By Rohit Talwar, Steve Wells, and Alexandra Whittington

Will tomorrow’s workplace be shaped by smart software, robots, and intelligent devices with few workers on display—or can we apply these technologies mindfully to create a more human experience?

As futurists, we are constantly exploring the future of work and the workplace and the potential impact of new technologies. In this article, we explore the next frontiers of the workplace. In particular, we explore how organisations might harness the potential of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and a growing range of other increasingly powerful technologies in service of humanity at work.

Across all Fast Future’s work on our books, articles, and speeches we have focused on the core theme of how we can and should retain humanity in the face of disruptive technology. When we think about the future of the workplace, it’s clear that technology’s role is already becoming a present-day issue, as highlighted by the various ways that robotic and connected devices have begun to disrupt day-to-day working life. So, what are some of the existing and soon-to-be possible ways that connected and robotic devices may impact the workplace from now to 2040.

Big Brother in the Workplace Today

Let’s start with some of the most potentially disturbing developments that are designed to monitor and enhance workplace productivity, but which also represent a massive potential invasion of our privacy.

Identity Badge on a Chip – The Swedish company Biohax implants a chip between the thumb and index finger of employees. With the implant, many tasks can be accomplished with a wave of the hand – such as access control to buildings, signing on to a computer, and purchasing from a vending machine.

Algorithmic Managers – Workplace chat and productivity app Slack learns from the things employees talk about and share to provide them with relevant content. The company is working on a “manager bot” that will use AI to monitor employees remotely and remind them of approaching deadlines. Tools such as Microsoft Office will also be able to compare our performance against literally hundreds of millions of users around the world, provide us with personal productivity data, and even offer training tips and instructional guidance on how to become more efficient at any task we are undertaking. Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of investment firm Bridgewater Associates, is devising a way to micromanage every activity undertaken by employees using AI and location tracking devices.

The Next Horizon

The next wave of developments in the coming five years will see the emergence of a variety of technology solutions designed to help workplaces run more smoothly and allow us to better balance work-life requirements and priorities.

AI Human Resources – Artificial intelligence is already changing the way Human Resources (HR) operates. Perhaps we are edging toward human-less HR with AI-based applications for manpower planning, recruitment, selection, appointment, onboarding, offboarding, performance monitoring, contract management, automated matching of skills and experience to workplace needs, and determination of rewards and benefits for employees, contractors, and “gig-bots” alike. Smart HR applications could also monitor us via all our devices and detect factors such as stress levels, distraction, the extent of social conversation we engage in, and when we are performing at our peak. Personal fitness trackers and the algorithmic managers described earlier are already taking us some way along this path.

Personal Robo-Delivery – Small autonomous robots are already delivering fast food and mail. Soon, they could perform tasks such as mail delivery in the workplace and running errands for our employees while they are at work. For example, when an employee’s grocery order or dry cleaning becomes available for collection, the firm’s robot would be alerted to set out through the town to pick up items from the local shops and either deliver them to employee’s homes or to their workplace. Providing such devices as an employment benefit would help take the edge off the work-life balance struggle and make companies more attractive to prospective employees.

The More Distant Future

When we look further ahead on a five to ten-year timescale, a range of even more dramatic and disruptive developments become possible.

Automated Sharing – Within the next seven to ten years, estimates suggest that upwards of a trillion objects could have embedded sensors and an internet connection – this Internet of Things (IoT) could transform many aspects of workplace management. Glance around your workplace at the objects and facilities that are barely used from meeting rooms to printers and kitchen equipment. What if we could use the information from these sensors to bring the sharing economy to bear in the workplace? Data from our local IoT could help reduce the amount we have to spend on these resources or generate an income from them – swapping ownership for usership and access.

Sensors embedded in devices and objects could provide usage information and help identify opportunities to share, i.e. to rent or loan out your stapler, conference room, or office cafeteria for a day or an hour. Local internet-based applications could provide a platform for inter-office sharing and rental throughout a locality. Such an approach could help cut back on overconsumption and waste. Sharing might also reduce asset investment costs and the duplication of office supplies and cut the number of hours employees spend searching for and ordering supplies. Indeed, one day, smart software could undertake all our procurement and sharing responsibilities – renting out or sharing our under-utilised assets and finding the nearest available portable heater, projector screen, and short notice meeting facilities on demand.

Digital Twins – Using data from our connected devices, organisations will have the potential to collect massive amounts of data about a person and their reactions, ways of thinking, and individual preferences. Hence, physical and virtual robots could one day be able to replicate a person’s behaviour and responses. In fact, your digital twin could attend a meeting for you and comment on your behalf, while you continue working on other tasks from home or your desk. Your twin could also capture, summarize, and report back on the entire conversation, including analysis of the softer emotional content of the meeting.

By analysing body language and micro-facial expressions of the other participants, our twin could tell us about the mood of the meeting and people’s reactions to ideas being discussed – something we might have picked up on intuitively had we been there. A reliable clone in the form of a digital twin may relieve a lot of the stress and tension of workplace obligations for individuals with increasingly pressurised workloads. Our digital twin might take the form of a physical robot, a desktop device such as a laptop, or a smart hologram.

Life Automation – Connected devices and “life automation” apps might share your agenda and habits to plan the flow of your day from your bed to your workplace and back again. These devices, coupled with highly controllable micro-environments, could allow you to experience the ideal balance of temperature, air conditioning, sound proofing, and ambient aromas without impacting the person sat next to you at all.

Music from your home surround system could automatically keep playing in your headphones after you leave your apartment, switch to the in-car system if you get behind the wheel, and then continue playing at your desk when you start work. The home heating system or personal workplace micro environment would turn on when you are ten minutes away. Food would be delivered or ready to eat minutes after you break for lunch or walk in the front door at the end of the day.

We Can But Should We?

The boundaries between reality and science fiction continue to blur as emerging technologies accelerate at an exponential pace. The challenge is to identify they kind of workplace culture and environment we want and then deploy these shiny new tech toys in service of those ambitions, helping people perform at their best and happiest.

• What are the most dramatic changes you are currently experiencing or witnessing through the adoption of new workplace technologies?
•  How might employees respond to the introduction of productivity enhancing tools that also erode personal freedoms and privacy?
•  What technological advances might contribute most to enhancing your workplace experience over the next few years?

This article was published in FutureScapes. To subscribe, click here.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-4521050/ by thedigitalartist

By Rohit Talwar and Helena Calle

As futurists, it may be no surprise that we believe talent management and world class learning will differentiate the winners and losers in the emerging future. However, the growing demand for people with the skills required to navigate the next futures of work and the workplace, requires nothing short of a revolution in the educational system.

