Showing posts with label thoughts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thoughts. Show all posts

The Future, Complexity and Human Thinking

Don't let me drive a motorized vehicle after writing a long article.  In fact, don't let me drive any vehicle motorized or not.  My brain is often deep down a rabbit hole pondering data, crafting logical arguments, analyzing research findings, storytelling, wordsmithing etc, and any remaining brain cycles are not enough to drive safely. If my brain capacity can be nearly consumed while just sitting at a desk, think about the brain cycles consumed by pilots flying modern fighter jets in combat!

Modern fighter pilots have a plethora of onboard sensors that collect and stream massive volumes of data every second. The object of so many sensors is to give our pilots more information at a faster rate in order to achieve competitive advantages over adversaries. Too much information, however, is debilitating.  That is the reason the task of flying will increasingly be handed over to robotic, AI-powered pilots, so humans can use their limited brain capacity to focus on assignments with a slower tempo - like accomplishing the overall mission.

In order for jet fighter pilots to understand all the data pouring in, special helmets and UXs were designed to dumb down and slow down the need for human analysis.  Even with simplified user interfaces, pilots reported they struggled with information overload.   That is why the role of future military pilots is quickly evolving away from flying aircraft to operating flying command and control centers.

The massive rivers of data that keeps an aircraft flying has reached the level where humans are incapable of processing it fast enough to be successful.  In fact the F-35 is said to be unflyable without AI.  We now have reached the human thinking version of the sound barrier.  To push through and beyond it we will need AI augmentation to expand and extend our mental processing power. 

Ideas as Competitive Advantages

Recently an executive referred to our TCS Future of Business team as an idea factory.  I took that as a huge compliment.  No invention, good deed or successful company has ever been created without ideas.  Ideas can form nations.  Ideas can send astronauts to the Moon and robots to Mars.  Ideas can accelerate the development of life saving vaccines.

Last year I met with a room full of executives and one of the first things one of them asked was, "What new ideas are you bringing to the table?"  I loved that question!

In evolutionary biology competition is often described as survival of the fittest.  Today, however, competition often revolves around ideas, and the best ideas win.
While human biology evolves so slowly we don’t notice, ideas evolve so quickly, we can’t keep up. Idea evolution is like biological evolution on steroids. ~ Futurist Gerd Leonhard
If good ideas are the secret to success, then it is important we know their definition.  A good idea is a "thought about a virtuous course of action.".  Where do we get good ideas?  My TCS colleague and renowned futurist Frank Diana recently wrote that, "We all now have access (via the internet) to the collective intelligence of society, and we are therefore exposed to more ideas than ever."  Good ideas do not even need to be completely new to have value.  Frank often speaks of the value of "combinatorial" technologies.  Unique combinations of existing technologies that offer value in new ways.

Interviews with Kevin Benedict