I‘ve been at an Innovation Summit in Canberra to deliver a presentation on taking advantage of cloud computing delivery models.
The most interesting presentation was the one that looked 5 to 15 years out. Mixing that in with some thinking I heard recently on one of ABC’s ‘Big Ideas’ podcasts (highly recommended), I present some teasers:
Quantum Computing
IBM and Google both say, independently, that it’s 5 years away. We’ll see. Utilising the weird properties of quantum mechanics, it promises a truly massive leap in computing power. Problems that currently take millennia to compute (eg factorising large numbers) will be solved within seconds. An implication is that public key encryption will be broken (we will need a new way to secure internet transactions). On the plus side, there will be huge productivity benefits as scheduling will become more efficient.
Scheduling? Really? Who cares?
An interesting but counterintuitive problem in maths is referred to as the ‘travelling salesman problem’. A travelling salesman has to find the shortest route to visit, say, 60 cities and return home. Sure, he will come up with something that’s alright; but to find the best method will require him to test 60! possible combinations (that’s not 60! wow; that’s 60! mathematically: 60x59x58x57x … x1). That number is larger than the number of atoms in the universe. I told you it was counterintuitive.
Scheduling problems (nodes and connectors) are the same in concept as DNA sequencing and a whole host of similar problems. Doing some of them massively faster will revolutionise a range of industries.
Artificial intelligence
AI is here, and now getting better all the time. This will disrupt workplaces over the next several years. Think chat-bots that feel like a real conversation, with a realistic avatar on the screen. The female avatar the Singapore government uses had to be programmed to deal with unwanted and unexpected attention: users were asking her out on a date.
Jobs that will be affected: administrative work, service delivery, professional services and more. White collar jobs.
Opportunity for government: dealing with all those business rules via chat bots. Risk: those jobs.
Block chain
This is the technology underlying bitcoin. It is a public distributed “ledger” that is non-repudiable (can’t be argued with – if you undertake a transaction all parties have an unmistakable record).
There are a lot of people in the world whose job is to confirm that transactions have happened – think reconciliations, rolling back errors, checking: all that work to make sure that your company’s system agrees with my company’s system. These examples are from finance, but the implications are far broader.
Further, there’s a big bunch of government employees whose job relates to this concept. More disruption.
Data analytics
Deeper and deeper understanding of you by companies and governments (for good or ill). Better targeted selling. Better government services. What about privacy? What about my traditional business model? More disruption.
Conclusion
Excitement and threat. Robotics has been replacing blue collar jobs for decades. Coupled with AI and analytics, it is now white collar jobs under threat.
But, as the saying goes, there’s not many folks making buggy whips any more. We adapt. Let’s hope we do it in a way that keeps the dignity of work, pushing it into more creative areas – and for now we can only barely imagine what they may be.
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