How Does One Engineer a Paradise?

I finished my first book, Engineering Paradise:  Are You Ready?, a book that illustrates how current trends in social thinking and technology is changing our society in a fundamental way, recently.  After I finished writing it, I had an interesting thought:  though I described the many technologies that are already affecting change, I didn’t give readers a clear idea of what an ideal world may looks like.  The reason why our world is still full of inequalities and violence is because we are currently mired in obsolete infrastructures, social systems, traditions and ideologies that hold us back.  These systems have been around for hundreds of years, slowly changing to adapt to different social, political and economical movements.  These are hard to change because they are all embedded into our society and into each other.  Not to mention most people are employed and depend on the survival of each one of those systems for their welfare and livelihoods.  Any significant change in social structures are therefore scary to most, because individuals are afraid of what they cannot understand or predict.

Under these conditions, suggesting how our world may function in 10 or 20 years would be incredibly naive and speculative.

However, I was thinking about the following:  what if, strictly as an intellectual exercise, we imagined that all traditions, social resistance to change, social systems and institutions were just swept out of the way and we just build something better.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.  It’s nice to dream about some sort of perfect world where we don’t need to care about how things really are.  That’s what science fiction is for, right?

That was the initial conclusion I had with the idea too.  But then it dawned on me.  Even though what paradisiac world we may build would be fantasy, at least it would be something we could shoot for.

 

One thing that I have learned as a serial entrepreneur is that if we want to achieve a project that seems too big to be doable, we still have a shot of achieving it if we have 3 things:

• A well-defined plan.
• Strong motivation.     
• A dedicated team of individuals that believe in the project and are willing to work towards it step by step.

So, I decided to write this book to paint a picture of how we could build the ideal future for ourselves.  Thus, I’ll prepare point #1 for us all.  At least I’ll be producing my version of it, supported by proper studies and professional knowledge from experts. 

Then, by publishing the book and directing other activities aligned with the goal of engineering a paradise, I hope to gather a large enough group of motivated people that believe in building an ideal world.  There are already several organizations that are working towards making the world a better place and I’m sure millions of individuals in the world wish they could contribute to such a great project. 

Are you one of these people?

Finally, with those two pieces in place, together, we can figure out a plan to engineer our current world and ultimately transform it to fit the end goal:  the ideal world.

I’m sure most of you have very different ideas of what the ideal world would look like and that’s fine, but in this case, we’ll want to build based on proper evidence.  Using proper research sociologists and other scientists have already documented over the years, I’ll illustrate what is fundamentally best for human beings.  Starting from that basis, I’ll elaborate on how nations could be ideally governed to ensure the people are in the best possible position to thrive.  After all, we have over 3,000 years of experimentation and trial and error under our belt as a society and now we’re supported by artificial intelligence to assist us, the Internet to connect us and sufficient comfort levels for at least half the world’s population to collaborate on our common goal.

Then, I’ll go into a full section detailing how such a governing system can be managed by the people and finally I’ll elaborate on how an ideal economy would work within this new innovative system.

I’m hoping this detailed plan on reformulating our society leveraging advanced technologies, will inspire many to work together, as a team, with me or in independent groups.  It’s all good.

Fundamental technologies 

If you haven’t read my first book, you may be a little bit lost in the next few chapters so here’s a bit of an update on certain technologies that will support most of what I’ll be discussing.

We have been playing around with artificial intelligence (AI) for the past couple years.  AI is not new.  In fact, it has been around for over 30 years but only recently has AI applications become part of our daily lives.  Not only toys used by large companies, research laboratories and governments but in our living rooms and on our smartphones.

It is like it was for computers in the 80’s.  For the first time families started buying them for their homes even though transistor computers had been around for at least 30 years.  Computers had become a commodity after years of companies improving the basis of the technology and finding ways to reduce costs enough to make the technology useful, small enough and cheap enough to be purchased by families.

Now, we have AI like Alexa, Siri, Cortana, Watson and Google Assistant, to name just the most popular AI in North-America, available to consumers.  They can understand native language and can connect to our smartphones, security systems, our digital information, home appliances, heating, lights and so on.  We can control these systems through our AI assistants, or by using our smartphones.  The AI assistants are intelligent enough to search the web for us, add items to our grocery lists, and learn who are proper family members or strangers in our homes or front doors. 

Today’s AI are learning AI, which means the more we use them, the better they can perform.  They are just like children learning about their environment and after a while, they don’t need as many explanations to achieve their tasks.

We’re also running automated devices and robots with AI brains.  The most obvious automated devices that will take the world by storm will be self-driven electric cars.  Most car manufacturers will start selling those on or around the year 2020[1], which is very, very soon.  These can be considered robots with an AI brain since they will recognize passenger voices, understand instructions and then be able to drive themselves on real roads, dealing with unpredictable road conditions and the public.  They just have wheels instead of limbs.

