AxelS
, ,

Ultra Focused Data Driven Innovation Effort

We believe having a massively big objective requires a laser sharp focus. At least that has been true for any business and we think it is also true for an organization that is not profit oriented – yet very goal oriented. With that we propose the following to our leadership teams:

One goal:
Prosperity for all nations, through innovation and entrepreneurship, resulting in closing the gap between rich and poor, eradicating any level of poverty.
One method:
Stimulate, support and accelerate already existing entrepreneurial minds and innovative initiatives within each country
One approach:
We do not bring success models from developed countries to help less developed countries but help understand global standards and inspire people to meet or exceed them with their own ways and ideas based on their own culture and innovative thinking.
One path:
We see leading nations losing their leadership over time, like Egypt, Inka, Greece, China, Rome, British Empire, USA. None of those countries vanish away but their achievements, ingenuity, creativity and prosperity was/is fading away and with it all the previously developed entrepreneurial spirit. We need to stop those collapses and even help developed nations no longer loose their momentum, and all nations prosper together.
One KPI
Export volume per capita of innovative products, services or business models

 

Why the extreme focus?

The top developed countries are leading the world since the inception of the industrial revolution and continuously grow in prosperity and influence. Emerging countries grow rapidly through natural resource extraction or outsourced production power and services, The slow or not developing countries, either determined to keep things as they are or struggling in finding their way.

Based on the “Export Per Capita” list we see a deep correlation between sustainable wealth and developing and exporting innovative products. We also began to look at grouping countries differently than today.

  1. The most prosper countries are the ones that exporting innovative solutions across the globe. The massive export power is a key contributor to their wealth. The US and Europe are good examples for those countries.
  2. Countries with more natural resources than they need for themselves and export those resources also gain significant prosperity for their nation. However they show an extreme dependency on the global needs of their natural resources. At the same time the innovative countries innovate to reduce that dependency and look for alternative materials. Middle East and Africa are good examples for those countries.
  3. Countries with high production power, or large services sources at cheap labor are exporting their services and gain an increase in prosperity through outsourced production and services. Also they are extremely dependent on the global needs of their production output. And also here the innovative countries try to further and further automate production and reducing outsourcing as their development effort to ever less expensive products and services. And therefor putting those outsourcing and production nations unwillingly at huge risks.
  4. Countries with no natural resources, no outsourcing or production power and no innovative solutions may need to either develop a different strategy to be self sufficient and not follow the race of innovation, growth and prosperity – or – decide to connect with the innovative countries, get help for education and trying to still catch up with the development.

The gap between innovation countries and the other countries is constantly widening as we progress. The gap between emerging countries and least developing countries is widening even more dramatically. While some emerging countries are well under way to catch up and even sooner or later surpass todays developed countries, other emerging countries are just too weak, mainly due to lack of education, leadership and political structure to catch up.

To close that gap between all nations, we are trying to help stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation – regardless of their political or economic environment. And to keep the gap closed once we are there, we try to help developed nations to understand the risk of falling behind by slowing down in their innovative efforts.

To better understand the dynamic of becoming innovative, being innovative and potentially loosing the innovative edge, we explore a different classification of countries.

We are currently exploring the following classification in 5 groups:
1) Innovative nations (Exporting innovative products/services/business models) A, AA and AAA grade (see below)
2) Previous innovative nations (Exporting* previously innovative solutions, older than 25 years)
3) Non innovative industrial nations (countries with industrialized production power)
4) Non innovative natural resource nations (countries exporting their natural resources)
5) Non innovative non exporting nations (no significant exports of anything)
Grades of innovative nations
AAA Most innovative nations, highest export per capita volume, export into more than 25 other countries
AA Innovative nations, reasonable innovative product export volume per capita into more than 10 other countries
A Early innovative nations, some innovative export volume of more than € 100 / capita into more than 5 other countries
For relevancy reasons we define “Export” as continuous delivery of products, services or business models into at least 5 other countries and a combined export volume of more than € 100 per capita of such innovative solutions.

A country can be both, a former innovative nation and an innovative nation.
Germany for instance is primarily a previous innovative nation and a single A innovative nation. PIN, A-IN
The US for instance is an AAA innovative nation and a previous innovative nation AAA IN and a PIN
Italy maybe just a previous innovative nation “PIN”
China maybe a “Non innovative Industrial Nation” NIN
Emirates maybe a “Non innovative Natural Resource Nation” NRN
Nepal maybe a “Non innovative non exporting nation” NNN

Thanks for any feedback

 

 

/1 Comment/by
AxelS

Self propelled economies

We have roughly 200 souverain states on earth, depends on who is accepting which country. The 10 wealthiest countries together represent more than half of all export/capita value from around the world.  The 25 poorest countries do not export anything at all. It appears that the ability to export indicates the level of prosperity. The higher the export volume per capita the higher the prosperity in the respective country.  For that reason we took “Export volume / Capita” as the single most important “Key Performance Indicator” or KPI for a countries prosperity. However: WE DO NOT suggest that we “help” countries to grow their export in order to create economic growth and prosperity. But we DO help those who have made a conscious decision to grow and develop their nation’s economy.

