By Steve Wells, Rohit Talwar, Alexandra Whittington, Helena Calle, and April Koury

In the face of widespread and accelerating automation, how can we reskill society and create new job opportunities?

Creating Businesses and Employment in a Turbulent Economy

The Big Reboot is a two-part exploration of how we prepare society for the potential impacts of technological disruption, job automation, and the continuing shifts taking place in the global economy. In this first discussion we look at practical strategies for i) raising skills and digital literacy across society, and ii) generating the new ventures and job openings required to fill the employment gap left by those that are displaced by technology.

We are reaching peak hysteria in the debate about the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation on tasks, roles, jobs, employment, and incomes. On an almost weekly basis, we see projections of wholesale job devastation through automation. These doom-laden forecasts vie with outlandishly optimistic forecasts from AI vendors and consultants suggesting that millions of new roles will be created because of our smart new tech toys. In practice, we are simply too early in its evolution to have any sense of the likely outcomes of this Fourth Industrial Revolution—the latest wave of change driven by exponentially advancing technologies.

Automation and the Economy—Five Key Uncertainties

Right now, the world is legitimately clueless about five key factors:

• How far and how deep will these technologies actually penetrate over the next five to twenty years?
• What level of opportunities could be generated in the new sectors and businesses that might emerge?
• How might the nature of work, roles, jobs, and workplaces evolve over time?
• How might governments, businesses, and individuals respond and what is the potential for innovative job generation solutions to emerge?
• What might the net impact of these accelerating waves of technological change be on employment and the economic prospects for the individual?

So, getting beyond the debate and the hype, as futurists we believe we should be redirecting our energies across government, business, and society, challenging old assumptions and limiting paradigms to conduct previously unthinkable experiments to help us prepare for the next two decades. Hence, our focus is on designing and testing solutions for a range of possible “next futures” and for the scenarios of what might follow them. Why? In our view, it seems naive and dangerous to rely on the alternative strategy of simply betting on the hope that growth and innovation will save us.

Thinking the Unthinkable

We argue that now is the time to be thinking the unthinkable about: 1) preparing the workforce for an uncertain future; 2) creating new jobs and businesses; 3) providing for the unemployed in a fair, dignified, and straightforward manner that supports their search for opportunities; and 4) funding the transitions from today’s economy to future ones. To help stimulate action, with this chapter we build on some of the concepts presented in our recent books Beyond Genuine Stupidity—Ensuring AI Serves Humanity and The Future Reinvented—Reimagining Life, Society, and Business to present a range of experimental ideas in the first two of those domains—education and job creation.

We caveat these ideas with the acknowledgment that they too might only be temporary solutions in a fast-changing world. Some believe that we might be seeing the beginning of the end of jobs as the primary means of feeding our families and that, within 20 years, AI may have transformed the notions of work and employment as we know them. Others are suggesting that the economy will be reinvented by exponential technologies such as AI, 3D/4D printing, synthetic biology, lab grown food, vertical farming, autonomous vehicles, hyperloop transport, and smart materials. The belief is that these technologies are creating a level of societal abundance that eliminates the need to work and breaks the link between our physical earnings and our access to goods and services. All this may be true and will be the subject of future explorations. For now, we want to focus on the next 10-20 years and a world where work, employment, and incomes are still likely to be central tenets of economic management. So, what are some of the core experiments we could be pursuing in the fields of adult education and job creation?

Educating Society

What’s becoming abundantly clear is that at the national, business, and individual level, what will determine our ability to survive and thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape are our levels of education and big picture awareness. Our capacity to navigate a turbulent landscape will be driven by a number of factors: 1) our understanding of how the world is changing; 2) our capacity to think, reason, and solve problems; 3) our ability to learn new skills and approaches quickly; 4) our mastery of life skills such as collaboration, scenario thinking, coping with uncertainty, and handling complexity; and 5) our digital literacy. On the latter, countries like Finland are leading the way with their innovative free online offering designed to teach the entire nation about AI.

Collectively, these skills will help us move from role to role in a world where job tenures are shortening but lifespans could be increasing. They will also help us start our own businesses and take greater responsibility for our own livelihoods. This is something that could become an increasing priority as medium to large organizations slim down their workforces through competitive pressures and automation. We can see a growing onus on small to medium enterprises to provide the bulk of employment across the economy. Hence, some of the key policy experiments we are advocating are outlined below.

Future Immersion Intensives—It is now common for business executives to attend immersive study tours to meet new ventures in emerging sectors or take part in transformative one- to two-week courses at institutions like Singularity University. These are designed to accelerate “mindset change” in these organizations by providing a crash course in the ideas shaping the future and the technologies that might deliver them. A similar, lower cost, society wide option would be to create a range of such programs ranging in length from a weekend to a month. They would combine business visits, lectures, projects, and discussions with innovators, change agents, and entrepreneurs. The programs would be aimed at those in work, the unemployed, students, parents, teachers, and those who realize their business has to change. The faculty could be drawn from business, academia, and those in the local community who are retired or unemployed but have a desire to serve and grow at the same time.

Acknowledging the Shift to a Graduate Level Workforce—Automation seems highly likely to reduce the number of lower and mid-level skilled jobs in the economy. We can see a scenario where, within five to ten years, 80% of the new jobs created will require a graduate level education or equivalent. This means a cornerstone of any employment policy has to be to ensure we are readjusting the skills and knowledge base in the country at every level. In particular, this means encouraging and incentivizing adults to enter into continuing education while still in employment. Equally it means confidence building programs for the unemployed, basic literacy support for those who have been left behind, and a massive expansion of access schemes to allow those with few or no formal qualifications to transition into higher education.

Expanding Access—Funding will always be an issue—but the cost of inaction and a poorly educated workforce could far outweigh a large-scale expansion in provision. This could be delivered in innovative ways—including encouraging firms to sponsor local education programs either through direct funding, providing tutors, or allowing the use of their unused meeting and training room facilities during the day, in the evenings, and at weekends. Vacant facilities in schools, colleges, and universities could also be used in the same way.

A key part of the learning agenda here would be to take people into new and emerging businesses to help them understand the changing nature of work and workplaces and learn about the skills they require now and in the future. Support systems could be provided for communities to self-organize education and skills programs, sourcing tutors locally, and using attendee ratings and feedback to determine who best serves the needs of local communities. Clearly, pump priming might be required for areas where no such local tutoring talent exists. The key is to try a range of experiments, share the experiences, and scale the best practice models for different types and size of local community.

Abolishing Student Debt and Tuition Fees—In the UK, students are typically finishing higher education with debts of £30,000—£60,000 and, in many cases, poor job prospects and relatively low morale. This is the very group that needs to be inspired to create new ideas, services, and businesses for a changing world. Hence, a cancellation of student debt and individually paid tuition fees might help make it more attractive to go into higher education—especially if meaningful student grants were re-introduced.

Training and Education Salaries—For those who are made redundant or struggling to find work in their current sector, an option might be to retrain for a new career or sector. Here, a government funded salary could be payable for the duration of a training program or degree course.

Associations and Guilds with Training Salaries—To help deliver on the above retraining requirements, new salaried models of vocational training could be developed by evolving existing professional bodies and creating new ones. Their primary purpose would be to help develop the skills and personal competencies required for the new world of work. These programs would combine work-specific training, work placements, and the development of general work, business, and social skills. A training salary would be paid throughout the retraining period to take away the associated stress of taking time out to learn new skills.

Incentivizing Learning—Continuing professional development might have to become compulsory or be incentivized through the tax system to encourage individuals to keep acquiring skills to help them move from job to job.

Investment in Job Creation

Alongside reskilling the nation and changing mindsets, a parallel process is required to help stimulate new jobs, and to grow the businesses and industry sectors that will provide them. A number of potential experiments are described below.

Start-Up Salaries—Those starting new businesses could be offered a government top-up to ensure that employer and worker salaries are payable at a reasonable level for the first few years, enabling these firms to focus on their growth and development through a crucial period.

Investment in Future Sectors—The scale of competition between nations is intensifying and there is a clear belief that technologies like AI, blockchain, the Internet of Things, synthetic biology, and quantum computing will be the key battlegrounds. Hence, a major expansion in public funding for research and development across a range of domains is required to ensure the country is identifying and creating jobs in the key science, technology, and innovation sectors of the future. The scale of public investment will need to keep pace with global leaders to ensure the nation can compete in the future.

Laying the Foundations for the Future—The industries of the future are likely to be highly data intensive, global, and demanding of superfast broadband to help them stay connected and responsive in an always on world. To accelerate the attraction of these new sectors, governments will also need to ensure that they are delivering broadband infrastructures which match the best in the world.

New Models of Start-Up and Early Stage Venture Investment Funds—The new models would see government matching the investments made into these funds by individuals and business. Investment would be open to anyone globally who wanted to back start-ups through these funds, which would take a share in the equity of each business they invest in. Individual investments into the funds could range from £1 to £1 million with no special tax reliefs. To reduce administrative costs and speed up the process, the investments would be made using a standard model and contract structure, with high levels of technology support to manage the process and report to investors on the progress and needs of each business.

The investor community would help do the due diligence on the potential investments, and those investment opportunities with the greatest employment potential would be prioritized. A condition of receiving money is that the investee business would invest a proportion of future profits in such funds every year. Any profits received from the investee businesses and from the sale of such companies would be rolled up into the fund for the first few years until the funds are established as robust.

The administrative staff running the fund could be resourced using venture capital fund secondees provided as part of their firm’s corporate responsibility endeavors. The more junior staff could be provided by consultancy, legal, and accounting firms looking to provide innovative training experiences for their younger employees.

Compulsory Corporate Investment Funds—For a fixed period of time, while the economy is in transition, every business could be mandated to invest a fixed proportion of profits to help with start-up creation via the funds described above.

Investing Corporate Cash Surpluses—For those holding large cash surpluses, a similar approach would be to mandate those companies to invest a proportion of that cash into national investment funds. These would again back new ventures, early stages firms, and, in particular, more established businesses looking to grow. This could accelerate job creation on a massive scale and put corporate surpluses to use in the economy.

Total Employment Responsibility—Under this model, each firm would be responsible for ensuring a certain level of employment in the economy, calculated by AI systems based on the previous year’s revenue as a proportion of total private sector turnover. This might be delivered through direct employment, subcontractors, and suppliers who work solely for you, or the creation of jobs in new businesses which you support.

Employers’ Collectives—Firms could pool their total employment responsibility commitments into collectives—paying a fee per job to be created. The collectives would effectively take on the responsibility of starting and supporting start-ups, and providing grants, loans, and equity.

Deferred Redundancy—In this model, workers made redundant would remain on a firm’s payroll at full pay until they find a new job. This would incentivize firms to provide training and job finding support to those who they make redundant.

Public Service Expansion—Across the world, most public services such as education, healthcare, transport, environment management, and emergency services are struggling to meet their own responsibilities and public expectations. These services can all reasonably expect greater future service demand in a period of upheaval and transition. Improving the quality of public services could help raise morale across society. The focus of these new jobs could be targeted on public-facing activities. Staff would be on fixed term contracts with strong continuous learning opportunities that encourage the individuals to acquire higher-level capabilities and move on into the private sector.

