The future has passed!
Did anyone notice the “tipping point”?
19. of March 2016, the day the world was rudely disrupted, and not many people noticed or didn’t pay attention.
It was the day the world changed forever, and with it, everything contained within our tiny personal universe, our planet, that little spec of something, compared to the rest of our incomprehensible extensive collection of galaxies.
What am I talking about? Yes… the day advanced technologies, or rather artificial intelligence, became a reality.
A computer managed to win against the world champ of the ancient Chinese board game, “Go”.
This may not sound like much of a deal, but it soon becomes if you consider that Go is probably the most complicated game ever invented. There are more possible moves in a game of Go than atoms in the universe. This lonely but memorable day has been called the “tipping point”, the day computers learnt to think and out-smarted one extremely capable human brain.
Could that influence the future of Medicine? I would say so!
For example, I am sure the computer, fondly called “AlphaGo”, would have no problem outperforming any Naturopath or Medical Practitioner.
Is that scary, or will it progress to a hopefully better, healthier future?
If we look around a bit and contemplate how we are trying to solve problems, we quickly notice that most of us try to solve problems by looking back to the past. Instead of looking to the past, we may have to look into the future to overcome this profound time-lapse problem between an idea and a practical solution.
By the time any solution has been implemented, it is already outdated.
Technology is undoubtedly disruptive, and the only way to use it is to let it happen and use it in new innovative and definitely “creative” ways to reach a new paradigm in everything we do.
Obviously, Medicine is a significant part of that; have the governing bodies noticed that?
Our health system is seriously overwhelmed, with long waiting lists and a massive bureaucracy; nothing seems to be streamlined to shift our society into “Prevention and therefore into a Wellness Mode” rather than “Sickness Maintenance”.
Maintenance may be suitable for specific business structures and marketing but not to create a healthy society.
Let’s look more into technology to understand those far-reaching possibilities that could be on the current strategy planning list.
Computer-generated Artificial Intelligence AI is more or less here right now. To use it, concepts need to be developed now, not when it has overtaken us.
An algorithm that learns for itself is a fundamental building block of developing AGI ( Artificial General Intelligence).
The process that can be achieved with that will become so fast that we lose the ability to follow it.
We already have 3D printing; in the future, everyone will have a 3D printer at home. We will order online and have the product printed at our house.
This may also be feasible for medical products.
Driverless cars are hugely disruptive on all levels, and again, they are here already .. imagine switching over to driverless cars; the impact of that would be enormous… for starters, there would be no speed fines and hardly be any traffic accidents which by itself would free up valuable hospital times and occupancy.
But it has more far-reaching implications. It may be cheaper to “Not park” a car and let it drive back to your home or around in circles, or it could be used as a “driver-less” taxi.
Maybe no one will own a car in the future; just dial a driverless car to take you to where you want to go.
A Trip to the hospital, get picked up by a driverless ambulance and have your blood checked by a computer on the way while answering computer-generated questions.
Household and companion robots will check your health daily and call for an ambulance in dire circumstances.
The future has arrived.
Could all this lead to complacency, and eventually, we will be happy, pampered humans devoid of taking actions ourselves?
Blake Newcome1 is a fictional forensic journalist in the fight against complacency.
Reporting for the "Fact File News" - November - 2033
Cheers, Dieter Luske - News in Brainland
Blake investigates topics in his scope of interest, such as serious crimes, political corruption, artificial intelligence IA and robots, humanoids or androids development. He often spends months, even years researching and preparing a report.
Great piece of writing. This is the example I found particularly confronting: A Trip to the hospital, get picked up by a driverless ambulance and have your blood checked by a computer on the way while answering computer-generated questions. Please, can I have some TLC from a human who will look into my eyes and reassure me everything's going to be alright?