Trying to predict not only what new technology will emerge in the coming decade but also the effect that it will have on business, investment and regulation is by its nature a fool’s errand.
But, despite the speed of change, there are some clearly emerging megatrends that will inform the direction of travel in the next few years.
Underpinning almost all of them are perhaps the most exciting and disruptive of all the new technologies: artificial intelligence (AI) and supercomputing.
AI, most experts believe, will develop in its own lane, but will also underpin the development of many other complementary vertical technologies that will depend on AI’s speed, accuracy and ability to learn and improve.
Richard Tang, founder and CEO of the ISP Zen Internet, believes we’re moving beyond ‘artificial’ intelligence towards something more like ‘real’ intelligence, the next level of AI.
The next 10 years, Tang believes, will see AI’s place as a foundation technology in business firmly cemented: “Things like voice recognition and RPA [robotic process automation] are useful for big businesses with lots of different systems and spreadsheets, but if you want to improve a process in an enterprise it’s a very complex problem. We’ve tried in our business and it’s really hard.”
But there are examples of companies using existing technology like the virtual reality software Lex (from Amazon) to improve processes – it can monitor phone calls and detect changes in pitch, tone and volume to build a picture of customer interaction and satisfaction.
“We can expect more of that type of thing, with AI incrementally creeping into business processes and improving them. The next 10 or 20 years will certainly see a lot of human customer interaction replaced by AI-led machines,” says Tang.
The next level of AI will bring in more context-driven understanding. “It’s not just about understanding ‘what’ and ‘when’, but ‘why’,” Tang suggests, pointing out that the rate of progress in these applications is improving all the time, with greater emphasis on AI speaking to AI.
“So, as corporates increase their reliance on AI, their partners, whether in banking, insurance or other parts of the supply chain, will respond in kind, transforming mundane, slow and costly interactions.
“Machines can communicate much faster than humans can,” Tang says. “The average ‘data rate’ for human speech is 31.5mbps; computers speak in Gbps, so it’s exponential.”
Among the next wave of technology that will underpin a lot of disruption is blockchain, – the secure, unhackable distributed ledger software upon which the world’s cryptocurrencies sit. But some observers – including Tang – view blockchain as an existential threat to banks in particular.
“There’s no reason why you couldn’t store everyone’s bank balance on the blockchain, removing the need for the central computing power of the big banks,” he says.
“In its place, it makes sense that we’ll see the emergence of five or six megacorps that own the underlying infrastructure, with banks, insurers, retailers and others sitting on top of that as the owners of the customer relationships.
However, he notes, “that calls into serious doubt the value that big banks and others offer to their customers, especially in a world where AI-driven banking direct from mobiles to the blockchain will become mainstream. The fintech sector is moving very quickly to fill every gap in the banking sector.”
Clearly, the banks are among the most vulnerable to disruption. However, John Stewart, NatWest’s global head of scouting and research, is one of many in the banking sector tasked with understanding the next wave of innovative tech that promises to disrupt countless sectors.
Having recently returned to the UK after five years in Silicon Valley, Stewart has had a ringside seat at the scene of innovation, where quantum computing is generating a lot of interest. Quantum computers will allow us to process data in a more sophisticated way that moves beyond traditional methods.
While a regular computer uses zeros and ones alternatively, quantum uses them at the same time, which increases the processing power exponentially. Essentially, quantum breaks free of the ordinary processing limits we currently work under.
Indeed, a recently leaked paper from Google suggested the search giant’s quantum machine Sycamore had completed a single highly technical calculation in three minutes and 20 seconds.
To give a sense of the leap forward, it would have taken the US Department of Energy’s Summit computer 10,000 years to do the same.
So, what will that mean for business?
“If you’re the corporate treasurer of a large insurance company, your big worry is losses,” explains Stewart. “So you start looking at your risks and property insurance looms large. A big worry is climate change and sea level rises. Using all the historical flooding data, we can model based on that, and guess at what might happen if levels rise by, say, one foot.
“But quantum allows you to go beyond historical precedent and start to model the consequence of a two-foot rise, which would have an exponentially greater impact. At the moment the computational power simply doesn’t exist; but quantum computing gives you the option of going far out into the unknowns and getting your predictive models so much better.”
Quantum is also a threat, however: Stewart recalls a presentation from the CEO of a quantum computing start-up who asked the audience to ‘imagine a world where every bit of data you’ve ever created or will create is publicly accessible; that’s what quantum computing will do to your encryption’.
“Our current encryption landscape is safe because there are more locks than keys,” Stewart says. “However, quantum upends that by using such powerful processing as to find enough keys for each lock. That said, clever people are now working on quantum-resistant hardware, but that’s in the early stages.”
So, as computers get faster and more powerful, the applications they can run also increase.
The earliest applications of ‘blended’ or ‘augmented’ reality (AR) have been largely behind the scenes, with a growing number of companies using it for training (US retailer Walmart for one) or industrial design. But AR will soon emerge into the consumer space, Stewart believes.
“The obvious application would be something like retailers using AI-driven engines to help home consumers walk around a virtual supermarket picking their favourite fruit.”
Gradually, he believes, better headsets will see AR move into the mainstream, and as one sector adopts the tech, more will follow.
“They’re much more wearable… they’ll go into gaming, travel, retail, fashion. And then suddenly, consumer demand will see it extend into banking, for instance, where they may offer certain experiences in ‘midair’ as people become more used to wearing lighter, better headsets and want to access their account information instantly.”
Anyone with shares in AR headset manufacturers will be pleased to hear that. But the manufacturing sector is set to leverage its own disruptive tech in the coming decade. 3D printing has been around for a while, but is used for small production runs for bespoke products.
However, the range of materials used has grown (printing metals is now a reality) and the applications, from plant-based meat to functioning organs, are beginning to expand.
Stewart foresees the development of larger printers as a key factor in powering genuine disruption in the area of logistics, shipping and manufacturing.
“Imagine a situation where a FedEx or UPS has two or three huge printers in its warehouse: the manufacturer, rather than importing parts from China, assembling them and shipping them back, instead simply sends the CAD file to the distributor, which prints the car part, or chassis or tool, and then ships them on or sends them back. Companies like Bosch and other large manufacturers will be feeling nervous about this stuff.”
Few sectors will escape the impact of any of these technologies. Some may see them as a threat, but planning is already under way for the smart ones to harness the opportunities.
Christian Doherty is a freelance business and technology writer
This article was taken from the December 2019/January 2020 issue of The Treasurer magazine. For more great insights, log in to view the full issue or sign up for eAffiliate membership