If you want your mind blown, read this article; but don’t start listening to the podcast or watching the videos until you have a couple of hours to burn.

AI, Virtual Reality and the Inevitable

While I was working out this morning at the YMCA, I started listening to a Tim Ferris Podcast with Kevin Kelly. I’m not a big fan of Tim Ferris (although I liked his book 4-Hour Work Week) because he is a little too commercial, but I’m very fond of Kevin Kelly (going back to his book Out of Control). They also plugged his new book, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, which sounds like a must-read on the next 20 years of technology.

Kelly is a prescient thinker and he shared some of his insightful thinking about emerging technologies, books and how he manages complexity during his podcast:

• Artificial intelligence
 – virtual reality as well as AI being exciting, disruptive and probably safe
• The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
• It’s All Too Much by Peter Walsh
• Simplicity Zen: Sit Sit Walk Walk Don’t Wobble
• What people are good at: Creativity
• What computers are good at: productivity, efficiency
• His personal Venn Diagram
• China (becoming a place for innovation)
• Truck drivers – #1 job in America (these jobs will disappear)
• Augmented reality
• Visual < tactile

What people shouldn’t worry about:

• AI – not going to destroy humanity
• GMOs – genetically modified organisms
• CRISPR – just a better way to do what we’ve been doing for decades

What we should worry about:

• Computer viruses can destroy physical things
• Cyber warfare – we don’t have rules and nobody is talking
• Legal drone assassinations and AI (scary)

Kelly also spoke briefly about SaaS artificial intelligence that is already being sold by Google. Google API for image analysis is free for up to 1,000 units, but I haven’t tried to understand what a “unit” is.

Mixed Reality – Data Visualization in 3D Spaces (My Thought)

He spoke about an article that he wrote on Wired about the current state of VR and it’s potential. I’m particularly interested in this technologies’ potential for data visualization.

Imagine putting on some VR glasses and walking into a space (perhaps its any space you’re currently looking at) and having interactive dashboards appear in 3D in front of you. I’ve been in some massive dashboard spaces at AAA and Georgia State the last couple of years. I’ve also heard about one at Kellogg’s that I’ll be doing a podcast about in the near future.

This technology is called Mixed Reality.

Mixed Reality has the potential to be a far more immersive way to present data visualizations (than rooms with big dashboard screens) because it’s something that is real-looking and portable. The graphics would permeate whatever physical space you currently occupy. It should also (in theory) be much less expensive, provided Magic Leap doesn’t charge tens of thousands of dollars for their technology.

The podcast is riveting. Highly recommended.