From early stages and school, through to higher education and adult learning, we need a fundamental rethink. Fortunately, several promising experiments are already underway at every level, and a range of initiatives are being developed to try to reform education and prepare people for the future.

According to the World Economic Forum the skills likely to see the highest demand for the next five years are focused on softer, more generic attributes like creativity, emotional intelligence, coordinating with others, and cognitive flexibility. The problem is how to help people develop these skills.

Current ed-tech initiatives offer interesting new models of learning but it is too early to assess if they will succeed in contributing to the development of any of these skills. Alt school, for example, gives student´s flexibility to adjust curricula and personalize their learning paths. This initiative sounds very interesting, but it fails to help students develop skills related to collaborative working such as communication, coordinating with others and emotional intelligence. Another example is MOOCs where students have flexible content available everywhere. Unfortunately, knowledge availability does not ensure understanding, comprehension, and creative thinking. Hopefully these approaches will evolve over time to address the soft skills challenge.

So how do we close the gap when future workforce scenarios are changing rapidly and the demand for relevant skills is becoming ever more urgent? Here are three possible solutions to help the transition process:

Teacher as facilitators: A key role of teachers nowadays should be oriented to promoting interaction between students. Knowledge is readily available for students online, and social skill training needs to be prioritized and happen over time with consistence practice. A teacher´s role in social skill development could include facilitating students’ in learning to communicate and solve problems with others; teaching collaborative approaches to achieve common goals and resolve conflicts; and helping student develop a sense of empathy with each other.

Organizations: The design of organizations and work should enable creativity and innovation. This can be done by encouraging and incentivizing employees to apply foresight techniques, innovation tools, and design thinking approaches to develop execute solutions to persistent and emerging problems. Greater emphasis should be placed on collaborative interdisciplinary projects combining employees from different organizational areas – e.g. logistics, administration, marketing – to tackle complex problems.

Education institutions as accelerators: With tech solutions and startups being at the core of innovation, education institutions need to place greater emphasis on teaching entrepreneurship and innovation courses to help students learn structured approaches that can be valuable in any job setting. Basic knowledge about how to detect market issues, design and test solutions, and gather customer experience insights are essential to building successful startups and performing almost any role within and organization.

We have a stark choice – we can either change the way we prepare our children for the future or apologize to them in advance for blocking the path.

This article was published in FutureScapes. To subscribe, click here.

A version of this article originally appeared in Training Journal.

Images: https://pixabay.com/images/id-4078059/ by comfreak

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

The future of money in the age of digital currency is one of the topics we’ve been exploring most frequently in a variety of recent client talks and articles. Here we discuss the future of cash in particular and how it might evolve. We’d welcome your thoughts on the topic.

Cash Free: Choice or Burden?

Eliminating cash has huge potential benefits including convenience, security, and cost reduction for retailers, banks, and governments. For customers, there is the benefit of flexibility – a priority increasingly driven by younger generations more comfortable with digital technology and the on-line world. The combination of these forces means the need for cash has reduced significantly. As our own Steve Wells, reports, when travelling to client events around the world in the last year, he has visit places as diverse as Romania, India, the USA, the Netherlands, Croatia, and Greece without any need for cash.

Another factor here is that social insecurity may be a major motivation for people to avoid using cash in their daily lives. For example, within the western world at least, a rising share of people simply don’t have any money to convert to cash once they’ve met their weekly expenditure. Many young adults are weighed down with student loan debt, and without money in the bank and hence no access to cash, the only other option is to use credit cards. Hence, financial inequality may itself be helping to make cash extinct in many economies.

Globally, many governments would like to eradicate cash as a measure to help reduce corruption, crime, shadow economy activity, and tax avoidance. For example, Sweden has been leading the shift to a cashless society and most consumers use debit or credit cards or their mobile phone for payments. A key reason to push the cashless agenda is that it is easier to monitor economic activity when all transactions are digitally registered.

A concern here is that, from a retailer’s perspective, cashless transactions gives the consumer an irrational feeling of detachment from their money. When money is not physically present in the transaction, consumers may be more likely to spend with less inhibition and lose track of how much they have left. Indeed, this may be one reason why so many retailers are pushing the cashless agenda. For banks, governments, and citizen services such as welfare benefit payments, the use of digital solutions to replace cash reduces the administrative requirements and cost overhead of handling cash.

The Future of Cash

In the mid-term, developed countries might stop using cash in the form of coins and paper currency. Instead they are likely to move to electronic transactions, using cards or phone apps. This might be a phased process, and initially we may see smaller value coins and notes taken out of circulation. For example the UK recently considered taking 1p and 2p coins out of circulation. To help reduce shadow economy activity and tax avoidance, the Indian government has removed 500 and 1,000 rupee notes from circulation and effectively banned their use.

In general, for a variety of reasons, developing countries still have a long way to go. The cashless movement could lead to exclusion of poor and more vulnerable segments of the population that do not have bank accounts or cell phones. Similarly, older generations still often rely on cash rather than using digital payment solutions. Smart phones are gaining a much larger foothold, but until they penetrate the whole of the population worldwide and in developing countries in particular, cash is still likely to exist. Fintech startups taking on banking in developing economies are coming close, but do not yet pose a risk to cash as yet.

Political, social, and sovereignty related arguments are likely to slow the move to a cashless world – particularly in more nationalistic economies. Further opposition may come from those who see this as a further incursion of big brother into our lives and yet another erosion of individual privacy.

In the longer term, we will see a growing range of initiatives that effectively eliminate traditional uses of use of cash – these include:

• The increasing use of mobile devices with payment apps
• The use of chips under the skin, as already offered to employees at Three Square Market for access control and the workplace cafeteria
• Cheaper credit cards issued through challenger banks and retailers to develop brand loyalty, and
• A switch to national or trading bloc cryptocurrencies.

However, we expect cash will not die out globally for at least the next 20-30 years. It will probably happen gradually, as the world becomes more digital and our institutions develop the ability to extensively protect and encrypt data. Perhaps we can expect the use of cash to cease within 30 years on a social scale – especially in retail and government services (pensions, benefits) – as more and more citizens become fully engaged with digital financial options.

The Potential of Digital Mediums of Exchange

One interesting possibility here is the rise of new forms of trading tokens. Future waves of such digital currencies might allow us to receive tokens in return for employment, but also for providing local services, and as rewards for completing educational tasks at school and at work. Our airline frequent flyer miles, and store points could also be converted to such tokens. Instead of receiving a like for posting an article on social media, our supporters could reward us with a fraction of a token. Such a widely accepted medium of exchange could lay the foundation for micropayments to work effectively and efficiently across society and to enable the unbanked and cash poor to participate more fully in the economy.

