Half the world is hooked on smart- phones, save your correspondent. They are merely quantitatively different from laptops. As an independent cuss who doesn’t like to be buzzed while walking and has the luxury of pensions and investments to keep me in minimal comfort in Bali and the Philippines (and by the way, I worked 30 years for those), I laugh at those who manage 16 hours a day glazing into a 2-4 inch screen.
Yes, I have an iPhone and large Asus, only because everyone demanded.
Now my suspicions are given foundation by a blog that went viral, as did the same correspondent’s correct but revolutionary prediction maybe 15 years ago that the future of the phone would be over the Internet. This CBS (and for Kuala Lumpur IT hounds, CNN) IT expert, yes, the New Yorker’s Nick Thompson, told us about Amy, his virtual personal assistant.
Amy isn’t a smartphone; she’s a virtual bot, who arranges phone conversations and meetings, for a start.
It can be tiring among busy people to arrange these, and few any longer have the stellar luxury of a personal secretary (I kept three busy while in the government, but then government is always intricate, protocol-driven and not much interested in efficiency.)
Amy does all this and more for Nick; his iPhone 6 can do none.
This is in itself a qualitative jump from the smartest phone.
It raises the immediate question, is that all? Why not a million other things: checking the thermometer at home or even the oven temperature?
The answer is that yes, it can do all, for everything that is wired in. The chips required are almost free at this point, assuming there is a system operating the network.
In 1970, four of us were driving 200km across Massachusetts, the United States, for a concert, and I asked our architect, given radar technology and the fact that cars were driving at regulation speed on an eight-lane turnpike, why couldn’t radar beams move along the road and relieve us of driving, so we could play Bridge the whole way?
He explained that my idea was fine, there were many good ideas around, but the technological base that one assumed with such systems was 50 years away. He was smarter than I, as in 2020 we will begin to see AI being used for our transport systems.
Uber is barely a step up the food chain, but its market valuation is now US$15 billion (RM61 billion) more than the once biggest company in the world, General Motors, because with an Uber account, a car, though still with a driver, picks one up anywhere to go anywhere, making my American visits almost effortless.
The AI move of import comes when Uber uses vehicles without drivers, again presuming more and more dedicated roads where cars can move without risk of accident.
In Paris there are bicycle banks at intervals; one slips in his credit card (alas, the perverse French require it be one of theirs) and drops the bike at destination. And Paris, when not flooded, like today, is a great mostly flat city for biking.
What’s the difference between that and car banks, which are more or less what Avis and Hearst have for their good customers, though requiring one to go to their dedicated lots, a boring commute from airport baggage claims.
But I mean everywhere. One immediate effect is on status symbols. No one will stand around for an extra hour to get a Mercedes if a Toyota is right there.
Now let AI put all this together. The biggest difficulty for a driver is parking, the easiest problem for a computer to solve. Then come all the requirements for a real AI system.
Think of it. Huge American garages can become hobby rooms, and still vastly more important, that 1950s paving of America, to unite the country, can revert to farmland or parks. Optimistic?
If you only use a car when needed, rather than buying it to show off your status, and cars are regulated on the motorways by AI, we will need a tiny fraction as much highway space.
I want more than a virtual Amy. I want an R2-D2 always present to retrieve a book (doesn’t that sound anachronistic?) or send a drone out to pick up the groceries Amy has ordered for me.
Of course, then one realises that’s absurd.
Food and dry goods will come from vast efficient warehouses, with many Amy’s keeping track of inventory.
This will be a bit delayed in Uttar Pradesh, India, but the way tech spreads, much of the world will move seamlessly together.
Roads south from KL, north from Bangkok, across Australia, and perhaps most importantly in Japan, where the government in trying to jumpstart the economy spent 10 years paving the country, can return to their often very special or sacred use.
This is all going to happen much more quickly than most people suspect, because AI isn’t heavy stuff like trucks.
Amy is weightless. But don’t worry, not too quickly for cars at least. The Boston Consulting group says it will be 2035 before a fourth of our cars are self-driven or have major self-driving components.
As my friend said in 1970, it takes time to set up the supporting infrastructure.
W. Scott Thompson is professor emeritus of International Politics, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the US