We chose the term “self propelled economy” for an ‘economy development method’ using innovation and entrepreneurship as a way to ignite prosperity. Rather than helping a nation to create jobs by launching foreign tech companies, train and hire the best people, we inspire their entrepreneurs to build innovative solutions themselves.

Example 1 External Scenario (push economy)

Assuming a country with 35 Million people and primary products being split between agricultural, tourism and textile production. Assuming further, that a tech company from any developed country comes in and offers to train 2000 people to become software engineers and computer scientists to later on hire them and maybe others, creating a total of 20,000 jobs in the next 3 to 5 years. The hope would be that possibly another 10 companies would come and do something similar, ending up with about 200,000 people working in high tech jobs, paying a nice chunk of taxes and a first step in prosperity could be seen. It also would mean that roughly 2% of the work force is covered and unemployment rate goes down. Moreover, that soon upper 2% of the population would consume more and keep other people busy as well. It is a great start – no question.

Example 2 Internal Scenario (self propelled economy)

Assuming the same country with 35 Million people and primary products being split between agricultural, tourism and textile production. Now assuming further, that the country decides to stimulate an innovation development program and trains 2000 people to become software engineers and computer scientists and another 2,000 people with rather conventional business education to form 2,000 startups. During the first 5 years they would hire possibly 50 people each, or 100,000 in total – this is only half of the previous scenario, still making some nice money and reducing unemployment rate at least by 1%.  However those businesses would sooner or later start to export their products to other countries. Each product exported brings additional money into the country. And in the following 5 years the growth rate of those companies will most likely surpass the number of people hired by foreign companies in Example 1.

The Big Difference

If example no. one, is highly successful, the foreign company’s success is part of the success story, export/capita and wealth development of the country of origin. The country where they started to setup their business is nothing more than an indirect outsources operation and the value chain leading back to the country, that company is coming from. For our emerging country a nice lift but essentially the biggest imaginable loss: The loss of innovation and entrepreneurship for their own nation. In Switzerland for instance people had been proud that products like Google Maps have been developed in Switzerland and later on purchased by Google. In Germany people are proud of their globally leading robotics company Kuka, which has later on be purchased by a Chinese company. In Nigeria a sales person selling water to Chinese miners digging out copper and gold from the earth is very happy to have that job. All with the same argument: We wouldn’t been able to do it ourselves. Yet, in all cases the macroeconomic loss is not even recognized. While in Scenario 2, the country may “suffer” the slower growth – very much like the developed country before they have been developed,  but in example 2, the emerging country took the most important leap in its history: From self feeding to producing for others – to become autonomous and propelling their economy by its own ingenuity, innovative thinking and execution. Europe’s prosperity is based on innovation that is more than 50 and up to 200 years old. China’s prosperity is based on its ability to produce what Europe and the US had developed at much lower price. California’s prosperity is based on high margin products that will dominate the future.

Over the past 5,000 years, global leadership came and went away. China may become the very first nation in history that actually repeat it’s global glory – but only if they can manage to become again a innovation powerhouse as they have been some thousand yeas ago when they introduced porcelain, gunpowder,  compass, nudels, paper making, silk, the mechanical clock and so on to the world.  And as we continuously embrace: the act of invention is not the point, it is the skill to distribute an innovation and a brand that creates prosperity.

/0 Comments/by
MaritaR

Back in Asia

After a very successful Asia roadshow in 2018 we are on our way to Asia again, Feb 27 – Mar 30th 2019.
Please come meet with Axel and me, if you are around in one of the 5 cities in 4 countries:

Feb 27 – Mar 5 Vietnam HCMC
Mar 6 – Mar 10 Vietnam Hanoi
Mar 11 – Mar 15 South Korea Seoul
Mar 18 – Mar 23 Bangkok Thailand
Mar 24 – Mar 29 Nepal Kathmandu

With the help of our local country ambassadors, we will meet and have talks with Entrepreneurs, Investors, Universities, Governments, Media, and Innovation Hubs. The main purpose is to exploring opportunities to increase the level of innovation, inspire young entrepreneurs, discuss innovation economy topics and best ways to increase prosperity.

