And once TV and film production does begin to fill the pipeline again, we’ll see different kinds of content because the world will be different. Because, well, 2020 has been a different kind of year!

Film production considerations

TV and film production closed down quickly in mid-March due to state and local government mandates and the impracticality of social distancing on set. After all, who wants to see their favorite actors wearing masks or blowing kisses?

Post-production work was able to continue of course, but to what end? Movie theaters were shuttered and quickly became nothing more than anchors threatening to sink suburban malls.

Production companies faced the option of delaying releases for as long as a year or biting the bullet and sending their work directly to streaming services. Both happened. As a result of locked theaters, Netflix has millions of new subscribers.

At this time, production has begun again with many safety precautions in place. Experts say that for the foreseeable future there will be smaller crews on sets, fewer shooting locations, fewer cast member extras, and more reliance on virtual effects.

A new era for making movies

But what’s really interesting to me is not how or when TV shows or movies will once again be made and released, it’s the kind of content and themes we’ll see. Will our experience with COVID-19 change content? Yes, but probably not in the ways you’re thinking.

Have you noticed how jarring it is these days to see a pre-2020 filmed scene with a crowded bar, a packed arena, or close-talking groups of people? That’s because it doesn’t reflect the reality of our life at this moment in time. But when we finally get the all-clear to shed our masks, and when social distancing is once again by choice and not necessity, those kinds of scenes on film won’t seem odd anymore.

Film reflects everyday life, and our life will not always be about avoiding respiratory droplets or worrying about invisible aerosol particles. Accordingly, the only masks we’ll see on the big screen will be in scenes with doctors, caregivers, or bank robbers.

Our shared COVID experience, though, should and will change movie content in a much more fundamental way. When we come out on the other side of this pandemic, we’re going to have to reflect on what we went through and what it all means. Movies and shows can help with that internalization process. For people all over the planet, the COVID crisis has been a deeply personal experience, and we’ll be looking to storytellers to help guide our thinking and even help us formulate some newly calibrated life priorities.

A new era for content

Of course, COVID isn’t the only challenge we’ve been confronting as a society in the last few months.

We’ve seen the emergence of a new level of social consciousness on matters related to diversity and equality. In light of that, have you noticed how many episodes of our favorite television series or movies now feature cringe-worthy scenes or plots with noticeable stereotyping?

Moving forward, movie and television show themes, plots, portrayed relationships, and dialog will be forever changed, reflecting a new awareness of racial and gender equality and related sensitivities. The general public will be super-attuned to these themes, so filmmakers and script writers will need to be very careful to stay on the right side of the shifting boundaries related to these social issues.

Would these areas of social conscientiousness have emerged as strongly had we not been in a COVID-induced state of vulnerability? That’s for others to decide. I would simply say that our global consciousness changed in 2020 and this is the perfect time for a new breed of storytellers to pave the way in healing our psyches and even helping us understand some new social norms.

Pay Attention, Hollywood!

The old ways of thinking in Hollywood just won’t cut it anymore. We’re in a new age, and script writers will need to take heed. Our definitions of heroes, success, and achievement are changing. So are our thoughts on villains, fairness, virtue, passion, and our quest for accomplishment.

If film and television producers don’t realize this and if they fail to seize the opportunity to give us what we need and want, they too risk becoming irrelevant in the post-COVID world.

The distance between dreams and reality is getting shorter.

Our present is becoming a more distant past every day.

For most of us, AI is the magical genie in some invisible box that is redefining a new state of normal for us on a daily basis.

AI is not something that we can touch, feel, taste, swallow, or toss back and forth like a ball. At the same time, it will soon become part of every one of these senses and activities, and that kind of future is showing up at our doorsteps with increased regularity.

Change is our only constant. As this scales up, the rapid onset of AI means every new generation of people will participate in far more unique experiences than ever before.

As bystanders, we are on the edge of a technological revolution of such magnitude that we literally can’t even comprehend it. Bit by bit, we are witnessing these confusing shifts happening right under our noses as we contend with one new reality after another after another.

Even as a futurist, I struggle with how parents should help focus the personal and professional pursuits of their children and what skills will be most beneficial.

Our most basic desires like health and happiness will likely have very different meanings in the years ahead. What if good health in the future requires genetically modifying our DNA and happiness means undergoing a simulation so transformative that virtually no one will ever have to experience sadness ever again?