Investment in the Arts and Social Sciences—In a world where technology could play a much bigger role in traditionally supported professions, we need to think laterally about where human roles will still be prevalent. The performing and creative arts are likely to remain sectors where we will want to see humans in action rather than robots. Equally, the social sciences require strong analytical and intuitive capabilities which are currently beyond the scope of AI. Furthermore, the addition of unique human perspectives is often what makes social science insights more profound and compelling. Hence, both these sectors could be key job creators if we can fund their expansion and the growth in the number of associated higher education places made available.

Embracing Experimentation

These are just a handful of the many ideas we have been exploring for how to address the challenges presented by a world in transition. There are no answers at present—only ideas that warrant investigation and experimentation to see how we can reskill society and create new job opportunities in a world where the individual is still expected to take responsibility for the wellbeing and shelter of their dependents.

The second part of this series will look at ideas for supporting the unemployed and will then go on to deal with the critical question of how all the various ideas and initiatives might be funded. For those who are particularly concerned about such issues and the impacts on debt and taxation, we would also ask them to consider what the cost of inaction might be. It is also worth bearing in mind that if a nation can pioneer innovative solutions in each of these areas, the results could be attractive to other nations—creating new service industry opportunities.

• How do we persuade business leaders and politicians to debate the thinkable and the unthinkable openly?
• What support might business seek from government to create a localized job creation ecosystem?
• What approaches could be tested to help businesses engage in job creation?

This article is excerpted from A Very Human Future – Enriching Humanity in a Digitized World. You can order the book here.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-454880/ by geralt

By Steve Wells, Rohit Talwar, April Koury, Alexandra Whittington, and Maria Romero

How might artificial intelligence impact daily life from dating to disputes and personal development?

Without a doubt, artificial intelligence (AI) has become the hottest topic in town. A combination of breathless excitement and near-paralyzing fear are driving the debate and countless—often ill-informed—predictions about how the technology will revamp our future lives. While it is far too early in AI’s evolution to say where it’s going or where we might end up, it is already penetrating our lives. From smartphones and dating sites to web searches and driverless vehicles—AI is becoming part of the fabric of life.

Over the next few years, business, home, and schooling could be completely different with AI on the scene. At its core, AI is software or hardware that learns—and it could become programmed to learn mostly about us, its users. The technology is being applied to learn our habits, our likes, and our relationship patterns. Just as Netflix uses an algorithm to suggest films you might watch, a similar “Lifestyle AI” could help choose your wardrobe, your next meal, your job, and your romantic partner. While it all sounds a bit like science fiction, the capabilities of AI tools and the range of applications are growing exponentially. Indeed, by 2020 AI could be present in some form in everything we do. By 2030, AI is likely to have infiltrated our lives in much the same way as smartphones, the internet, and global travel are now taken for granted. So how might AI change our day-to-day existence? Here are fifteen ways our lives could be different in the future as a result of AI.

1. Better Dating and Partner Selection

From one off dates to life partners, AI could access and evaluate the array of big data being amassed about us every day. The matching algorithms could consider everything about us including our social media activity, communication styles, interests, dislikes, DNA profile, medical records, walking speed, aspirations, and relationship history. The systems would help find the right intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual match, maybe even determining how long a marriage is likely to last and advising on whether we should even consider longer term relationships.

2. Anticipating your “Party Sick” Fridays

Some companies are exploring the idea of monitoring employees’ social media activities to determine if they may be partying a little too hard tonight and thus likely to call in “sick” tomorrow. Knowing in advance would allow for cover to be arranged—this is of particular interest to customer contact centers which need to maintain certain staffing levels to achieve their service targets. Indeed, employers might even offer staff “party days,” where they can accrue extra hours which can then be used to sleep it off the morning after a big night out without it affecting their pay or employment records. The entire set of activities described above could all be conducted by AI with no human intervention.

3. Managing our Mental Health

There is a growing incidence of pre-clinical and clinical level mental health issues across the developed world. From workplace stress to full breakdowns and a range of other conditions, people are struggling to cope with the pressures of modern life. To help address this, AI tools on our phones and computers could monitor everything from our speech patterns and keyboard strokes, to an array of medical indicators captured through body worn devices and implanted sensors.

From early detection of possible issues to providing background guidance during stressful calls and conversations, AI could help manage our mental health. More advanced systems might go so far as to shut down all functionality of our phone and not re-activate it until we have done some meditation or taken a walk. The system could provide our doctors with regular updates on our condition and call in special medical assistance in emergencies.

4. Making Good Decisions

Our AI could become a sort of conscience, reminding us of right and wrong at every turn. This could work on both the individual level (“Should I lie on this job application?”) and at an organizational scale (“Should we rip off this customer?”). Not only might AI be deployed as a form of monitoring or “truth detecting” technology that sets off alarms at the source of any mistruth, but data could also become so ubiquitous and verifiable that it won’t pay to lie. Along the same lines, crimes of all kinds could become much more difficult to commit. Indeed, law enforcement could eventually get bored and look for something else to do—possibly investing more time in strengthening community engagement.

5.  Wardrobe Management

The in store or “on App” AI mirror could show you what you might look like in different colors and sizes of the same dress and under different lighting conditions, simulating work and leisure settings. Knowing your wardrobe, usage patterns, accessorizing approach, and changing fashion interests, your AI could call ahead to the store to have a range of suitable items waiting for you with a human or robotic personal shopper to assist you. When wracked with doubt over whether to make a purchase, your AI could call in the advice of your friends for trusted instant opinions.

6. Mandatory Personal Growth

The ability of AI to help us understand ourselves and learn could lead to lives filled with learning. The “unexamined life” could become obsolete—it may one day be legally impossible to avoid the constant Big Brother data gathering and feedback about one’s daily progress against officially defined or personally set physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual development goals. The absence of such goals or tracking information might indicate antisocial tendencies. Everyone might be expected to make full use of AI to become better students, employees, and friends. The gathering of data to improve one’s performance in every area would be viewed as a must-do, otherwise, what’s the point of collecting it—or indeed—what’s the point of living in an organized society?

7.  The End of Solitude

The days when someone could take a few days off the grid and disconnect from everything may be coming to an end. For AI to really know its user, the blanket of visible and hidden data collecting sensors that enshroud us must be on and working everywhere and around-the- clock. While you could be physically alone, your digital footprint could reveal your whereabouts in a microsecond. Privacy issues may arise if terms and conditions are not properly established, and security systems will remain vulnerable to hacking. Even in this scenario, it is very likely that you could still be “allowed” to voluntarily turn off your AI, but that alone would be a red flag that might trigger further and more in-depth scrutiny of your behaviors.

8. Legal Dispute Resolution

Many current cases could be directed away from the courts to be resolved by AI judges. For example, in divorce adjudications, employment tribunals, industrial injury claims, and many customer-supplier disputes, judges today are largely applying standard formulae to determine settlements. With AI, a much larger volume of precedents could be considered in a fraction of a second to find the cases that best resemble the current one. Hence greater consistency could then be achieved across the country in the resolution of similar disputes.

In more severe cases such as robbery, murder, or violent crimes, data could be collected and analyzed from the Internet of things (IoT) array of sensors built into everyday objects such as furniture, clothing, and electronic appliances. If the TV room surveillance camera, the sensors in the sofa, and your mobile phone all say you committed the crime, then AI might be able to resolve the case faster and more cheaply than a traditional court room. A jury might still be involved, but the AI would be providing them with more consistent, up-to-date, and precise guidance than any human could ever hope to achieve.

9. Home Management

Consumer AI will enable wave after wave of automatable functions in the home. When combined with appliances, AI could make housework and household management seamless. AI-powered apps, which allow the oven to communicate with the refrigerator and the pantry robot, would act like home chefs. Furthermore, instant replenishment of food and supplies would mean never running out of anything again. Cleaning could be run on appliance to appliance (A2A) scheduling, which robotic cleaners conduct almost completely independently of humans. One of the advantages would be a reduction in household waste, as AI would aim both for efficient use of all products and to perfect the recycling habits of the consumer. Putting the household in better balance with the ecosystem and releasing humans from housework could deliver major benefits in terms of sustainability, time saving, and less domestic stress—at the cost of constant in-home surveillance.

10. The “More Time” Illusion

With all the assistance that AI could provide at work and home, humans might suddenly find themselves with an abundance of leisure time. Nevertheless, it seems more likely that new expectations could become set and that new activities would emerge. However, there may need to be a trade-off: Just as the introduction of mobile phones made us all available on the go so we could be more productive and “always on,” it also invaded our private and recreational time. Hopefully, the new activity choices would be driven by passion, curiosity, and inspiration rather than productivity.

11. Super Personalization

Previous industrial revolutions have favored mass production over personalization, mainly because of the costs of customization. With the introduction of AI and 3D printing to manufacturing processes, a new generation of adaptable production machinery and control software would lower the cost of delivering more customizable products. Today, Amazon and Google use search algorithms to prioritize the results that they believe best match your digital profile. In future, AI could order a unique cereal that would match your desires and diet requirements for the following two weeks. Adoption of AI could enable individually tailored products and services to replace generalized market segmentations.

12. Community Building

Communities may be better organized since AI could monitor and analyze the “health” of the community—covering everything from environmental indicators through to levels of crime, engagement in public spaces, and discussions on web boards and social media. Community planners could harness the intelligence of AI for optimal planning, ensuring that public works and services are available where and when residents need them. For example, AI mapping might help planners identify and predict faster that an area with a rapidly growing population will soon lack sufficient access to schools, health facilities, libraries, and even a fresh food markets. Community managers might send mobile classrooms, GPs, libraries, and fresh food trucks to those areas, or help reorganize the community to self-provision some of the missing essentials.

13. Environmental Monitoring

Environmental conditions may improve by using AI and sensors connected through the IoT to help monitor the local and even global environment. Sensors may constantly feed AI software that records and analyzes the latest local environmental data on factors such as air and water quality. Based on AI predictions and recommendations, commuters may be redirected to public transport or to use reduced emission roads on certain days. In addition, trees and greenery might be planted in specific areas to reduce soil erosion and decrease potential flooding, while entire cities may be redesigned to lessen overall environmental impact on the planet.

14. Personal Travel Agent

Artificial intelligence could be the brain behind future travel and transport planning. Smart tools might evaluate travel preferences in different circumstances and match them against the travel options available. Should I drive, take an Uber, or the train? Should I fly, and where from and to? What connections do I need to reach my destination? How can I make all my business meetings on Friday and still be home in time for my daughter’s school play? What is the greenest and least environmentally impactful route I can take? Having created a bespoke itinerary, the AI could complete the necessary reservations, submitting the personal data required to confirm a booking. Not only would AI manage that process, it may also be at the center of the experience where autonomous vehicles control the journey. Whether car, train, bus, plane, the AI would hopefully keep transport system users safer from accidents—where human error has long been the predominant cause.

15. Education Revolution

For a long time now, the criticism of many primary and secondary education systems around the world has been that they are preparing students to pass examinations and not for the world of work they will be joining; especially a world that is evolving rapidly. Artificial intelligence could replace the technical information delivery role currently undertaken by teachers. The AI system could monitor each student on a range of subjects designed to prepare them for the future world of work. No longer will all students work to the same or similar curriculum through all 11 years of primary and secondary education. Instead they would have a carefully planned and constantly monitored, evolving, and personalized program.