After the first Asia trip in 2018, we began to work together with our country ambassadors and representatives of local innovation groups, some government and academia. The common goal we all agreed on was to stimulate innovation, and the whole innovation process and bringing every country successfully to the global markets, create jobs, and spark new businesses.

Much has happened between our start in June 2018 and now

The first global online event: “World Innovations Forum Kick Off 2018‘
The initial construct of an “AI Leadership Framework for countries”
Researched the “Most wanted engineering skills for the future”
Welcoming the new “Innovations Age”
Described in more detail “Self Propelling Economies”
Many Initiatives, Programs, Events and Insights have been prepared – ready to engage.

And the latest development:
Highly focused, data driven Innovation Classification rather just counting patent applications.

Now we like to invite everyone to join this journey – either by visiting the local Entrepreneurs Nights. You can find them easily on Meetup. Also in each city we will have time to meet with entrepreneurs, investors, corporate executives, enablers and governments.  If not yet done – please contact your  local ambassadors.

World Innovations Forum Nights

February 27 Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam https://www.meetup.com/wiforum-HCMC/
March, 06 Hanoi, Vietnam https://www.meetup.com/wiforum-HaNoi/events/259220407/
March 14 Seoul, South Korea https://www.meetup.com/wiforum-seoul/events/256358412/
March, 28 Kathmandu, Nepal https://www.meetup.com/wiforum-kathmandu/events/258402465/

Looking forward to see you :)

@MaritaR

/0 Comments/by
MaritaR
, , , , , ,

Ambassador Role Model Nepal

There is a lot we can learn from Nepal. The very beautiful and sometimes considered mystic country could not have more orthogonal dimensions. Nepal is at the very low end of the GDP list, is unfortunately high up on the list of “perceived corruption”, is a nation with the one of the most kindest people on earth, has exceptional talents, a still under developed infrastructure, is still dependant on donations from foreign countries, yet some extraordinarily ambitious people to turn the nation from a “receiver” nation into a fast emerging nation on the way to become a “giver” nation. When such a country, with a new generation of sheer infinite determination can organise to breed talents working on globally latest technology such as Artificial Intelligence, with goal to turn the nation to prosperity – we must ask shouldn’t that be possible in other countries too. We also must wonder if the combination of a new agile government, highly engaged academia, highly motivated entrepreneurs, all working together – is a superior model of the future? Or will the model of a public being permanently on confrontation course with their government, ego driven groups with nothing but steering up the nation with horror scenarios for their own good and media loving to confuse information consumer for the sake of popularity be the winner of the future?

Khem Lakai – Nepal

While we, the World Innovations Forum, has pretty much all ducks in the row here in Switzerland, a very active community in San Francisco, where it all started, and a very good start recently in Bosnia, great energy in South Korea, Vietnam, Germany, Macedonia, Nigeria, and other countries, our current Role Model is Nepal. Khem Lakai our Ambassador, had by far overachieved our wildest dreams. After our first Meetup in 2018, and a good exchange during the year, Khem understood, it was important to get top technology created in Nepal. Since natural resources are limited and industrial production is not too well developed yet, competition in other countries is fierce, he decided to help stimulate tech development. Together with Ranjan Mishran, a Nepali who is studying at ETH in Zurich they inspired a team of PhDs from Zürich and other Universities to come to Nepal. The Swiss Embassy in Nepal immediately recognized the importance and supported his actions.

Kathmandu, Nepal

In nearly no time, students in Nepal are being trained and built an AI systems and have been stimulated for Entrepreneurship. With yet another group of Nepali tech enthusiast in diaspora, lead by Prof. Bishesh Khanal who decided to quit his dream job in London to move back to Kathmandu and help Nepal move forward with other very successfully tech professionals and experts in the field of AI. Khem worked closely with various entrepreneurial enthusiasts in the nation, co-sponsored national events with Nepal Tourism Board and mentored youth in politics from all different political parties to raise awareness for a “visionary leadership”:  Nepal is to change the narrative of poor and sorry nation to a successful strong nation.

 

Premier Minister Khadga Prasad Oli of Nepal with World Innovations Forum Chairman Axel Schultze.

A few months later they invited Axel to speak with the Prime Minister Oli about the World Innovations Forum’s overall plans and also having talks with their Finance Minister Dr. Khatiwada. The power play continues this year with a first International Investors Summit in Nepal. Now Axel is preparing to attract international startup investors from the US, Germany, UK, Switzerland and maybe a few other countries to Nepal. While the country is still perceived as a rather corrupt nation, we see already Nepali Finance Minister starting to bring the legal framework in alignment with International expectations. The extraordinary journey is just in the beginning.