Will unknown forces in that same future create new forms of sadness to compensate?

We are the first generation in human history to agonize over the implications of children personifying robots and talking to machines. What if your child’s best friend is a robot? What if your kid and their robot buddy plan devious pranks together? What if they get into fights with other kids and their robots?

We are only months away from the first case of robots bullying other kids and their robots. This type of interaction may even become a super popular YouTube channel.

If you find this line of thinking alarming, you’re not alone.

As we find ourselves immersed in a world of change, our most ingenious innovators will be using AI and its seemingly unlimited toolsets to develop a new generation of entertainment. Our present forms of entertainment will pale in comparison.

To be sure, AI will infiltrate the entertainment industry and rewrite the rules for fame, engagement, accomplishment, and most importantly, our way of thinking about success.

Photography

With advances in image capture and manipulation, people no longer need to learn complex tools like Photoshop to enhance and alter their images. AI is already being used in every aspect of image augmentation to produce the best possible photo. However, the latest idea is using AI to generate images from scratch, and produce the entire composition synthetically.

1. The Time Traveler – We can already place any person in any photo at anytime in history, but with AI it becomes far easier with a look and feel that is far more real.
2. Total Fabrication – Fake people, fake backgrounds, and fake lighting, all to attract real attention.
3. Photo Mechanics – Bad photos become good photos. Optimal light, refocused, reframed, recolored, and shifted to a better perspective.
4. Perfect Spin – Ugly people become better looking, fat people become thinner, old people get younger, and tired people become energized.

AI music will be all about listener reactions.

Music

While the toolsets of musicians will improve on every conceivable scale, the toolsets of listeners will expand at an even faster rate. Very little of today’s music industry will remain unchanged over the coming decades.

5. Mood Matching – When music can be synced to the mood and mindset of the listener, every piece of music becomes a performance enhancer.
6. Never Ending Song – Auto-generated music that continually evolves around a certain set of characteristics and can as infinitely long or definably short as the needs of the moment dictate.
7. Holographic Live Performances – Song can become instantly visualized through holographic displays and spontaneously transformed from the original band, to dancing bears, to prank-playing ducks, to singing pinball machines.
8. Music Produced in Context – Much like the background music playing in a movie, this type of AI-generated music will automatically produce the appropriated audio backdrop for every life changing moment as it occurs.

Humor

Most AI today is based on spotting patterns in large data sets. Because software is fast and never tires, AI has an edge over humans when it comes to most simple tasks. But it gets harder when it tries to make sense out feelings and emotions, and that’s what’s at the heart of most humor.

Even the best stand-up comedians will admit, there is no magic formula for producing the perfect joke. Much of what makes us laugh depends on subtle factors such as context, surprise, and body language.

That said, future AI will eventually learn to reverse engineer humor in weird and unusual ways.

9. AI vs. Human Joke-Offs – Few things will be more fun at parties in the future than having a joke telling competition between people and their robots.
10. Insert Joke Here – When writing lengthy text, it will be easy to mark a spot for a one-liners or jokes, and have an AI app suggest several possibilities.
11. Tension Reliever – Adding bite-sized humor to that very instant when a person’s tension is building will be a great way to relieve stress and reframe the mood of the moment.
12. Instant Caption – Any photo can have a funny caption added instantly with the right the AI caption-generator app.

We may all become the center of our own hero’s journey.

Storytelling

How will AI reinvent the way stories are created and told? Storytelling becomes far different when you switch from being a passive observer to an active participant, and the nature of your own engagement shifts from jealous observer to living your own “hero’s journey” on a daily basis.

13. Record Your Own Story – Biographies will be far easier to produce when AI is used to document the story as it happens.
14. The Ultimate Bad Guy – Whenever the need arises, it will be relatively easy to have AI reverse engineer the ultimate bad guy from whatever movies and books you choose as your point of reference.
15. Never Ending Story – Over time it will be relatively easy to have AI produce a 247,000-page storyline that can be sliced and diced in a number of interesting ways.
16. Perfect Ending – Too often stories close with unresolved issues that leave people hanging. But AI will be used to find the perfect way to complete virtually any narrative.

AI movie making will further revolutionize this already cutting edge industry.

