I was reading about the AR/VR headset that’s due for release by Apple sometime this year. A truly disruptive product, if it does even half of what was stated…
Actually, we are at the cusp of very significant changes. Much like the period in the late 90s, leading up to the Ecommerce boom and bust, and then the proliferation of the internet, and the release of the iPhone in 2007 – some changes end up completely altering the landscape.
While we have been reading a lot about Artificial Intelligence, or AI, it’s capabilities are just coming to the surface with OpenAI labs. ChatGPT allows you to type requests and commands returning results that would seem like there is a human at the other end of it. Dall-E 2 renders images based on text descriptions.
These are front-end AI examples. The data crunching that’s happening beyond the scenes as we happily scroll, like, purchase and comment online, will feed these AI models to a point where the AI knows you better than yourself. Data does not lie, after all.
Combine such learnings with a fantastic delivery mechanism that Apple puts in front of you, and in 5 years, the iPhone will morph into a data processing device, led by the AR/VR headset, with ample inputs from AirPods and the Apple Watch that create an exoskeleton of sorts. Your capabilities are enhanced beyond imagination, and your reality altered to a large extent, to a point when you start to question what is truly real.
There will be large-scale unemployment, but unprecedented opportunity as well. Which side of the fence you find yourself will depend on how you prepare for it today, and how fast you can upskill, and continue to upskill. Else you are faced with the same future that typists, medical transcriptionists and Desk-Top Publishing ‘experts’ stared at when they were caught unawares.
Think about it!