Khem Lakai, the World Innovations Forum Ambassador, together with his connections and a very ambitious country is making the sheer impossible a reality. It’s the concerted effort with an exceptional leadership that made this work. It was only a spark of inspiration from the World Innovations Forum,  yet the highly focused, ambitious and self determined Khem Lakai did what he felt is right for Nepal, connected with likeminded people and relentlessly executed. It’s that mindset and the understanding what really makes sense for the larger part of a country that moves mountains. In the meantime a new innovation lab is in the making. Also a collaboration between another Swiss university with a Nepali University is considered to create an exchange between some top Nepali talents and Swiss talents to also shorten the distance between cultures.

Its the right time for the right action with the right people that makes a change possible. This is the spirit the World Innovations Forum is trying to embrace. Our most sincere THANK YOU to Khem and his team of equally ambitious team of exceptional people like Ranjan Mishran, Prof. Bishesh Khanal and many others to build this World Innovations Forum poster child.

Even though Khem is the prototype of a self starter, let us inspire all of you to do what is best for your country as every country is in a different situation. But we are all one world – together.

@MaritaR

 

/0 Comments/by
AxelS
, , ,

Welcome “Innovations Age”

Innovations Age driving many major innovations simultaneously and globally

Innovations Age driving many major innovations simultaneously, independent of each other and globally

Transcending from the Information Age into the Innovations Age.

Looking back: Information is king, information will be omnipresent and widely accessible more or less across the globe. All that exactly happened. The power of information changed the world order. It was no longer the production power that made emerging countries to developed countries, but well-informed societies, that were able to understand the global trends, global needs and the way to deliver any good globally. The information age was the big enabler of globalization. The information age was the driver to let countries like Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Ireland, New Zealand, Slovenia, South Korea emerge to highly developed countries in less than two decades. But all that will change in the new Innovations Age.

Ushering in the Innovations Age. Since three years we see a new driving force, on the verge to change the world more than ever before: Innovations – on a very broad front. Human’s progress on hybrid sciences between technology and human skills: Artificial Intelligence, or enormous progress in smart materials, biological materials, energy technology, ultra small and inexpensive satellites, private business space discovery, environmentally conscious food, augmented reality – all pushing forward with great thrust and most importantly simultaneously. Hence the ‘s’ in the Innovations Age. The team felt who would be better to take the lead on this change than the World Innovations Form.

In 2018 alone we saw mind-bending inventions far beyond information technology. We heard about the creation of a heart chamber that is entirely built from biomaterial, creation of concrete stone that is made of air – actually CO2 – modified carbon, the advances in enforced deep learning letting AI play, find or construct much faster than any human ever will, creating bacteria that can digest polymers, and hundreds of other breakthroughs – in one and the same year. This year, 2019, we will see very similar development but on an even broader spectrum with an even bigger push forward. Innovation is turning from “big bangs” in the past centuries – into constantly “rolling thunders”.

The global impact of mass innovation is multi-dimensional.
1) New solutions with new educational demand will create new jobs in a variety of existing and even new industries.
2) New discoveries will require the availability of corresponding infrastructure and legal support
3) ‘Agile Government’ may become a signature term for the leading countries in the innovations age.
4) The world order will shift again. The Information Age powerhouses such as the US, Japan, UK, may need to give way to new nations with a more agile faster-responding society. It’s no longer about east or west, not even developed, emerging or less developed countries.

The Innovations Age is all about agility. We will need to look out for ‘agile nations’, ‘fast following nations’ and ‘preserving nations’. If we needed to make this categorization today, the new world order would look very different:
Agile Countries
South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, Netherlands, Austria, Australia, Chile, Mexico, Russia, Brazil.
Fast Following Countries
Argentina, Canada, Columbia, Nepal, Nigeria, Peru, South Africa,
Preserving Countries
Virtually all other countries including former highly developed countries including US, UK, Japan…
The mix of developed and emerging countries couldn’t be grander.
However, that grouping is rather premature. But we will soo already by 2020 a clear impact of the evolution in the Innovations Age.

We are not alone. The term Innovations Age was coined before us. Already in 2017, McKinsey published an article “The age of innovation“. Huffington Post declared already in 2011, The Innovation Age starts now.. Also the University Of Tampere, Finland is working on the “Age Of Innovation“. And as we describe here, education is one of the keys in the new Innovations Age, the book “Innovation Age Learning” may be interesting to read.