Movies

We are quickly moving from making movies about AI to using AI to help us make the movies. With filmmaking, 99% of the work today is very mundane. It involves going through hundreds of hours of video to find the best clips for a 2-second insert. AI will become a powerful tool for reducing the tedium of old-fashioned movie making and much more.

17. Dynamic Plot-Changes – Based on the interest level of the audience, and the attention meters built into theaters, plots will instantly shift to keep viewers on the edge of their seats.
18. Fake Movie Stars – No need to hire over-priced movie stars when an AI generated one will do.
19. The Perfect Formula – The best movies tend to be an emotional rollercoaster and AI will quickly leverage this type of expertise to create the perfect formula for every scene, story arc, plot twist, and more.
20. Holographic Movies – Just as we’ve developed ways to colorize black and white movies, in the future AI will be used to convert two-dimensional movies into 3D holographic experiences.

Food often becomes the center of our daily entertainment.

Dining and the Culinary Arts

A great dining experience generally requires the human touch, but IBM’s AI-enabled Chef Watson offers a glimpse of how AI can become a sous-chef, of sorts, to help develop recipes and advise human chefs on food combinations and mixing techniques to create completely unique flavors.

21. Perfect Mood Food – In the future, sensors on your body will decipher everything from what kind of beer you want, to how large your portions should be, to what comes after your final bite.
22. The Healthy Diet – Maintaining a healthy diet often feels like you’re the only one saying “no” in a donut shop full of cops. The right AI will help you savor the right food at the right place, at the right time.
23. Instant Narrative – In much the same way a travel guide will tell stories about a building, culture, or moment in history, an AI culinary app will help people understand the artistic narrative behind every dish.
24. Living Food – In just a few years, every drawing, sketch, and two-dimensional piece of food art can be instantly three-dimensionalized, virtualized, modified, animated, and 3D printed right at your table.

How long before you find yourself playing the “game of life?”

Gaming and Sports

We are on the verge of gamifying nearly every aspect of our lives including our employment, recreations, social interactions, education, entertainment, family life, and even our purpose in society.

25. The Game of Education – Very soon today’s schools will be replaced with an elaborate system of lifelong learning that is hyper-individualized around the interest and passions of every students.
26. Full Immersion Sports – When cameras and sensors get added to every player on the field, as a spectator-participant, once you don the special “experience helmet,” you will instantly see, hear, feel, and be part of the intensity of any sporting event.
27. Living the Game – Very soon games will evolve to the point where there is a fine line between living-your-life and living-a-game, where virtually every aspect of your life is scored, rated, quantified, and compared.
28. Your Job Gamified – Over the coming years many jobs will become gamified versions of the work that needs to be done and AI will keep you on track and show you how to perform at the highest possible level.

Travel

Travel today is often a painful experience with the constant security checks, biometric scanners, passport controls, and random bag searches. The sheer cost of these government-is-watching-you moments is far more than the momentary interactions with uniformed officials. They have a way of dampening our enthusiasm, squashing our sense of adventure, and diminishing our willingness to explore and try new things.

Travel doesn’t have to be this painful, and AI will find a way to replace most of the grizzled looks and furrowed brows that line our cross-border entry points.

29. Seamless Security – Instead of parading people through endless queues and mindless corridors for security checks, virtually all-human agents will be replaced with invisible AI security that happens without disruption, disrobing, or disturbing the flow of excitement.
30. Maximum Impact Journey – Auto-schedulers will recommend events, activities, and attractions to fill every possible moment to the fullest.
31. Anytime Anywhere Narration – Wherever you travel, you’ll be able to have an interactive conversation with your AI travel guide.

Final Thoughts

Until now, we’ve used technology to handle specific routine tasks. We hired engineers to break down complex processes into their component tasks, to develop automated processes.

But AI is different. It has the ability to evaluate, select, act, and learn from its own actions.

When it comes to more complex problem solving, we used to think it would take computers decades or even centuries to catch up to the nimbleness of the human mind. But we underestimated the explosive nature of deep learning.

The concept of the technological singularity, the point where machines gain some level of superhuman intelligence and quickly outpace the human mind, is based on the notion that our own thinking can’t evolve fast enough to keep up with technology. It also overlooks the potential for AI-assisted human intelligence to turbo-charge itself past any of today’s known boundaries.