Personal curricula would be designed to stretch and develop each student with the skills he/she needs for the expected types of jobs or further education landscape they might encounter at 16 years of age. Students will still need someone in the classroom, but maybe the human “teacher” is responsible for helping advise on research strategies and problem-solving approaches, encouraging group work and collaboration, nurturing individuals, and providing emotional support. The primary role of teachers would be helping students develop the social and meta-learning skills required to enable each to play a full role in the emerging world—served by the machines—thus ensuring every individual a very human future.

• How do you see AI most impacting your life?
• What new possibilities could open up for you with AI?
• What do you hope won’t change as AI penetrates every aspect of human activity?

This article is excerpted from Beyond Genuine Stupidity – Ensuring AI Serves Humanity. You can order the book here.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-647206/ by geralt

By Rohit Talwar and Alexandra Whittington

How can the travel, hospitality, and business events sectors envision and prepare for the inevitable surprises of the next five years?

In the face of growing global uncertainty, the next five years could bring a dramatic decline as customers cut back on spending plans. Equally, disruptive new technologies, growth in rapidly developing emerging markets, new industry sectors, and the relentless pursuit of business revenues could see the travel industry break all previous records. For the travel, hospitality, and business events sectors, we can get rightly excited about growth opportunities. The difficulty comes when dealing with uncertainty and trying to cater for a range of possible scenarios from boom to global meltdown.

The harsh reality is that change can happen quickly and leave firms in a state of shock, with demand suddenly nosediving because of broader “unforeseen” factors in the business world. So, what are some of the biggest “inevitable surprises” on the horizon that could hit us any time in the next few years, what could they mean for the firms involved, and how can we prepare for them rather than be blindsided when they hit us? This article describes eight surprise developments that will require a timely response from the travel, hospitality, and events world between now and 2023. Is your organization ready?

Many of the top futurists on LinkedIn and Twitter say that they can “future-proof” your business or confer “strategic foresight” to your planning, which will save you from blindly guessing about the future, as your competitors do. The fact is that no futurist—or any other brand advisor, thought-leader or management consultant—can completely eliminate surprises. However, what futurists can teach clients to do is embrace the unpredictability of the current moment and allow imagination and vision to infuse business planning with greater versatility.

Critically, good futurists can impart some of the core skills required to help managers and leaders spot early signs of possible change and prepare for a range of different paths to the future from the present day. As an example of the practical application of future thinking, this chapter will demonstrate how, in the travel and hospitality industries, surprises do not necessarily mean something negative waits around the corner, but can actually open up a series of opportunities for the more agile and innovative businesses.

A surprise can delight us, like an unexpected party thrown in our honor, or it can frighten us, like suddenly happening upon hazardous road conditions while driving. The future will inevitably serve up both pleasant and unpleasant surprises—but spotting individual future developments themselves is not the most critical task for future-focused leaders. Of course, it depends on the nature of the event, but the most important element of a surprise party, or having to suddenly slam on the brakes, is the quality and timeliness of the response. As futurists, our expertise lies in foresight—not in a precise, fortune-telling way, but as a feel for how conditions are changing, as an ability to explore the different possible scenarios that may play out, and as a well-tuned sensitivity to potential fluctuations in key factors shaping the near- and long-term future.

This chapter presents eight of the biggest potential surprises awaiting in the next few years for the travel, hospitality, and meetings sectors. Even though many of these developments might appear to have a touch of sci-fi about them for those who have not had them on their radar, they are all based on solid evidence we have identified in our latest trend and scenario research.

1. The Rise of Surveillance Capitalism

Much favored by the large technology platforms such as Google and Facebook, this is a business model that seeks to provide services intuitively, based on the observed activities, patterns, and preferences of the customer, as determined through analysis of the data they have provided. Each search we do, each posting we make, and each article or cat picture we “like” generates a wealth of information, which can be mined and interpreted using sophisticated big data analysis tools.

Hence, as a way of providing a service, surveillance capitalism rests on the ability to obtain consent to monitor customers. There is growing awareness that consumer-facing businesses with sophisticated technology infrastructures can amass and interpret a scale of big data that allows them to develop intimate knowledge of us as individuals. The concern is that they will then use those insights to manipulate our behavior into making purchase choices. This concept is known as surveillance capitalism.

Almost every business wants to get closer to their customer, and some mistakenly talk about “owning” them—few of us like the idea of being treated as the possession of those we buy goods and services from. The question is how far business should go in pursuit of deeper customer insight? The situation is changing rapidly in two diametrically opposing directions. Firstly, there are numerous tools and technologies which already allow for the immediate capture and analysis of our individual data and for the subsequent generation of personalized customer responses. These include GPS, sensors, mobile, and biometric recognition, artificial intelligence (AI), and predictive analytics.

For example, HSBC bank has implemented ATMs based on facial recognition, while Citi and Barclay’s increasingly request voiceprints to identify their customers instantaneously and intuitively. There is an implicit expectation that customers appreciate and benefit from the implied surveillance, and as long as transparency and privacy are prioritized, customers seem willing to use such services. In the next five years, it is possible that personal drones, our online “digital twins,” and highly advanced biometrics will be considered essential to providing good customer service. The convenience of voice- or face-based hotel check-out, for example, should strike the right balance between privacy and customization, and avoid the abuse of personal data at all costs.

Concerns over the potential misuse of our data are driving the idea of personal privacy protection. A range of tools are coming to market which would act as intelligent guardians of our data, allowing third parties to only access that which they really need. Such services increasingly question why a meeting organizer or hotel actually needs any of our personal details. A simple numeric identifier could allow us to access the event or a bedroom so long as payment has been made. Such a response to the excesses of surveillance capitalism could seriously undermine the data-centric customer personalization strategies being adopted by many in travel, meetings, and hospitality.

2. Consumerism in Decline?

This potential surprise can be inferred or extrapolated from a range of recent market trends. For example, in the UK, leisure attraction manager Merlin Entertainments has reported a decline in visitor numbers—while the operator of Legoland, the London Eye, and Madame Tussauds attributes some of the decline to recent terror attacks, the bulk is due to longer term tourism trends. In the US, previously stable restaurant chains like Applebee’s are failing, while malls and retail are in general decline, with up to 1,000 stores closing each week and a massive wave of closures executed in 2017 by the likes of Gymboree, Radio Shack, Macy’s, JCPenney, Sears, and Kmart. The closures are not fully covered by increased online sales. In response, analysts and investors are beginning to wonder if encouraging consumerism is perhaps no longer a panacea for a slumping economy.

In part, the trend may be driven by a movement away from ownership towards usership, and a growing preference for experiences over physical goods. However, perhaps a bigger phenomenon is the relative demise in the spending power of the middle classes in many mature economies such as the US and the UK. This relative middle class decline has, in many ways, set the stage for a movement away from consumerism and toward frugalism.

Furthermore, today’s Western Millennials are increasingly characterized as dragged down by debt, constrained by low or no wage growth, concerned over poor job stability, and often left with little disposable income. A simple lack of demand is a key driver of this trend. Another driving force is increasing awareness of the impact of constant consumption on fragile ecological systems. Even when conscious consumers buy, they are doing so sparingly.

The sharing economy is a perfect example of young consumers rejecting mass consumption patterns. There are a number of examples emerging which show how a new generation has eschewed the obsession with ownership, such as co-living, where numerous unrelated individuals share a home in dorm-like settings. Others include the popularity of community resource sharing schemes like Streetbank, and ride sharing, which negates the need to own a car.

For the tourism sector, Airbnb room sharing is a demonstration of how new consumers have rejected exclusivity and the trappings of hotels in favor of modest or practical rooms. In particular, Airbnb speaks to the focus of this consumer segment on experiences over materialism—thus the attractions and services of a hotel can pale in comparison to the potentially authentic experience that a guest room in a private home offers. Being able to cater to this type of consumer, particularly at the same time that the luxury contingent continues to be served, is a surprise development many hospitality outlets may not anticipate as key to competitive survival over the next few years. For the meetings sector, this trend towards cost saving, frugality, and a rejection of the apparently lavish or ostentatious could have a direct impact on delegate willingness to attend events, and their resulting expectations if they do.

3. Artificial Intelligence

A prime contender for the hottest and most hyped technology of the 21st century, AI is penetrating every business sector and laying the foundations for a revolution in the delivery of products and services. We have been using AI for some time in smartphones, aircraft autopilots, GPS, and credit scoring software. The range of applications is now set to explode over the next 18 months. For example, new models like Amazon’s My Mix provide an algorithm to serve as an intelligent personal shopper, suggesting items and curating them like a Pinterest page.

Clearly, it will not be long before companies offer customized shipments of items we might like, because their AI knows our shopping and lifestyle habits. This information will typically be gleaned from analysis of our online behavior and from interactions with the intelligent agents that manage and monitor our lives via our smart mobile devices. The effect would be that subscription boxes become predictive, so that apparently unspoken consumer preferences are seamlessly guiding a range of service and product providers that anticipate, rather than meet, our needs.

In tourism and hospitality, a customer’s preferences for products, services, and desired levels of engagement with humans could be gauged, predicted, and catered for before they arrive at a hotel, for example. Imagine a hotel room stocked with all your favorite toiletries and mini-bar snacks, the right number of towels, and pillows fluffed to the appropriate density. Whether our requirements are met via AI or the human touch, the capacity or inability to personalize with such premium perks could enhance or damage the reputation of a hospitality business. Furthermore, automation can provide specialized moments of customer engagement—such as the perfect choice of fragrances, teas, colors, and dynamically changing electronic wallpaper displays—that hopefully strengthen the relationship.

4. Political Uncertainty

Politics has re-emerged from the shadow of global business—recapturing the media spotlight and engulfing the globe—with unpredictability as the essence of all conceivable geopolitical futures. It is important to consider the impact on destinations: Are we on the verge of experiencing a Brexit/Trump/North Korea/ISIS effect? Could a situation arise where isolationism, terrorism, and hostile political and economic conditions could deter customers from doing business in certain locations? Political uncertainty can paralyze planning, financially, and in terms of company morale.

While some worry that Brexit might drive businesses and visitors away from the UK, there are also policy changes in the US that are expected to deter international visitors to conferences and events. These moves could also lead to some businesses moving offshore to make it easier for their foreign staff to function effectively. Strict travel regulations put the hospitality industry in the middle of a potentially chaotic situation. It may become important for hotels to provide a calm oasis away from the stressful, dangerous, and potentially invasive world of international travel, particularly for meetings that bring participants from all over the world.

Heightened geo-political awareness is of particular importance given the constant flow of projections that suggest that future growth in traveler numbers is likely to come from China, as well as those who practice Islam. These regional shifts in dominant traveler profiles mean that, to stay competitive, the meetings and hospitality sectors will need to take their game to the next level in terms of language skills and cultural sensitivity, encompassing diet, religion, protocols, customs, and practices. However, with the rise of nationalism and increased hostility towards “the other” in some quarters, attempts to cater for certain traveler groups by displaying heightened cultural sensitivity could also be perceived as a controversial and unpatriotic gesture.