Conclusion

While there are clearly many potential benefits to the shift to an entirely digital medium of exchange, there are also significant hurdles and concerns to be addressed. The pace of transition could vary quite dramatically between nations and the process may require a fundamental reshaping of economies.

This article was originally published in FutureScapes. To subscribe, click here.

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Images: https://pixabay.com/images/id-4094245/ by comfreak

By Rohit Talwar

I have just taken part an extensive survey on the Future of Work, conducted for a UK government department. Below are my thoughts on what the worst-case outcomes might be for the various scenario elements of the Future of Work explored in the study. The focus is on the implications for people management and human resources (HR), and for the Civil Service (CS) Clearly, there are many possible paths to the future and a range of scenarios that could play out. As futurists, we often deliberately use these worst-case scenarios to push back on prevailing assumptions, help people think the unthinkable, and prepare for the most challenging of possibilities. Below you can find the Future of Work elements and my responses on the potential worst case scenario HR and Civil Service implications. that were outlined I’d love to hear your thoughts on the various questions posed.

A: Uncertainty and Agility

Scenario – The amount of uncertainty in the labour market will increase as a result of business failures such as Carillion, increased automation and economic volatility. The need for organisations to be more agile and flexible will continue due to rapid technological development and increased uncertainty and volatility.

HR Implications – In the best firms, we are likely to see a shift from focus on procedures and administration to developing digital and futures literacy, an emphasis on building new leadership models, and on unlocking human potential. Many are likely to be blindsided by the changes and find themselves ill-equipped to help their organizations adapt.

Civil Service Implications – The most likely outcome if we continue on the current trajectory will be budget cuts to fund Brexit and higher unemployment costs, and more bad and expensive automation. This could result in service cuts, public anger, more chaos, and headcount reduction. This in turn could see the best talent leaving, deadwood rising to higher responsibility, and organizations in permanent crisis mode. The outcome could be constant ridicule from the public and the media, and government being blamed for holding back society, business, and economic development

B: Employee Attitudes and Expectations

Scenario – Attitudes towards work will continue to change due to factors such as technological advancement, economic changes and globalization. This will lead to increased diversity of attitudes between generational groups. There will be an increased focus on employee well-being and “good” work. This is as a result of increased media attention to poor working conditions and higher expectations from talented workers.

HR Implications – Some organisations will place more emphasis on enhancing the conditions for workers. However, competitive pressures, cost reductions, and higher redundancies due to technology make it seem likely that in many organisations people management and HR will actually be de-prioritised, particularly in the public sector. Their focus will become more administrative, e.g. handling redundancy processes.

Civil Service Implications – More outsourcing of public sector HR, a decline in HR service standards, headcount reductions in HR, lower standards of performance and poor morale across the service, with more strikes.

C: Diversity and Inclusion

Scenario – The emphasis on diversity and inclusion will continue but will broaden from the current focus on gender, race and age to focus on other aspects of inequality such as geography, education and social class.

HR Implications – We will want to do more on diversity, and initiatives like #metoo and #timesup will have an impact. However, given increased automation, competition, and higher unemployment diversity and inclusion could actually be de-prioritised.

Civil Service Implications – The Civil Service will espouse good intentions, but in practice will slide back on commitments and water them down.

D: Automation and Skills

Scenario – Advances in AI mean that repetitive tasks will be mostly automated leading to a number of skills becoming obsolete and a large proportion of the workforce needing to re-skill. Advances in AI will also lead to the automation of some decision making tasks, particularly those relying on the integration of accurate and detailed data such as medical diagnostics. The automation of repetitive and decision-making tasks will shift the focus away from the need for knowledge to skills such as those in the area of creativity, leadership and managing complexity. The automation of tasks and the increase of complexity generally will mean that people will become more specialized. The use of more specialists and the availability of high quality ICT means that work will require the formation of collaborative teams that may work virtually and will often be self-managed.

There will be an increased need for skills in working with technology and in managing teams made up of both machines and humans. As the skills that organisations require are changing rapidly, there will be a shift to recruit for potential skills development, attitudes, capacity for learning and agility rather than for a particular skillset. Some organisations will “rebel” against increased technology use and return to more traditional face to face approaches to working. Automation will mean that organisations and jobs will last for less time meaning that people will have to be constantly learning new skills and changing jobs. This extreme uncertainty will lead to increased levels of stress and mental health issues.

HR Implications – People management and HR will be more automated and outsourced, with lower HR budgets. There will be a greater focus on processes and metrics, and less on maximising employee performance, improving their wellbeing, and job fulfilment.

Civil Service Implications – Poor digital literacy and lack of talent will lead to ineffective and expensive automation. Public service standards will fall, dissatisfaction with the Civil Service will rise dramatically because citizens will have less opportunity to challenge and complain about automated decisions made by government agencies.

E: People Management

Scenario – The core elements and practices of HRM will remain the same. There will be an increase in the use of wearable devices to allow individuals to manage their own productivity and wellbeing.

HR Implications – Much more management of people by machines using the data from their wearables. Privacy will be eroded, with employees forced to use the devices. Reward systems will increasingly be based on performance as measured narrowly by these devices. People will be treated more and more like machines, organisations will behave more like machines, and work will become an increasingly unpleasant place.

Civil Service Implications – The Civil Service will use wearables in a relatively dumb way, the application of the technology won’t produce better performance – just a lot more data for managers to obsess over.

F: Risk Management

Scenario – Due to the move to a cyber environment and increased uncertainty, focus on risk and reputation management will increase.

HR Implications – More vetting of job candidates, more continuous monitoring of employee activity and greater control over what they have access too. Stricter penalties for staff involved in cybercrime.

Civil Service Implications – More government data breaches, with more budget directed towards cyber-protection, and lower transparency.

G: Organisational Structures

Scenario – The use of partnerships between organisations, including private-public partnerships and networked organisations will become more common.

HR Implications – The best HR functions will be a key part of resourcing the future needs of the business and ensuring a good cultural and ethical fit with potential partners. However, most won’t play much part in forming such relationships or designing new organisational forms. A lot of these collaborations will fail because of people and cultural issues.

Civil Service Implications – The Civil Service is likely to make greater use of external partnerships, but won’t have the resources to manage them well, and will generally be unhappy with the outcomes, but will paint a positive public story about their value. Lack of oversight skills will see a significant waste of public funds, higher levels of corruption, and a further decline in service quality.

H: Employment Contracts and Working Patterns

Scenario – Globalisation and technological advances mean that hours of work are likely to continue to increase due to the need to communicate globally. This will lead to work intensification and increased problems such as employee burn-out. The existence of a physical workplace that people attend daily will continue to decrease due to advancements in ICT and other forms of technology. Therefore, the number of people working remotely will also increase. The increase in remote working will endanger relationships between workers. This means that organisations will take steps to create physical spaces where employees can interact socially and hold physical meetings, for the purpose of building community and cohesiveness within their workforce.

