Institute For The Future

Podcast: Robots & Automation

We’re about to enter an automated world, where everyday people, organizations, and cities use previously-unimagined machine power, where algorithms make art and diagnose illness, and where humans+machines redefine how we live, work, and play. In this future, billions of things in our material world get networked and take on unprecedented capabilities. They’ll have on-demand intelligence and be capable of continuous capture and sensemaking as well as simulating complex decisions. And these ‘things’ won’t be static, but instead adapt as evolvable hardware and encoded judgments reshape the outcomes of their actions. In short, we are approaching a world of unfathomable and transformative automation.

In 2015, IFTF's Tech Horizons program explored these issues and opportunities in our research, The Automated World: Toward Human+Machine Symbiosis. I recently shared my thoughts with The Other Washington, a Seattle-based podcast, for its episode on robots and automation (starts at 21:40).