5. Retail on the Road

A development that might surprise the hotel industry is seeing cars become a shopping venue. We’ve witnessed the rise of Uber as a new model for thinking about transportation; an entire generation has awakened to the fact that it is not that a car you need, but a ride with a customer-centric booking process. The next evolution will be self-driving taxis and other autonomous vehicles, even potentially personal drones and flying cars. Such an “inevitable surprise” could create newfound chunks of time for companies to interact commercially with people riding in connected cabs and self-driving cars.

Car-sharing and taxi app services free up time for consumers to shop when they would normally be driving (or parking) personal cars. Furthermore, free of fixed transportation expenses and significant differences in the average consumer’s disposable income could be on the horizon. Hospitality can certainly benefit from the funds normally used to purchase a car, gasoline, and insurance suddenly being freed up for travel or room stays and recreational activities in hotels.

6. Digital Currency

A growing number of businesses are now accepting digital currencies and the most prominent among them—Bitcoin and Ether—have seen recent price spikes followed by significant reversals. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is valued at US$18,000 per coin, giving it a market capitalization of US$305 billion, surpassing that of VISA. The next biggest is Ethereum with a market capitalization of US$42 billion.

Bitcoin, Ether, and the other digital currencies offer completely new systems for payments, reservations, and billing that the hospitality industry can benefit from. The basic mechanism bypasses traditional centralized financial clearing and accounting systems and their associated charges. The model enables direct financial flows between buyer and seller with the transaction captured in a distributed and highly encoded, and hence, theoretically immutable ledger of record. So, while the Bitcoin exchanges might get hacked, the transactions records are there as an unchangeable matter of permanent record.

There are larger numbers of Bitcoin owners than ever, and with the current economic uncertainties surrounding banking and finance, there is good reason to think the popularity of digital currencies will continue to grow. The rising adoption of these alternatives to credit cards and cash will require firms to develop new technological capacities around the sales of products and services.

Hotels and meetings will need to cater for customers using digital currency wallets, for example. The fact that most reservation systems are based on credit cards suggests this could be a difficult hurdle. Is it possible to imagine holding a room with Bitcoin? A key twist here is the recognition that blockchain, the decentralized ledger that forms the public database of digital currency transactions, can be used for information transfer activities beyond payments and money transfers.

7. Blockchain

There is so much more to digital currencies than just payments. Indeed, over time, blockchain-based contracts could completely automate the reservation process and be applied to a number of other functions including delivery management, ordering, accounting, and record keeping. Self-executing contracts, also known as “smart contracts,” could revolutionize the monitoring of and payment of service provider obligations and reduce the accounts payable workload (and hence workforce) considerably. As an instant and irrefutable record of transactions, blockchain might serve well for tracking room charges and in-room purchases.

Blockchains can be used to track payments, and can also be applied to confirm inventory, validate documents, verify ownership, and notarize the authenticity of a variety of things. For example, Dubai International Airport is pioneering the use of blockchain for digital passports and others are applying them for everything from verification of academic credentials to the tracking of artworks.

The versatility of blockchain in the hotel and meetings accommodations sector could bring major benefits and cause significant disruption, as it stands to impact the workforce most dramatically. Going a step further, with the amount of blockchain and AI development taking place in the financial and technology sectors today, it’s possible that some organizations could be run entirely on algorithms and blockchain within five years. Such distributed autonomous organizations (DAOs) exist only in the form of software and have literally no employees.

8. Immersive Technologies

Cutting-edge immersive visual technologies like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) and shared mobile video content could have a major impact on meetings and hospitality. The ability to record and enhance a range of experiences might compete directly with live meetings and hospitality in the sense that in-company meetings are increasingly virtual and teams, more and more, work remotely.

Whilst there is always likely to be a space for live events, immersive technology will increasingly encroach on the sector’s territory. Evolving from today’s social media, digitally shared video and experiences may constitute the future of many social interactions including work but extending to weddings, family reunions, and other celebrations.

With augmented offerings, it’s not just the visual senses being tempted; soon, brain-computer interfaces could simulate touch, taste, and smell sensations as well. Eventually, digital experiences of food, travel, and even sex could compete with real-life in terms of authenticity and satisfaction. Strong, convincing simulations are something for the hotel world to consider.

Technologies that can create authentic, shared experiences could increasingly become a lower-cost alternative for how people gather in the next five years. If hospitality and meeting providers can utilize these technologies in ways that emphasize the human element, they may find new opportunities for preserving what matters when it comes to meetings and physical travel experiences.

Enhanced awareness of these potential surprises can ensure a timely and effective response, but obviously not everyone outside of the futurist profession knows where and how to look for early signals of surprises on the horizon. Most futurists have a daily practice that involves extensive reading and information gathering on emerging developments, a process known as “horizon scanning.”

Scanning is a research technique that can be applied in any organization; it basically involves building up a wide range of sources of reading material to gain a number of unique, differing, and possibly fringe perspectives on current events, technological developments, and economics, for instance. The information might come from a Twitter feed, a Google alert, or some other form of regularly updated information such as a Facebook group.

Many businesses may feel they cannot devote the time to scanning that a professional futurist might. However, even encouraging staff to allocate five minutes a day to the process can start to build an increasingly rich and diverse set of perspectives on possible changes on the horizon. The important thing is to build a diversity of voices into your organization’s daily information diet.

Diversifying information sources is critical for identifying new developments and growing the “anticipation muscle.” Most importantly, tapping into diverse sources ensures you are attuned to a spectrum of emergent potential surprises in your industry and the broader business environment. Learning to anticipate the future with imagination and an open mind may be the best “future-proofing” money can’t buy.

• How could travel sector businesses exploit their wealth of accumulated personal data without overstepping customers’ boundaries?
• What opportunities may arise from the combinatorial effect of these inevitable surprises?
• How might businesses embrace uncertainty and infuse versatility into their planning and strategy processes?

This article is excerpted from The Future Reinvented – Reimagining Life, Society, and Business. You can order the book here.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-2405207/ by geralt

By Steve Wells, Rohit Talwar, and Alexandra Whittington

How can we ensure that advances in science and technology are harnessed to secure the betterment of all humanity?

If aliens visited Earth, we’d expect to witness world changing technologies with capabilities beyond our imaginations—blurring the boundaries between reality, fiction, and magic. Even without the aliens, artificial intelligence (AI) is displaying the ability and potential for dramatic disruption—promising deep-rooted impacts across sectors, from manufacturing and transport (think driverless vehicles) to education and mental health.

The future applications of AI are limitless and unknowable—we are too early in its evolution to know how far it could replicate and ultimately exceed the human brain’s capabilities. Predicting the reactions of humans, businesses, governments, and civil society is almost impossible as there is limited understanding of AI’s potential or willingness to think deeply about impacts and consequences. Forecasts vary of how many jobs could be replaced or created through the adoption of AI and its sister technologies.

Whether 80% of jobs are eliminated or 50% more created, the new jobs will require advanced skillsets and mindsets. The transition will be dramatic, painful, and require new knowledge and competences. Governments, businesses, and civil society will need to rethink the assumptions and mechanisms that underpin our world. We believe five areas should be central to societal discourse, business strategy, and government policy in order to avoid inevitable shocks and crises: raising technological literacy, ownership of technological innovation, micro-business creation, ensuring technological advances serve humanity, and the consequences to health and well-being.

An ill-prepared society is possibly the biggest risk. To prepare for change we must understand its drivers. Government ministers, business leaders, front line staff, teachers, and parents need to understand the science and technology developments shaping the future and the new ways of thinking, business models, and game-changing ideas they enable. This is a personal responsibility and something firms and governments could address through in-service training and adult education offerings. Free and cheap online platforms already provide the content—the challenge is encouraging access and building it into both personal development and back to work programs.

A deeper understanding of AI in particular would clarify why  so many experts and commentators are raising concerns about ownership of critical future technologies. There are warnings that   a few highly powerful investors and corporations could literally dominate and dictate life on Earth. The fear is that they will develop and own the core technologies and applications that underpin every business activity, government decision, social interaction, and financial exchange. Some argue for strict controls on the extent of such intellectual property (IP) monopolies. Others suggest the IP for critical technologies such as AI should be taken into public ownership and made available for firms of all sizes to access, possibly paying a revenue share into public funds to finance future developments and the costs of basic income and service provision to those displaced by automation.

Today, we have no idea of how many jobs automation will displace over the next decade. We can though make reasonable assumptions that large numbers of tasks will be automated—even in professions such as medicine, law, and finance. It is also hard to estimate the scale of total task replacement. For example, would safer autonomous vehicles mean the beginning of the end for repair garages and auto insurance policies as the manufacturers or even the cars themselves seek to cover their own reduced liabilities?

The one certainty is that people will need to take more responsibility for their incomes through the creation of small and micro-businesses. Employers can play a massive role here in providing start-up training and mentoring through the early phases of business creation for employees they are replacing with technology. The most forward thinking might even co-invest with such businesses to help them get started and potentially provide them with a route to market. Governments could provide similar services and easy-to-use online platforms for business creation, marketing, networking, financial management, invoicing, accounting, and tax submission, enabling founders to focus on the development of their business.

Finally, the threat or reality of technological replacement is already adversely impacting physical health and mental well-being across a range of occupations. An accelerating pace of change seems likely  to exacerbate this. Online tools could help people deal with stress in a confidential manner and help train the next generation of mental health professionals.

Clearly, the accelerating pace of technological development could bring significant benefits. There are also genuine concerns about the potential for dehumanization of those left behind as wealth and power becomes consolidated into the hands of the few. There will inevitably be concerns over raising taxation to fund all this—to which the counter-question would be how will we fund the consequences of failing to prepare and inaction?

• What key impacts of AI should society be preparing for today?
• How can we prepare adults and children for a world where technology will perform roles traditionally undertaken by humans?
• What role should the state play in governing the deployment of disruptive technologies?

This article is excerpted from Beyond Genuine Stupidity – Ensuring AI Serves Humanity. You can order the book here.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-221718/ by geralt

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-3771100/ by FreeFunArt

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-3885331/ by geralt

A version of this article was originally published in Bytestart.

By Steve Wells, Rohit Talwar, and Alexandra Whittington

Are robo-taxes an inevitable by-product of the replacement of humans by machines and will the robots be doing the collection?

Robots and Society

In 1979, an innovative two-minute TV commercial gave Britain a glimpse of the future. Choreographed to music from Rossini’s Barber of Seville, hi-tech machines built the Fiat Strada. The tagline was “Handbuilt by Robots.” Humans were nowhere to be seen in the Turin factory where the ad was shot, but the film crew knew where the people were: outside, on picket lines protesting the loss of their jobs.

The Robots are Coming

Fast forward nearly 40 years and “the robots are coming, they want to replace us, and there’s nothing we can do to stop them” isn’t the plot of the next season of Westworld, it’s a real-world warning that’s becoming louder with each new leap in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics.

Both the technoprogressive enthusiasts and the head-in-the-sand reactionaries believe doomsayers are overstating the threat. After all, we don’t all make cars. That is true, some of us dig ditches, some of us lay bricks, some of us milk cows. And there are now robots doing those jobs. But what if you take orders at a fast food outlet? McDonalds is replacing you with automation. Perhaps you’re a lorry driver. Volvo, Uber, and others have already trialed driverless trucks—not always successfully. Indeed, what if you are a doctor, lawyer, accountant, architect, sales person, marketeer, pharmaceutical researcher, insurance claims analyst, building inspector, or engineer—all of whom are seeing AI, robots, and drones taking on part or all of roles traditionally performed by humans?