The increase in digital platforms related to obtaining work will lead to an increase in contingent work and the continued growth of the “gig economy”, and the shrinking of organizations’ permanent workforce, as well as an increase in the number of people who are self-employed. The increase in contingent and “gig” work will lead to an erosion of trust in the relationship between an organisation and its managers and their employees. Job quality and the standard of living will drop due to the number of people working contingently and the lack of protection offered to this segment of the labour market.

HR Implications – HR will spend more time managing contracts with gig workers and automating the process, and they are likely to drive down gig worker rights. Workplace rights will be eroded, and people will be seen to be as replaceable as machines. Firms with a genuine focus on their talent and workers’ rights will stand out.

Civil Service Implications – A lack of resources in HR and wider management could see the Civil Service becoming a big user of gig workers, but with some of the worst conditions for those on short term contracts.

I: Use of data

Scenario – The emphasis on collecting data from customers and employees will continue to increase. The need for skills in data analytics will increase.

HR Implications – Many will become obsessed with capturing and analysing customer data. However, they will not necessarily use this to enhance the lives of workers. The focus could simply be on driving task based performance through attention to micro-measures.

Civil Service Implications – The Civil Service will seek to gather more employee and customer data, but there will be little evidence of it being used to enhance the performance and wellbeing of the workforce, or the service provided to citizens. We can expect far greater surveillance and intervention in the lives of citizens.

J: Ethical Practice

Scenario – The requirement for organisations to undertake their business in a way that is ethical and socially responsible will increase. Process transparency will increase due to the ability to access company information easily via technology.

HR Implications – Good firms and HR functions will establish and adhere to the highest ethical standards. Many will fall far short of this, and we could see ethical standards slip dramatically in the face of increasing competition and the power to abuse our data offered by technology.

Civil Service Implications – The Civil Service will gradually downgrade its public commitment to ethical standards.

What’s your view on the worst-case scenarios for the future of work and how we can avoid them? Please share your thoughts.

This article was originally published in FutureScapes. To subscribe, click here.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-4590836/ by geralt

By Rohit Talwar and Helena Calle

How can we embrace the strategic importance of learning and development?

Learning, Survival, and Growth

In our recent book The Future Reinvented—Reimagining Life, Society, and Business, we argued that, in the face of seemingly unprecedented change across society, learning at every level is central to survival and growth. Here we explore five underlying forces at play that are placing learning and development (L&D) at the heart of tomorrow’s organizations.

A Faster Planet—The world is moving and changing at a breakneck pace. Organizations are challenged to make sense of today while keeping an eye on the horizon for the next wave of transformative developments. For leaders, it is increasingly apparent that survival depends on the ability to make sense of change, unlearn what no longer serves, and acquire new knowledge and insights.

Living the Future—Societal shifts, disruptive thinking, and game-changing technologies are shortening the gap between concept emergence and translation into a physical reality. Hence, the growing emphasis on acting faster on insights and reducing the time to ‘sell’ a change internally—because people can see for themselves why it’s needed. The implication is that everyone needs to learn to understand how to scan and evaluate signals of impending change around them and on the horizon. From changing customer requirements to futures videos, all provide powerful learning about tomorrow.

Digital Mindsets—Entities are being redesigned around data flows and adopting increasingly digital mindsets—using data to underpin decision-making. While intuition, assumptions, and creativity are important, there’s growing emphasis on fact and results-based decision-making. Adopting more systematic problem solving using the scientific method requires a different training approach. Individuals must learn how to approach data, make evidence-based decisions, and draw conclusions using repeatable methods. They also need to learn to make decisions when the data is imperfect or unavailable.

New World Literacy—A wide range of exponentially evolving technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain are creeping into workplaces, enabling radically different ways of thinking about how things work and how to achieve outcomes. For example, driverless cars will overturn long held assumptions regarding insurance and vehicle ownership. Hence, a key challenge is to accelerate the speed at which leaders and managers are learning about, and updating themselves on, these disruptive technologies and the ideas they enable.

Smarter Workplaces—Exponentially improving technologies such as AI and robotics are starting to transform workplaces, outperforming humans in many tasks. They are also expanding our capacity to process and interpret vast arrays of data, conduct complex activities with repeatable precision, and automate much of what was exclusively in the human domain. Learning about how to work with these technologies and harness them to unleash our creative talents is central to ensuring organizations see a positive return on their automation investments.

Future performance will undoubtedly be tied to an organization’s capacity to learn. The question is whether today’s L&D professionals are ready to step into the immense opportunities that are emerging and play a central role in creating tomorrow.

• Alongside evaluating the cost of L&D, does the organization also look at the costs of having capability gaps?
• How can we help individuals take greater responsibility for their own learning journeys?
• What capabilities will L&D leaders need in order to help the organization embrace the importance of acquiring new insights and skills?

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 Training Journal.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-92904/ by geralt

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

How might the most popular human augmentations impact our daily life over the next twenty years?

As we look to a world in which enhancement of the human brain and body are likely to become commonplace, a key question arises: Is a person still human if they are also enhanced, enriched, or augmented by technology? To help readers make their own decisions on this, here, in the spirit of the season, we offer a list of twenty-five human transformations that might make it onto the “must have” holiday shopping list of 2030. Which would you or your loved ones want?

First, most of the emerging transformational technologies aimed at human enhancement fall under a few general categories, despite a good deal of crossover. Here’s a quick guide:

Chemical enhancement: Chemical enhancements would include pharmaceuticals which alter the brain, encompassing nootropics for focus and memory, or psychedelics for vision quests. Any transformation resulting from ingesting a food or drug would fall into this group.

Genetic enhancement: Targeting our DNA and genetics, this category of augmentations involves editing or altering the actual chromosomes and genomes before or after conception. The most commonly discussed technology for genetic enhancement today is CRISPR, a “cheap and easy” means of editing DNA in existing life forms. Genetic transformation also takes us into the realms cloning, designer babies, chimeras, and aging/disease prevention.

Neurological enhancement: Enhancements to the brain can take several forms ranging from hardware to software. Neural implants, electronic stimulation, and brain hacking all fall under this category—implants being actual foreign objects embedded in some way to affect the nervous system. Hacking could involve tapping into the brain via “mind over matter” or altered consciousness state to awaken previously dormant mental, physical, or even metaphysical abilities.