The true limits of human performance have yet to be unleashed.

As humans, we are obsessed with trying new things, pushing the boundaries, and testing our limits just to make a difference.

In the end, everything AI does will have to fit into one of our human-centered value systems that take into account our personal desires, ambitions, and abilities.

We’re not about to give up our humanity just to let some machine decide whether or not an idea has value.

Indeed, it is in this context that we find ourselves coming up with groundbreaking new ideas like gravity boots, jazz music, graphic novels, self-driving cars, blockchain, machine learning, and artistic pyro techniques using fireworks that are dropped from drones and synced to the music.

We are just now getting a glimpse of the amazing future ahead, and it will be captivating, thrilling, shocking, and extraordinary all at the same time.

This is an AI generated random human face!

If you recently lost your job, I encourage you to blame this young lady. Contrary to first impressions, this isn’t a real person at all. She is nothing more than an AI generated random human face.

In the past we’ve run into fake products, fake identities, fake profiles, and fake news. But now we may end up with the biggest problem of them all – fake people.

On the surface, she’s a curiosity. She seems oddly familiar, the girl next door, the one that got away, or a friend of a friend. But she is indeed a fake person.

In fact, it would be easy to use AI to generate 100 similarly striking photos of men and women across the cultural, age, and race spectrum, and quickly A-B test to see which one works best for selling cars to older Asian couples in Sarasota, Florida. Or selling refrigerators to middle aged women in Des Moines, Iowa. Or selling skateboards to Hispanic teenagers in Pocatello, Idaho. Or selling starter homes in Pueblo, Colorado to working millennials.

Fake child photo.

When it comes to fake photos, we’re just getting started.

Why would I hire a supermodel if I can randomly generate someone new? Why would I buy a stock photo when I can auto-generate one?

Any scene, with or without people, the same AI that generates fake people can auto-generate fake houses, fake cities, fake situations, fake pets, fake disputes, fake arguments, fake injuries, and fake police responding to whatever fake stuff supposedly happened.

Not only can AI create realistic videos of people doing and saying things they’d never say or do in real life, it can add convincing human faces that never existed in the first place. We are about to become deluged with tons of fake testimonials hoping to persuade us to buy some new product or service.

In 2014 the first computer was created to use a form of machine learning called Generative Adversarial Networks or GAN. It worked like a morphing program that blended inputs from several sources, in this case human faces.

Artificial neural networks are computing systems inspired by the biological neural networks to mimic the activity of neurons in the human brain. In a GAN, two neural networks are essentially pitted against each other. One of the networks functions as a generative algorithm, while the other challenges the results of the first, thereby playing an adversarial role, hence the name.

To demonstrate this, thispersondoesnotexist.com is a website that auto-generates the face of a new fake person every time the page is refreshed.

As you can imagine, it won’t be long before this technology starts to permeate many other industries.

The porn industry is already rethinking its business models because every existing video can be stolen and re-mastered with new faces. These fake porn videos have taken on the moniker of “deepfakes” and are already showing up online.

Every court case, news story, historical document, and eyewitness account will suddenly need to be held to sophisticated levels of scrutiny. Our understanding of what constitutes “truth” is about to get rocked to its very core.

This is not a real photo, but a photo-realistic 3D rendering.

Photo-Realistic 3D Renderings

The same software that was used to help window manufacturers demonstrate what their products looked like in changing sunlight has evolved into a fascinating new field of photo-realistic 3D rendering.

What you see above is yet another step in the evolution of graphic imaging, allowing visionary thinkers to illustrate scenes and environments that don’t exist.

As we make further advancements in AR/VR and begin to immerse ourselves into fantasy game settings, some very talented people will be challenging our very notion of what constitutes “real.”

This type of technology is clearly setting the stage for a massive new industry designed around the limitless opportunities of “worlds not yet invented.” The gaming industry is already pushing the envelope in this area but is just scratching the surface of what’s truly possible.

Where are the “fake people” opportunities?

Technology itself is neither good nor bad, but naturally the way people use it can be detrimental to one group or another.

Whenever there is a problem, I‘m quick to look for the opportunity side of the equation. So what new businesses or micro-industries will this create?