It’s not even the case that a unique robot solution is required for each task; one model of robot produced by Kawasaki Heavy Industries of Japan can be adapted for use by a variety of businesses, including electronics manufacturers and drug companies. Furthermore, the latest Sawyer robot costs just US$19,000 and can teach itself tasks through observation without human intervention.

Can We Rely on History to Help Us Predict the Future?

On the one hand, some argue that economies have always adapted to the introduction of new technologies. In the early 1800s, looms were smashed by cotton and woolen workers who feared for their jobs, but in the end, to meet increased demand, more machines were needed and that meant more people to tend them. Employment levels remained about the same, it was just the nature of the work that changed. And we got used to horses being replaced by tractors, didn’t we?

However, the counterargument is that the machines being brought in now are, or soon will be, smart enough to not need human supervision. The industries of the future could require far fewer, more highly skilled workers—this time we’re becoming the horses.

The Luddites couldn’t prevent the introduction of 19th century cutting-edge technology, the Turin car workers couldn’t halt progress in the 1970s, and no amount of 21st century Canute-channeling can push back the current waves of change. Jobs are going to go: in the UK, a third by 2030 say some experts. In less than a decade and a half we could be looking at large-scale long-term unemployment. Fewer people working means less income tax, which means a government revenue shortfall, higher unemployment costs, and difficulties maintaining public service provision. This also means less citizen spending power to buy the goods and services being produced by the machines. The societal consequences could be devastating.

What Can We Do?

Many leaning to the right of British politics are pinning their hopes on business growth and employment being driven by the encouragement of free markets and lower corporate tax rates. They are trusting that unemployment costs will be met through revenues from corporate and individual taxes coupled with higher VAT takings.

Others advocate a more novel approach. Tax the robots.

But surely, we shouldn’t tax innovation? That was the response of the EU’s Digital Single Market Commissioner, Andrus Ansip, when Bill Gates suggested there should be a form of taxation on firms that use robots to take human jobs. Despite that reaction, Gates’s idea is gaining traction: in the UK, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn recently championed taxing advanced technology; in the USA, San Francisco now has a committee looking at how that might be done; and South Korea is leading the way by reducing tax incentives for investments in automation—not quite a robot tax, but close to it.

The thrust of the tax-the-robots notion is that robots and AI should be considered something that creates value for the owner, and companies cutting workforces are likely to be making higher profits. This represents a fundamental shift in the core notion that we should all seek employment to feed ourselves and families. Indeed, we could be seeing the shift to a different economic model—one whose ideal shape we don’t yet know. Hence, the idea of applying additional taxation to companies that replace workers with robots or smart AIs to offset the loss of income tax caused by making humans redundant. In the long term, the economy may look so different that such conversations might be irrelevant, but for now we need a solution to what some see as a looming social and economic crisis—and robot taxes are the main option for debate right now.

Clearly, there’s more to robot tax than merely balancing the Exchequer’s books. Advocates of a robot tax want this money to be used to fund the foundations of the next economy; channeling the proceeds into adult retraining, education transformation, R&D, and unemployment provisions. A robot tax could pay for a fresh approach to education, one which develops the whole person, not just the future worker. This new approach would include life skills (cooking, health, and household management), interpersonal skills (listening, leadership, writing, and collaboration), and self-awareness (mindfulness, meditation, and mental health strategies). The underlying principle is that the value of automation should be used to benefit all of society, help us cross the “messy middle” transition period to a new economic model, and help to mitigate against future problems.

A Political Decision or the Right Decision?

Right now, we don’t know how robot taxes would work in practice and the concept has become highly politicized.

One good starting point would be to (ironically) run powerful computer simulations of different scenarios for the pace of automation and the impacts on employment. These could be used as input to the development of economic models to explore the funding requirements of different public service strategies and how they might be met.

A next step might be to take a fresh look at taxation in general and cast an eye over options for adapting to a very different future. Several nations, including Finland and Germany—who are thought to be most likely to be among the first to implement some form of automation taxation mechanism—have already experimented with different forms of guaranteed or universal basic income. Such innovations may have an important part to play in how we deal with increased use of robots and AI.

While there are many supporters of the idea, taxing robots and AI will be hugely controversial; even agreeing the definition of robot and AI is likely to be an early stumbling block. Those wanting to encourage debate feel they are often deliberately misrepresented as the new anti-innovation Luddites—even though the ideas are supported by many at the frontiers of AI development. The advocates’ view is that we should be taxing the proceeds of innovation to fund the new social and economic models being enabled by AI and its human liberating sister technologies such as robotics, cloud computing, hyperconnectivity, 3D/4D printing, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology. In response, there are already many unashamed proponents of low taxes, free markets, and wealth maximization using phrases such as unbridled socialism, communism, or Marxism to describe robot tax thinking. But, at present, no viable alternatives are being put on the table—and hope is not a very good strategy when planning the future for 7-9 billion people.

Of course, it may be that taxing robots turns out to be a temporary measure, as automation-heavy companies find their profits dwindling following the potential Rise of the Artisan, brought about by huge demand for products “hand-built by people.”

• What actions should individuals, companies, and governments be taking today to prepare for large-scale job displacement by automation?
• What could a world without work look like—how can we prepare ourselves for the transition?
• How might people’s lives and purpose change if work was no longer a critical part of their existence?

This article is excerpted from A Very Human Future – Enriching Humanity in a Digitized World. You can order the book here.

A version of this chapter was originally published in IT Pro Portal.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-663992/ by geralt

By Steve Wells, Rohit Talwar, Alexandra Whittington, Helena Calle, and April Koury

How might virtual reality impact work and learning in the near future?

Virtual Reality Enters the Learning Space

Virtual reality (VR) is one of the major contemporary technologies being implemented in teaching today with emerging examples that hint at how it could play a role in the future of education. As one of the key experiential technology innovations that has gathered significant attention, current examples of VR in the marketplace include HTC’s Vive, Oculus Rift, and SteamVR. As a consumer product, VR is a seemingly magical form of entertainment made possible by emerging technology. The nature of VR changes the way people interact with digital information, including data, knowledge, and alternative scenarios. The many potential benefits of VR in teaching are only beginning to show through.

One of the biggest challenges in education and training is ensuring that whatever is being taught meets the audience’s learning needs. In today’s complex and fast-paced society, where new discoveries and technologies emerge regularly, learning needs can also change rapidly. In response to these challenges, tools like VR can help educators adapt and refine solutions quickly. This is just the latest instance of innovative consumer electronics tools being employed in teaching—past examples include the internet, social media, mobile phones, and video games.

Emerging Educational Applications

The VR experience allows people to interact with others in a simulated scenario at different and increasingly multi-sensory levels. Educators have found information retention improves when the individual is engaged in such diverse multi-level experiences. Example classroom applications of VR include:

• Visualizing inherently abstract concepts in physics, engineering, mathematics, chemistry, and biology such as exploring geometric shapes in 3D, following signals through the nervous system, and seeing the behavior of physical structures under different loads and environmental conditions.
• Exploring scenarios that are difficult or dangerous to recreate in the classroom, such as the impact of combining hazardous chemicals, the behavior of the heart during a cardiac arrest, and monitoring lava flows and temperatures in an erupting volcano.
• Creating virtual realities that help bring to life aspects of the curricula and learning objectives in a more engaging manner. For example, traveling virtually to a scenario that brings to life the major facts and details of the history of pre-Hispanic cultures or the different conversations and tensions that led to past wars.
• Enabling students with special needs to experiment with different learning strategies that do not rely on passive listening or reading. For example, learners with attention deficit, hyperactivity, and dyslexia could potentially learn more effectively through experimentation in virtual contexts.

The Workplace Opportunity

There are also a range of possible VR applications in the work environment:

• Demonstrating architectural models and testing factors such as human behaviors during emergencies.
• Advanced multi-sensory simulation of complex and dangerous tasks and activities, encompassing surgery, flying a supersonic jet, and fixing a component on the outside of a spacecraft, through to rehearsing combat or disaster rescue scenarios.
• Making abstract data more tangible to help workers understand information more deeply and promote a better decision-making process. The scope and scale of daily choices can be visualized more easily in VR. For example, a 3D map of the likely return on effort invested for different potential customers might make it easier to determine where to focus sales activity.
• In a variety of contexts, people will be able to create different virtual worlds and test alternative strategies, explore possible solutions, and surface unintended consequences. For example, when launching a new product to a new market, the creation and exploration of parallel virtual market entry scenarios would enable employees to evaluate which choice might best fit the current strategy.
• In corporate training, VR could help accelerate the learning process by allowing people to run through multiple real-world scenarios for the application of a skill, for example practicing coaching skills with virtual people that possess different attitudes and personalities. Training can also be done in situ, for example providing a VR overlay to guide a remote maintenance engineer through the removal and repair of an aircraft engine part, when the plane is 10,000 miles from its home base.

Enhancing Human Experience

Virtual reality is also being put to use in ways that can enhance the social, emotional, and mental conditions for humanity in general—an increasingly important priority for education and training in a world where there is a growing fear of technology usurping humans. For example:

• Virtual reality offers the opportunity to bring people together in applications ranging from shared dating experiences and family reunions through to global team meetings and conflict resolution processes. Whether as our avatars or holograms, we can interact and retain a sense of personal contact with people across the globe in these shared experiences.
• Virtual reality can be used to help us face fears or phobias. Improving students’ psychological resilience may be one of the more difficult challenges of educating for the future—technology that can simulate sensory experiences in a nonthreatening way might be among the best strategies to build inner strength. In fact, growing levels of anxiety and stress observed in society might be alleviated by virtual social settings, possibly using artificially intelligent VR therapists or confidantes.
• Simulations in VR can be used to increase empathy, appreciate other viewpoints or experiences, and even address mental health problems. For example, schizophrenia patients may gain better control over their reality and their mental state by interacting with a VR program which replicates the phantom voices and images that they hear and see. This may also help others better understand the experience of those with such conditions. In another example, the manufacturer of a pain reliever demonstrated VR simulations of migraine headaches to the family members of migraine sufferers as a way to help caregivers understand the traumatic pain of such headaches. Similar empathy exercises might help people gain insights on what it is like to be disabled, dyslexic, elderly, or chronically ill.

Conclusion—In Virtual Service of Humanity

There are clearly a wide range of potential applications emerging for VR in the education and training context. Indeed, using VR to achieve academic, technical, as well as relational goals is one of the most promising approaches to the future delivery of education and training. Moreover, in a rapidly changing world, perhaps the most valuable potential contribution of VR in education and training will be in helping enhance our capacity for understanding, caring, and empathy. With technology automating many job roles, the best employment opportunities will likely require far more than technical abilities. Qualifications for good jobs are already evolving toward abstract criteria, like cultural fit. This suggests that, in the future of hiring, interpersonal faculties and emotional intelligence could supersede educational credentials, or even work experience. This may be the most beneficial but surprising application of VR in education and training.