Physical enhancement: Physical transformations would usually appear as hardware add-ons like exoskeletons (i.e. an “Iron Man” suit), endoskeletons with reinforced bones, chip implantations, bionic eyes, or other prosthetics. These could be bionic, cyborg, 3D/4D printed, or otherwise innovative adaptations, which can either be removed (like prosthetics, clothing, or armor) or permanent (surgically attached or implanted). Genetic manipulation to achieve extreme physical beauty or strength would be included in this category.

Electronic enhancement: The use of electronics involves the transformation of intelligence, consciousness, or humanity into digital form. Any type of uploading or downloading of human “content” in digital data form (hard drives or to the cloud) could be considered an electronic enhancement. There may also be types of implants or tattoos that read vital signs to communicate them to the Internet of things (IoT), blockchains, or digital public health data sets. Health applications of nanotechnology could fall under this category along with wearable technology, and human transformations that deal with virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR).

Radical life extension: Extending life often refers to “curing death” as its raison d’être. Aging is viewed as an unnecessary evil, a mere medical problem waiting to be solved. Being able to live 125 years or more with comfort and good health seems to be the current vision for life extension proponents, who advocate for pharmaceutical, dietary, and lifestyle adaptations to achieve longer than natural life spans.

Cryogenic freezing/Cryopreservation: Rather than extend life, this transformative breakthrough puts life on pause, to restart later in time, decades or centuries from now. The idea behind cryogenic freezing is that in the future, medical technology will be able to reanimate a body which has been preserved in liquid nitrogen at very low temperatures. The elderly and the terminally ill are the most likely candidates for cryo, although in the future there could also be elective preservation conducted for personal reasons by otherwise healthy people. Of course, we have no idea whether we’ll ever have the technology to re-awaken the physical body and restore memory and consciousness.

The holiday shopping list of 2030 may contain several of these future transformations wrapped up in a neat package of human enhancements. Below are twenty-five radical suggestions you might treat your friends, colleagues, and family members to in the coming decades. Happy holidays!

1. Instant Content Upgrades – Uploading a new language, a map, knowledge about a client or project, and key information prior to a romantic date or a business meeting could be available over the next 10 to 15 years through instant content updates to the human brain. This would be achieved either through direct downloads to our web-connected brains or via plug-in memory devices for more confidential information.
2. Brain-Computer Interface – Wireless communication between our brains and an array of connected devices could become a reality. From computers and phones, to domestic appliances and in-car entertainment systems—we would be able to operate gadgets with our thoughts. These wearable or implanted sensors and transmission devices would allow us to communicate as we do with Siri and Alexa today, but without saying a word.
3. Smart Contact Lenses – Who needs screens when you have eyes that can be turned into visual interfaces? Every device could easily connect with your smart contact lenses and present the information you desire such as augmented reality overlays of a city as you sightsee. Your requests would be communicated using eye movement, gestures, words, or telepathic commands.
4. Beyond the Rainbow – Gene therapy has cured color blindness in monkeys; if clinical trials are allowed, color blind humans may be next. Eventually, science may expand our color vision to include all wavelengths of light, from gamma rays to ultraviolet and even radio waves. Humans might literally see the world in a whole new light.
5. Beyond Sound – As humans age, we naturally lose the ability to hear higher frequencies. In the future, we may be able to reverse this, or even enhance human hearing beyond the normal range via aural implants directly connected to our brains.
6. Endoskeleton – Become stronger and fitter from the inside out, but without most of the requirement for exercise and healthy eating. Physical and genetic enhancements applied to your bones and muscles would improve your Body Mass Index (BMI) and performance from the get-go. Reinforced bones would improve tone and strength with no extra work needed.
7. Implanted Immunity Bubble – Subcutaneous implants would detect pathogens in the immediate environment and provide antibodies to protect us from specific contagious diseases. This would make most public health measures irrelevant as coughing, sneezing, and touching may no longer pose a risk. Hand washing could become a redundant activity and vaccines unnecessary, while a global antibiotic crisis could also be averted.
8. Heightened Sensitivity – Through deep brain stimulation, humans may eventually have total control over how much physical sensations affect them. We could turn a dial to increase touch sensitivity during intimate moments, or while playing a car chase computer game, but dial down our sensitivity in anticipation of a physical altercation.
9. Reality Check Implant – This personal detection system would allow us to control our experience of mixed reality, virtual reality, and augmented reality sensory stimulation environments. The system would block out photoshopped, virtual, augmented, digital, or holographic imagery, and other sensory inputs whenever the wearer wants to “keep it real.”
10. Wear Your Reputation on Your Sleeve – One’s online reputation may become a valuable form of currency in the future, and be considered in job-seeking or credit applications, for example. Tattoos or embedded objects could change, grow, morph, and otherwise shape-shift depending on one’s fluctuating online reputation score. A score might be comprised of the number of social media contacts, shares, likes, or uploads.
11. Cosmetic Gene Editing – The gene modification technology known as CRISPR introduced in 2012 has already made it “cheap and easy” to edit genomes inside the body. The CRISPR system’s ease of use means it could be adopted for almost any gene-editing requirement. So, while doctors could apply the technology as a targeted cancer treatment, we could also see the same approach used for cosmetic augmentation. For example, shopping malls could provide services to change clients’ hair thickness, eye color, and skin pigmentation, making CRISPR treatments as common as other beauty and lifestyle options.
12. Immersive Experiential Technologies – Augmented, multi-sensory, and immersive mixed or virtual reality could create opportunities for new types of life experience. For example, feeling the bed linen, tasting the food, and smelling the bathroom fragrances of a hotel on the other side of the world would be part of choosing where to visit. You could possibly consume a range of experiences direct from your living room, in place of travelling: Immerse yourself in the sights, sounds, and smells of the Serengeti while you eat your takeaway pizza in Brooklyn.
