INNOVATION
Innovation is not what it was 10 years ago. We live in an age where human-machine intelligence starts to reach the shop floor in most industries. While, 10 years ago, it still was the brains of the best skilled technicians that would contribute to an innovative product, today, we see machine intelligence becoming much smarter, versatile, powerful and innovate than a human can ever be.
Machines have started to generate construction layouts, design proposals and even blueprints for pretty much anything. The exponential increase of CPU power combined with the vast amount of data available, has lead to machines being able to learn way faster than humans will ever imagine. When the computer beat the Go-Player, even the software developers couldn´t follow what the computer was doing, and why.
Innovation based on sole human brainwork will become a relict of the good old times. Augmentation is the theme for the next 40 years. We are entering the augmentation age.
We are already seeing many examples on how we, as humans, augment our daily tasks with machines or machine-like devices. The most simple example is the mobile phone, that almost everyone who is following a profession uses to accomplish the many tasks at hand. Be it the search for a website, the monitoring of stock-markets or the matching of products, proposals or partners: apps are the solution that we all turn to. Apps, however, are only the precursor of what is already coming up in pole position: intelligent machines.
Intelligent machines are capable of intuition, a trait that was so far reserved for humans. This intuition capability has been learned and will continue to be improved using powerful processors and the unbelievably large amount of data that we - humans - freely and "with no question asked" enter into the cloud, on facebook or onto our website.
Machine learning is in fact nothing else but pattern recognition combined with the derivation of logic. Machine intelligence is the manifested learned logic, coded into algorythms. The really impressive fact here is: machines have started to program these algorythms themselves - that is: without any human interaction.
We can only imagine what innovation will be like, once machine intelligence has far outreached our - human - abilities. The much greater aspect of innovation will potentially be the ethical and societal questions posed, when machines start to design, build and control new machines - without humans getting even close to comprehend - let alone interfear with - these developments.
As member of several international organizations dealing with the consequences of machine intelligence for our societies, I am involved in disucssions and developments at the forefront of machine learning activities. With this expertise, I can help you in devising strategies for your future innovation processes and assist in implementing them long-term.