• Which hard to teach topics or ideas could be more easily conveyed with VR?
• What are the potential advantages and disadvantages of using VR in the classroom?
• How can educators retain the human element in their classes, while embracing technology?

This article is excerpted from A Very Human Future – Enriching Humanity in a Digitized World. You can order the book here.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-3630004/ by mohamed hassan

By Steve Wells, Rohit Talwar, Alexandra Whittington, April Koury, and Maria Romero

What developments might emerge in the near-term future given all the unruly technologists with their magical new toys, industry upheavals, and complex social, economic, and political forces we can see on the near horizon?

In our book Beyond Genuine Stupidity: Ensuring AI Serves Humanity, we highlighted a range of ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) in particular could have a transformative impact for individuals, society, business, and government in the coming years. There are also a range of other exponentially improving technologies which could have a dramatic impact on society in the decade ahead—including robotics, augmented (AR) and virtual reality (VR), blockchain, 3D/4D printing, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology.

However, the future is about far more than technology, and so, in these predictions, we have combined hard data on emerging trends with some creative exploration on our part to explore the developments we might see emerging and playing out over the next five to ten years. We cover both the use of disruptive technologies and the broader societal and economic changes and developments that might play out in the near-future. To help challenge the reader, the predictions also range from the highly plausible to wildcard developments that fall into the “unlikely but dramatic” category.

Society and Lifestyles

1. Hollywood/Bollywood #metoo Slowdown – The success of the #metoo campaign in surfacing female harassment will strike deep into major film studios and a broader range of sectors around the world during 2018. Whether through public exposure or private pressure from actors refusing to work with certain directors and producers, many of the accused will choose to resign or be forced to step down from their productions. This leads to regular production delays on a number of films and a noticeable slowdown in output and hence poor commercial results for many studios. The net result is that studios start to change their production model, with heavy vetting of those involved.

Directors, producers and actors are forced to take out insurance policies indemnifying the studios against harassment lawsuits and the costs of any production delays. By 2023, we also see a big cultural shift in the studio system, with many more women in executive, production, and directorial roles. The rise of ethical and female-led independent film production further challenges the power of the big studios. The continuing rise of more accessible distribution channels and technology to develop film projects means that more independently produced movies are able to capture audiences.

2. The Queen Abdicates – In a move which shocks the media and the part of the nation that pays attention to such things, Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand announces that she is abdicating the throne in 2018 in favor of her son Prince Charles. The Queen indicates that she would like to slow down, spend more time with her husband Prince Philip, and act in an advisory capacity to the new King Charles. Written into the strict terms of the abdication agreement is the condition that Charles himself must in turn abdicate by December 31st, 2023 in favor of his son Prince William.

3. Facts as an Art Form: The Post-Truth Society – Terms like “regulatory alignment,” “alternative facts,” and the “post truth society” have recently entered our vocabularies and will be much over-used in the year ahead. The main concern is that it will require advanced AI to fact check everything before we can accept something is both true and has evidentiary support. At one level, these terms are amusing descriptions of a subculture where some believe that there is a very distant relationship between the “facts” and what is actually said or shared by those in power.

The problem will be highlighted most acutely in the discussions around the UK’s exit from the European Union. The true shape, costs, impacts, and benefits of Brexit will become the dominant talking point for many in politics and the media, and may not be fully clarified even a decade from now. At a deeper level, these issues highlight an erosion of trust in the veracity of what governments, businesses, public agencies, the media, and fellow citizens are saying. As individuals, we crave honesty and naturally favor organizations that we trust inherently. This offers a critical future opportunity for individuals, organizations, and governments to differentiate themselves because of their commitment to radical transparency.

4. Robo-Dating – Want your date to hang on your every word, never interrupt, and always do what you want? The first matchmaking websites will appear for those who want to date physical robots or virtual avatars—with personalities customized to our precise preferences. Around the world, women’s groups will rise up in protest at services that they perceive as objectifying and dehumanizing women and returning them to the role of fawning 1950s housewives. Within five years, the systems will be using AI to determine and create our perfect match and allow us to have real babies with our robo-partners using donors and surrogates.

5. Robo-Pop – 2018 will see the first pop song written by AI enter the top 20 of the pop charts in a major economy such as South Korea or Japan. By 2023, predictive algorithms will be used to determine the music and lyrics for over 50% of number ones, with the majority written by AI software.

6. NFL/Premier League Player Strike – Concerns over the treatment of black people by the police spurs a global movement with sports stars taking the lead. This culminates in a weekend of strikes in October 2018 with black players participating from the US National Football League (NFL), the English Premier, many other football leagues across Europe, and sports like cricket, baseball, and basketball. While progress on the underlying cause is slow, this becomes an annual event, and by 2023 has almost become a date in the sporting calendar.

Technology Transforming Life

7. Artificial Intelligence vs. Genuine Stupidity – Artificial intelligence is no longer the stuff of science fiction. From airline autopilots to smartphones and call center chatbots to automated legal contract generation, the technology is firmly embedded in society. The year ahead will see its scope, functionality, and processing power increasing. Sadly, many will continue to refuse to invest the time to understand how AI could transform their lives.

For those in positions of power in business and government, there will still be reluctance to examining how AI could create new threats and generate new opportunities. Under the guise of pragmatism and risk avoidance, they will actually be putting the future of their business at risk. Others will recognize that carving out a small amount of time to understand the technology, how it is being applied, and what it could mean for their sector will help them deepen their understanding and form a perspective on how and when to approach it.

8. Human Augmentation – The trend towards people enhancing their brains and bodies is only likely to accelerate. The year ahead will see a mix of excitement and outcry at the proliferation of examples of people receiving chemical, genetic, physical, and electronic augmentations of their “version 1.0” human brains and bodies. Over the next five years, it will be increasingly commonplace for people to use nootropic drugs and supplements to enhance their cognitive capacity.

Dramatic progress will also be made in the use of genetic modification techniques to change everything from eye color and hair thickness to skin pigmentation. Similarly, the use of external exoskeletons and internal endoskeletons, 3D printed body parts, and super smart materials would also enable physical augmentations that could make us stronger, faster, and less susceptible to pain. The age of the superhuman is beginning, and governments and businesses alike need to think about the pros of cons of encouraging such practices and addressing their potential impact across organizations and society as a whole.

9. Robo-Store – Around the world, 2018 sees a spate of openings of fully automated robo-stores where customers either wave and pay, or they are identified through facial recognition and their account is debited automatically. Robots serve customers, re-stock shelves, and self-organize to change displays rapidly based on their analysis of recent visitor and buyer behaviors. Home delivery can also be arranged using drones and pavement delivery robots. The automation of retail accelerates over the next few years and, by 2023, entire shopping malls promote themselves as fully automated. Human store staff are basically there to act as personal shoppers and customer advisers—powered by deep insight provided by the in store AI systems.

10. Head/Body Transplants – Following their much-disputed claims of completing a successful human head transplant to a corpse in 2017, controversial surgeon Professor Sergio Canavero and his team repeat the experiment in front of international observers in 2018. The individual survives less than 48 hours, but the observers acknowledge that the experiment was successful. By the end of 2023, the technique has been refined and there are now more than ten people around the world who are still alive six months after their transplant operation.

11. Cryo Queen – Hot on the heels of the announcement of her planned abdication by year end, 2018 sees the Queen also announce that she will have her body cryogenically preserved on death. The hope is that the technology to rejuvenate her body and restore her memory and consciousness will have emerged within 20 to 50 years. The intention is twofold: firstly, to give future generations access to the wisdom and experience the Queen has amassed over more than nine decades; secondly, to give a major boost to the UK cryogenics industry as one of the new sectors that will carry the UK economy forward post-Brexit. Within five years, the entire UK royal family, most senior UK political figures have all committed themselves to cryogenics. They are then followed by several prominent business people, performing artists, sports stars, and media personalities—with many becoming shareholders in the leading cryo service providers.

12. AI Newscaster – During 2018 a robot equipped with AI is used by a major news channel in the Middle East to work alongside a human, reading out the daily news and interviewing guests. As media budgets come under pressure in the increasingly automated world of 2023, the robo-casters have become commonplace in broadcast news services and online channels. We may pay a premium for a personalized newscaster who sounds like Meryl Streep, Stephen Hawking, or Beyoncé. For the majority receiving the public services from the news channels, our AI has been fed thousands of hours of news reporting in order to learn to flawlessly mimic the serious and situationally appropriate tone of the channels’ best human newscasters.

Politics

13. Polibots/Roboticians – The first robot will be fielded as a political candidate somewhere in the world in 2018, probably by a fringe party. By 2023 South Korea, Iceland, and several others will have updated their constitutions to give robots equal rights to humans in parliament. In the next few years, the first robot MP will take their seat in a national parliament, consulting and polling their electorate electronically on every issue in real time via the internet before casting its vote and displaying a 100% attendance record.

14. Trump and Kim Play Cards – Brinkmanship is dialed down dramatically in the second half of 2018. This comes after a massive build-up of US military presence along both of North Korea’s coastlines and direct threats from President Trump to annihilate North Korea. In a bizarre turn of events, a meeting is brokered between President Trump and President Kim Jong-un in Japan with former basketball star Dennis Rodman acting as the go-between. Kim Jong-un insists that the leaders play poker to “break the ice,” believing Trump to be beatable. While the result is never officially released by the US, North Korean TV claims it as the first of many victories in the meeting. Progress in thawing relations between the two nations remains slow, but in 2023 the US does send food aid via South Korea to help the North deal with a devastating drought.

15. Country Mergers – The perilous state of Zimbabwe’s economy becomes more apparent post-Mugabe. The nation’s leaders turn to South Africa for support in late 2018 and Zimbabwe effectively becomes a protectorate. Almost all arms of government come under South Africa control or supervision by 2023 and, to all effects, Zimbabwe is now its tenth province. A similar pattern is repeated around the world with more than 20 bankrupt or failing countries adopting similar protectorate arrangements under the instruction and supervision of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and United Nations.

The Economy

16. Brokenomics/Economic Warfare: Stuck in the Middle – There is a growing awareness that the economic, financial, and monetary control systems that govern our world have become overly complex and unworkable. The year ahead will see a growing number of governments, global institutions, business leaders, and civil society organizations publicly acknowledging this and emphasizing the need for change. Many of these systems were designed for a previous pre-internet era and have been extended long beyond their useful life. They now represent a source of significant risk for the global economy. Emerging risks include an estimated US$1 quadrillion plus in derivative contracts against a global GDP that is valued at about US$75 trillion. Alongside this are seemingly non-viable pension systems, and personal, corporate, and government debt obligations collectively running at many times global GDP.

In the face of these potential economic time bombs, our financial and monetary governance mechanisms no longer seem fit for purpose. At the same time, more nationalistic political agendas are arising around the world and could drive intense economic warfare. Experimentation with new models will take place over the next few years, albeit at a very slow pace. A major new financial meltdown could accelerate that process.

Firms are already finding themselves stuck in the middle between shareholders and regulators and will increasingly come under government pressure to invest locally rather than internationally. Robust scenario planning and a rapid execution capability are both vital in these circumstances. The former can help explore the possibilities and map out the options; the latter can help reduce the time to value and avoid projects being lost in limbo.