13. 3D Cloner: See and Print – This device would allow a product to be identified and 3D printed in real time and “on sight.” Special optical lens implants would trigger the cloning of the item being viewed by the wearer, like taking a snapshot. Clothing, food, and even medical products like prosthetic arms or legs could be created instantaneously on the spot, “cloning” whatever item the user glances at, and transmitting the design to be produced on 3D printing machines.
14. The God Pill – Advances in pharmaceuticals and neuroscience could lead to a breakthrough drug designed to experience a higher state of consciousness which some might call “God.” This might provide a feeling of one’s place in the universe, a sense of oneness with nature, or help you visualize yourself face to face with an actual deity. These hallucinogenic experiences would fall somewhere on a spectrum between recreational and therapeutic, depending on the recipient’s state of mind at the time. This could be perfect for coping with mid-life crises, dealing with the death of a loved one, anxiety disorders, accepting a terminal diagnosis, and recovering from addiction. Or, just try it for fun.
15. 3D Printed Wings – We could fly as close to the sun as we like with customized 3D printed wings, which are perfectly designed to bring aerodynamic freedom and flight. These powerful, lightweight appendages could be attached surgically and removed by a visiting robo-surgeon or with an in-home DIY kit and training video (sold separately).
16. Always a Good Hair Day – A gene-altering pill that could change a hairstyle within fifteen minutes from straight to curly would save time and energy since styling is eliminated from the daily routine, and there would be no need to visit the hair salon. Furthermore, toxic beauty products could be eliminated from daily regimens with this enhancement. This would also be ideal for traveling to extremely humid or dry climates. This pill’s popularity could surge in regions where climate change is already having an effect.
17. Virtual Reality Empathy Machine: Walk a Mile in My Shoes* – Conflict resolution would be simplified with virtual reality empathy films, which allow friends, family members, teachers, students, bosses, workers, and even litigators in court to literally see the world through each other’s eyes. Benefits would include greater interpersonal intimacy and understanding, elimination of sibling rivalries, and dealing swiftly with difficult people. *Requires pre-installation of a memory recording device.
18. Sleep with the Fishes – Using “mind over matter” psychological approaches, hacking of the human body might someday allow people to breathe underwater. The brain would convince the body it has certain fish-like abilities—specifically, greater lung capacity. Humans could then live in futuristic underwater cities, engaging in a little live action role play as Aquaman or a mermaid, or just enjoy swimming with the dolphins during island vacations without scuba gear. Such an enhancement could also enable humans to settle or just vacation on floating or underwater cities without fear of drowning.
19. Cryopreservation Pal – Cryogenic freezing is a medical technology that preserves a human body in liquid nitrogen at very low temperatures, hopefully for later reanimation at some point in the future. A cryopreservation chamber, which fits one human and one dog or large cat, could make the deep sleep a bit less frightening. It would be nice to know your best friend will be there when you wake up in twenty or a hundred years’ time. Instant companionship might make the idea of being reanimated in the far future a little less daunting for people who don’t have spouses or family members being cryopreserved.
20. Perfect Body in a Pill – What if, at last, medical science achieves the ultimate win for sofa surfers, and creates a pill to give you the body of a god without putting in all the work or adopting any healthy habits? Ripped abs, ageless skin, perfect proportions—what more could someone want? For those who do want more, a second daily pill could generate an intoxicating body odor.
21. Exoskeleton – Achieving superhuman strength and endurance might be possible with an exoskeleton suit of external body armor that turns any average person into Iron Man. Physical labor would be a breeze with the addition of robotic arms, legs, and a back which never tire or run low on energy. Whilst this would be great for work or recreational sports, it puts house movers, construction workers, and even weight lifters at risk of being “replaced by cyborgs.”
22. Elephant Man or Woman – Imagine never forgetting anything ever again. Elephants are believed to have the longest memory of any living creature. With the help of neural implants, now people can remember forever, too! These implants, possibly in the form of a “neural lace” lattice of tiny sensors under or just above the skull, could improve memory, and may ultimately also prevent Alzheimer’s disease. This would make a perfect gift for the radical age-extender in your life, or elderly relatives who’ve not yet shown signs of dementia.
23. Digital Happy Pill – Dwellers of the world’s high-tech smart cities could opt to take a pill that lets them have their lives monitored and managed remotely with 24/7 data capture and surveillance, day in and day out. Imagine having each and every behavior monitored, and, if necessary, modified, by the city’s central nervous system based on a smart city artificial intelligence program. One of the ways to alleviate fears, paranoias, or other mental delusions concerning “privacy” might be to take this daily “digital happy pill”, jointly monitored by city planners and medical professionals to ensure smart city residents are the happiest citizens on earth! Smile, you’re on camera (constantly, even in your own home)!
24. 4D Printed Skin – 4D printed materials are essentially “shape shifting” in the sense that they can change their form and properties based on external stimuli. So, wetness prompts drying or absorption, heat promotes cooling, and so forth. In the future, a skinsuit, active skin covering, or surgical skin implant could give humans the ability to adapt to their environment seamlessly. Clothing may become unnecessary with this form-fitting, shape-shifting material, which could look like clothes, skin, or whatever the wearer selects. An essential adaptation in extreme climates, 4D printed skin is also ideal for the fashionista in your life.
25. Organ Regeneration – The ability to regenerate human organs could end the ravages of disease, aging, and even injury. By 2030, organ regeneration modification may be the signature transformation of life-extension adopters. Careful consideration should be taken with the giving of this gift (particularly with alcoholics and drug abusers), as it could actually enable irresponsible behavior.