Self-driving cars will also likely be connected to the Internet, just like AI personal assistants, so they can access useful information and share with other AI-enabled robots and software in a networked fashion.  That will make them even more efficient and instantly learn from other self-driving cars on the roads, making them very good drivers and very safe faster than we can blink.  At the very least, they will be better drivers than any human can and keep improving 24-7 as we use them.

In the midst of these technologies supporting all industries from education, health, economy, government, manufacturing, and others, it is easier to imagine novel ways to structure our society than every before.  I think it’s a good time to give it a try.

Exponential thinking 

Here is something else to consider moving forward:  we must stop thinking in a linear way.  It is quite natural to do so since we are built to experience the world through our senses and our bodies are designed to seek balance (what biologists call homeostasis).  We are built to change, but change in our brain and bodies creates imbalances that our own biochemistry constantly tries to balance out.  The body’s rebalancing process takes time.  It never gets faster from generation to generation, so there are hard limits in how fast we can change our minds or adapt to physical situations. 

Socially, there are even more pressures towards linear thinking because everyone around us, ourselves included, measure time in the same small increments and we balance each other out at similar rates.  It is all tied into our biology as described above.

It’s no wonder when we start thinking about the future, we tend to see progress in a straight line, ergo if it took one generation to go from cell phones to smartphones, the natural thought is that it will take one generation to go from smartphone to the next generation of pocket communication device.

Unfortunately, technology is built following the Law of Accelerating Returns[2], a term coined by renowned futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil.  The law describes how progress not only depends on our linear creative selves, but it also depends on the body of previously developed technologies.  This creates an exponential growth curve.

Kurzweil wrote in his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near, “Technology goes beyond mere tool making; it is a process of creating ever more powerful technology using the tools from the previous round of innovation.”  Kurzweil studied different tools in different industries and the trend in each industry is exponential because every industry is using better and better tools leveraging the previous generation and tools from other industries.

Thus, productivity keeps increasing exponentially in each industry[3].

If we look at high tech innovation on its own, people work on different aspects, namely software (AI, smart systems, application tools), computer hardware (smaller microprocessors, quantum computing, organic computing) and robotics (more efficient servo motors, new materials, gyroscopes, miniaturization).  Then each one of those aspects are used by people to develop the other in a cyclical manner.  Better hardware allows us to use create more sophisticated software leveraging more information that achieves results faster (see Moore’s Law)[4].  This software is used by engineers to design better robotics.  Then engineers use the improved robotics to create smaller transistors at a faster pace and integrate them into new better computer hardware. 

The advancement of each component, hardware, software and robotics, are then used in other industries where we could illustrate other similar cycles.

The truth is, the world we’re living in is changing at an exponential rate.  We must then learn to think exponentially.

So, if you think it is impossible to engineer a paradise in our society within a single generation, you may be surprised.  Methods of communication, production and collaboration have never been faster and better suited for massive change.  And they too will become better and allow connectivity at an accelerated rate.

In some ways, since human beings are biologically linear, we must get ourselves out of the way by allowing this accelerated ace of change to occur, supported by intelligent technologies that are in fact improving at an exponential rate:  artificial intelligence.

So, I suggest we expect things will change faster than we can possibly imagine.  It takes a measure of trust but I’m hoping you will continue to read this book and perhaps contact me to collaborate on projects that will help move things along.

Check my website for some projects that I have started or some that are already underway.  

I’m also available for any engagement that would allow me to educate.  I’m leaving it to you.

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[1] Moore’s Law.  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

[2] The Law of Accelerating Returns.  Ray Kurzweil - http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns

[3] Technology Feels Like It’s Accelerating – Because It Actually Is.  Alison E. Berman and Jason Dorrier - https://singularityhub.com/2016/03/22/technology-feels-like-its-accelerating-because-it-actually-is/

[4] Self-Driving car timeline for 11 top automakers.  Dan Fagella - https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/04/self-driving-car-timeline-for-11-top-automakers/

Autonomous Vehicles Taking Flight

You may have heard a lot about major companies producing and testing self-driven cars over the past year or so.  In fact most car major manufacturers are planning to sell autonomous cars of some form by 2020.  We also have companies such as Uber and Google who famously have released plans to do the same by the same deadlines.

It is thought that by 2020, there will be approximately 10 million autonomous vehicles on the road in the world.

Now don't get all super excited just yet.  The first self-driven cars will likely not be completely driver-less.  For security reasons and legal reasons, in the first few years of these going to market, the cars will still require drivers to interact with the car fairly regularly or at the very least supervise the self-driving AI that is doing the driving.   After a while and when statistics show that it is safe or safer to let the AI drive the vehicles, then we'll have fully automated vehicles on our streets and so on.