Summary

Summarizing the Innovations Age, characteristics and difference to the past time period.
Unlike any other time period before, including the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Dark Age, the technological period of the Contemporary History with its Jet Age, Atomic Age, Digital Revolution, Space Age, to today’s Information Age,  the Innovations Age ushers in a time period of simultaneous development, versus linear development. The possible impact of Artificial Intelligence is an excellent example of that situation. Linear development would take eons to progress. Only the simultaneous development in neuroscience, computer science, social science, robotics, IOT, gives the future autonomous machines a significance that could not evolve in a linear manner. Similarly the upcoming progress of smart or bio materials can only evolve due to its parallel development nature. And more so all that is happening in parallel to each other. For the first time in human history, parallel development will move us from a technological monoculture into a massive parallel development culture. Innovations are now literally limited to the number of talents we can build up through ever more advanced education systems – even taking the rapid development of autonomous machines in consideration. Interestingly enough: Human education will signify a major aspect of this new age.

You may want to join the upcoming online conference February 12, 2019.

 

/0 Comments/by
AxelS
, ,

15 most wanted engineering skills in the future


This post was inspired by a question on Quora and so I put my answer here on the blog as well.
Looking in our heavily research driven crystal ball, we see the following 15 engineering disciplines the most sought after in the next 25 years. In the following 25–50 years thereafter it will change a bit as AI and model engineers will build ever smarter systems that can do quite some of the engineering work – but for many reasons we are certain – not all !!!

AI / ML / NLP and friends engineering

By 2030 AI will be in any product or many components of a single product
approx. a million open positions as of today, Dec 2018

Algorithmic engineering (mathematicians)

> It’s the substance AI is made of and we need hundreds of thousands of them

Model engineering

> The biggest challenge in AI: Creating the model of what AI should be intelligent about

Molecular engineering → Molecular model engineering

>A precursor to smart materials, bio materials and much more

Smart Material engineering → Smart Material model engineering

> By 2030/2040 isch it will affect most everything we produce. Any material we deal with in our everyday’s live may be smart and do things that we can’t believe today/ It’ll be as big as AI is today if not even more revolutionary

Bio engineering → bio structure model engineering

> By 2040 it is the base for augmented human bodies. Getting eyes like an eagle, joins like a panther, reflexes and organs we can only dream of today. But it will also change the way we see all life around us and the influence we may have.

Robotics → Robotics model engineering

> an obvious one – yet the robots of the future, past 2040, will be very different. Not because of AI but because of the smart material and the bio engineering development.

Autonomous machines engineering

> Today we see robots, cars, etc. as autonomous machines. Tomorrow, 2025 onwards, we can add IOT and other autonomous devices to the mix. By 2050, we can see far remote machines on the Moon doing work we won’t do on earth…

Nano Technology engineering (re-started)

> Carbon nano tubes are revitalized as material we could use to build a space elevator and other crazy things we cannot do otherwise.

MedTech engineering → MedTech model engineering

> BY 2030 we can finally expect getting nanobots into our body for surgery but also as monitoring and other robotic tasks. It will be only the top level in that space. There is a lot ongoingly that will need very specialized engineers.

FinTech engineering → FinTech model engineering

> Whether we have a cryptocurrency comeback or a new development on our “old” currency, by 2025 blockchain like technologies is in the financial business future.

SecureTech engineering

> 2020 to 2525+ everything we need is vulnerable on its own. Security is, was and will remain to be a huge part of our technology world.

Energy systems engineering

> 2020 to 2525+ whether we will harness one day the gigavolt flashes (~10 Billion volts) or leverage our abundant geothermal energy, everything we do will need ever more energy.

Civil engineering (urbanity trend eyc.)

> Already today we are building more and bigger cities in the next 20 years until we experience the turnaround back to country live around 2050/2075 or so, especially when not only all production but also must services will be automated. In the then following 50+ years we will rebuild earth like we cannot imagine today.

Quantum computing engineering perhopes

> Not sure if we ever find a solution to the still unstable quantum states in the quantum computing theory. But if – lots of engineers will all of a sudden be needed.

There are many many more like food engineering, life style engineering, education technology engineering, health care engineering, and so forth, but the above give you probably a good idea where we are going.

P.S.
Why do we (World Innovations Forum) think so? There has never been a technology that was invented and in less than 10 years mainstream. Since we see what is in very early stage development of startups, we can see well into the next 10 years. New inventions and findings coming in in the next 10 years, will take us well into 2035 which are obviously very hard to predict. But we can at least try to predict the development that will come on top of the current development like robots that will advance but will advance even further when other developments like smart material have advanced. That brings us into year 2050. Thereafter we can only see consequences of the development we predict like the turnaround of urbanization and megacities. If most people no longer work in corporate bird cages but do things they simply love to do, join the makers movement, start their own little business and so forth, there is not only no need to live in a city but possible an urge to go back into countryside. That assumed consequence gives us fruit for thoughts beyond 2075 into 2100 or so. Again nobody really knows but we have ever better indicators and prediction models improving accuracy and to do what we do :)

/0 Comments/by
AxelS
,

Demystifying Artificial Intelligence

I see thousands of horror stories and get hundreds of fearful questions like will AI be harmful to humans, will “they” take over the world. People see them already as fully developed beings and thousands of times superior over humans. There is an interesting psychological analysis about that – but first let me stop this absurd craziness.

WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?

First and foremost AI is a piece of software. It is typically written in very well known and for decades widely used programming languages such as C, C++ or Python. To make the software do what is smarter than just “if this happens then do that” software developer are using smart algorithms – mathematics. Another technique that is used is so called “Neural Networks” – but also that is pure software. The neural networks is a mechanism that is seen in our brain handling all kinds of filtering, sorting and decision providing mechanisms. So all in all, AI is software, math and libraries of techniques.

Instead of keyboard and mouse, so called “Natural language Processing” tools or in layman’s terms: speech recognition tools are used.  So we can talk to the computer and it will talk back by using speech synthesiser. And since we are used to use web cams, electric thermometers, GPS and stuff, we can attach these to the computer as well.

Now the combination of computer, software and all kind of sensors, the “machine” looks much smarter than before. But hey, it is still a machine, doing what the software we wrote, is dictating it to do.

Another thing, which started the avalanche of hysteria and craziness, is the idea that in the combination of smart algorithms and neural networks, we can actually program the machine to “learn”. The only magic in this is that we humans have an enormous respect for “learning”. The machine however learns VERY differently than we. Give the machine 100,000 images of dogs and it will learn how a dog looks like. If we now add a dog in 100,000 other pictures where also cats and other animals are in, the likelyhood to recognize the pattern of a dog is pretty high. In contrast to a human, my daughter took about 20 to 30 impressions of a dog to “learn” what a dog is. She also learned that a cat is a similar animal but not quite the same.

Why is AI such a big deal

Well, you could give an AI system the construction plan of a car. Then ask it to create an optimal body, that is as light as possible, as stiff as possible, has a dynamic material behavior in case of a crash and considerable ,ess expensive.
The AI system could instead of only 100,000 views take 10 Million iterations of each component and come back with a design where the car is only 100 KG instead of one ton, has a network style body instead of full material and using all kinds of stiffness measures that it is stronger and at the same time lighter. With less material and for instance only steel at certain point, carbon in others and so forth it would eventually cost 50%, weighs only one 10th and is much safer. Artificial INtelligence can be programmed to do things like that basically anywhere. Making enormously precise Weather Forecasts, analyze stock exchange behavior of thousands of companies over the past 100 years and  the behavior of investors by the minute to predict much better value development. It can help analyze illness, make more accurate and more neutral decisions as a judge and so forth.

If it is so cool – why don’t we do all of this now?

Well – AI is still in development. Approximately 1 million engineers in approximately 100 countries work independently on all kinds of solutions. Mathematicians join the software developers and vice versa. However it is by far not as easy as many people think. The most advanced development right now is autonomous cars. Invented originally in Germany in 1992, where the first autonomous car drove 2,000 KM from southern Germany to Scandinavia and back, all in autonomous mode. Autonomous cars may then take 20 years to get all the kinks out and be safe enough to get on the road. Politicians go back and forth whether they should support it or not, the public is in hysteria to say the least and there is a lot of uncertainty about how AI could be turned into weapons.

What risk remains with AI?

Let’s assume for a moment, we would not have automobiles today. Now somebody would come and suggest we build cars and street, but also need to take in consideration that every year more than one million people will get killed and 20 – 50 million insured. Would we allow that anybody is building those killer machines? Never ever I guess. But the CAR is not the killer it is the human that drives the car. Like in all other ares, the human that uses the gun, the human that uses the knife, the human that drives the tank. Yes, AI and Robots could be build to go to war, kill the opposing country and possibly wipe out a nation. But it is not the robot that magically makes that decision – it is the human that designs it. And as seen in 1945 in Hiroshima, we could do that already in the last century.

On the other hand, we have 340 Million occupational deadly accidents a year. How about accelerating the AI and robotics development to get machines into those jobs and safe 340 Million humans each year. This is more than people dying at wars and accidents all together.

Yes, there are risks that ill-minded people take this technology as a weapon against others. We saw this with Social Media, the Internet, any type of technology in the past.  and we need to do everything to prevent them. But those machines build from plastic, silicon and metal will not magically turn into living things with a purpose we didn’t program and wipe out all humans or stuff like that. Those visions – even coming from people like Steven Hawkins – are based in a huge deficiency of understanding what humans really are and that our “intelligence” is not more and not less to our brain, than  the muscles are to our body. Today we can lift thousands of times more with our cranes than with our muscles. Soon we will be able to think through constructions or algorithms thousand times more complex than we can calculate with our brain. But one thing have cranes and AI in common: Humans have developed them and have the interest and responsibility to make them as safe as any way possible.