• What enhancement or superpower would you most like to have?
• Where do we draw the line between human and bionic? Human and cyborg?
• Which traits could or should never be replicated by technology? Where is the line between enhancement and eugenics?
• What kind of legal framework would we need to develop in order to address the concerns around human augmentation?

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

A version of this article was originally published in The Journal of MHealth.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-3089947/ by geralt

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-4175713/ by Tumisu

By Rohit Talwar

How can we respond to technological shifts and create a genuine agenda for change that advances the prospects for all humanity?

Enriching Humanity in a Digitized World

Our hope is that our books provide a broad, stimulating, and provocative exploration of the ideas, developments, issues, and potential solution paths to A Very Human Future. So, what are the next steps to go from insight and ideas to experimentation and impactful change? Below we outline a brief manifesto of 12 critical action areas that we must focus on as individuals, society, businesses, and governments if we are to avoid the risk of being overwhelmed by the scale of change on the horizon.

1. Extraordinary Leadership—In order for any and all of the ideas presented in this book, we need to develop leaders with a vastly expanded set of capabilities. What’s good for business in the future will be ever-more intricately entwined with what’s good for individuals, society, and nations. Our choices and their consequences will come under an exponentially more intense spotlight, and actions with negative outcomes could bring down businesses and governments at an increasing rate. Hence, the imperative must be to increase the investment in developing leaders who can understand and navigate a rapidly changing reality. Key here will be taking leaders out into the world to engage with those who are developing and implementing the ideas, processes, and technologies that are reshaping our world.
2. Digital Literacy—Individuals, businesses, and governments alike need to acknowledge the central role of digital in all our futures, especially its relevance to our job prospects and to the health of economies and businesses. This means making the investment of time and money to learn about the technologies coming through, understand what makes them different from what already exists, and appreciate the scale of their potential impact. Governments can follow the example of Finland in providing a free online introduction, businesses should be prioritizing and ensuring high levels of digital awareness, and individuals need to take advantage of the wealth of free content available on the internet. There are literally no excuses for maintaining a lack of digital literacy.
3. Education Systems—Across the globe, education systems, corporate learning programs, and adult education provision need upgrading. We need to ensure that these prepare people with the skills and awareness that will help them move easily from job to job and to create their own businesses. Proven accelerated learning models about that can help individuals acquire new knowledge and content rapidly. These approaches need to be accompanied with the acquisition of lifelong skills such as problem solving, collaboration, scenario thinking, and conflict resolution.
4. Evaluating the Exponentials—With governments and businesses, in particular, there is a tendency to be too slow and conservative in the evaluation of and experimentation with emerging technologies. The result can be crisis responses when the impacts become far greater and more wide ranging than expected. Initial evaluations therefore need to take an outside-in perspective, drawing on input from outside the organization and relevant discipline to gather a much broader set of views. The earlier we have a feel for possible development paths, application opportunities, and potential impacts, the more comprehensive and effective our response strategies should be.
5. Employer Responsibilities—In a world where technology may replace more jobs than it creates in the short term, we need a new debate about where the boundaries of employer responsibility lies. Be that helping staff with finding new jobs to paying higher taxes, the conversation and experimentation with different options needs to start yesterday. Equally, employers need to explore how they will navigate the boundaries between technologies that allow us to monitor every aspect of employee performance and behavior and the privacy, rights, and freedoms of the individual.
6. Support for Job Creation—Governments and businesses alike will have an interest in ensuring that new meaningful jobs are created for those rendered unemployed by automation. Whether as customers or taxpayers, there is a need in the current economic model for people to be earning money. Hence, an expansion and improvement in the quality of retraining schemes will be critical, as will a massive increase in support for those wanting to start their own businesses. Experimentation is required to test out a range of options.
7. Investment in the Jobless—A number of experiments are already underway with variants of guaranteed basic income schemes. Every nation will need its own exploration of policy options and to conduct experiments for how it will support potentially rising numbers of unemployed people, how it will help them retrain, and how it can address the broader societal consequences of declining employment.
8. Creation of New Sectors—From human augmentation to autonomous vehicles and synthetic materials, we will see a number of new industries emerge and hopefully generate jobs. Governments need to assess the likely loss of jobs in current sectors. The results need to be compared to the potential for job creation through current levels of investment in research and development, supporting new ventures, and attracting inward investment. Where there are clear gaps, action needs to be taken rapidly to avoid the potential for a rise in long-term unemployment. Many of the new jobs will require the equivalent of a degree level education. This in turn points to the need to ensure anticipatory action in reshaping education curricula and supporting people to enter higher education.
9. Addressing the Mental Health Issues—Across the planet, stress has become a growing challenge, with rising numbers affected and a massive associated economic impact. Addressing this means changing workplace cultures and management models, increasing provision of mental health support in society, and expansion in the number of people being trained to become therapists and counselors in the future.
10. Technology Ethics—There is a challenge of trying to enforce global standards and guidelines on technologies that nations see as a core source of future competitive advantage. There is also the concern about the weaponization of technology and the protection of personal privacy. Nations and businesses alike have to take the lead in establishing clear codes of conduct on the technologies and their applications and demonstrate that they are holding themselves to the highest ethical standards. Citizen and consumer pressure will then act as a powerful lever on those who are slow to respond, although there will always be countries and companies that choose to sit outside such agreements.
11. Draw Constructively on the Past—Creating a very human future doesn’t require that we erase the past. It is important to honor human history and retain the positive aspects. Ways of doing so might differ between cultures and countries, but the essence remains the same: uphold values and behaviors that place people at the center of all agendas. If we carry forward the elements of our past that celebrate humanity in all its forms, we can build a very human future at every level of technological development.
12. A Very Human Dialogue—The debate about whether particular advances harm or advance society’s interests will rumble on, the key here is to maintain an open public dialogue. The challenge is to raise literacy levels and public awareness of the issues, so we can bring more citizens into the discussion to share their views on what society needs and wants as compared to what technology makes possible.

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-4302990/ by Stine68Engel

By April Koury and Rohit Talwar

How might AI impact future developments in cyber security?

Security has always been an arms race between attacker and defender. He starts a war with a stick, you get a spear; he counters with a musket, you upgrade to a cannon; he develops a tank, you split the atom. While the consequences of organizational cybersecurity breaches may not be as earth-shatteringly dramatic today, the centuries-old arms race continues into the digital sphere of today.

The next challenge for companies with an eye towards the future should be to recognize that artificial intelligence (AI) is already entering the scene. For example, we are seeing the emergence of AI tools like PatternEx—focused on spotting cyberattacks—and Feedzai for fraud detection across the ecommerce value chain. The technology is developing so rapidly that it is too early to say whether the impact will be revolutionary, or just the next evolution in the continued digital age cybersecurity arms race.

Artificial Intelligence

Some AI evangelists argue this new technological force could render all others seemingly irrelevant given the scale of change, risk, and opportunity it could bring about in IT security. This new dark art offering seemingly magical technological wizardry does indeed have the potential to change our world, and—depending on who you choose to believe—either make life a little better, lead to total societal transformation, or end humanity itself.

As a result of a new generation of disruptive technologies coupled with AI, we are entering the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The three previous revolutions gave us steam-based mechanization, electrification, and mass production, followed by electronics, information technology, and automation. This new fourth era, with its smart machines, is fueled by exponential improvement and convergence of multiple scientific and technological fields into an all-encompassing Internet of things (IoT). The medium to long-term outcomes of these converging exponential technologies for individuals, society, business, government, and IT security are far from clear.

The pace of AI development is accelerating and astounding even those in the sector. In March 2016, Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo system beat the world GO champion—demonstrating the speed of development taking place in machine learning, a core AI technology. The board game GO has billions of possible moves; you cannot teach the system all the rules and permutations. Instead, AlphaGo was equipped with a machine learning algorithm that enabled it to deduce the rules and possible moves from observing thousands of games. Its successor AlphaGo Zero taught itself to play GO in three days without observing any human games and then beat AlphaGo by 100 games to nil. This same technology can now be used in IT security in applications ranging from external threat detection and prevention to spotting the precursors of potentially illegal behavior amongst employees.

The Current State of Affairs in IT Security

In 2015 in the US, the Identity Theft Resource Center noted that almost 180 million personal records were exposed to data breaches, and a PwC survey report highlighted that 79% of responding US organizations had experienced at least one security incident. Industry research indicates that while hackers exploit vulnerabilities within minutes of their becoming known, companies take roughly 146 days to fix critical vulnerabilities. With the average cost of a data breach estimated at US$4 million, there is growing concern over how companies can keep up with the constant onslaught of ever stealthier, faster, and malicious attacks today and in the future.

