These are very interesting times to be alive if you are a human. We are at a point in our journey as a species where moving forward, we are building a world for ourselves, that is much akin to a science fiction one that we often read about or see in movies.
Seriously, if you pay attention to the latest developments that are happening in various fields of human endeavour and all the research that is going on, you wouldn’t be able to contain your excitement about the future and what it entails.
Throughout the world, there are teams of brilliant people that are working on technologies that will not only define the next 100 years to come but will also redefine what it means to be a human.
Google (or Alphabet) is single handedly leading the charge on much of those technologies and if even half of its efforts see the light of the day, it just might end up determining the fate of humanity. Let me talk about three such ventures today.
Verily
Verily was formerly known as Google Life Sciences before Google went through a major re-organising and is now a subsidiary of Alphabet focused on the study of life sciences.
Technological advancements in this field will change how we maintain and monitor our health and fight off diseases. Verily, it seems, will have a major stake in that future.
From contact lenses that will work in conjunction with miniaturised glucose monitors (inside or outside the body), to allow for continuous glucose monitoring to a project that is collecting genetic and molecular information about the human body to determine its ideal healthy form, Verily will help us augment human health like never before.
They are even developing an entire nanoparticle platform that could one day mean swarm of nano-robots swimming inside our bodies performing continuous diagnosis and repair work.
Calico
This is another subsidiary of Alphabet and was founded in 2013 as a biotech company to research human longevity and to combat ageing related diseases.
Many experts assert that in the not so distant future, we will have a lot more control over how long we live. Firstly, the average human life span would increase to a great degree thanks to all the medical advances and second, in the more distant future, we will have several other sci-fi like options like downloading our consciousness into machines.
Calico is quite secretive about its plans to elongate human life span but what it has announced, are some partnerships that it has undertaken to fight age related diseases like neurodegeneration, cancer and others.
The cures to these diseases will alone be a major achievement as millions upon millions of people suffer a great deal every year due to diseases like these and it is high time that cures were found for them.
DeepMind
DeepMind is an artificial intelligence company founded in 2010 that Google acquired in 2014. This subsidiary alone has been the subject of so many breakthroughs in the recent years that it is safe to say that it will play a major role in a future world where AI is as ubiquitous as we humans ourselves.
In 2016, DeepMind’s AlphaGo program beat the world champion at Go, a board game which has more moves than the atoms in the universe and a game where intuition is as necessary as logic to win.
The company’s AI is so advanced that their system is not pre-programmed like the AIs of other companies and learns from experience thanks to a highly advanced neural network.
In fact, Ray Kurzweil, a highly reputed author and futurist believes that AI will reach human level intelligence by 2029 and will surpass it by 2045 and I think that DeepMind could very well be the very first company to achieve that feat.
These are just some glimpses into what Alphabet is working on. There are a lot of areas that are being explored by many other subsidiaries of theirs that will be the next frontiers of human development. A single company undertaking so much of cutting edge development truly makes me believe that it might single handedly define the fate of humanity. Stay tuned for a part II of this post where I talk about more of its subsidiaries.
Between Google and Elon Musk, I think we haveca bright future if we dont blow eachother up.
But don't you think that one corporation (in Google's case) who has that much power, could get dangerous?
This was a very interesting post and i loved reading it. Now if only we could get some people in political positions around the globe who are not hindered by nonsensical religious beliefs, we as a species could really flourish.
Yeah, a lot of our potential is still not being used because of various nonsense reasons and I can only hope we can rise above that someday.
Interesting times indeed!
For sure!
I remember when Google was still in its infancy in the 90's. Back then, it became quickly the best search engine that eclipsed everyone, like Yahoo, Altavista, Webcrawler, etc... I loved Google as a search engine, but I don't like Google's direction 20 years later. It has become too intrusive, like a giant octopus with thousands of tentacles. People always despised government 1984-big-brother-ish behavior, but when it's a corporation like Google doing the same thing, the future might not look as bright as it seems. Google holds and tracks all its users information, throwing that into an AI entity makes me want to go live in some remote Amazon jungle (no pun intended).
P.S. I don't like Kurzweil's ideas, he pumps himself with 100's of daily meds to extend his lifespan. I don't think he will ever be immortal.
The thing is that people don't even realize that all information is tracked and saved. Data is gold for them.
I think pirates should start hunting octopuses. If you need a crew I'll be there captain, arrrr :)
What disturbs me even more, I had chatted with some people who actually don't care if they're tracked. They remind me of the Matrix, they sleep comfortably and don't want to wake up. I guess they prefer the red pill.
Illusion is often sweeter... before reality hits. I wonder what will be the thing that will make them realize.
Perhaps when they grow up and realize how stupid they were, giving away their privacy willingly and for free, that they might value the true meaning of liberty. People who give away their liberty are nothing but a slaves.
they give it away because taking responsibility is too much of a stretch
Yes, and that is my major concern despite the fact that the research they are doing is actually very important for the future of humanity because they are trying to solve some of our biggest problems. The problem lies in the fact that one single corporation would have that much power.