17. Pound – Dollar Parity – The continued strength of the US economy, a favorable US stock market response to President Trump’s tax plans, and chaotic uncertainty around Brexit all serve to drive down the value of the pound to parity with the US dollar during 2018. Following erratic gyrations which take the pound below US$1 during the Brexit wilderness years of 2019-2021, the UK economy eventually reaches a level of calm by 2022 as the shape of the new semi-Brexit clarifies. The pound settles at an exchange rate of around US$1.10 by 2023.

18. Zero Growth Nation – UK growth will plummet to zero and below in 2018. Brexit concerns will see more companies leave the UK, while those that stay will reign in spending and engage in deep discounting. Households will cut their spending amid concerns over personal debt and job prospects as public-sector redundancies rise; more jobs are lost to automation; and firms cut headcounts to reduce costs. Other major nations also see growth stalling, but few hit the buffers like the UK. After a chaotic few years of Brexit mayhem, growth starts to stabilize by 2022 and crawls above 1% in 2023.

19. Bitcoin at US$50,000 – Speculation will drive the price of Bitcoin to at least US$50,000 during 2018. This will further drive down the levels of Bitcoin’s commercial use for transaction purposes, as coin holders will hang on to them as an appreciating asset. Within the next two years, China will announce its own government backed digital currency. This will see rapid adoption by several countries that will also outlaw Bitcoin and its rivals.

By 2023, the price of Bitcoin, like many other competitors, will decline sharply as it returns to its role as just another digital currency, predominantly used for trading purposes. Massive losses are incurred by individuals, investment funds, and even countries who invested heavily in Bitcoin on the way up, but didn’t sell out their positions quickly enough before the crash.

20. The Artificial Economist – Around the world, AI programs will outperform economists, analysts, and stock pickers in predicting what will happen to major stock markets, exchange rates, GDP figures, and bank base rates across the major economies by the end of 2018. Over the next few years, the number of new AI-powered FinTech funds at first proliferates and then plateaus and declines, with a number outperforming the market and some delivering unprecedented returns to investors. A wave of consolidations, mergers, and closures follows.

By 2023, AI is either running or central to the management of more than half of the major public investment funds, unit trusts, investment trusts, and the like in the largest economies. Around the world, we also see AI being given a seat on investment bank boards, central bank advisory boards, and government monetary policy committees.

Transport

21. Driverless Everywhere – All around the world in 2018, we will see pilot schemes to test fully autonomous electric vehicles on the road, operating under normal driving conditions. China will be the first to actually have driverless cars driving alongside human-operated vehicles on a regular basis. The growing Chinese middle class flocks to purchase their first autonomous vehicle because these cars become a new status symbol. As a result, vehicle pollution in cities like Beijing will start to decline, slowly at first and then demonstrably.

Motivated in part by the targets in the Paris climate agreement, more than 25 countries will have fully functional driverless green energy vehicles available for sale or hire by 2023. By then we could also see the first city authority introduce restrictions on manually driven cars in favor of autonomous vehicles.

22. Flying Taxis – following successful trials of single person passenger drones in 2017, commercial services are launched in China and the UAE during 2018. The technology continues to improve over the next few years, despite some fatal accidents and many near misses. Around the world, by 2023 more than 20 countries have licensed the use of both single and multiple occupant passenger drones.

23. Supersonic Travel – In 2018, we will see the first test flights of a supersonic flight from one of the new entrants such as Boom or Cygnus. When fully operational, these planes will be able to cover a range of up to 7,000 miles at speeds of 1,400 miles per hour, and are planned to be in commercial service by 2023.

24. Hyperloop – During 2018 at least 10 countries will follow the lead of the UAE and India, and sign up to have superfast (600-1,200 kilometers per hour) Hyperloop rail services in their countries within five years. Near full speed prototypes are likely to be demonstrated during the year, and commercial Hyperloop services should be present in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and possibly California by 2023.

Strategic Management of Business

25. Cognitive Dissonance: Long Term vs. Right Here, Right Now – The year ahead will see many leaders continue to be challenged with how to deal with a growing leadership juggling act. On the one hand, they can see quite clearly that radical changes are taking place and a very different future is emerging. However, on the ground, this isn’t always reflected in the immediate requests coming from customers. They also know from experience that change starts off imperceptibly slowly at first, and then the take-off can often happen very fast.

The tension between focusing on the here and now and allocating time and resource to an uncertain future is likely to grow rapidly. Developing the capacity to lead in this new normal will become a differentiator between winners and losers. Hence, a critical priority will be learning how to balance the “urgency of the now” with the “importance of the next.”

26. Future Awareness – Businesses typically fall into three categories when it comes to future readiness: Firstly, some organizations and their leaders can rightly be proud of their level of awareness about the drivers of change that might shape their world in the coming years, and they are prepared for a range of possible scenarios. They typically have strategies that can kick in if the economy nosedives or if growth opportunities develop faster than initially expected.

The second group is often oblivious to change or deliberately ignore it. They seem happy to rest on their laurels, believing they are bulletproof, that their offerings are always going to be in demand, and that their client relationships are cast in stone. This group is often the slowest to respond to change and tend to feel the most negative impacts when it happens, as they are least prepared for it.

The third and final group is honest enough to say they are uncertain about what might happen next, how change might impact them, or how to prepare for future uncertainty.

Knowing where you stand is a critical start point. The next step is to ensure that across the organization, leaders and managers are investing their own time and encouraging their staff to scan the horizon, read about impending changes, and think about possible implications and responses. If they lead by example, their teams will follow.

27. Starting from Zero – In the past, companies might have started their annual planning knowing that at least some proportion of business income was repeatable and that they would see recurring revenues in the year ahead. However, in many cases, contracts are shortening, retainer relationships are being dissolved, and organizations are obliged to start from zero when analyzing next year’s revenues sources.

Budgeting from zero is a mindset and capability that will be developed and adopted increasingly across a range of industries in the coming year. At one extreme, this will drive firms to reduce headcount and adopt a more contingent workforce model; at the other we will see innovative strategies to try and open up new markets and lock-in longer term customer commitments.

28. Exponential Organizations – The coming year will see businesses of all sizes and many governments focus their attention on the idea of driving exponential or bigger improvements at speed. Most commentators focus on the big technology-enabled examples, e.g. Airbnb handling 90 times more bedrooms per employee than the typical hotel group or Local Motors generating new car designs for its 3D printed Strati 1000 times cheaper than the average car manufacturer. However, equally attractive are the simple innovations that can deliver rapid improvements—such as airports introducing parallel loading bays at security checkpoints to double or triple the flow of passengers. Leaders will be expected to encourage the pursuit of exponential gains and lead by example in the search for opportunities.

29. Ecosystem Thinking – Faced with the complexity of modern business, rapidly changing markets, short-lived opportunities, and exponential rates of development in technology, firms will have little choice but to work with a network of external partners. The year ahead will see a lot more experimentation with the use of ecosystems to absorb the constant onslaught of change and provide the capacity to respond faster. The next five years will see a mindset shift taking place, moving from “not invented here” to “which provider can do it better, cheaper, and faster.” To make these ecosystem models work, there will be a critical requirement to develop leaders, managers, and staff with a collaborative mentality and a willingness to share, learn, and create solutions in partnership rather than by diktat.

30. Gagging on Green – In the coming few years of greater global uncertainty, firms may find it an increasing challenge to honor their environmental targets in an unpredictable commercial landscape. Failure to do so could ruin their reputation. Over the coming years, many businesses will increasingly be adopting the policy of pushing the responsibility to suppliers—demanding that they meet both cost and environmental requirements in order to win supply contracts. Others may seek low or no-cost ideas from staff that can be implemented quickly with little capital outlay.

Digital Choices

31. Hooked on Transformation and the Race to Obsolescence – In 2018, we could well see a pause for thought amongst large firms who are investing hundreds of millions of dollars on digital transformation projects. Many will realize they are just playing catch-up and trying to win the battles of the past ten years. They will also start to see the risks inherent in following the “cut and paste” prescriptions of advisers who are also promoting similar strategies to their competitors.

Businesses will become more mindful of the inherent risk at the core of their digital strategy—namely that the faster we automate, the easier it is for others to copy what we do. The recognition will also grow of how hard it is to sustain a point of digital differentiation for any length of time. The risk is that many are locked in a race to the bottom, commoditizing their offering and potentially sowing the seeds of their own demise. A vital role here for leaders will be to challenge those involved, and ask them to explain how the outcomes will help us stand out and enable us to be more innovative and responsive than competitors pursuing a similar path.

32. Born Digital and Hollow – An increasing number of new businesses will be adopting a very lean resourcing model, automating wherever possible from the outset in their pursuit of exponential growth and the much coveted billion-dollar “Unicorn” valuation. Indeed, we will see a proliferation of so called distributed autonomous organizations (DAOs), companies that exist only in software and have no employees. By 2023 such entities will be far more widespread across a range of activities, including those that take place in the physical world.

We can anticipate entirely digital versions of fast food chains, domestic service providers, and travel booking services. Whilst humans may do the ultimate physical service delivery, the underlying booking platform will exist entirely in software—imagine an Uber or Airbnb with no staff at head office. Inside larger firms, the next few years will see a critical and continuous conversation on how to monitor these digital entities. A key area for exploration and experimentation will be how to ensure the preservation of human talent, as it is still more capable than technology in spotting and responding innovatively to emerging changes, risks, and opportunities.

33. I Serve the System: No Human to Turn To – One of the most soul withering phrases we hear today is, “I’m sorry, the system won’t let me do that.” As we automate more and place increasing authority in the hands of technology, leaders will become increasingly mindful of what this could do to brand identity and the public discourse about us in social channels.

Firms will be experimenting with different delivery models and making clear choices over the extent to which they will allow humans to exercise discretion in the service of the customer. This will extend to working through what our back-up plan is when the technology fails in a highly-automated business, and evaluating whether there are differentiation opportunities in having a more human face to the business.

34. Surveillance Capitalism – In the pressurized economic environment of the coming years, many individuals will be ever more willing to give away their personal data. In return for “free” services, we may allow firms to make greater use of the content of our social media, emails, and online searches. The firms that provide these “free” services will deepen their focus on extracting valuable data from our activity, which can be resold and used to target us more effectively.

Within five years, if left unchecked, the penetration into our daily lives and personal activities could become all-pervasive. Indeed, some researchers suggest that, by using predictive analytics and machine learning tools to analyze between 64 and 200 of the items we like on Facebook, a detailed profile can be developed of everything from our likely purchasing behavior, through to what we might watch, and our voting intentions.

This notion of “surveillance capitalism” is likely to increase in the coming years. As businesses, we need to decide the extent to which we’ll try to extract commercial value from our customer data, and whether we’ll look to protect ourselves from others’ exploiting the data we have provided.

People and the Workplace

35. Swarm Organizations – Persistent economic uncertainty will see a number of firms and governments cutting back to the barest minimum of human resources. Such organizations are increasingly likely to adopt an accelerated “swarm resourcing” concept to respond to new opportunities and urgent change projects.

This model is based on the approach favored by film producers—pulling together teams for critical projects on demand—drawing on contractors, partners, agencies, staff on zero-hour contracts, and internal resources. The core challenges here are getting the team formed, bonded, up to speed, aligned, and functional in the shortest possible time. This will see a lot of organizations putting the development and recruitment focus on having the right internal capability and management processes to support a swarm approach.