As an example, how long will it be before someone will be able to create an entire feature-length action video without cameras, actors, or actresses? One person sitting at a computer could suddenly compete directly with Hollywood studios. Instead of spending $100-200 million on producing a big-budget movie, the hard costs for this kind of film could be close to zero.

In this scenario, the fine art of storytelling becomes radically faster, easier, and cheaper. Naturally this could lead to more businesses creating more movies, VR experiences, and next-gen performances for far less money.

The face of Nicolaus Copernicus reconstructed by a Polish forensic team.

Rewriting History

Born in 1473, Nicolaus Copernicus was one of the brightest minds among Renaissance-era mathematicians and astronomers. He formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe. He died at the age of 70.

For the past 500 years, the image on the right was the only image we had to know what he looked like. Recently, a Polish forensic team spent time reconstructing this face from his skeletal remains.

It won’t be long before we have new ways of automating that process.

How long before we have the ability to create photos and videos of our parents, grandparents, and other ancestors? How long before we have video ads of people like Einstein, Lincoln, Gandhi, or Mandela selling soft drinks, home appliances, beer, of trying to convince us to vote for or against the latest ballot issue?

A number of AIs are now using deep learning techniques to produce human-sounding speech. Google’s DeepMind uses WaveNet, which can copy and reproduce human speech almost perfectly. Similarly, the startup Lyrebird has an algorithm that is able to synthesize a human’s voice by recording one minute of audio.

Last year when Google CEO Sundar Pichai first demonstrated their Duplex product, capable of making some very human sounding phone calls, complete with personal quirks and inflections, a number of people objected to the ethics of a fake human voice impersonating a real human.

Google subsequently promised they would add a warning or disclosure in calls originating from this technology, but they are also working to make additional improvements.

Adding to the growing pallet of tools for imitating humans are AI-infused robots that can vividly express human emotion like Hanson Robotics’ Sophia and SoftBank’s Pepper.

All of the above are images of fake people that never existed.

Final Thoughts

It’s official; we have passed the famed Turing Test in areas of voice, image, and video. They are now indistinguishable from the real thing.

Clearly, an age of smarter machines is already here, and as the ability for AI to perform tasks previously only human beings could do improves, the line between human and machine will continue to blur. Now, the only question is if it will eventually disappear altogether.

To answer my original question, yes, we do indeed have a fake people problem, and we have yet figured out what measures need to be taken to protect us from scam artists.

Our biggest danger, as always, is devious people. My guess is that a number of cons are already in play and we won’t hear about them until several people have lost their entire life savings.

Even more perplexing will be those who are operating in the grey areas of the law, using just enough fakeness to operate inside the layers of fuzziness and stay somewhat legal.

So how does this problem get solved, and who is ultimately responsible for managing the problems as they occur?

I’d love to hear your thoughts so feel free to weigh in if you have a story, an answer, or a solution.
opinions on this topic.

I was thoroughly intrigued when I found out the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado was offering a degree in asteroid mining.

Yes, the idea of extracting water, oxygen, minerals, and metals from an asteroid sounds like science fiction to most people, but it’s not that far away.  In fact, Colorado School of Mines’ newly launched “Space Resources” program will help people get in on the ground floor.

After thinking about the proactive nature of this approach, it became abundantly clear how backward thinking most colleges have become.

When colleges decide on a new degree program, they must first recruit instructors, create a new curriculum, and attract students. As a result, the talent churned out of these newly minted programs is the product of a 6-7 year pipeline.

For this reason, anticipatory-thinking institutions really need to be setting their sights on what business and industries will need 7-10 years from now.

The Risk-Averse Nature of Education

When Harvard professor Clayton M. Christensen released his best-selling book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, his core message that disruptive change is the path to success, was only partially embraced by higher education.

While many were experimenting with MOOCs and smart whiteboards, changes in the subject matter of their courses still evolved at the traditional pace of discovery.

This is not to say colleges are not innovative. Rather, the demands of today’s emerging tech environment are forcing business and industries to shift into an entirely new gear. And that most definitely includes our academic institutions.

From a management perspective, it’s far easier to oversee a contained system where all variables are constrained. But during times of change, we tend to give far more power to the “unleashers,” who are determined to test the status quo and release ideas and trial balloons to see what works.

