decision to move inland and away from the rising floodwaters.

The figure that the report states though are nonetheless a lot higher than most estimates, with the World Bank estimating that 140 million people will be affected by 2050, for example. Breakthrough cites as evidence of their predictions a 2018 report by a Swedish non-profit, which in turn sourced it from a 2010 report by a German non-profit. That said a billion people live in areas that could be inundated by sea level rises this century, which is quite different to saying there will be a billion climate migrants by 2050. The authors also referred to a UN website which says: “Unless we change the way we manage our land, in the next 30 years we may leave a billion or more vulnerable poor people with little choice but to fight or flee.”

As for what other people think about this particular report Mark Maslin of University College London says the report “adds to the deep concerns expressed by security experts such as the Pentagon over climate change,” who are now making their own contingencies to move hundreds of US military bases in response, before adding, “maybe, just may, it is time for our politicians to be worried and start to act to avoid the scenarios painted so vividly.”

So, as emissions continue to climb, and as activist organisations like the Extinction Rebellion campaigners and school pupils continue to strike can we reduce and even reverse global greenhouse gas emissions? In short, yes, and now, one by one, I’m going to show you a pathway to reducing those greenhouse gas emissions, in all their forms, by up to a staggering 70 percent as we delve into climate change solutions for the agriculture, construction, energy, and transport sectors.

AGRICULTURE

Today agriculture accounts for 26 percent of all global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with food production representing 82 percent of that total and the remainder being supply chain related activities, which makes it, from a GHG perspective one of the most polluting industries. From farting cows and savannah burning on land to the fisheries at sea, the fact of the matter is that feeding the world is tough and there are a whole bunch of activities that, like it or not, contribute to climate change.

Also, as I discuss in more detail in our Future of Food special feature, as we head towards 2050 where the global population will surpass 10 billion people the amount of food that we need to produce, as documented in a recent study in the journal Bioscience, will need to increase by an estimated 25 to 70 percent which means that unless we change our ways, in other words how we produce food, how we distribute it, and how efficiently we use it, this figure is only going to increase.

Fortunately though there are a host of new exponential technologies already coming through that could help us eliminate almost all of agriculture’s environmental footprint and make it a much more sustainable industry – from eliminating greenhouse gas emissions to eliminating the need to use anti-biotics, chemicals, hormones, pesticides, water, and everything else that goes into producing our food.

In the near term there are the more obvious solutions, including genetically modified crops and livestock that grow fast, produce high yields, and are resistant to disease and are able to ride out a variety of different environmental stresses such as drought. But, as attractive as these options might seem to people in the short term, as we find new ways to produce everything from super cows through to super high yield crops that, among other things were ironically were originally designed to grow in space and on Mars, over the long term these food production techniques will still rely on having huge tracts of land allocated to them, will still be subject to the same issues of food distribution and wastage, and will still carry a huge environmental footprint.

As we accelerate out of the near term though and shift our thinking from linear thinking to exponential thinking, from improving on the old to embracing the new, at first we’ll see the increasing proliferation of vertical farms that allow us to grow at least eight times the amount of produce as we do today using at least 90 percent less space and water, and 100 percent less chemicals and pesticides. Furthermore, as we continue to see the rise of fully autonomous robotic vertical farms the cost of producing this high quality organic produce will drop dramatically until it gets close to zero, and as these farms move into local warehouse complexes, and then into neighbourhoods and communities, the number of food miles that produce has to travel will be all but eliminated.

Now that we’ve, arguably, all but eliminated the environmental footprint associated with crop production, as well as in time fruit production, let’s now turn our attention to the pressing problem of sustainably supplying the world with enough protein, better known as meat.

Nature perfected the answer to this problem billions of years ago, namely the ability to turn one single cell into an infinite number of cells, and it’s only now that we’re unravelling natures secrets and leveraging this same, albeit biological technology, for ourselves.

The first type of technology using this ancient secret recipe goes by many names with the two most popular being Clean Meat or Lab Grown Meat. But, while these two technologies rely on taking single viable cells from animals and using Bioreactors to help them replicate and proliferate to create everything from on demand chicken nuggets to on demand fillet steaks, there are other foody exponential technologies we can lean on as well. By using a special type of 3D printer called a Bio-Printer we can also print, yes that’s print, gourmet food and beef on demand, and use genetic engineering to create milk and dairy produce without the cow – here, there, at home, or even in space. And it goes without saying that there are no cows, or fresh fields of grass in space – both of these methodologies are, arguably, the ultimate in sustainable farming models.

Furthermore, the meat products we can grow using these technologies means not only can we take a single cell from an animal, whether it’s a chicken, a cow, a sheep, or even a zebra to create authentic, organic meats on demand, but we can also do the same for fish, from salmon to tuna, too. And, again, because this entire manufacturing process can be automated as the technology becomes more refined we’re already seeing prices plummet, from $1 million per pound of meat five years ago to $363 today. As a result, in just a few years time it’s conceivable that we’ll be within a whisker of being able to produce these meats, these organic anti-biotic and hormone free, and these animal free meats, at wholesale supermarket prices, and then the price plummets further from there …

So, as you can see, using these technologies alone, and before even more emerge, we can already see a path to producing an almost unlimited amount of crops, fruits, and meats, on demand both locally and even within our own homes, sustainably.

And that’s how we eliminate over 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions … moving on though now let’s cast our eye to some of the other industries.

CONSTRUCTION

When we discuss greenhouse gas emissions not that many people automatically think about the construction industry, but today building just the core and shell of buildings account for over 10 percent of all GHG emissions and it’s in no big part thanks to the industry’s wonder material, yes, I am of course talking about concrete.

