Society is on the brink of the second industrial revolution according to Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly who says the formula for tomorrow’s startups is simple; add artificial intelligence (AI).
Kelly was speaking as part of a PHD Worldwide keynote, with strategy, planning director Mark Holden, at the Cannes Lions on the “inevitable” 12 technological forces that will shape the world.
One of the key changes that Kelly sees on the horizon is AI, which he says is “launching the second industrial revolution”.
The first revolution, he says, came about because of the invention of “artificial power” which could be added to manual processes to make them easier. Using an example of a water pump moving from a manual process to an electric pump, Kelly says the formula for the industrial revolution was “take X, add electricity, and you have something new that can do something we couldn’t imagine before”.
“What we’re doing now is very similar, we’re going to take the electric pump and get the smart pump,” Kelly says.
“We’re going to do that over and over again because we can access this commodity (AI) like we have electricity. What I would suggest is that the formula for the next 10,000 startups is very simple: take X and add AI. Take something that isn’t smart today and add as many minds to it as you want.”
The impact of AI will be that robots will make new jobs for humans, as productivity work is outsourced to machines, and humans focus on tasks where efficiency isn’t important: science, innovation, art and experiences.
Kelly also asked the industry to “embrace these technologies”, rather than looking to fight against their growth.
“We’re going to be working with these rather than against them,” Kelly says. “I’m suggesting we embraces these technologies because through their embrace we get to steer them. If we try to inhibit them, reduce them, we don’t get to steer or manage them.
“The long-term trends are going to happen whatever we do, so we are interested in the specifics, those are not predictable those we have a lot of choice about. but we only get to those by using these technologies and engaging them.”
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