Disruptive tech: There’s hope for the future. But fear too

My research has made me acutely aware of the dangers in advanced technologies. These are moving faster than people can absorb change and offer both unprecedented rewards and unpredictable hazards.

A driverless car can challenge many assumptions about human superiority to machines.

Learning to drive a car is a rite of passage for people in materially rich nations.

Once, technology was a discrete business dominated by business systems and some cool gadgets. Slowly but surely, though, it crept into more corners of our lives. Today, that creep has become a headlong rush.

In the US, real incomes have been falling for decades.

Of jobs in India, the World Bank estimated that 69% could be threatened by automation.

The silicon-based computer chips in our laptops will surely match the power of a human brain by the early 2020s.

With exponentially advancing technologies, things move very slowly at first and then advance dramatically.

Imagine a future in which we are able to live healthy, productive lives though jobs no longer exist.

Schools as we know it will no longer exits, because we will have digital tutors in our homes.

The triad of data connectivity, cheap handheld computers and powerful software will enable further innovation in everything else that can be connected or digitised. And that will change the way we live our lives.

Adapting to change will not be easy. Sometimes it will seem traumatic.

A key difference between today's and past transformations is that technological evolution has become much faster than the existing regulatory, legal, and political framework's ability to assimilate and respond to it.

Disruptive technology isn’t entirely new. Back in the days of the robber barons, the ruthless capitalists of the early United States built railroads without seeking political permission.

Advanced technology invariably has the potential both for uses we support and for uses we find morally reprehensible. The challenge is in figuring out if the good outweighs the potential for bad.

This boils down to three questions relating to equality, risks, and autonomy:

1. Does the technology have the potential to benefit everyone equally?
2. What are the risks and rewards?
3. Does the technology more strongly promote autonomy or dependence?

Narrow artificial intelligence (AI) is now embedded in the fabric of our everyday lives.

The idea of robot law can be a boon to society as robots will not distinguish between well-connected people and the common man.

Everything we formerly electrified, we will ‘cognitise’.

Humanity as a whole can benefit from having intelligent computer decision making helping us.

The many flavours of self-learning are baby steps toward a so-called flipped model of education.

36.5% of Americans are obese. India’s obesity rate now ranks among the top five in the world.

Between 2020 and 2030, for the first time in human history, the global population of people older than 65 will eclipse the population of people under 5.

The mere ability to automate work doesn’t make it a sensible thing to do. It is unlikely that food service jobs will succumb to automation.

Transparency, detection and accountability are the necessary antidotes to security risks.

The actual value of privacy is up to citizens and governments of the world to decide.

So, we can expect our identities to be stolen, we can expect extortion attempts, we can expect attempts at crazy industrial hacks.

Drones’ ability to travel directly to their destination on uncrowded flight paths will enable them to replace all manner of terrestrial shipping.

Drones can also perform jobs hazardous for humans to perform, such as inspecting roofs, cellphone towers, and bridges. 

Because drones are so cheap and getting cheaper by the month, they hold tremendous potential in the developing world.

In Malawi, UNICEF is looking to start testing drone delivery of medical samples to remote regions of the country.

Drones could boost living standards in rural America the way they boost convenience in urban America.

The overall desirability of drones really depends on how much abuse we see and how rapidly we develop defences against such abuses.

Few people seem to fully grasp the profound improvements in our lives that driverless cars will bring.

Driverless cars will slash accident and fatality rates, saving millions of lives. It will remove a third to half of the vehicles on the streets in a city.

Places like India will have far more to gain from autonomous vehicles in terms of safety, efficiency and reduction of pollution.

Eliminating drivers will also allow automobile companies to build cars from a different mindset. Driverless cars will not need steering columns, brake pedals, accelerator pedals or any of the components used for slowing or accelerating. There will be no heavy steel protective beams or doors.

Dropping all this extra mass and complexity will allow cars to be superefficient and superfast.

In India, 146,133 people died in road accidents in 2015. This is twice as high as Western countries.

Your refrigerator will talk to your toothbrush, your gym shoes and your bathroom scale. This is Internet of Things or IOT.

IOT is a fancy name for the increasing array of sensors embedded in our commonly used appliances and electronic devices, our vehicles, our homes, our offices and our public places.

These sensors will be connected to each other via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or mobile technology.