For this reason, managers and creatives often find themselves on opposing sides, and the winners of these warring factions often determine what we as consumers see as the resulting ripples of change.

Offering Pilot Programs

When Facebook bought Oculus Rift in March 2014 for $2 billion, the job boards went crazy, as there was an instant uptick in the demand for VR designers, engineers, and experience creators. But no one was teaching VR, and certainly not the Oculus Rift version of it.

Colleges have a long history of being blindsided by new technologies:

• When eBay launched, no one was teaching ecommerce strategies
• When Myspace launched, no one was teaching social networking
• When Google launched, no one was teaching online search engine strategies
• When Uber launched, no one was teaching sharing economy business models
• When Apple first opened their App Store, no one was teaching smart phone app design
• When Amazon first allowed online storefronts, no one was teaching the Amazon business model
• When YouTube first offered ways to monetize videos, no one was teaching it

Since most academic institutions are only willing to put their name on programs with long-term viability, the endorsement of half-baked agendas does not come easy. However, that is exactly what needs to be done.

Colleges can no longer afford to remain comfortably behind the curve.

52 Future College Degrees

As a way of priming your thinking on this matter, here are 52 future degrees that forward-thinking colleges could start offering today:

1. Space Exploration – space tourism planning and management
2. Space Exploration – planetary colony design and operation
3.  Space Exploration – next generation space infrastructure
4. Space Exploration – advanced cosmology and non-earth human habitats
5. Bioengineering with CRISPR – policy and procedural strategies
6. Bioengineering with CRISPR – advanced genetic engineering systems
7. Bioengineering with CRISPR – operational implementations and system engineering
8. Bioengineering with CRISPR – ethical regulation and oversight
9. Smart City – autonomous traffic integration
10. Smart City – mixed reality modeling
11. Smart City – autonomous construction integration
12. Smart City – next generation municipal planning and strategy
13. Autonomous Agriculture – robotic systems
14. Autonomous Agriculture – drone systems
15. Autonomous Agriculture – supply chain management
16. Autonomous Agriculture – systems theory and integration
17. Swarmbot – design, theory, and management
18. Swarmbot – system engineering and oversight
19. Swarmbot – municipal system design
20. Swarmbot – law enforcement and advanced criminology systems
21. Cryptocurrency – digital coin economics
22. Cryptocurrency – crypto-banking system design
23. Cryptocurrency – regulatory systems and oversight
24. Cryptocurrency – forensic accounting strategies
25. Blockchain – design, systems, and applications
26. Blockchain – blockchain for biological systems
27. Blockchain – large-scale integration structures
28. Blockchain – municipal system design strategies
29. Global Systems – system planning, architecture, and design
30. Global Systems – large-scale integration strategies
31. Global Systems – operational systems checks and balance
32. Global Systems – governmental systems in a borderless digital world
33. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle – drone film making
34. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle – command center operations
35. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle – municipal modeling and planning systems
36. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle – emergency response systems
37. Mixed Reality – experiential retail
38. Mixed Reality – three-dimensional storytelling
39. Mixed Reality – game design
40. Mixed Reality – therapeutic systems and design
41. Advanced Reproductive Systems – designer baby strategies, planning, and ethics
42. Advanced Reproductive Systems – surrogate parenting policy and approaches
43. Advanced Reproductive Systems – organic nano structures
44. Advanced Reproductive Systems – clone engineering and advanced processes
45. Artificial Intelligence – data management in an AI environment
46. Artificial Intelligence – advanced human-AI integration
47. Artificial Intelligence – streaming AI data services
48. Artificial Intelligence – advanced marketing with AI
49. Quantum Computing – data strategies in a quantum-connected world
50. Quantum Computing – quantum-level encryption and security
51. Quantum Computing – quantum computing implementation strategies
52. Quantum Computing – AI-quantum system integration

Final Thought

More so than any time in history, we have a clear view of next generation technologies. Naturally, we’re still a long way from 100% clarity, but for most of the technologies listed above, the shifting tectonic plates of change can be felt around the world.

Without taking decisive action, colleges run the risk of being circumvented by new types of training systems that can meet market demands in a fraction of the time it takes traditional academia to react.

