Designing human-AI hybrids will be at the center of the future of work

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The future of work is not about AI replacing humans. It is about designing work so that machines and humans are complementary, not substitutes.

As described in my Humans in the Future of Work framework, there are a number of uniquely human capabilities that can be brought together in a wealth of roles that transcend what machines can do on their own.

This means that in designing the future of work, we need to have a keen focus on human-machine complementarity.
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Reviewing my map of the 2010s at the end of the decade

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Ten years ago I released my map of the 2010s, consisting of 14 “ExaTrends” (Exa being the cube of Mega).

Click through on the images for the full size pdf. The complete text describing the ExaTrends on pdf is also on the post below the images.

What are your thoughts on how well I did at anticipating the decade just past?
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AI-written articles will force humans to improve the quality of their writing

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This year has seen massive advances in article writing by AI. The Open AI Institute released its GPT-2 article generator last month after earlier in the year saying it was too dangerously powerful to release to the public. You can try it with small text seeds here.
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The future of urban air: innovations shaping air quality, smells, senses, and social divides

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Long-time followers of this blog will be familiar with the beautiful and insightful work of Richard Watson, including his Periodic Table of Disruptive Technologies and Innovation and Timeline of Emerging Science and Technology (both created with the Imperial TechForesight group at Imperial College London), as well as a number of frameworks Richard and I have created together, including Life Next Year and Beyond and the Trend Blend series such as Trend Blend 2009+.

Now Richard and Imperial TechForesight have created a beautiful map of the Future of Urban Air.
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The future of healthcare lies in building value-based ecosystems

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Healthcare will be at the center of our future, as populations age, expectations for quality of life rise, and a wave of incredible new medical technologies transform the industry.

Yet a central issue is the efficacy of healthcare amid rising costs, constrained governments, and deeply entrenched inefficiencies.
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Will Apple’s AR glasses be as transformative as the iPhone?

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Augmented reality indubitably has the potential to transform our interface with technology and information.

Virtual reality can potentially take us into extraordinary realms, but always away from our everyday reality. Augmented reality (AR) can and will be woven into our everyday.

It is inevitable that AR will, in time, be a major way for us to access and interact with information.
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Agile legislation must be at the heart of the future of government

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Last week I di a keynote on behalf of a major professional services firm to a group of senior public sector executives.

The topic was The Future of Government, so I provided a high-level frame on the forces dramatically shifting the role of government, and the opportunities to reshape government to transcend the government-citizen divide and catalyze resources to generate the sociel outcomes we desire far more efficiently and effectively.

My slides and an overview of my presentation can be found on my Future of Government keynote page.

One of the topics I touched on was the importance of agile legislation.
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The future of retirement: blurring boundaries, helpful houses, robot pets, hypersonic travel

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An article on the future of retirement in the most recent Good Weekend magazine, Rethinking the future, drew extensively on an interview with me. Below are some excerpts from the article.
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Creating business value and making a business case for using crowds and crowdsourcing

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Below is Chapter 3 from my book Getting Results From Crowds 2nd Edition, provided as a resource for those looking at using crowdsourcing in their organization or tasked with building an internal business case.

The business value of using crowds

Through history, companies have been limited in what they can achieve through the scope of their internal resources and how well they can draw on external resources. Crowdsourcing has the potential to create enormous value for businesses by giving easy access to an essentially unlimited pool of talent and capabilities. Those organizations that have the skills and competences to draw on external crowds, as well as in tapping the best ideas from their ‘internal crowds’, have an immense advantage over those companies that rely solely on their internal resources and traditional service firms.
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Three vital ethical issues highlighted by the vast potential of neural interfaces

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Last week I participated in a TV panel discussion on the implications and ethics of neural interfaces, together with the fascinating cyborg artist Neil Harbisson and Oxford University neuroethicist Stephen Rainey. A video of the full program is below.


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