Here’s why the AI doomsday scenario is flawed and harmful

All you ever wanted to ask about AI taking over the world.  Spoiler: The role of consciousness is fundamental, but it is not the only thing.  What is the AI doomsday scenario? A dystopian narrative of a future where humanity is threatened and even extinct by AI. How would that happen? In a worst-case scenario, AI will at some point become...

We have a choice each time we automate

(This article was originally published in Swedish by the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet on April 23, 2023).  The development of AI is currently progressing at an unprecedented pace. In the colorful debate that sways between enthusiasm and warning, however, the most relevant question is seldom asked: what do we want with AI and automation? Perhaps not unexpectedly, it is...

Reality check: What is AI, approaching 2021?

Holding lectures on future and digitalisation, and on how to understand the change that is coming over us, I often meet the question about what AI is. Can machines be intelligent? How intelligent is AI? How far can AI reach? Here’s my view, as we are approaching 2021. Let’s first have a look at why...

Here’s why meetings and events are becoming increasingly important

Many seem to agree that meetings and events are becoming increasingly important today. But exactly why are they becoming more important? Our gut feeling goes a long way to answer the question, but if we want to make the right decisions in a world that is changing at an accelerating pace, it may be good...

Ten reasons that the future is happening right in front of you

Obviously we don't know anything about the future. And bothering about the future is not what you're doing all day. Yet, you want to be prepared. So ask a futurist. But not even a futurist will know. So what could the futurist tell you? Well, to look around at what's happening. Because the future is...

Eight + one megatrends you need to check out in 2018

A new year has just begun, with phenomena and trends that were mere ideas just a few years ago. Change will never be as slow as today, and therefore it is important to look up to see the big picture. Here are eight megatrends, plus one upcoming hot topic, you need to keep an eye...

Seven Things Lawyers Should Know to Be Digital Winners

Many lawyers and law experts worry about how their professional opportunities are changing with digitalization, observing how some daily tasks are already being taken over by digital automation and artificial intelligence, AI. And yes, the ongoing change in the legal sector is significant, and moreover, it only just started. The good news, however, is that...

Give your organisation an injection of inspiration on digitisation

As I give talks on future and technology—or rather before I give my talks—I often meet people saying they feel that we're entering a time of big changes, and yet they seem to have difficulties in defining exactly what this change is. They might refer to the fast uptake of smartphones, tablets and social media, but...

Jobs will go away… but not work!

With digitization and automation jobs will disappear, but we'll continue to work anyway. That is what several experts I have been talking to believe. They also think that distribution of wealth in society could become the biggest challenge ahead. None of the experts I have been talking to about jobs and the future is opposed to the picture that...

Here’s my Youtube channel on technology driven change

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b5TQl-ygGo Technology is changing our world at an accelerating pace, and the change is going faster than most people would think. This is the theme that interests me the most and that I'm passionate about, and it's also the theme that I regularly give talks and seminars on, at conferences and to various institutions, government...

Here is how we could coexist with a superintelligence

The idea of a superintelligence might be frightening. I have touched the subject before and I also discussed why human values (hopefully) might be important to a superintelligence. But we don't know. Professor Nick Bostrom at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University believes that superintelligence could put all humanity at risk, and he's...

Amelia understands what you say, and acts

Amelia is a new hire at a call center. She answers in two seconds, solves the problem in four minutes instead of an average of 15 minutes, and customers are quite happy. Amelia never goes home. Amelia is what might be the most advance artificial intelligence so far on Earth. Developed by US based Ip Soft that normally...

Artificial baby mind learns to talk

In the last months I have been immersed in exciting projects, while also keeping up with how the story told in my book An Impossible Invention continues to evolve. There's been so much on the theme of The Biggest Shift Ever that I would have liked to share in blog posts, so much fascinating science...

Google’s goal: To control the world’s data

In 2013, Google acquired eight companies specializing in robotics, and many have asked what Google will do with all those robots. The eighth company wa s Boston Dynamics, which through funding by DARPA has developed a couple of high-profile animal-like robots and the two-legged humanoid Atlas. A week after that acquisition, Google became the world's...