The ideas I’ve listed are a tiny fraction of what’s possible when it comes to emerging tech degrees. Should colleges stick their neck out like Colorado School of Mines and offer degrees that may not be immediately useful? Adding to that question, how many college degrees are immediately useful today?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

Every major industry today was started as a micro industry. Everything from steel, to photography, oil, airlines, electricity, automobiles, pharmaceuticals, and search engines all worked their way into existence from a tiny starting point.

Many of the oldest ones like steel, automotive, and pharmaceuticals took centuries to grow into the massive global industries they are today. But those created with digital technologies like search engines and smart phones sprang to life in only a few years.

Countless businesses are already feeling the first waves of disruption as industry veterans are hoping to navigate the turbulent waters ahead. As always, it much easier to visualize what goes away than what comes next.

In his 2006 book, Long Tail, author Chris Anderson said, “When the tools of production are available to everyone, everyone becomes a producer.”

While much of Anderson’s thinking was focused on 3D printing and flying drones, virtually every emerging technology offers an innovative playground for makers, inventors, and startup junkies.

100,000 New Micro Industries

Over the coming two decades we will be witnessing an unprecedented wave of innovation and creativity driven by new tools of production. During this time we will see an explosion of over 100,000 new micro industries that will employ hundreds of millions of people.

As example, the global market for shoes is 21 billion annually. Within five years, 5% of these will fall into the category of smart shoes. That means in just a few years we will be producing over 1 billion smart shoes every year.

During that same time we’ll begin seeing a new era of industrial grade scanners, 3D printers, thousands of new printable materials, and an equal number of new sensors and data collection devices.

This means that virtually anyone with a passion for shoes can launch their own micro footwear industry. Even carving out a tiny niche selling 2,500 smart shoes a year at $200 each is enough to launch a sustainable half-million-dollar micro industry.

In the shoe industry alone, 10,000 startups selling 2,500 shoes a year will only amount to 25 million shoes in a 21-billion shoe marketplace. That’s little more than a rounding error for the current industry.

With our evolving new pallet for shoe designers, we will likely see super niche markets for diabetic shoes, lacrosse players, steel-toed occupations, hockey players, sailors, sleep apnea, mountain climbers, gymnasts, amputees, window washers, and organ players. There may even be special shoes for every known allergy, self-navigating shoes for the directionally impaired, dog shoes, cat shoes, and shocker shoes for correcting certain additions.

The smartest of smart shoes will even come to you when you call them by name.

Since it will soon become easy to summon a driverless car, it will no longer be necessary to own one, leaving the garage empty. An empty garage tends to be a magnet for all the junk that accumulates over time, but it also represents an opportunity, an opportunity to become something else. And this will lead to a number of possible micro industries.

One option is to remodel two and three-car garages into AirBNB rentals that you operate yourself, allowing you can make a tidy extra income on the side. Another option is to work with Marriott, Hyatt, or Wyndham and create a branded rental as part of the new distributed city experience they’re working on.

An empty garage can also be rented as a startup space or creative space for painters, sculptors, inventors, or musicians. Much like a distributed hotel operation it can also be part of a distributed storage operation.

88 Examples with our New Tools of Production

The following examples are intended to give you a creative launchpad for how to think about these emerging micro industries.

Every micro industry will be defined by a few key startups that define and demonstrate a functional business model and prove a specific market segment.

Driverless Technology

1. Speed dating – Random people enter a driverless vehicle and speed around while getting to know each other.

2. Mobile retail storefronts – As an owner of a mobile retail store, you write your own rules about store hours, location, products, and service offerings.

3. Mobile grocery stores – Niche food selection services such as bread shops, fruit shops, vegetable shops, etc.

4. Mobile banks – As branch banks disappear, mobile banks may very well take their place.

5. Mobile repair businesses – Our repair culture is set to go hi-tech with things like an Apple Genius Bar on wheels, IoT installations, hacker-proofing of houses, etc.

6. Mobile medical services – Urgent care on wheels.

7. Mobile conversation salons – Lonely people are always looking for a way to fit in. With mobile conversation salons, you sign up for whatever discussion topic you’re interested in and the driverless RV will let you know how soon it can pick you up.

8. Mobile gaming teams – Gaming moves to a whole new level when 6-12 rowdy players team up in a mobile setting to play Destiny, Wolfenstein, Call of Duty, or Assassin’s Creed. Much like flight attendants on an airplane, roving waitresses will offer an assortment of food, snacks, and cocktails to the participants.