When ever we make imagination about google the imagination goes real because google believe that very invention is once an imagination .
humans do not invent but discover... knowledge exists even without it being discovered.
invention = copyright and patent scams
No there is a difference between these two words don't mix it
example: the law of thermodynamics have always existed... we just discovered them
one cannot patent/copyright something we cannot create. As a result there are countless of discoveries that are patented and that will NEVER be used because they are threats to the monopolies and academia, which decide when a so called new invention can be released.
i Absolutely agree now , i pick your point .Thanks @earthcustodians
Yeah, they sure are innovative.
if we didnt have monopolies ruling society and deciding which discoveries can be used to profit from them, society would not be enslaved. Right now, we seem to get along with innovations that are going to enable a massive cyber prison
Google is gaining more and more influence on everyone's lives, for better or worse. It is a scary, but true, idea that what Google wants people to see is what people will see (all that people will see). I am scared for the future, but we have to be hopeful that these companies with such great influences will make good choices for humanity.
Fantastic post! It really gets you thinking!
well drop by my blog first if you really think so... good choices? Would you on top of that give away your consent? Have you seen minority report... watch it again if you did....
Yeah, I too think that one single company with arms and legs everywhere could become a concern in the future.
After some days people will only say google,google and google
haha in many scenarios, they already are!
@sauravrungta - Reading about DeepMind is exciting and at the same time scary. I know the visions of 'skynet' from the Terminator movies springing to mind is a bit far fetched. However, with AI advances, will come the inevitable question of who decides how the AI reacts to certain situations and whether a self sustaining AI would really care about the decisions 'humanity' makes?
Asimov's 3 prime rules of robotics did kind of create a framework (at least in the realm of sci-fi stories). I would be interested in knowing how that is planned to be implemented. The 'learning' neural networks could also, theoretically, learn bad things from humans?
Thanks for sharing this interesting info. Upvoted full.
Regards,
@vm2904
AI is the greatest hoax... get immortality and live under cyber threats 24/7
without establishing peace on earth, AI will be the end of humanity.
The vision of skynet type AI may not be too far fetched if you ask me. Experts are already predicting that AI will surpass human intelligence by 2045. So, it may not be too far away.
Then I wonder how there will be 'control' on AI from a human perspective.
Only time will tell.
Nice post.. It's very true..google has made everything come closer to us..now the world is in our hand.. thanks for sharing.
Upvoted.
yes and now all our smart appliances spying on us ... this is a cyber prison that is coming
I blog about AI quite much
Yes, google sure has done a lot of innovation. Let's just hope they are continued to be used for the good.
Google as a company will grow to a point where states think about breaking it apart like the USA did it with Rockefellers oil company
haha, who knows!
Upvoted and also resteemed :)
Thanks!
Nah fam, not Alphabet, but Apple will be controlling every aspect of our lives very very soon, if not already....
Apple doesn't have nearly enough reach into other research and development areas as Google.
Google is a amazing company in many different areas. In others, like free expression and censorship, they are putting up barriers.
Yeah, perks of centralised companies.
The motto of Boogle is:
Be Evil
I sure hope they do not determine anything of the future.
The idea that what is wrong with the body is missing chemicals is outdated and known to be very wrong. If, what was wrong with the body was missing chemicals, than placebos would never work. But placebos do work. Often better then new drugs being tested.
Thus, the idea of measuring of certain drugs to administer other drugs is provably false, and often damaging. Further, it is trying to affect the symptom of a symptom of the problem. When we start actually dealing with the problem, then these ideas that Verily is calling "the future" will seem really really dumb in hindsight.
Calico is working on some very bad stuff. Kinda like making clones so you can harvest their organs when you need them. They are not any part of the future. And, people who are actually seeing results in anti-ageing are going in a completely different direction.
AI... there currently isn't any real AI research happening on the planet.
Most scientists still believe that consciousness resides in the brain. Everyone who has gotten deep into meditation knows that consciousness isn't in the brain. So, scientists believe that if they build a large enough, complex enough computer, that equals the brain... viola, consciousness. But, this isn't, and won't be the case.
And currently, the state of the art in expert systems, is really really bad. They think they have cars almost able to autopilot, however, these systems freak out in all kinds of situations.
Even with something as a CNC milling machine, the expert system still cannot figure out all the conditions when the machine will try to break itself by running into itself. And this is in a COMPLETELY controlled environment when you know where everything is and how everything is connected and there is no human element. So, expert systems, still a long long way to go.
Further, Boogle has just shot itself in the foot by editing out content that it deems as "inappropriate", or "false news".
Everything is good as far as we humans make our living better, but the idea of Artificial intelligence scares me.
Yeah, if it is done for the betterment of humanity, it's all well and good but still I think one corporation with that much influence could get dangerous. And yeah, the idea of an AI smarter than us also scares me.
Yeah, Tez from Google being one of the examples for India. Gifting every user 51rupees to join, they literally donot ask for otp during transactions and have all your bank account information for free. Sadly most of my friends love tez and the free money it gives. But it will just use our data, buying every single acount in even less than a dollar :(
I hope people wake up and just realise the potential of Steem and how it could change the entire internet soon. Then people won't have to look for other alternatives like Tez which compromise your data. I am sure people will realise Steem's potential soon ;)
Hehe yeah i am hoping that top starting with my friends ;)
I'd think Amazon,lol
Interesting post shared....
I will also read 2nd part of this post.