Thinking, fast and slow, pattern recognition and super intelligence

This summer's reading has been Thinking, Fast and Slow by the Israeli-American psychologist and winner of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Daniel Kahneman. Great reading (although a little heavy to read from start to end in a short time). The book describes the brain's two ways of thinking -- the faster, more intuitive and emotional...

Suppose Google plans to create a mind

I'm reading the latest book by Ray Kurzweil -- How to Create a Mind (2012). In his book Kurzweil pulls together different  pieces of cutting edge brain research and puts them in the context of his own experience of developing technology for voice understanding and character recognition. The result is the Pattern Recognition Theory of...

Imagine hi res trading replace crowdfunding and VC:s

One main aspect of digital revolution is that it opens completely new business models and mechanisms in an industry, such as Spotify's model with streaming music as opposed to downloading and owning music files or even cd:s. In an earlier post I selected six industries that will be hit next by digital revolution, and one of them...

A really good post on ethics for machines, robots, cars…

Here's a really good piece on the difficulty but also the importance of ethics for machines, robots, autonomous cars, arms and similar stuff powered by artificial intelligence: Moral Machines by Gary Marcus, Professor of Psychology at N.Y.U. Prof Marcus argues that the moment autonomous cars will be so much better and safer than human drivers that we...

What’s the size of an artificial mind?

Now this is one question that has intrigued me for some time, and I think I have a good and quite simple answer. I've already made it quite clear that I believe that we will be able to create human like artificial intelligence -- strong AI -- within a couple of decades, and that there will be...

What if we make animals as smart as humans?

Recently a group of reserachers reported that they had designed a brain implant that sharpened decision making and restored lost mental capacity in monkeys. Even if that's a very interesting piece of research (you can read NY Times report here) it's of course lightyears from making animals intelligent. Still one bizarre idea immediately struck me. I...

Exploring ethics for machines

“If we admit the animal should have moral consideration, we need to think seriously about the machine.” That's how Northern Illinois University Professor David Gunkel puts it, discussing whether and to what extent intelligent and autonomous machines that we are devloping can be considered to have legitimate moral responsibilities and any legitimate claim to moral treatment. In his new book The...

Six industries that will be hit by digital revolution

Some people in the music industry still wonder what happened when an established and profitable business model was torn to pieces in a few years. Well, soon a lot more people in several other industries will ask themselves the same thing. I just outlined six industries that will be hit in the next future in...

We just launched Next Magasin – on how technology’s changing the world

A few days ago we finally launched Next Magasin – a new magazine on how technology's changing the world (just to be clear, it's only in Swedish for now). I'm the managing editor and it's been a great time to work with the first issue, which is free to download or to read on Ipad/Android/Pc....

Watch out for humans pushed to the edge

I just read a piece in Wired Magazine on high school students having debates at 350 words per minute. And it came to my mind that in history of technology it's a well known fact that when a technology is at its last stages, just before being widely replaced by a better and more versatile...

What would it be like to be super intelligent?

Have you ever considered the immediate images appearing in your mind when you hear the word super intelligence? Maybe an alien with a huge cranium staring at you... or a computer controlling every step you take...? Or have you ever tried to imagine what such a super intelligence actually thinks of you? It might turn...

Five industries where 2 billion jobs will be lost

Most people have understood that the music and the movie industries have been profoundly changed by the internet. Fewer realize that this was just the beginning. Futurist Thomas Frey recently talked on how 2 billion jobs will disappear by 2030 and also outlined five areas in which this will happen: 1. Power Industry 2. Automobile transportation 3. Education...

Autonomous cars highlight fundamental questions

I like the recent call from Molly Wood at Cnet News (where I used to work in 2009): “Self-driving cars: Yes, please! Now, please!”. She notes quite obvious advantages with autonomous cars – safety, efficiency and environmental improvements – and observes that the forces working against adoption are fear and love of driving, emotions so...

Why human values will be fundamental for a super intelligence

What do the ancient Greeks or fight for civil rights have to do with the destiny of the universe? More than you could believe. Or rather – they are a fundamental part of it. The short explanation is that without the experience gained through thousands of years of human civilization, a super intelligence wouldn't have...

2012 is a good year to start a blog

2012 is a good year to start a blog on a major transformation for humanity and of the world. Several theories based on the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar suggest that Dec 21, 2012, will either mark the beginning of a new era, or the end of the world. This blog has basically nothing to do...