Still sad that Africa doesn't have open borders...

"The Africa Visa Openness Index measures how open African countries are when it comes to visas by looking at what they ask of citizens from other countries in Africa when they travel. It aims to show at a glance which countries are facilitating travel for citizens of other countries and how: whether they allow people to travel to their country without a visa, if travellers can get a visa on arrival in the country or if visitors need to get a visa before travel...Free movement of people is a cornerstone of regional integration and the African Development Bank’s vision to create the next global market in Africa. Creating larger, more attractive markets and supporting intra-African trade are boosted by greater mobility. When business people and traders move more easily across the continent, thanks to liberal visa policies, they bring higher levels of investment, fresh skills and expand the range of goods and services on offer."

Source: Africa Visa Openness Index Report, 2018

Playing the Amateur Futurist: Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Intelligence

Over the past 20 years, humans have outsourced many of our tasks and responsibilities to devices, sometimes without even realising it. We hardly remember phone numbers, birthdays and scheduled events without our phones anymore. We are almost totally dependent on applications for navigating our way rather than printed maps. Right now, the AI-enabled x.ai personal assistant is much more efficient at scheduling tasks, meetings, etc.

Users of iPhones know Siri. There are also Alexa and Cortana for other operating systems. These artificial intelligence systems have been with us for a while now and, for advanced users of the respective devices, these systems have become dependable personal assistants. We ask them questions and we expect accurate answers immediately. However, this example of AI is about to become obsolete even before many people have learnt use them properly.

While Siri and Alexa require you to speak aloud to it, MIT has created a new device that can basically read your thoughts and whisper what you want to know in your ear: it is called the AlterEgo (see here). From the MIT Media Lab website:

“AlterEgo is a  non-invasive, wearable, peripheral neural interface that allows humans to converse in natural language with machines, artificial intelligence assistants, services, and other people without any voice—without opening their mouth, and without externally observable movement“—simply by articulating words internally.
The feedback to the user is given through audio, via bone conduction,  without disrupting the user's usual auditory perception, and making the interface closed-loop. This enables an human-computer interaction that is subjectively experienced as completely internal to the human user—like speaking to one's self.  AlterEgo seeks to combine humans and computers—such that computing, the Internet, and AI would weave into human personality as an internal “second self” and augment human cognition and abilities.”  

This is quite unlike the Google Glass smart glasses. The AlterEgo is worn behind the ear and along the jaw. Apparently, before we speak, we vocalise the words in our heads; the AlterEgo device reads the vocalisation without a person needing to actually speak. Because it’s not actually worn in the ear (which frees up the ear for real world sounds), it then communicates whatever we need to know by whispering the information into our heads through bone conduction. It gives users access to the entire Internet, right in their heads via silent two-way communication, privately, even in a crowd. Welcome to the world of Augmented Intelligence.

However, AI is also replacing humans in several roles, which brings up the spectre of humans competing with AI for jobs. Right now, AI is used extensively to analyse legal documents for risks and to predict legal outcomes, which contributes to decision-making on whether to settle a case or go to court. Deloitte predicts that 100,000 legal roles will be filled by AI by 2036.

Google's TensorFlow is one of the major breakthroughs in neural network applications which enable machine learning. We can envisage a future scenario where a phone is actually smarter than the user, as devices acquire independent ability to learn and improve their intelligence. When this is allied to observed improvements in robotics and 3D printing, there could possibly be a future where machines create better versions of themselves.

It is perfectly conceivable that the only way the human race will survive a world that is shared with autonomous artificial intelligence is through fusions of human and robot and augmented intelligence. Welcome, Mr and Mrs Terminator :)

Playing the Amateur Futurist: Robotics, Autonomous Mobility and Telexistence

When I was growing up (in Ghana), the popular conception of robots were funnily-shaped pneumatic little machines that rolled along with blinking lights and imitated speech in a tinny mechanical voice. As I grew older, I learnt about industrial robots with long, jointed arms that work on assembly lines in factories, such as in car manufacturing. 