Now, because the world knows how to make cars pretty well, and the challenge is mostly on the software and the sensors necessary for automated vehicles to navigate their way safely through populated areas and busy streets, many technology startups and established companies have decided to enter this game as well.

German company Continental are looking at selling automated multi-seat taxis in the Frankfurt area in the next couple years with spacious interior space as a prime selling point.

Continental Urban Experience (CUbE) vehicle

Popular Uber competitor Lyft has created a partnership with Disney Parks to eventually have autonated mini vans (called Minnie Vans at Disney) taxiing people from park outskirts to within their parks.

Intel even bought an automated vehicle startup called Mobileye for huge bucks so they could deploy about 100 self-driven cars (level 4 automation, which means the cars will need to be driven by humans on occasion but not all the time.  Level 5 automation is fully driver-less.)

Heck, many companies are thinking about cargo transportation too, like Einride from Sweden, who thought up a concept cube truck that has absolutely no driver.  Fully loaded, it would weigh in at 20 tons and would be able to ride for 200 km on a single charge.  The truck would either travel fully automated or would be remote-controlled by a company employee.

Einride T-Pod cargo transportation vehicle

All of these planned vehicles are, of course, 100% electric.

What I think is even more exciting though, is that many companies, including some familiar ones are prototyping flying taxis as well.  These would be either autonomous or remote-controlled, just like the transportation vehicle from Einride mentioned above.

Why no actual driver in the vehicle?  Well, there aren't enough pilots to go around and we can't really ask anyone to go through an expensive piloting training program just to ferry oneself around.  These would be more than likely just remote-control operators until the time people are fully vested in the idea of fully automated flying vehicles.

I discuss the implications of this a bit further in the video below:

There seems to be two kinds of automated flying vehicles in development.  All are electric:

1. Drones:  basically what you would expect.  They have fans all around them for stability and generally always fly like a helicopter would.  We're talking about 50 km ranges on a charge an speeds of about 100 km/hr.   Daimler's Volocopter and China's Ehang flying taxis are designed for 2 passengers and have both been approved for trial in Dubai by the end of 2017.  Dubai wishes for their city to bet 25% vehicle automated by 2030.



Daimler's Volocopter (2 seater)

2. VTOL Airplanes:  Vertical TakeOff and Landing airplanes.  These have fans or propellers that either change orientation from vertical for takeoff and landing to horizontal for flying aspect, or their have both types of propellers that activate as needed.  These can fly much faster in a distance but are less maneuverable when going in a line versus the drone types.  The vehicles by Lilium and Uber are meant to carry between 2 and 5 passengers up to 300 km on a single charge at speeds around 300 km/hr.

Lilium electric aircraft (2 seater)

Just like the ground versions of automated vehicles, these are designed to be called by apps on our smartphones for convenience.  It is anticipated that at first, some of these vehicles will be purchased by car owners looking forward to have their own.  However, most will agree that in the future, automated vehicles will be rented or subscribed to by passengers, avoiding the whole situation of parking.  In some cities parking spaces take up more than 20% of the land area.  Imagine what we could do with all that space in cities if cars don't need to be parked all the time!

Expect to see automated flying vehicles in a city near you by 2025, definitively.

Self-Driven eVTOL Taxis In Our Near Future

I've written several times about self-driven cars being introduced into the market around the year 2020 by most large international car manufacturers (and a few other companies like NVidia...), but what I have discussed yet is the plans by several governments and companies to deploy self-driven air taxis.

It's pretty logical really.  Normally, we wouldn't consider letting anyone except licensed pilots to pilot a vehicle that could crash onto our heads, but in the world of self-driven vehicles, letting the computer drive an airplane is just as logical as letting it drive a car or a truck.  I mean, passenger jetliners are already mostly automated anyway and with the advent of excellent AI (Artificial Intelligence), it's easy to go from letting ourselves being driven around safely on the streets to letting ourselves get flown around.

Uber, among others, have thought of this in order to alleviate further the transportation problems we have in general:  traffic and transit time.  Using roads to go from point A to B is good, but what if you could go faster and "as the crow flies" when using their upcoming fleet of self-driven vehicles?  You could get where you need to go much faster and you aren't encountering any traffic since you're flying over everyone else.  Bonus is that you can go from building to building without even touching the Earth itself!  This of course, is possible due to VTOL (Vertical TakeOff and Landing) technologies.

In the video below I talk a little bit about the implications of such transportation systems further if you are interested:

Of course, in order for these air taxis to work, we'd need to be able to ensure the vehicle is at the 5th level of automation, which necessitates absolutely no input from a pilot or driver.  So it is possible that the first ones may be piloted by remote or at least there is a way for a designated "pilot" to take the controls in some special cases to ensure the air taxi gets people down safely (which is the 4th level of automation).

