So now we get into the more interesting part of how we will become more, and more, integrated with technology. As we sit here today, we are somewhere between stage four and five on the Klososky vision of things, and as you say in the last installment, stage four was the Internet. We are still feeling the effects, and reaping the rewards of this major step forward. The intriguing thing for me with my futurist hat on is that it is pretty clear what the next stages will be, because we already have prototypes being built of the systems that define the next large leaps we will take with integration.

Stage five will be known as the era of intelligent software systems. We have been talking about artificial intelligence, expert systems, and knowledge based systems for years, and have been building the early versions in this class of tools. There really is no magic here, it is simply a matter of taking rules that humans use to make decisions and coding those rules into a platform that can ingest data, and apply the rules. We already have expert systems that help us make loan decisions at banks, medical decisions at hospitals, and do claim adjudication in insurance companies. Each year, we improve these systems by encoding more rules, with more variations, and create more trust that the computer can make decisions as well as a human given the same set of data. Like most big leaps forward, there is a slow run up before the major change. The Internet was like that as well in that we had it for years before the Web component was added to and it took off with the masses. Such will be the same pattern with all of the big stages that are coming. The technology will exist for years before it “suddenly” takes off and has major impacts on our lives.

So let’s spin forward what intelligent software will begin to do for us, and to us. As expert systems become more and more sophisticated, they will begin to encompass more rules than any one human could handle. This will create situations where the expert system is literally smarter than a human – or at least can make decisions that will prove to be better on a more frequent basis. An example would be that a heathcare system will be able to diagnose more accurately than any one doctor. This is only surprise to you today if you do not understand how crude some of our diagnostic tools are, and how often doctors are just guessing. Or how about a car insurance rating system that can much more accurately judge what your payment should be by processing 100 factors about your life instead of the 5 or 6 that humans use today. As these systems get better and better, they will become more and more valuable and companies will covet the asset that will be their expert system. These pieces of artificial intelligence will one day be the most valuable asset on the balance sheet.

Then they will become self learning… Oh yea. They will begin to monitor the results of their predictions and decisions and will self modify their rules based on outcomes. This will quickly allow them to get more and more accurate, and be ever changing with new trends, data, or variables. Will they ever become conscious? No, this is not Matrix territory, these are just highly intelligent pieces of code that know one specific thing very well, and can learn from mistakes. And these will be embedded in devices all around us. We will come to depend on them. We will do what they say without thinking because they will have proven to be dependable. We will eat what they tell us to eat, and drive like they tell us to drive, and handle business decisions the way they tell us to. Except for those rare moments when we think we know better. This already happening isn’t it. I use a GPS to take the route it tells me and I almost never try my own turns. I go where it says, when it says to. Turn now please…

Scott Klososky
scott@fpov.org