TheCable

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams goes a favorite from Eleanor Roosevelt, as I imagined a world “almost” run by automation with robots and hubots representing governments and corporations at high-powered meetings, with geo-sensitive, movement triggered surveillance hubots (drone types with morphing possibilities) and robot security agents manning government personnel and corporation buildings; and what it will look like with a human-less ride hailing that fills an order for food, drinks and music on the go while speaking in my mother tongue (or coordinating from a mobile phone key-press).

So much is possible when we let our imaginations soar and with the realization that all things are possible (we need to speed up the conversion time between imagination and reality). Michelle Obama quips that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and the willingness to work hard for them. So I pictured a completely human-less bureau de change with multi-option (withdraw, transfer, pay for items and save among other features), multi-channel (accepts cards, voice feeds, iris activation, and mobile triggers), multi-currency and multi-language support for tourists and business travelers that synchronizes with the human, robot and hubot satellite identifier in space realtime while learning from every data unique to its usage in a highly secure environment. It is funny how a world could be imagined to host humans getting married to hubots and living happily ever after.

Everything rises and falls on leadership (responsibility, emphasis mine) goes that favorite quote by Dr. Maxwell; and quite impressive how every thing has changed so fast to-date with even more changes envisaged in the near future. When hubots become classroom teachers that get coordination from a central hotspot linked directly with satellites hosting several other classroom teachers (hubots) across different countries or continents and deep-learning from what every other big country or continent data churned from the millions of interactions coordinated with social media “likes” and trends. Furnished with machine learning algorithms easily accessible to users without sophisticated technical knowledge. Yes, interactive sessions of questions and answers happening at 7G even 8G speed will provide learners of same or similar topics access to questions posed in others countries and continents, golden answers with super high rating from social media infusion (making learning so much fun). At this point in the future, big data (the real oil) becomes the reference learning institution as every learning center (primary, secondary and tertiary) derive their guidance and coordination from the almost “all-knowing” satellite repository (with humans manning such control centers) and learning happening through multiple channels (the hubot can speak, listen and play a soothing background song to set a mood for learning particular topics and provide on-the-go assessments for students in a true continuous learning environment). In this reality, learning happens at multiple levels (participants learn from the hubot, the hubot learns by listening to the participants, while the hubots also learns from the connection it has with big data from its home country, other countries and continents across the world). It also affords students the opportunity to decide on getting some guidance on any topic of their choice at some point in their daily school life (for say 1 hour every day – school is huge fun).

Moreover, as security agents, hubots in similar ways connected through the 4 senses (hearing, seeing, smelling and feeling) will provide top of the range coordination with immigration, police, and every center that holds records of people such that as they approach, the hubot determines whether to allow or deny access based on derived rating from local and international centrally accessible past records. The superior Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) protects it while surfing for realtime updates and uploading information within the cyberspace. The freeing up of humans from doing the manning with little to no way to access real-time information and process big data trends from satellite nurtured central repositories frees up humans to coordinate more serious parts of the machine learning algorithms at control centers while software installs and upgrades can happen on the go with subscriptions. Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual reports can then be easily compared across continents when the world fuses into one single unit. One cloud storage fed from continents gathering data from countries getting feeds from hubots at different locations.  

At the center of transportation and driving is the need for intuition which needs to be mastered in the future hubots while humans are doing what they really enjoy – thinking the impossible and pursuing its realization. Impossible will be nothing soon, as knowledge is said to double every 18 months. When analysis and analytics for trends and patterns deducible from available data becomes top notch and machines can get feeds directly from these results then information assimilation rates and decision-making will be catching up faster with the rate of change of knowledge increase (what is known makes more possible to be known – this knowledge paves the way to more of that knowledge, as every thing is connected to everything else).

Its year 2031 and I just decided on a business trip to Texas from my home in Magodo, Lagos, Nigeria. While at home, I approached the dresser as it responds with a good morning in my smart home furnished with AI, IoT and ML everywhere – the mirror is talking, and so is my multi-state bed (morphing into different desirable feels at my voice or mobile key-press request). My dresser is a hubot and with a few simple conversation, fetches me the right clothes for my trip (all well ironed and made ready to wear in my travel box). I became friends with Lami (my dresser hubot) on my last trip to Bahamas where we met at an auction and Lami was ready to go home with me. Lami has been helping to dress me up with regular learning updates for an annual subscription.

Furthermore, I approach my fridge, Pemisire, as she opens to nourish me at the focus expression on my iris. She is so professional in her approach and a master at diet options as she gets feeds from local and foreign stations, an option that can be enabled with a few subscription bucks. Her capacity to swiftly learn, process, and evaluate data in order to make choices is a significant contribution she brings along. She hands me an apple and bottle of water (my favorite morning snack) to get a relaxing experience after a good shower. Her superior AI uses deep learning face and speech recognition and reinforcement learning that allow her learn from guests preference – she’s so polite. Yes my refrigerator is female as I opted for her and not the male version for some extra features she had as an excellent conversationalist. I recently bought an upgrade on the software with a hardware add-on that allows her provide a soothing aroma on close approach, multiple language support for my diverse guests, mobility around the house (with security CCTV coverage via hidden IP cameras) and the add-on interpretation services she offers around the house. So much of what Pemisire was doing around the house as I woke up to reality, and it’s just the beginning of 2022 and I wish you a happy new techful year. Dreaming, talking and tinkering with technology possibilities should be the domain of leaders of the future. And yes, dreams come true when passionately pursued and Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality like Jonas Salk said.

I remain committed to you as we journey through this long awareness friendship and build a truly new narrative that outlives us in the new Nigeria of our dreams. Yours in tech, Olufemi Ariyo

Email: [email protected]