The future of the future
Jose Luis explained what will happen in the next four decades, about the future of the future. He is part of the millenium project, which is the futuristic part of the United Nations. In this project they explain how growth is accelerating. For instance, UK took 58 years to double its GDP two centuries ago, but China nowadays takes only 7 years to achieve the same objective (growth of the growth).
Cordeiro is professor at the Singularity University, where he teaches technological singularity.
The singularity is the moment when the artificial intelligence reaches the human intelligence. When singularity is achieved (between 2029 and 2045), man will become immortal. This concept was popularised by Ray Kurzweil (MIT), which explained Moore´s Law and how computer processors are becoming faster and smaller each day.
Today changes are not linear: they are exponential. Five years ago, Jose Luis Cordeiro sequenced his human genome. As changes are exponential, the costs and the time to do this process will decrease a lot this next years. He believes that in the next ten years everybody will sequence his/her genome. In the future, medicine will be personalized, preventing lot of diseases.
Moreover, he remarked that we must go from manufacturing to mindfacturing, from PDVSA to Disney, from Juan Valdez (Colombia) to Starbucks. Where is the business? In mindfacturing.
The Stone Age did not end because the lack of stones, so the Oil Age will not end because the lack of oil. Our brain is the most valuable asset.
3 waves of Alvin Toffler:
- Agricultural Revolution (natural resources)
- Industrial Revolution (industrial resources)
- Knowledge Revolution (human resources)
Quoting science-fiction writer Arthur Clark, if a scientist says that something is possible, he is probably right. If he says that something is impossible, he is certainly wrong.
Is aging a disease? Maybe a curable one? Today there are mice that live 3 times the normal ones. We are part of the first immortal generation. We are going to face, in Corediro’s words, the “death of the death”.
Our genome fits in 3 Gigabytes (not too much). What about the brain? Nowadays computer are a million time faster than our brain. The only difference is that the brain has more neurones than computer transitors, but this will change soon. Robots will have feelings. In South Korea are discussing to give human rights to the robots. It’s important to remark cultural differences. For exemple, dragons are bad in the west and good in the east (the same happens with robots). Is not Robots Or Humans… but Robots And Humans!
To conclude, Cordeiro said that the crisis in China may be consider as a danger or an opportunity.** We live in the most exciting time in human history and we have to choose between the gates of heaven or hell.** Cordeiro’s encourages us to choose the firsts ones.