The future predicted 100 years ago has come true

Mr. Saito started his lecture by saying that the future he predicted has come true. In 1900, before cars even existed, it was believed that in 100 years video conferences, voice recorders and flying cars would become a reality. In fact, some people are already using video conferencing, and in addition to recording audio, AI speakers are also appearing. In addition, there is a nationwide movement to fly flying cars over Tokyo by 2023, and the future that humans have envisioned is actually becoming a reality.

Predictions about technology for the next 20 years

Next, at a conference called "Abundance 360" where the world's top CEOs gathered, their predictions of "what will happen in the next 20 years" were introduced.
(Reference website: From Peter H. Diamandis LLC's tech blog https://www.diamandis.com/blog/countdown-to-the-singularity)

These events are likely to occur in the near future, as the aforementioned predictions of 100 years ago have come true.

Technology is evolving at a rapid pace

Next, several examples were given about the speed of recent technological evolution, and I will introduce one of them here.

<Artificial Intelligence and Go>
"AlphaGo" is a computer Go program developed by DeepMind, which in October 2015 became the first to beat a professional human Go player without a handicap.
At that time, artificial intelligence scholars said that it would take 10 years for artificial intelligence to beat humans. By the way, it was said at the time that it would take 800 million years to calculate the total number of Go moves.
However, just three years after this victory, "AlphaGo" evolved "Alpha Zero" has come to win games such as chess, go, and shogi against all artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence has come to perform calculations to win by narrowing down information on its own, instead of calculating by brute force.

Exponential means "exponential"

The human brain can only predict the future mathematically, but science and technology are said to evolve exponentially. To explain with an image, I hope you can think of arithmetic as addition and exponential as doubling.

A good example of the exponential development of science and technology is the analysis of the human genome. The analysis of the human genome was budgeted for 1990-15, and by 1997 only 1% of the progress had been made. However, it sped up exponentially and was 100% complete well ahead of the deadline.

Singularity is a “technological singularity”

The singularity (technological singularity) refers to the point at which advances and developments in computer technology, life science, etc., enable science and technology to create better science and technology on their own. It is a concept proposed by American futurist Ray Kurzweil in 2005 and gradually became known. Beyond this point evolution diverges to infinity. Kurzweil also predicts that “the singularity will be achieved around 2045, and a discontinuous world that is completely different from the world we have seen so far will come.”

Mr. Saito says that it is important to anticipate accelerating technology rather than the singularity coming and going.

Ability to overlook future technology

To put it simply, exponential thinking is a way of thinking for managers, employees, and students to take a bird's-eye view of the technologies that may occur in the future and put those images into practice. Saito says that it will be the general education of the future.

Listening to this lecture, it was a time when I keenly felt that business in the future cannot compete on the same path as before.
If you want to know more about exponential thinking, why don't you read the book written by Mr. Saito, who gave this lecture?