But as I mentioned before, this is not that far off.  In fact, Google's self-driven cars have been operating at level 4 of the automation chart for years already.  It excites me to think that we could finally remove some of the congestion from our streets by finally using the air above our heads to move around.  It just allows for so much more freedom of movement and more options for city planners to allow traffic to flow.  But what about noise?

Well, Uber's design is electric with propellers to push air around, so that's pretty quiet...quieter than our regular gasoline guzzling cars at least.  Lilium, a German company, is proposing their own eVTOL design which uses ducted fans instead of propellers.  Generally the same concept.

Though it is unclear what Uber's timeline looks like regarding their eVTOL concept, it is safe to assume that these bad boys will only be deployed after the deployment of their fleets of self-driven cars near 2020.  Chinese company EHang already has an agreement to deploy their 2 seater drones in Dubai in the next couple years (those presumably are guided by a controller, not self-driven, but details are not clear on that).  In the meantime, Lilium wishes to conduct manned flights of their entirely self-driven eVTOL air taxis in 2019.

Just to give you an idea of specs, Lilium's model will likely be able to carry up to 5 people up to 300 km distance at a speed of 300 km / h.  In perspective that's a 5 minute ride from JFK Airport to Manhattan, instead of the current 55 minute drive. Not too shabby indeed!

All I can say is that offering different ways to commute and move around using the area above our head, all using electricity, no emissions, making it all quiet, and self-driven, is like looking back on so many science fiction movies asking myself "What were they thinking!  We're doing so much better with this!"

Yep.  Looks like we can engineer better systems than what science fiction writers can imagine.

Super-Intelligent "Robots will outnumber Humans in 30 years"

Don't take my word for it.  This comes straight from Japan's SoftBank Group CEO, Masayoshi Son.

If you've been following along my blog and videos, that statement shouldn't be very surprising.  For those of you just tuning in or reading these lines, here is the jist of it:

• Around 10 years from now, one of our computers will be able to do as many computations per second as a human brain.
• By then, there should be over 20 times the amount of smart devices as there are people on the planet, all interconnected (what we call the Internet of Things (IoT) nowadays).
• A few years later than that, there would be more devices, in more parts of our lives, and each one of those devices could potentially be as powerful as a human brain (though most would not need to be to assume their role).
• 29% of the 140 acquisitions of Artificial Intelligence companies in the world in the last 5 years were made in 2016 alone.  It is anticipated that there will be 300% more acquisitions than that in 2017.
• This year, China has already started using the first autonomous Security Robot, beyond the facier industrial robots, that can track bombs, criminals and other stuff as well as identify potential criminal intent on the fly.  I think it can give out directions too, like any good beat cop can.  It's the first robot that I know of that is in actual use in public.
• Autonomous self-driven cars are on the way by all major manufacturers along with outliers like Tesla Motors, NVidia,, Google, Intel and several others.  There are already self-driven vehicles on the road in England and other European countries as well as many self-driven trucks in the mining industry etc....  Major manufacturers for privately owned-vehicles still plan to start selling their personal self-driven vehicles on our around 2020.
• And of course you are aware of autonomous delivery systems being tested by several large companies (Amazon included) around the world.  UPS has joined the list of companies in this game.  A bunch of other entrants are giving a shot at the delivery game too, such as LastMileRobotics.  Of course, they likely would get acquired or become suppliers for larger firms if their designs hold up.

So with all that activity and integration of really smart devices and sensors running about... in 30 years, robots will be in fact everywhere in our lives, and they will likely be in larger numbers than human beings, and those robots will be severely outnumbered by smart devices embedded into most of our home devices and infrastructure.  Not everything smarter than us will actually look like a robot and vice versa.

I talk about how this will look like in the video below:

In a nutshell though, in 30 years, it is very reasonable to assume that we'll be surrounded with robots of varying intelligence, size, purpose, including possibly nano-robots in our bloodstream.

What does it mean for us simple dumb humans?

Well, it means we can enjoy life then because all that interaction between super-smart robots means they can basically take care of running everything we don't want to run, more efficiently, and with more competence than all the experts of the planet combined.

It means, sharing space with these robots and enjoying ourselves.  We no longer speak of work.  We speak of having occupations because believe it or not many humans want to be involved as a driving force behind our art, culture, science and society.  Humans will be basically fully integrated into a network of intelligence and robots.  

And don't think we won't have robotic lovers (mechanical or organic in nature).  Even today we've figured out how to give robots "senses".  It is thus quite reasonable to assume in 30 years, we'll have mechanical robots fully capable to feel and even be sensual just like a real human lover would.  

And why not?