As it stands, many firms focus more on reacting to security breaches rather than preventing them, and the current approach   to network security is often aimed more at “standards compliance” rather than detecting new and evolving threats. The result is an unwinnable game of whack-a-mole that could overwhelm companies in the future unless they are willing to adopt and adapt the mindset, technology, and techniques used by the hackers. And there is very little doubt that hackers are—or soon will be—developing AI tools to increase the frequency, scale, breadth, and sophistication of their attacks.

Organizations in this digital age create infinite amounts of data, both internally through their own processes and externally via customers, suppliers, and partners. No one human can analyze all that data to monitor for potential security breaches—our systems have simply become too widespread, data-laden, and unwieldy. However, when combined with big data management tools, AI is becoming ever more effective at crunching vast amounts of data and picking out patterns and anomalies. In fact, with most AI systems, the more information they are fed, the smarter they become.

AI’s Future Potential

One of the biggest potential security benefits of AI lies in detecting internal threats. Imagine an AI system that, day in and day out, watches the comings and goings of all employees within a corporate headquarters via biometrics and login information. It knows, for example, that the CFO normally logs out of the cloud each day by 12 noon and heads to the company gym, where she spends an average of 45 minutes. One day it spots an anomaly—the CFO has logged into the cloud at 12:20 pm. is intelligent enough to compare her location with this unexpected login—according to its data, the CFO’s face was last scanned on entering the gym and has not been seen leaving the gym, but the cloud login originated from her office.

The AI recognizes the anomaly, correlates the discrepancy between login and CFO locations, shuts down cloud access to the CFO’s account, and begins defensive measures against potential cyberattacks. The system also alerts the CFO, and escalates this high priority problem to human cybersecurity within seconds. Important company data and financial records are safe thanks to AI security. Imagine how its capabilities will grow as this same AI system continues to learn from and predict the behavior of hundreds or hundreds of thousands of employees across the organization—helping it monitor for and predict similar security breaches.

Beyond employee behavior, our AI security application is also watching the company’s internal systems and learning how they interact. It discovers when customer information is added into the company’s database, accounting software automatically picks up the information and an invoice is generated within an average of 7.5 seconds. Any deviation outside of normal behavior by .25 seconds triggers the AI to investigate every link within the process and tease out the cause. In this case, based on what it discovers (an inconsequential lag in the system), the AI security properly prioritizes the incident as a nonthreatening low risk, but will continue to monitor for similar lags and alert system maintenance to the issue just in case. Now let’s take this scenario a step further—imagine that not only has this AI system learned the behavior of hundreds of employees and of the internal company networks, but it is also capable of continually learning from external cyberattacks. The more cyberattacks thrown at the AI, the more data it can parse, and like a thinking, rational soldier who has manned the battlements through numerous campaigns, the better educated and prepared it becomes for future attacks. It will recognize totally new, hostile code based on experience and previous exposure to related patterns of attack behavior. It will build defenses as it works to unravel the new hostile code, and as the offensive AI code attempts to adapt to the new defenses, the AI security will continually develop new methods to counter and destroy the invader.

This is the potential AI security system of the near future—fully integrated inside and out, noninvasive to daily business, and always on alert and ready to defend. It will be the ultimate digital sentry— hopefully learning and adapting as quickly as the attackers.

Organizations’ Approach to AI Security

Just as the stick fight eventually escalated to nuclear weapons, so too will the AI battle between organizations and hackers keep evolving. Continual one-upmanship will become the norm in AI security, perhaps to the point where even developers will be unable to decipher the exact workings of their constantly learning and evolving security algorithms. As complex and expensive as this all sounds, will companies in the future, especially smaller organizations, be able to survive without AI?

As the stakes become higher and failures loom larger, ever evolving AI threats may encourage far more collaboration across multiple companies. Smaller organizations could band together under one AI security system, dispersing the cost and maintenance across multiple payers, while larger players with the financial and technological muscle to own their own AI security may exchange critical information on cyberattacks—or rather, their AIs could exchange information on cyberattacks and learn from each other.

Alternatively, companies could become so overwhelmed that they simply opt for simple, technologically cheaper “brute force” non-AI solutions to counter increasingly complex AI hacks. The simple, or dumb, solution may entail more checks and passwords across accounts and devices, or perhaps security enhanced devices that are changed every two weeks. While adding five layers of complex passwords  to any login or continuously rotating through smart phones could protect company security, the increased overhead, employee frustration, and time wasted with cumbersome security measures would not be seen as ideal and could hinder the firm’s reputation—which might make it more susceptible to attack.

While an AI system will quietly monitor security and enable employees to focus on their work, the simple non-AI solution will place an unnecessary security burden on the employees—they will be responsible for keeping up with those five complex passwords and changing devices on a biweekly basis. Whereas the AI system is maintained by a few cybersecurity experts, the simple security solution is in the hands of every employee, vastly multiplying the chances of a security breach. In the future, this simple non-AI solution might become a defensive strategy of survival rather than an adaptive offensive campaign of a leading, thriving business.

The Role of Humans in AI Security

Of course, at this point a natural question is, “If AI is quicker, smarter, and continually adapting to do its job better, why even bother with human cybersecurity?” Today, AI security must still learn from humans, and although it may one day reach the point where it no longer requires expert involvement, that day remains at least a few years down the road. Furthermore, depending on how valuable we deem human oversight and intuition in security, that day may never come to pass. AI security systems currently need humans to write their starter algorithms, and provide the necessary data, training, and feedback to guide their learning. Humans are currently an essential part of the deployment of AI, and as AI security evolves beyond this nascent stage, the role for humans in AI will evolve as well.

As organizations increasingly digitize processes, amassing mind-boggling amounts of sensitive data, new importance will be placed on the role of the human architects and minders of AI security systems. Never has so much data been so easily accessible to attack, and even small attacks gathering seemingly innocuous data could add up to catastrophic security breaches. Developers of AI security will become akin to nuclear weapons inspectors in importance—highly trustworthy individuals who have undergone extensive background checks and intensive training, vetting, and accreditation. They will not only build AI security, but also provide oversight and intuitive guidance in the training process and be an integral line of cybersecurity defense.

AI security will go far beyond human capabilities, freeing organizations and cybersecurity experts from the impossible task of constant vigilance, allowing them to prevent future attacks without interrupting daily workflow. Tomorrow’s AI security system will learn, self-improve, and run discreetly behind the scenes—intelligently monitoring, prioritizing, and destroying threats; ever evolving into the next finely-honed weapon in the cybersecurity armory.

• Where does cybersecurity in the AI age sit on your organization’s priority list?
• Will SME’s be able to survive without AI security in the future?
• Could we see corporations increasingly resorting to cyberattacks as a means of gaining competitive advantage?

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

A version of this article was originally published in Network Security Journal.

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