Fitbits for cows, flying cars, co-bots? Steve Brown, “the Bald Futurist,” reveals some amazing possibilities for future technologies and how they will affect the energy industry.
Computers keep getting smaller and cheaper. Everything in our lives is becoming smart and connected. We are just scratching the surface of how technology will change our lives in the next 10 to 15 years, Steve Brown told an audience of energy utility representatives.
Mr. Brown is a
futurist who helps large companies and industry organizations understand trends
so they can plan for where the world is going. He gave a keynote
address at the 2018 Efficiency Exchange conference hosted by the
Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance and Bonneville Power Administration.
Six
technologies will shape the near future for every industry, including energy
utilities, Mr. Brown said, and “each technology is about building more bridges
between the physical world that we inhabit and the digital world where
technology is constantly advancing.”
The big six technologies of the future
In his 15
years at Intel, Steve Brown, an engineer by training, worked at the forefront
of digital computing, so he knows about technology. He also worked for a
cultural anthropologist at Intel, so he understands how people think about and
react to change. And he worked on early Energy Star standards for PCs.
Artificial intelligence tops his list of
the big six technologies of the future.
“Artificial
intelligence is a big, big deal,” Mr. Brown said. “AI is a completely different
type of computing than the digital computing we use today. You program AI computers
by training them and showing them data.” AI enables the digital world to learn
and imagine.
I caught up
with Mr. Brown after his talk and asked him how he would prioritize these six
technologies. Is there one we should be paying the most attention to? “If I had
to pick just one, it would be AI,” he told me. “If we thought the last 40 years
was amazing, in the next 10 years we are likely to see more change in our lives
than in the last 40 because of AI’s capabilities. The energy industry should be
paying attention to it.”
“You can think
of AI as the second coming of computing,” he said in his keynote address, “one
that is able to solve a completely different kind of problems.” Self-driving
cars would not be possible without AI.
The internet of things is giving the world a
nervous system by implanting sensors everywhere. You’re already carrying 8 or 9
sensor that are built into the phone in your pocket. Mr. Brown said there will
be around 100 trillion sensors in the world by 2030, telling digital systems
what’s happening in their and our physical environment.
“With IoT we
can create control loops, where we sense something in the physical world and
use that to make a decision and act on it in the digital world,” Mr. Brown told
me later. “If we can use AI and sensors to look for patterns in the way people
use energy, we have more of an ability to optimize the usage of that energy.”
He said
several companies are starting to use AI to look for patterns in people’s usage
of energy and coach consumers on how to use less. One IoT example in his
presentation was a wallet that becomes harder to open when the owner’s bank
balance is low.
In an audience
of 400 energy efficiency experts, I wasn’t the only one wondering how we could
make a switch harder to turn on when electricity is more expensive.
Autonomous machines are AI inside of
robots. Mainstream robots today can’t understand much about the world around
them, but with AI they will be able to safely interact with humans in more
meaningful ways. Autonomous machines enable the digital world to act.
Blockchain is the technology underlying
crypto currencies. “I prefer to think of blockchain as a new platform upon
which people will create incredible new value,” Mr. Brown said, “and crypto
currency is one of the tricks that make blockchain work.”
Mr. Brown
described blockchain as a fancy database, distributed across many computers,
with no central owner, and all the data is stored with military-grade
encryption. “Blockchain allows us to create decentralized applications, like a
social media platform without one central company in control of it.”
Blockchain
also enables distributed open-source development of applications as well as
shared ownership in small portions of projects. Think community solar, with
many owners of small shares coming together to make the project a reality.
If you’re
tired of your mobile phone’s slow and intermittent internet connection, hang on,
Mr. Brown said, 5G is coming. “The
Internet of things will need a constant connection and low latency,” he said.
“5G networks don’t just make data go faster, they make connections more
reliable.”
One technology
that will need 5G’s always-on broadband is augmented reality.
“Augmented reality takes digital content
and overlays it on the physical world,” Mr. Brown said. “Essentially the world
becomes your display.” He showed a short video illustrating some of the many
possibilities for augmented reality, which goes far beyond virtual reality in
its capabilities.
How the big six technologies combine to shape
the future
Mr. Brown gave
some examples of how these six technologies will come together to change the
world we live in a decade or more from now.
“Cobots” are
robots that will work alongside humans. These AI coworkers will be able to
train people on the job, perform quality assurance in manufacturing, and alert
equipment owners to upcoming maintenance needs.
AI-enabled autonomous
cars will become a shared resource. “We are about to make a major leap in
transportation,” Mr. Brown said. We won’t need nearly as many cars, but they
will all be electric. Makers and nations are committed to zero emissions
vehicles. Uber is experimenting with air taxis.
“Things are
going to flip quite quickly, and that’s going to mean people want a lot more
electricity.” Electric vehicles and blockchain, among other upcoming technologies,
consume enormous amounts of energy. But these trends portend some good news for
renewables: more storage.
Electric cars
are a giant battery, Mr. Brown said. “Utilities could get into the car fleet
business. Why let Uber do that? EVs could become grid level storage.”
What about all that privacy and
cybersecurity stuff?
I asked Mr.
Brown about privacy and security, given the challenges we already have without
these new technologies, and the risk aversion of utilities.
“Privacy
matters, and security matters more,” he told me. “People are willing to give up
privacy so that companies can gather the data they need to better serve their
customers. Make it opt in. Promise security. Explain the benefits and be
transparent.”
In his keynote
speech, Mr. Brown said that regulation is one tool for keeping up with these
technological advances – and keeping them out of manipulative hands – “but
fundamentally we need to have a cultural conversation about how we embrace
technology,” he told the audience.
“I deputize
you as deputy futurists to go have this conversation about the world we want to
build and the world we want to avoid. Conversation before regulation.”
“You have a
very bright future,” Mr. Brown said in closing. “Your customers are going to go
through rapid changes, and so are you.”