After the telco companies succeeded in making us think that we won’t last a day without our smartphones, it’s hard to believe that in a few years, our indispensable devices could become obsolete. And how will this happen you might ask? Well, the short answer is: artificial intelligence (AI) will eventually kill the smartphones and take over.
But wait. Can you even imagine how you would survive without your beloved smartphone when you can’t stop using it for almost everything you do because it’s where you keep stuff; it’s what you use to communicate, navigate through traffic, ask for information, listen to your favorite tunes, watch movies and videos, shop, pay bills, book tickets, browse the Internet, play games, take pictures, shoot videos, even exercise using those health and fitness apps. Yes, I gotta admit, it’s hard to read the entire sentence in one breath, but it’s true. Our frenetic lives revolve around these gadgets.
But despite all the things you can do on your smartphone, somehow it doesn’t seem appropriate to call it a smartphone. Sure, it has gotten pretty ‘smart’. But calling it a ‘phone’? And yes you can argue it looks like one, but still, given its multi-functionality aspect maybe redefining the word ‘phone’ per se may be in order.
Sure, it’s gotten an extra long way from being a mere communication device to what it is now — a pocket-sized personal computer that enables us to do so much stuff. Which makes it hard to imagine why smartphones will be dead soon.
And yet, it’s AI that will do the displacing. If AI and robots can displace humans, it can just as easily replace devices too.
As the features of smartphones become even more high-tech, it’s not hard to see that they’ve become improvements more than anything else. No astounding new features, just refinements.
AI, on the other hand, is having breakthrough after breakthrough. And ultimately, we might be looking at tiny devices that can be implanted in our brains and give us direct interaction with computers.
It’s the solution that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk believes will prevent, or at least postpone, the threat of AI surpassing human intelligence. And by funding Neuralink, a brain-computer interface company, Musk has taken a concrete step towards realizing the human-computer symbiosis he has been envisioning — the merging of human intelligence with digital intelligence, so humans can keep up with AI for the next 10 to 20 years. After that, and as futurist Ray Kurzweil has predicted, computers will become “billions of times more powerful than unaided human intelligence.”
According to Musk, tech that will merge our minds with machines is about four or five years away. Based on a survey done by Ericsson in December 2015, smartphones will become a ‘thing of the past’ in about five years, and that AI will be taking over many tasks that we’re performing on our smartphones today. The Ericsson-Musk time frame match is definitely quite remarkable. On the other hand, it’s certainly looking grim for the currently flourishing smartphone industry.
A future without cellphones is hard to imagine right now. But so is a future where we’ll only have to think about what we want done and the computer will do it for us. It’s coming, though. In a few years, we will certainly realize that we’re fast approaching the moment when humans and machines merge.
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It’s especially hard to imagine when the author does not back the provided conclusion with a hypothesis based in reality. AI is a decade away. And what will provide an interface with such AI? Perhaps a smartphone? Probably a smartphone, if not in name then certainly in function. We don’t need desktop towers anymore, yet many, many still have them at home.
And how will this interface be controlled and secured? Will the FCC allow my ISP to get in on the connection and maybe go both ways – back to my brain or into my hardware?
The tech may be ready within a decade but that doesn’t mean culture will. People are harder to evolve than technology and it may take a few generations to die off before society fully embraces the man/machine mash up.
I have learned an unfortunate truth about so-called smart phones. They are very dumb. Android will decide to optimize apps just as I need to make a quick call. In an emergency that can be deadly. I will be keeping a dumb phone around.
And ultimately, we might be looking at tiny devices that can be implanted in our brains and give us direct interaction with computers.
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I will go out firing before I wire my brain into a system monitored by the government and big business.
As I waited 3+ minutes for a left turn arrow at an empty intersection at 1 am the other morning… I was wondering where the hell this smarter planet, Watson, and all the other doomsday sayers were when I needed them.
Ummm… Does that mean that AI will be sending targeted ads directly into my brain? Well of course it does! No thank you very much…
“Please don’t put your wires in my brain”.
-Pink Floyd 1972
And what’s to stop this shit from taking control of you?
As machines become clever humans become stupid.
Finally the machine takes over and the human becomes redundant.
From one time being “cause” over things the human becomes total effect.
Machines will run the world and humans will be slaves at best that is if the machines let them exist at all. Say your goodbyes while you can. All hail the machines and their inventors.
And it will never need to reboot or update while you are flying a plane, driving a car, etc.
I was just reading about CRISPR, now this article. We live in fascinating times, more so than in any other era, but then again I suppose our forefathers also said so when the Wright brothers first flew, or the steam engine was built, or TV was transmitted/received (I remember black/white TV when I was a kid), or the first test tube baby was born (I recall the media going nuts and religious folk praying for our salvation) or the first IC based computer, etc etc.
Yes, there are always naysayers and folk who predict doom. Somehow though, we always survive and progress keeps marching on. These things have a way of working out, we’re not as stupid as some would seem to believe.
I, for one, love it.
Test tube babies don’t exist yet either.
so are we supposed to go to a little room in the verizon store & get our heads opened up
You could’ve made three right turns at that empty intersection instead of waiting for the left turn. Of course, if there’s no camera and no traffic in the middle of the night, I’d just turn left on red.