{"source_url": "https://www.forbes.com", "url": "https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2020/12/31/change-has-never-been-this-fast-it-will-never-be-this-slow-again/", "title": "Change Has Never Been This Fast. It Will Never Be This Slow Again", "top_image": "https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/600x315/https%3A%2F%2Fspecials-images.forbesimg.com%2Fimageserve%2F5e0be4cdab5be6000762ba71%2F960x0.jpg", "meta_img": "https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/600x315/https%3A%2F%2Fspecials-images.forbesimg.com%2Fimageserve%2F5e0be4cdab5be6000762ba71%2F960x0.jpg", "images": ["https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/00a457728407a935290c574d3a3e98f4?s=136&d=mm&r=g", "https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5e0be4cdab5be6000762ba71/960x0.jpg?fit=scale", "https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/144x144/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fassets%2Fimages%2Favatars%2Fblog-5907_400_4ad9d95032852c3294283bf5f7eed635.jpg", "https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/600x315/https%3A%2F%2Fspecials-images.forbesimg.com%2Fimageserve%2F5e0be4cdab5be6000762ba71%2F960x0.jpg"], "movies": [], "text": "Depositphotos\n\nThe 2010s were an ironic decade. Most metrics show that human welfare improved at an extraordinary rate, but many of us seem to be fearful or resentful, or both. The world is far richer in 2020 than it was in 2010, and global inequality is declining. There is still plenty of poverty, egregious inequality, and injustice, and there are still brutal wars and civil unrest. But overall, life expectancy is sharply up, and child mortality and deaths during childbirth are sharply down. Despite global warming, the number of deaths and injuries from climate-related disasters has fallen significantly, and many rich countries have passed the point of \u201cpeak stuff\u201d: they are using fewer resources, polluting less, and the world has actually increased its forest cover.\n\nAnd yet, the most potent political force in many countries is populism. Some populists are sincere people motivated by genuine conviction, but many more are obvious opportunists. Their claims are consistent: the world used to be a better place; the people\u2019s birthright has been stolen by outsiders, enabled by an established elite, and only the populist can rectify the situation. Oh, and anybody who opposes them is an enemy of the people.\n\nPopulism is rampant on both sides of the political divide. Today\u2019s right-wing populism is often explained as a reaction against economic disadvantage \u2013 the resentment of people who feel left behind by globalism and technological change. There is something in this, but in truth it is much more a cultural phenomenon: a reaction against the decades-long triumphal march of social liberalism, which has overturned what people believed to be the natural order of things. The worst insult a right-wing populist can level is \u201cpolitically correct.\u201d\n\nPopulism of the left claims that modern capitalism is a conspiracy by an elite which is dedicated to (or at least indifferent to) the immiseration of the majority. Contrary to what the data shows, it claims that inequality is at an historical extreme, and getting worse.\n\nMuch of the improvement in the quality of human lives which populists don\u2019t want you to know about was produced by the exponential improvements in technology, so it was perhaps inevitable that the ironic 2010s would see a backlash against technology \u2013 the techlash. Social media is accused of enslaving everyone to the dopamine rush of a Facebook like or a Twitter reply, and these accusations are often expressed most forcefully by the most avid users of the technologies they rail against. The tech giants are hoovering up our personal data for nefarious purposes, and recklessly deploying algorithms that are opaque, riddled with bias, and diluting the agency and humanity of a population that is increasingly dumbed down - incapable of paying attention to anything for more than ten seconds, unless it\u2019s a video game or a blockbuster movie.\n\nTechlash encompasses artificial intelligence too, which is either feared or ridiculed \u2013 or both. Either it is about to take over all human jobs and then destroy the species in a robot apocalypse, or it\u2019s an over-hyped fad: a mere conjuring trick using statistics and human slave labour.\n\nIn fact, the 2010s were AI\u2019s decade of wonders. In 2011, IBM\u2019s Watson beat the best human players of the US TV quiz show \u201cJeopardy\u201d - an amazing achievement, and the gracious human loser gave us the memorable phrase \u201cI for one welcome our new robot overlords.\u201d The next year saw the Big Bang in AI, when Geoff Hinton and others figured out how to get machine learning to work in AI \u2013 and in particular deep learning, which is (to over-simplify) a rehabilitation of neural networks. What made this possible was the huge increases in the available compute power and data, and what it made possible was superhuman facial recognition, and seriously impressive search, mapping, and translation services. (The often lauded recommendation services are still a bit crap, though.)\n\nTwo things which will have huge impact during the 2020s showed signs of their promise during the 2010s. Self-driving cars went from being rubbish, to being deployed in a pilot service carrying members of the public in self-driving taxis with nobody in the front seats. Smartphones went from rare in 2010 to globally ubiquitous in 2019. The digital assistants in these phones and other devices (Siri, Cortana, Alexa and co) are basic today, but Google Duplex offers a glimpse of how powerful they will become, and some of this promise will be realised in the 2020s.