This Futurist Is Predicting a Supercycle of Tech as AI, Biotech, and Wearables Converge

This convergence suggests a transformative era where advancements in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and wearable technology synergize, leading to groundbreaking innovations with profound implications across various sectors, from healthcare to consumer electronics.

For businesses hoping to ride the coming wave of innovation, futurist Amy Webb recommends what she calls 'value network mapping.'

The disruptive power of artificial intelligence has only just begun, according to futurist Amy Webb.

Webb, who is the CEO of Future of Today Institute, a trend forecasting and advisory firm, recently unveiled its 2024 Tech Trends Report before a packed audience at SXSW. Her address focused on what she calls a "supercycle" in technology--a time of "booming demand, elevating the prices of commodities and assets to unprecedented heights"--that she says has just arrived. Driving this cycle, she says, are major innovations in the three converging areas of AI, biotech and connected devices.

Webb envisions a world in which companies compete with each other in an ecosystem of AI-powered connected devices. These devices, one current example being wearable headsets like Apple's Vision Pro that offers a "spatial computing" VR environment allowing users to access some 600 apps. Aside from their consumer uses, they also collect data on users that could be used to train AI. Once large language models run out of online content to train with, Webb predicts that connected devices, whether wearable or present in homes or vehicles, will "continuously learn from you in real time" to provide more sources of data to train "large action models," referring to a model that predicts what to do, rather than what to say, next.

"We're about to be surrounded by millions of sensors that are always on, also always on us," she said.

Although advancements in biotechnology haven't been touted as widely as those in AI, Webb said the field is likely to be immensely important, especially when paired with AI. She pointed to AI-driven scientific advancements driving the discovery and development of materials that could help mitigate crises like climate change or hunger. Webb likened one new model that uses the language of biology to "ChatGPT, but instead for organisms."  She also referenced Google's DeepMind, which built a tool that discovered 2.2 million new materials of which 380,000 are stable enough for research, a feat the lab said equated to "800 years' worth of knowledge."

The implications of this sort of innovation are exciting, Webb said, but also have the potential to contribute to what she termed "catastrophic scenarios" that exacerbate inequalities or contribute to mass chaos and misinformation.

"The wave of innovation that's coming is so intense, and so potent, and so pervasive, it will literally reshape our human existence in ways that I think are exciting, and good, and absolutely terrifying," she said.

To head that off, she offered pointers and recommendations for lawmakers, businesses and individuals to head off the worst possible cases. 

For businesses, Webb recommended "value network mapping," which entails tracing all partners and entities within a company's ecosystem that are responsible for creating value. This practice offers a macro view of a business, facilitates communication and permits more agile change within organizations allowing them to adapt to the changing values that technological innovations bring.

"If you can do this, you will effectively slow time down and see disruption before it happens and enable you to create value going forward," Webb said.

Sourced from Inc. 

‍