17. Assisting individuals and organizations
to close their service innovation skills gap
and co-create smarter service systems
empowering employees, customers, citizens
with cognitive mediators
in the collaborative service economy
Abstract
Some speculations – a timeline 2015, 2025, 2035, 2055
In 2015, CSIG (Cognitive Systems Institute Group) has the mission of cognitive assistants for all occupations in smart service systems. Early days for sure. An AI Magazine article in the works will explore this more.
By 2025, may be possible to instantly ingest textbooks to create Q-A systems. There will be cognitive assistants for all occupations (accountant to zoologist), as well as for homeless, prisoners, and the mentally and physically challenged.
By 2035, empowered makers will realize their cognitive mediators know them in many ways better than they know themselves. Everyone will be able to afford an outstanding executive assistant and personal coach. We will all may be symbiotic with our cognitive mediators to help manage complexity in DIKW-rich environments (data-information-knowledge-wisdom).
The term “cognitive mediators” includes the concepts of cognitive (a) tools/components, (b) assistants/clerks, (c) collaborators, (d) coaches.
By 2055, empowered makers will command a thousand “workers.” The importance of rapid rebuilding from scratch with the right building blocks, as well as the responsible use of knowledge may be a priority.
See http://service-science.info/archives/3844
Reference:
Spohrer, J (2015) Empowering Makers in the Cognitive Era. At Institute for the Future (IFTF): Positive Platforms for a Workable Future Palo Alto, CA, MondayTuesday October 5-6, 2015.
URL http://www.slideshare.net/spohrer/spohrer-iftf-20150930-v1
One of my heroes and mentors – Doug Engelbart (1925-2013)
Doug and I had several conversations about the relationship between augmentation theory and service science. I wish we could have had many more.
Before connecting augmentation theory to service science, I have to travel through some technical areas that are closer to my first two degrees physics at MIT and artificial intelligence at Yale university – but I promise you, I will connect this to service science and smarter service system research agenda….
Today’s talk will explore two questions
What should we know how to make?
What might programming education become?
If we look at history we see a time when people could make only simple things, and often a single person could make them.
Would it ever be possible for a single person to know and make complex things? And what role might programming education play?
Will the cognitive era – the coming era of smart machines – make people more capable or less capable to know and make complex things?
No single person can make a pencil – it is too complex. A design student did try to make a toaster – and if you have not seen the TED Talk, I encourage you to watch it – it is very funny.
Toaster Project: http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toaster_from_scratch?language=en
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Pencil
"I, Pencil" is written in the first person from the point of view of a pencil. The pencil details the complexity of its own creation, listing its components (cedar, lacquer, graphite, ferrule, factice, pumice, wax, glue) and the numerous people involved, down to the sweeper in the factory and the lighthouse keeper guiding the shipment into port.
Open Source Ecology is one branch of the Makers Movement with the goal of making it easier for individual to make the industrial machines most needed in civilization…
“Open Source Blueprints for Civilization. Build Yourself.
We’re developing open source industrial machines that can be made for a fraction of commercial costs, and sharing our designs online for free. The goal of Open Source Ecology is to create an open source economy – an efficient economy which increases innovation by open collaboration.
“
Source: http://opensourceecology.org/
If Moore’s Law continues, by 2035 and by 2055, we are projected to have unimaginably large amounts of cheap computing…. 2035 one human brain level, and by 2055 all human brains level(10 billion people).
Based on Kurweil’s graph of how much compute power $1000 will buy, it seems that by 2030, for $1000 you should be able to buy the compute power of one person’s brain, and that by 2060 for $1000 you should be able to buy the computer power of 10***10, or 10B people, the compute power of the world’s population for $1000.
Source:
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html
Was Moore’s Law inevitable?
http://kk.org/thetechnium/was-moores-law/
By 2035 the phone may have the power of one human brain – by 2055 the phone may have the power of all human brains.
Before trying to answer the question about which types of sciences are more important – the ones that try to explain the external world or the ones that try to explain the internal world – consider this, slide that shows the different telephones that I have used in my life. I grew up in rural Maine, where we had a party line telephone because we were somewhat remote on our farm in Newburgh, Maine.
However, over the years phones got much better…. So in 2035 or 2055, who are you going to call when you need help?
What could possibly go wrong? Social technology makes us less social.
Image Source:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/1d/eb/5c/1deb5c1cf49a5dbb7689131f3cc8b9a9.jpg
Many intelligent assistants or cognitive assistants are beginning to appear. (the numbers indicate approximate number of employees at each companuy).
More and more companies are working on cognitive assistants – and each month a new company shows up working on their version of an intelligent personal assistant.
Make no mistake, like “magnetism” – the company the can first provide all its employees with intelligent personal assistants/cognitvie assistants will have done something quite historic!
Prediction 1 – more than half of the Forbes Global 2000, and equally many new startups, will have cognitive assistant projects for their customers within ten years
Prediction 2 – by 2035 we will be symbiotic with our cognitive assistants
Prediction 3 – by 2055 (in part due to the coaching of our cognitive coaches) an average adult will have the ability to rapidly rebuild from scratch societal infrastructure
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_personal_assistant
By 2036, there will be an accumulation of knowledge as well as a distribution of knowledge in service systems globally. We need to ensure as there is knowledge accumulation that service systems at all scale become more resilient. Leading to the capability of rapid rebuilding of service systems across scales, by T-shaped people who understand how to rapidly rebuild – knowledge has been chunked, modularized, and put into networks that support rapid rebuilding.
From I to T to Pi-shapes … and beyond! IBM needs graduates who can work on multidisciplinary, multisector, multicultural teams…
T-shapes have depth and breadth …
Disciplines from computer science to marketing to social sciences to arts & humanities
Sectors from transportation to energy to healthcare to government
Cultures from US to Europe to China to India to Latin America to Africa to Middle East and more!!
In the 1940’s IBM started teaching computer science at Columbia.
My first program – punch cards 1972.
Bluemix free access – http://www.ibm.com/university – see academic intiatives
Interested faculty, students, really anyone with a credit card can get 750 GB-Hours a month free
http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/developercloud/services-catalog.html