\n\nIn the next few days you will probably read many predictions about what AI will and will not be able to do by 2030. Here are a few contributions.\n\nThere will be another major breakthrough in AI, similar in impact to 2012\u2019s Big Bang\n\nResearchers will work out how to combine symbolic AI, or good old-fashioned AI with machine learning\n\nMachines will start to display signs of common sense\n\nWe will still be a long way off artificial general intelligence, or AGI \u2013 a machine with all the cognitive abilities of an adult human\n\nThe business world will move beyond pilots to large-scale implementation, and start catching up with the tech giants\n\nEurope will try harder, and might even start to crack the current US-China AI duopoly\n\nBy 2030, self-driving cars will be a common sight in most cities, but in taxis rather than privately-owned cars\n\nMany taxi drivers, van drivers and lorry drivers will be looking for new careers\n\nYou will have conversations with your phone, and send your digital assistant off into the net to do errands for you\n\n5G will make the internet of things a reality, so predictive maintenance will mean that things will break down and collapse less often, and there will be less waste\n\nVirtual and augmented reality will work quite well, and it will be interesting to see whether lots of people spend much of their lives in simulated worlds\n\nAI simulations will enable better decisions to be made in business, science and government\n\nWe may finally be able to turn sick care into health care. There\u2019s a decent chance we will cure many types of cancer, and the idea of ending ageing may well be in the mainstream\n\nAnd yes, we will have flying cars.\n\nSome of this may seem fanciful, and predicting the future is, of course, impossible. But here\u2019s the thing which most people still miss. When you read the forecasts elsewhere in the coming days, ask yourself whether they appear to be taking exponential growth into account.\n\nMoore\u2019s Law is the observation that computers get twice as powerful every 18 months or so. People often say it is dead or dying, but really it is evolving \u2013 which is what it has done since the phenomenon was first observed in 1965. Moore\u2019s Law gives us exponential growth, and exponential growth is astonishingly powerful. If you had one unit of computing power in 2010, you will have 125 units in 2020. How many will you have in 2030? Believe it or not, you will have 8,000 units.\n\nChange has never been this fast. And it will never be this slow again. Hang onto your hat: the 2020s are going to be astonishing.", "keywords": [], "meta_keywords": ["change", "climate change", "social media", "tech", "artificial intelligence", "calum chace", "cognitive world"], "tags": [], "authors": ["Calum Chace"], "publish_date": "Thu Dec 31 00:00:00 2020", "summary": "", "article_html": "", "meta_description": "The 2010s were an ironic decade. Most metrics show that human welfare improved at an extraordinary rate, but many of us seem to be fearful or resentful, or both. The world is far richer in 2020 than it was in 2010, and global inequality is declining. There is still plenty of poverty...", "meta_lang": "en", "meta_favicon": "", "meta_data": {"viewport": "width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1,maximum-scale=2,user-scalable=yes", "apple-itunes-app": "app-id=588647136", "fb": {"app_id": 123694841080850}, "og": {"site_name": "Forbes", "title": "Change Has Never Been This Fast. It Will Never Be This Slow Again", "image": "https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/600x315/https%3A%2F%2Fspecials-images.forbesimg.com%2Fimageserve%2F5e0be4cdab5be6000762ba71%2F960x0.jpg", "updated_time": "2019-12-31T19:47:22-05:00", "url": "https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2020/12/31/change-has-never-been-this-fast-it-will-never-be-this-slow-again/", "description": "The 2010s were an ironic decade. Most metrics show that human welfare improved at an extraordinary rate, but many of us seem to be fearful or resentful, or both. The world is far richer in 2020 than it was in 2010, and global inequality is declining. There is still plenty of poverty...", "type": "article"}, "twitter": {"site": "@forbes", "card": "summary_large_image", "title": "Change Has Never Been This Fast. It Will Never Be This Slow Again", "description": "The 2010s were an ironic decade. Most metrics show that human welfare improved at an extraordinary rate, but many of us seem to be fearful or resentful, or both. The world is far richer in 2020 than it was in 2010, and global inequality is declining. There is still plenty of poverty...", "image": "https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/600x300/https%3A%2F%2Fspecials-images.forbesimg.com%2Fimageserve%2F5e0be4cdab5be6000762ba71%2F960x0.jpg", "creator": "@cognitiveworld"}, "description": "The 2010s were an ironic decade. Most metrics show that human welfare improved at an extraordinary rate, but many of us seem to be fearful or resentful, or both. The world is far richer in 2020 than it was in 2010, and global inequality is declining. There is still plenty of poverty...", "keywords": "change, climate change, social media, tech, artificial intelligence, calum chace, cognitive world", "author": "Calum Chace", "news_keywords": "change, climate change, social media, tech, artificial intelligence, calum chace, cognitive world", "article": {"publisher": "https://www.facebook.com/forbes", "author": "Calum Chace", "section": "Innovation", "section_url": "https://www.forbes.com/ai/", "id": "blogAndPostId/blog/post/5907-5e0be4abfe66060007e55832", "published": "2020-01-01", "modified": "2020-01-01"}}, "canonical_link": "https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2020/12/31/change-has-never-been-this-fast-it-will-never-be-this-slow-again/"}