What is common to this category of robots is that they were essentially computers whose capabilities are limited to the processing of logical commands. They are programmable and do exactly what they are programmed to do, and no more. These robots lack the ability to recognise emotion, to empathise, to socialise with people in ways that we identify as human interaction.

This inability to socialise is history now with the invention of Sophia, the first social robot. She can hold intelligent conversations on a number of topics, show and recognise emotion and interact in very human ways. Watch Sophia being interviewed here. Indeed, Sophia has been granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia and she has been appointed as the UNDP's Innovation Champion for Asia and the Pacific.

Sophia will have a profound impact on our definition of what it means to be human. Probably the biggest difference between humans and machines was our sentient nature. However, when we begin to have super-intelligent machines that also have the capacity for emotion (feelings), then the issues of rights and morality are extended further than ever before. Will artificial humans, capable of loving, have the same rights (in marriage, etc) as natural humans? If they rise into positions of authority, will social robots develop and seek to enforce their own moral code, different from what humans originally programmed them with? What will be the role of (religious) faith in this brave new world?

Not all robots will exist physically, independent of humans like Sophia does. Some robots are designed to be Exoskeletons for human limbs and torsos. Originally, these were conceived to solve problems of disability but the current trend seems to be towards giving humans superability; think Iron Man in real life! 

Comfort clothing is now a thing. This is a whole new class of wearable robots that assist and extend human capability in performing tasks, so that we are more comfortable, physically, in performing blue collar tasks. The Ekso Vest is currently worn by workers in Ford's factories to offer physical support while performing their tasks, which leads to less physical exertion and the worker feels less tired at the end of his shift.

As almost everyone knows, autonomous mobility is here and it is expected to be the (near) future of cars. Tesla vehicles can already navigate their way in autonomous mode. But the future of transportation itself, as we know it, is in danger of being disrupted in a most innovative way. Robotic Avatars are being built to project the human senses over considerable distance, thereby eliminating the need to travel in person. All Nippon Airways (ANA) is sponsoring a $10 million prize to the first team to build and demonstrate a working model of a Robotic Avatar that can project the human senses and gestures over a 100 km distance. Imagine being able to touch, smell, feel and taste stuff 100 km (or more) away from your physical location. This ability to port our gestures and senses into robots in remote locations and interact with people and things in that remote location should impact travel within the next 10 years.

I'll discuss Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Intelligence in my next post in this series.

What sustains an Economy?

1. A FIRM is a legal medium that enables various contracts to interact, create value and share among the contract holders.
2. Shareholders initiate the interaction by investing their capital instead of saving, in expectation of a higher return than they would get on savings.
3. The firm then employs Employees. Their employment contracts states their skills, responsibilities and their share of the value created (their pay) which varies according to the scarcity of their skills and their bargaining power.
4. Suppliers gain a customer and are paid for their supplies according to their supply contracts.
5. Customers gain useful products and their purchasing contracts enable the Firm to remain in production and earn revenues.
6. The Government takes a little from each contract holder as tax, which pays for providing public goods such as clean air, education, etc.
7. But all the above is initiated and made possible primarily by ensuring that Shareholders are encouraged and comfortable to invest instead of saving so that we can all earn a living!

Playing The Amateur Futurist

Over the next few weeks, I hope to play the AMATEUR futurist. I intend to share what I've learnt about technologies that are likely to impact the physical and intellectual capability of humans in the next 10 years and the consequent effect on our lifestyles and work.

In the past 9 months, I've had the pleasure to attend two lectures by Devan Capur, the CEO of 3C Technologies and he simply blew my mind. I'll draw heavily on those lectures. However, any mistakes are definitely mine not his since what follows is my interpretation of information gleaned from his lectures and my follow-on research.

Broadly, the emerging technologies are segregated into 5 areas:

1. Robotics, Autonomous Mobility and Telexistence
2. Artificial Intelligence / Augmented Intelligence
3. Digital Biology
4. Internet of Things
5. Blockchain

These are very broad topics and I won't pretend to fully understand everything that I've read. My hope is to pique your interest to read further on these technologies and see if they excite you as much as they excite me.