Autonomous Machines, driven by Artificial Intelligence, are no living beings with a purpose to kill us. They are machines with a purpose WE GIVE THEM. And if that purpose is killing, then it is still us who made it that way. It is not something THEY CAN DO unless we allow it to go that way.

 

/0 Comments/by
AxelS
, , ,

Germany – Now IPO space no.2 globally

Germany has long been known for tech innovation and a very powerful economic driver. Berlin has grown to one of the most attractive start-up hubs in the world, putting Munich on the second place within Germany, yet still before Hamburg, Stuttgart, Frankfurt and other cities. With the enormous startup thrust – startups pushed to grow even beyond the German borders. Funding was the most significant barrier.

IPO Breakthrough

In the first quarter of 2018 alone, startups and spin-offs from larger companies pulled in close to  7 Billion Euro with their IPOs. This is more than the rest of Europe combined. This is pushing Germany in spot No. 2 globally behind the USA. And more IPO candidates are already in the loop. It took a bit for Europe actually to show that their startups have IPO quality – but now they seem to come with full power. More than just a handful, including HalloFresh, Delivery Hero, Zalando, Rocket Internet, Windeln.de, German Startups Group, Elumeo, Ferratum, Trivago, MyBucks, Akasol, Home24, CreditShelf, NFON and some others made it and IPOed in Germany already.

In the meantime, more IPO spots try to attract fast-growing businesses like the EuroNext in Amsterdam, Netherland and the Paris Stock Exchange. The relatively high P/E ratios of the classic enterprises, relative to their growth rate make those young businesses attractive. If one looks back to the early 2000s when a big surge of US startups went public, the majority of the investors where laughing, but today those companies produce a multiple that has never be seen in public companies before.

 

Artificial Intelligence Leadership

With the second biggest IPO finance place in the world, Germany is also attracting companies from other countries. More importantly, Germany is also preparing the capital flow into the next generation technology to support their declared attempt to become a global leader in Artificial Intelligence. The official AI strategy will be introduced Dec 4/5 2019. And with rapid financing growth has always been a worldwide challenge, the IPO leadership in Europa makes Germany also the place to go for AI startups. We will report about the AI Space Germany in December.

Stay tuned.

 

/2 Comments/by
AxelS
,

20 Animal Inspired Robots

Just saw this on LinkedIn :)
amazing progress


 

/0 Comments/by
AxelS

Artificial Intelligence Timeline – next 50+ years

Technological – Business – Societal  – Impact Development Timeline

The era of AMs – Autonomous Machines

2020 – 2025 We will see a rising number of products mainly chat bots, entering our day to day world. At the same time the work on “General AI” will be intensified and we are getting better and better results – yet no real products – despite the rapid development. The business impact will be substantial because access to knowledge will span all industries and will be substantially easier as conventional text search. Search engines will be either UI-less (meaning no keyboard, mouse, looking through lists but you speak to mic anywhere). The societal impact will begin to bring a dark cloud. The start of significant unemployment in all kinds of call centers, info centers, support center… Science Fiction movies may become rarer. Our development is faster than a movie maker can write a script, produce the movie and bring it to market. Ex-Machina II may possibly still not come out ;)

2025 – 2030 Technology development towards general AI will be in full swing but not yet really mainstream. Millions of engineers from around the globe will work on AI solutions. That includes Universal AI, multi purpose AI, single purpose AI. AIPU s (artificial intelligent processing units) will become more widely available. New Memory systems may arise. With that I mean silicon embedded intelligence to address memory content. There was a technology developed called “Content Addressed Memory” that may come to new life – now there may be a need for it. The number of AMs (Autonomous Machines) such as AI Based self driving cars, AI based autonomous robots, AI based autonomous devices, AI based autonomous computers will rise significantly. By then everybody will sell their products with AI-Based XYZ. AI is like Internet in 1998. Widely used but still not fully developed. But everything will include AI one way or the other. The unemployment rate will rise to very uncomfortable 100+ Million across the globe. Countries will start to TAX AMs in order to finance unemployment aid. Unemployed will most likely not be able to find a new job. It’s when the wider public understands that AI is different to any other new technology: AI is used to make machines autonomous – rather then needing new skills to use the new technology by humans. AI is not even a technology, software, microprocessors, robots, cars everything existed, but a completely new way to use technology. As a result, a significant shift in our society will begin. The makers movement will explode, social workers, nature-observers and protectors, artists, musicians, coaches and so forth will rise. We will move from “employed humans” to “autonomous humans”. We will grow more self determined across all levels of education and with a higher value to our society, environment and future evolution of humankind. A major societal inflection point may surface. Those who still need to “work” will push the AI development forward, knowing that if their jobs will be replaced, they can – like all the others – do what they really like to do and receive a UBI (Unconditional base income).

