Essay

The race is on among the big tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Microsoft  and Amazon to become the preferred supplier of your VPA. Who controls the VPA gateway will greatly influence  the relationship to all services a customer might want.

Like the browser wars of the 1990s, the outcome will lead to settling the balance of power in the next phase of the internet. By channeling attention and making decisions on behalf of their users, VPAs will have a significant impact to make or break other businesses already engaged in providing internet services.

One key in this development towards a VPA  is the application of machine learning to language comprehension both in respect to content and context  and the support of voice assistants to provide the interface to language oriented services.

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Every generation or so, a number of emerging technologies converge, and something revolutionary occurs. The reason we are now experiencing a paradigm shift towards the 4^th industrial revolution, largely driven by AI and Machine Learning, is the simultaneous occurrence of the following:

-The growing availability of massive computational resources for neural network and machine learning applications

-Networked access to the massive and rapidly growing data pools (big data) representing knowledge mostly as unformatted data

-The ongoing Integration of Deep Learning (a subset of machine learning) and Neuroscience with brain research

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As Moore’s law is coming to an end (See the Essay from 25.06.2016 under ARCHIVES) the race is on to build new computer hardware to meet the still exponentially growing demand for higher computer performance.

Quantum computing is the technology that many scientists, entrepreneurs and big businesses expect to provide a quantum leap into the future.

The field of quantum computing is undergoing a rapid shake-up, and engineers at Google have quietly set out a plan to dominate it.

By combining analogue and digital concepts the Google research team has made great progress to handle the problem of error correction that has plagued quantum computers in the past.

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In a corporate business context, as Singularity is coming closer, we can expect that Artificial Intelligence Machines (AIMs) will take over many of the cognitive intelligence tasks that are currently handled by humans.
Consequently the focus in managing human resources will eventually shift from cognitive driven business practices to emotional intelligence driven business practices.
This for one will raise the potential value of aging leaders as their capacity for emotional intelligence grows and their relative loss of cognitive intelligence is compensated by the application of AIMs.

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The idea that a computer takes on the role of a personal assistant has been around for many years. The smartphone and its internet access to ‘the cloud’ has become our mobile companion with Apps available to provide instant personal advice ranging from travel planning all the way to health issues to name just a few.

A truly personal assistant, however, has to be able to communicate like a human being in a language that is considered agreeable. Today we lack the algorithms that enable Artificial Intelligence Machines to handle this task. However, as neuroscience and brain research progress at such a rapid pace we will eventually understand how human language comprehension is built up and maintained.

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Digital Transformation is the prelude to Singularity. A digitally transformed company has the corporate culture to successfully manage the complex issues of Singularity. The following discussion will help to understand the drivers behind this paradigm shift.

Preparing for a digital economy is no easy task. It means developing digital capabilities in which a company’s activities, people, culture, and structure are in sync and aligned toward a set of organizational goals.

Cognitive Singularity will not happen suddenly as a ’big bang’. It will come step by step as deep learning AI and cognitive computer applications are generating value for specific business and customer segments.

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Technological advances have destroyed jobs since the beginning of industrialization. However, new job opportunities requiring new skills are often created following layoff-periods. The time for adjustment and the flexibility of individuals to adapt to new job situations supported by a socially responsible leadership is the key to handle the impact of change.

With Singularity approaching there will be no more    than a few outstanding high-paid individuals who are the ultimate drivers of advancing the performance of AI systems at an exponential rate. On the other side, there are a vast number of people facing potential unemployment due to the consequences of this development. This will cause serious disruptions especially within the white-collar job market.

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From a scientific and technical point of view it seems possible that a smartphone might one day have some form of Consciousness. The decision to enable that is up to us.

The century-old philosophical debate what Consciousness really is has recently become enriched by Neuroscience with its huge and well-funded efforts to understand the functioning of the human brain.

Computational Neuroscience which is part of this effort is trying to model the brain and eventually provide input to Artificial Intelligence applications and new computer architectures thereby plotting the road towards Singularity and its Ecosystem.

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Since 50 years the exponential growth of computer performance and inversely reducing its cost per chip has proven to be a reliable path for assessing the trend of hardware development and Machine Resources. Now due to limitations of silicon-based chip design this trend also defined as Moore’s law is coming to an end. What happens next?

In summary, it will be renewed by chips incorporating new materials and architectures, possibly outpacing the speed of change we have experienced in the last 50 years.

This development will be largely fueled by Artificial Intelligence applications and its requirement to handle and analyze huge data sets to support the Singularity- Ecosystem

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The VW diesel emissions disaster will be go down in history as one of the most significant commercial disasters with billions of dollars lost in the value of share capital and damage to VW’s reputation which will be extremely costly and time-consuming to repair.

Engineers had the idea that artificial intelligence software could be implemented that would sense if the car were being government tested for exhaust emission. Under normal driving conditions, however, this ‘artificial intelligent switch’ would not be activated causing far higher emissions.

Additional laws will be put into place to avoid a reoccurrence of the VW case. However, unless a corporate culture of ethical conduct is implemented, also applied to the design of AI software, laws will be broken again.

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