36. Privacy vs. Performance in the Always-On Society – In 2018, we will increasingly hear about firms that are able to monitor literally every employee all the time. This will be enabled by a range of workplace cameras, motion monitoring devices, sensors, and wearable technologies. The outputs from this “web of surveillance” will allow for a regime of total monitoring—especially when coupled with data from employees’ mobile devices, laptops, and desktops.

Firms will increasingly monitor factors such as concentration, reading rates, eyeball movement, mouse clicks, and typing speeds to assess employee productivity and determine when we are in and out of our peak performance states. There are obvious benefits to be gained from constantly tracking the health, wellbeing, and productivity of employees. Managers, employees, and governments will increasingly wrestle with whether this constitutes an infringement of rights or an invasion of privacy. A growing number might determine that the impacts on employee motivation and corporate reputation when adopting such “big brother” surveillance tactics might not be worth the risk.

37. Alpha Male vs. Embracing the Feminine – Across the board, 2018 will see firms responding to uncertainty by automating, becoming more number-focused, and adopting increasingly control-orientated thinking and management structures. There is a concern that these developments could drive out essential feminine traits that can differentiate us in the marketplace—leading to a far more masculine business environment with a few short years.

The broader issue of gender imbalance will undoubtedly persist for some time to come as firms continue to fail to take full advantage of available talent. In addition, a rising concern would be the loss of feminine traits that help define our culture and distinguish our brand in the marketplace. Leaders will need to pay serious attention to the challenge of ensuring that crucial feminine factors such as culture, connection, serendipity, empathy, and compassion don’t get devalued or eliminated as we pursue efficiency and give greater agency to the machine.

38. Always on the Way Out and Something on the Side – Someone entering the workforce at the age of eighteen today could easily live to a hundred and do anywhere from twenty to forty jobs in that time—if they are still working at all in fifty years’ time. The years ahead will also see growing volatility in the recruitment market, particularly for younger workers. Hence, 2018 will highlight how new employees have an eye to the next job and many will be pursuing side-businesses, hopefully in their spare time. While such entrepreneurialism will increasingly be encouraged, firms will also be challenged to find ways of motivating and getting the full commitment of people who are “always on the way out” from the day they arrive.

39. Workplace Stress – The mental health challenges for society will rise to the top of the public discourse agenda in 2018. This will be driven by growing pressures on mental health, coupled with new concerns over the possible impacts of technological unemployment. Each successive wave of workplace research suggests that stress levels are rising and leading to unhealthy, unproductive, and potentially dysfunctional home and workplace behaviors.

The year ahead will see growing emphasis on mindfulness meditation, yoga, sleep advice, dietary improvements, and regular health checks to help mitigate stress. Alongside this we will see a growing exploration of more radical shifts in the way we run our businesses, set personal targets, measure performance, and manage people. Those firms which have the courage to pursue a different approach and offer an alternative, less damaging path to success will find themselves in greater demand as employers.

40. A Very Human Business – As a direct response to many of the forces outlined above, the next five years will see an exponentially growing number of businesses deliberately swimming against the tide and genuinely putting people at the heart of their strategies. While they will still be using technology, it will be seen as a productivity aid. The goal will be to help free up the time of smart people to engage more deeply with customers, develop new strategies, be creative, experiment, and build more sustainable points of difference that are embedded in people not technology.

• What critical challenges might leaders face as they take on the responsibility of shaping a very human future enabled by technology?
• How could individuals seize the benefits and opportunities from the potential disruptions shaping the decade ahead?
• What are the likely implications of these potentially radical shifts for the relationship between business leaders and their local communities?

This article is excerpted from The Future Reinvented – Reimagining Life, Society, and Business. You can order the book here.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-4455347/ by geralt

By Steve Wells, Rohit Talwar, Alexandra Whittington, and Maria Romero

How might intelligence technologies shape our homes and lifestyles?

Smarter Living—An Abundance of Possibilities

There are numerous visions of what the cities of the future could look like, but a core idea about the future of cities is the notion that in the coming decades, urban environments will be enveloped by a digital blanket of sensors, devices, and cloud connected data which makes life run smoothly. Disruptive technologies ranging from renewable energy to artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, 3D printing, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are being brought together to deliver a newly enhanced city living experience: the smart city. The core concepts encompass all of the key elements of what enable cities to function effectively—from traffic control and environmental protection to the management of energy, sanitation, healthcare, security, and buildings.

Future smart cities promise to harmonize the benefits of contemporary “smart” technologies in order to provide a high quality of life. As the infrastructure upon which smart cities rest begins to take shape, the impact on homes is a critical strategic issue for estate and property professionals. How does life in smart cities translate to the city’s most personal microcosm, the home? How might it impact notions such as property leases and rental—could entirely new concepts emerge to replace them? Could the technology enable properties to lease themselves on the open market—charging literally by the minute or hour? To what extent are renters and buyers willing to give up some degree of privacy and free will to live in a smart city? Will homes be state-owned, privately owned, or organized on a sharing economy model? Smart cities will have a direct but as yet unknown potential impact on the world of property letting.

At the occupant level, how does the prospect of living smart appeal to customers today, and what will it be like ten years from now? Who will be responsible for smart sensors and data—if it breaks, or malfunctions, who will fix it? Above all, how will humanity be preserved in a future where technology is involved in every step of the day, even within the privacy of home?

A Shared Vision

City governments have to create inclusive processes to encourage citizens to join conversations about the forces shaping the future and the possibilities and challenges on the horizon. In particular, it will be essential to engage the population in dialogue about the desired future. Involvement might be best coordinated on a local/neighborhood level, for example—coming to agreement on what a livable city means, and how to attract jobs and support a constant flow of industries of the future.

Alongside the visioning role, local communities must have a voice in articulating a clear preference around education, environment, public services, access to justice, city administration, and civic engagement. These pillars then provide the guiding requirements which will in turn influence the design of smart infrastructure. City residents, as individual stakeholders or in coalitions, could provide a much-needed check on the powers of the smart city policy-makers and technology service providers. The quality of a smart city’s engagement might actually have a direct bearing on its popularity and hence property rental values.

Big Data—A Fine Line between Observation and Surveillance

Smart cities are designed to inform decisions by capturing massive amounts of data about the population and its patterns, such as water use and traffic flows. This information gathering results in what is called big data, and it is essentially gathered via surveillance. There can also be voluntary efforts to collect information, but the ease and affordability of sensors, AI, and advanced analytics in the future will mean this function can be completely automated. The data can be collated from almost any city infrastructure, encompassing traffic lights and cameras, pollution sensors, building control systems, individual homes, and personal devices—all literally feeding giant data stores held in the cloud. The ability to crunch all this data is becoming easier due to rampant growth in the use of algorithms, AI, and predictive software running on networks of high performance computing and storage devices. The availability of such near-complete data might prove extremely valuable in creating true comparisons of the environmental footprint, energy efficiency, and safety of homes and hence of rental values.

While the technological capacity is nearly in place, is there a matching political will to use it effectively? A number of questions need ironing out concerning freedom, surveillance, and privacy in smart cities. Interesting developments recently, such as court admission of evidence collected by a smart home assistant, remind us that smart technologies could evolve in ways that could jeopardize human rights and social justice.

Internet of Things (IoT)—Always Connected

Smart cities rely on advanced technology to make sense of massive collections of information. Indeed, the amount of information on the internet is expected to grow exponentially as a result of the IoT. Essentially IoT means that everything (“things”)—and potentially everyone—will become beacons and data collection devices, gathering data on ambient and behavioral patterns from its surroundings and from the information it is fed, and networking all this data via the cloud. Hence, after data, the IoT is the second driving force behind the rise of smart infrastructure: in order for everything from air conditioning to parking meters to function in a smart city, the use of microphones, sensors, voice recognition, and all sorts of other high-tech gadgetry must be hooked up to the IoT.

In terms of the private home, it is conceivable that the Alexa or Google Home will become connected to public IoTs in order to communicate everything from home energy usage to ordering fresh groceries. The future of the home may be wired for calling up a self-driving taxi when it is time to leave for work, for example. Smart home products that are already in place, such as security and temperature/ambience automation (i.e., Nest) will be able to “talk” to the police department in case of an intruder or unlock the door for expected guests using facial recognition cameras at the entryways. Homeowners will find themselves becoming a hub in a city-wide communication network—one of millions communicating to the same central “brain” of the city. What might the implications be for property rental models when we can access such “perfect information” about a home, one’s neighbors, the neighborhood, and every facet of the lives of the individual?

Sustainability—Low-Impact Strategies

Finally, all this data and awareness will enable decisions that make the best possible use of space, fuel, energy, water, electricity, and all resources, with an emphasis on sustainability. For example, a clear smart city priority is being able to anticipate big traffic jams and provide alternative routes to save time, fuel, and reduce impact on the city infrastructure itself. Limiting waste is a very logical outcome and benefit of the merging of big data, AI, and IoT which feed into the rise of smart infrastructure.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are growing their market foothold; hence the charging concerns related to EVs are gaining urgency in the eyes of many policy-makers and planners. Interestingly, the car companies themselves are exploring similar options as they place their stakes on sustainable solutions beyond transportation: BMW and Nissan have released home energy batteries that can extend the life of an electric car battery as an in-home renewable energy source, even capable of storing solar energy. With a view to reducing parking requirements, could access to a shared EV become an essential requirement for new properties and rental offerings?

Eventually, with a growing array of such distributed power solutions, a centralized energy distribution grid for homes and businesses may not be necessary. In the next decades, homes could run on their own energy stores, and preserve enough to share, sell, or store for their own later use. The homeowner would no longer depend on a power company to provide electricity, and the home would reach a “net zero” level of ecological impact; giving back more (if not less) than it takes from nature. How might rental prices be affected by a home’s capacity to generate income from electricity generation?

Cities Get Smart

It can be argued that the future of human life on the planet rests on a smooth transition to cities that are more efficient, less wasteful, and more conscious of the impacts of the individual upon the greater good. This may include a range of new negotiations along the boundaries of freedom and privacy: for example, allowing self-driving cars to replace human drivers in the hope of preventing death and injury in auto accidents, increasing traffic efficiency, and removing environmental impacts. Similarly, to reach municipal conservation goals, we might have to agree to invasive monitoring of waste generation, energy, and water use in the home. These are the kinds of tensions that future planners will need to wrestle with on a continuous basis. Furthermore, they form a set of novel and emerging concerns for future home renters and buyers. For the letting industry, a key question arises around the role it should play in contributing to smart city visions and developing smart rental models that take advantage of all the continuously updated data and insights we will have about properties and their all-round performance.

Ultimately, this is about creating cities that work for people. A thoughtful vision of the future enabled by a robust and well-executed smart city model could provide a foundation for channeling science and technology advances into the creation of a very human future in the city of tomorrow.

•  How do we define the boundary between smarter lifestyles and invasion of privacy when it varies for each of us?
• What are the critical services you would want in your future home?
• How do we ensure that every lifestyle choice improves our environmental footprint?

This article is excerpted from A Very Human Future – Enriching Humanity in a Digitized World. You can order the book here.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-914350/ by Catharina77