2030–2040 The AMs are substantially advanced. AI development languages and AI operating systems will become a standard in the tech space. Under the development systems the graphical application design tools may dominate as they can be used by pretty much any generally educated business manager. Just pointing and selecting data set sources, algorithms that analyze those data sets, selecting processors (neural networks) to pump it through and so forth. It will be the beginning of broadly available general AI. The number of AI based applications will grow faster and bigger than all conventional software together. The old software world is fading away. The number of applications and functionalities leveraging IOT, sensor techniques, and robots will enter into all kinds of industries replacing ever more people. It will now be apparent – also for the last human on earth – that industrial work will be completely eradicated. Industrial unemployment will be raising to over a billion people in the next 10 to 15 years. Whether its office workers or manufacturing workers, AMs will take over the jobs. Everybody who is working on repetitive products or services can be replaced by an AM. Artists, will still keep creating Art any creative work that creates a unique ‘thing’ will obviously not be replaced because it would simply make no sense and cost too much. Those AMs work 3 times as long (8 versus 24 hours), no social cost, no vacation. Unemployment aid will at the very latest now become an unconditional base income for everybody, funded by the earlier implemented Value added AM tax. Autonomous Humans will now become the majority. We also reached another interesting inflection point. Product costs are no longer determined by the amount of labor cost – back to raw material cost based pricing. But the raw material may actually sooner or later come from other planets. Science Fiction? No – this is now becoming reality. Not only because we understand that renewable ENERGY is limited but also recyclable MATERIAL is not infinitely available on earth. A billion cars with Lithium Batteries would require more Lithium after the first few replacement than we have on earth.

2040 – 2050 The AMs will evolve further, write complex algorithms themselves, beyond our own capabilities, create structures and construct products beyond our intellectual capacity. Humans, however, will also evolve further and deeper than we can imagine today, in 2018. Our brain will have more capacity for creativity because we will no longer need to remember when King Ramses built his empire, who his father was and so fort. We have that knowledge in our extended, collective, connected technical brain. Internet connection is omnipresent and guaranteed on every square inch on land or water on earth. Mass products in any way or shape can be constructed, prepared and produced by AMs. Only the decision, what we actually want to create, will still be coming from the human mind. And latest by then we will bring forward real self aware AMs (if not much earlier). There are many people including me working on self conscious AI concepts already. Yet even self aware AMs are far away from the human brain capabilities. The AI research will help us better understand what we are actually capable of. We will learn more about ourselves in these 10 years than in all the 300,000 years before. The human mind’s creativity is so complex that AI is still very far away from coming even close to it. We will have a far deeper understanding of the human mind than just our intelligence. We will understand that intelligence is just one power of our mind, similar to our power to move, the power of our muscles and the power of our orientation – which we have all augmented already some hundreds of years ago. We will understand artificial intelligence is no more than our artificial muscles, which we call tools.

2050 – 2075 Leveraging our added skills, collective knowledge our amazing machines, scientists will be replaced by those machines as well. Testing something new and prove a repetitive behavior to make it a scientifically proven fact, is much better done by an AI system than by a Ph.D. ‘system’. Science will be done by AMs across all factions. At the same time, innovative and creative ideas will explode, AM’s will analyze and verify those ideas in no time. AM owners will compete for those crazy but verified ideas and build it. AMs will help revitalize space exploration in a new and rather meaningful way. We will need other places than earth to harvest raw material and we need other planets for recycling or wast disposal. AMs, powered by solar energy are the best “people” to send to other planets or our moon to extract, produce, recycle, deposit. We don’t even need to terraform Mars for that. But we may safe Mars for exploring Terraforming together with AMs. Autonomous Machines and Autonomous Humans will build the most powerful synergy ever built. We will be depending on AI, more than on any other technology built so far. Most technology can be replaced by something else. But an AI system that can iterate through millions of ideas for any given solution in a few hours is something not only beyond what we built but beyond ourselves.

More details on how and why thousands of different jobs in 300+ industries, from around the world will be replaced in the next 30 years and how we manage the inflection point from the disaster of being “unemployed” to the luxury of becoming an autonomous human will be available on: World With No Work

Share The post Artificial Intelligence Timeline – next 50+ years appeared first on Axel Schultze.
/0 Comments/by