Sometimes looking back helps to give us some perspective about the way forward:
Here is the state of things in 1981
Now remember, we have been on an exponential growth curve since then, and this exponential curve is showing no signs of slowing down - rather, it is speeding up, as the newer software and AI systems (narrow AI, but still increasingly powerful) help us design the next step.
It is hard to fathom how *slow* the world still was in 1981.
This talk by NASA's Neill Jacobson does a good job of putting things in perspective in a clear, level-headed way in this TED talk:
The question is, how does one plan one's future under these conditions?
For example, a student entering a university in the UK will take on massive debt, to educate themselves for a career that may not exist within a decade of their graduation. Will it make sense at all to attend university for most careers, and to take the gamble of indebtedness? Surely it would make more sense to carefully research your selected subject, and see if the material you need to educate yourself in your subject area already exists on-line Then, look for an institution that would charge you to sit examinations only, that isn't a course provider? In other words, a university as originally conceived, a degree granting institution, not a teaching one?
In fact,this might be a business model one could imagine in operation: a university that offers no courses or lectures, but which simply provides a list of syllabi, with reading lists and examinations for a set fee. This would operate in a similar manner to the professional accountancy examination bodies, which are provided by the professional institutes, but these institutes do not teach per se: somewhat along the lines of the pharmacy examinations offered by the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries in the eighteenth century. Anyone could register to sit the examinations, and individuals were responsible for studying for the exams alone - usually with a tutor.
Will universities for the most part end up as institutions for the liberal arts? Will the entire notion of getting your education in an expensive institution still be meaningful, when the equivalent lectures and access to knowledge can be had online for free, with your own dedicated AI tutor?
Further down the line, we will be looking at sophisticated neural implants, and direct wetware-hardware interfacing, along the lines of the primitive ones already in existence, such as cochlear implants. Google glasses will end up internal, not external.
How long before modification becomes elective? There is already an FDA approved artificial retina. What happens when this technology outperforms the wetware body organ? Will people have elective surgery, to upgrade their eyes? This would equally apply to other body organs, as technology begins to make progress in emulation, initially for treatment of disease, and finally, outperforming our nature.
Here is the state of things in 1981
Now remember, we have been on an exponential growth curve since then, and this exponential curve is showing no signs of slowing down - rather, it is speeding up, as the newer software and AI systems (narrow AI, but still increasingly powerful) help us design the next step.
It is hard to fathom how *slow* the world still was in 1981.
This talk by NASA's Neill Jacobson does a good job of putting things in perspective in a clear, level-headed way in this TED talk:
The question is, how does one plan one's future under these conditions?
For example, a student entering a university in the UK will take on massive debt, to educate themselves for a career that may not exist within a decade of their graduation. Will it make sense at all to attend university for most careers, and to take the gamble of indebtedness? Surely it would make more sense to carefully research your selected subject, and see if the material you need to educate yourself in your subject area already exists on-line Then, look for an institution that would charge you to sit examinations only, that isn't a course provider? In other words, a university as originally conceived, a degree granting institution, not a teaching one?
In fact,this might be a business model one could imagine in operation: a university that offers no courses or lectures, but which simply provides a list of syllabi, with reading lists and examinations for a set fee. This would operate in a similar manner to the professional accountancy examination bodies, which are provided by the professional institutes, but these institutes do not teach per se: somewhat along the lines of the pharmacy examinations offered by the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries in the eighteenth century. Anyone could register to sit the examinations, and individuals were responsible for studying for the exams alone - usually with a tutor.
Will universities for the most part end up as institutions for the liberal arts? Will the entire notion of getting your education in an expensive institution still be meaningful, when the equivalent lectures and access to knowledge can be had online for free, with your own dedicated AI tutor?
Further down the line, we will be looking at sophisticated neural implants, and direct wetware-hardware interfacing, along the lines of the primitive ones already in existence, such as cochlear implants. Google glasses will end up internal, not external.
How long before modification becomes elective? There is already an FDA approved artificial retina. What happens when this technology outperforms the wetware body organ? Will people have elective surgery, to upgrade their eyes? This would equally apply to other body organs, as technology begins to make progress in emulation, initially for treatment of disease, and finally, outperforming our nature.
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