More than 20 Billion tonnes of concrete is produced every year, and that figure is increasing, using a manufacturing process that contributes at least 5 to 10 percent of carbon dioxide to global emissions – a number that’s only surpassed by the agriculture, energy, and transportation sectors.

When making concrete manufacturers often use a small amount of silicon and aluminium rich fly ash as a supplement to Portland cement in concrete, and while over the years there have been numerous attempts to replace Portland cement in concrete they’ve all failed – up until recently. Now though, thankfully, researchers in the US have finally discovered a low cost alternative Portland cement which means that the future of cement is green.

Asides from improving the environmental credentials of cement though there are other ways we can reduce, and even eliminate, the environmental footprint of the construction industry.

As new exponential technologies that help us design and manufacture buildings in new ways emerge, whether it’s 3D printing and robotics that help us print buildings and communities using a variety of new green construction grade materials, including materials made out of recycled plastics and Graphene based materials that are ten times stronger than steel but 99 percent lighter, or the use of new Creative Machines, Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven machines that can design buildings, communities, and even entire cities using the minimal amount of materials, it’s clear that the construction industry, should it choose to embrace these new technologies, has a very clear path to sustainability.

ENERGY

One of the biggest greenhouse gas culprits the energy sector has been lambasted for decades for its reliance on fossil fuels and for being responsible for over 25 percent of all global GHG. But in the absence of cost effective and efficient energy alternatives it’s little surprise that the global energy industry has, for so long, relied on these sources of fuel to generate the world’s electricity. Even when we do have the technologies to reduce our reliance on these fuel sources though it’s still not enough to enable the switch over – we have to have the collective cultural desire and will to switch, consumers have to vote with their feet, governments have to legislate, and companies, whether they be legacy incumbents or new visionaries, have to make the investments necessary to get them into the market and make them a success. And until recently very few of these had any substance.

Today though, unfortunately thanks to the visible ravages of climate change, everything is beginning to align in the future’s favour. We have new technologies coming through in the renewable energy sector, new global climate change treaties, powerful global climate change movements, and visionary companies and investors who are all spurring a green energy revolution.

When we take a closer look, for example, at solar panels today we have over 1 Trillion Watts of generation capacity installed and hundreds of record breaking installations being built or in plan. Furthermore, today’s commercial solar panels often have an energy conversion efficiency of around 20 percent, but we now have solar cells, concentrators, and panels that are 32 percent and 47 percent efficient that generate electricity from rain and snow, aswell as during cloudy weather and also at night, and we even have a pathway to creating spray on solar panels that have a staggering 80 percent efficiency. So, if you didn’t think fossil fuels were dead before, when solar panel efficiency is sitting at just below 20 percent efficiency, then any one of these solar developments should help change your mind and convince you that the future of energy production is decentralised, democratised, and green. And that’s before we discuss developments in other energy technology categories such as grid scale storage, hydro, wind, or tidal. And, “just like that,” we eliminate another 25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. But let’s move on again.

TRANSPORTATION

Transportation, in all its forms, accounts for over 14 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions, and needless to say, just like the energy sector the source of the vast majority of all these emissions are from fossil fuel sources. It can also be said that, like the energy sector, the transportation sector has been generally happy with the status quo over the years – the status quo in this case being the combustion engine, with the old adage “if it isn’t broken don’t fix it,” coming to mind.

After all, even though we’ve had technologies that could have helped us electrify the transportation industry for some time now it arguably took the entrance of Elon Musk and Tesla to shake the industry up and supercharge the development and adoption of electric vehicles. As I’ve said many times before though, and just to re-iterate the point, it’s not simply enough to have access to powerful technologies, companies have to innovate on top of them, integrate them together to form valuable relevant products and services, and then need to be able to execute efficiently and sell them into the market, and in this case, against all the odds that’s what Musk was able to accomplish. The result was a transportation revolution.

Now, as renewable energy generation technologies start to mature, as battery technology improves, and as companies and governments make significant investments in new energy infrastructure, we are finally seeing the transportation industry, from the airline and shipping industries, to the automotive and drone industries make the switch from fossil fuels to new green alternatives.

Even though electric vehicles replete with Lithium Ion (LiON) batteries are now, somewhat, in vogue, the industry isn’t standing still and now, because of Musk’s success, hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent by the industry and its partners to develop even better, more sustainable energy storage solutions – from LiON battery alternatives such as Calcium Ion, Lithium Metal, and Lithium Sulphur batteries that have higher energy densities, all the way through to new forms of high capacity 3D printed LiON batteries, polymer batteries that can charge electric vehicles in seconds, new wireless energy technologies that eliminate the need for supercharger networks, new solar energy technologies like those already mentioned, solid state batteries, and even structural batteries where the vehicle’s shells become the batteries.

The result of all this is that we can already see a future where future electric vehicles either have very few batteries, or are completely batteryless, like this concept Lamborghini and these solar powered vehicles, making the industry that eventually started going green even greener, and all of a sudden it looks like the industry that stood still for almost a century has gotten a taste of disruption, and now they’re all fighting to retain relevance in the new world order.

Even better though, as all these companies and their partners accelerate the development of new greener energy alternatives, including hydrogen based alternatives, other companies in the transport and logistics sector are benefiting, from the electrification of aircraft and even giant cargo ships, through to the electrification of rickshaws, vans, semi-trucks, and even flying taxi’s.

And that is how we eliminate a further 14 percent or so of greenhouse gasses, and all of this, dear reader, is merely the tip of the increasingly frosty iceberg …

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