Flying Drones

As we move past the hobbyist era of flying drones we will witness an eruption of niche startups that will serve as the anchors for trailblazing new industries.

9. Real-time terrain modeling

10. Policing drones

11. Gaming drones

12. Security drones

13. News media drones

14. Mixed reality recording drones

15. Canary in a coalmine drones

16. Bird herding drones

Ground-Based Drones

Most people tend to overlook the possibilities for the less sexy ground-based drones.

17. Night delivery drones – Delivery companies will be able to achieve a 10X increase in stops per hour based on off-hour delivery times.

18. Pizza prep, cook, and delivery drones

19. Drone delivery boxes – Large mailboxes for the package delivery industry.

20. Drone repair services – When drones break down in the field, they will require a mobile/drone repair service

21. Data collection drones

22. Invisible fence drones

23. Eyes-on-the-problem drones

24. Drone jousting matches

Drone Command Centers

As the drone industry matures, many organizations will transition from one-off drones to fleets of drones. These fleet of drones will require their own unique command center to manage the duties and tasks of these machines.

25. City command centers

26. Police command centers

27. University command centers

28. Farmers/agriculture command centers

29. Prison command centers

30. News station command center

31. Ski resort command center

32. Theme park command center

Sensor Technology

Every year the MEMs and sensor industry finds new ways to detect different aspects of the world around us. These sensors give us insight into the overall quality of the environments around us.

33. Thermal inspection sensors

34. Mold monitoring sensors

35. Personal mood sensors

36. Hair health monitoring sensors

37. Sleep quality sensors

38. Smell sensors (periodic table of smells)

39. Harmful animal sensors

40. Impending danger sensors

3D Printing

Over the coming decades we will find tens of thousands of ways to make micro improvements in all the materials, scanning, and printing processes associated with 3D printing.

41. Food printers

42. Ice printers

43. Select-your-ingredients candy bar printers

44. Shoe printers

45. Jewelry printers

46. Clothing printers

47. Purse printers

48. Pillow printers

Contour Crafting

Large-scale 3D printing used in the construction industry is called contour crafting.

49. Gazebo printers

50. Stage printers

51. Bridge printers

52. House printers

53. Commercial building printers

54. Statue (sculpture) printers

55. Storage cube printers

56. Park bench printers

Cryptocurrency

Everything we do with money today will be reinvented in the emerging cryptocurrency era.

57. Crypto banks

58. Crypto insurance

59. Crypto loans

60. Crypto coaches and advisors

61. Crypto wealth managers

62. Crypto cops and fraud investigators

63. Crypto identity protection specialists

64. Crypto tax specialists

VR-AR Mixed Reality

The immersive and semi-immersive forms of engagement that takes place in mixed reality will begin to uncover thousands of seemingly little applications over the coming decades.

65. VR-AR therapy – Cure phobias, stress, anxiety, and traumatic experiences.

66. VR-AR education and training – Learn by doing, but with a teacher/coach to help guide you.

67. VR-AR news – Experience the news first hand.

68. VR-AR gaming – Thousands of new games will soon leverage the VR-AR experience.

69. VR-AR movies – Immerse yourself into the storytelling experience.

70. VR-AR haptic experiences – Feel the experience via sports, dangerous situations,

71. VR-AR vacations – Go there without being there.

72. VR-AR coaching – Having smart people looking over your shoulder.

Artificial Intelligence

If we think of AI as a talent-enhancing tool, we can begin to imagine entire new industries surrounding the creative arts.

73. AI-enhanced songwriters

74. AI-enhanced sculptors

75. AI-enhanced writers

76. AI-enhanced architects

77. AI-enhanced VR storytellers

78. AI-enhanced swarmbot management systems

79. AI-enhanced puzzle-makers

80. AI-enhanced performance artists

Blockchain

Most people have heard about blockchain in tandem with Bitcoin’s rise as the flagship of cryptocurrencies. However, blockchain is more than just bitcoin, it’s a method of tracking transactions using technology that could prove to be revolutionary.

81. Blockchain voting systems

82. Blockchain auditing systems

83. Blockchain quality assurance systems

84. Blockchain smart contracts

85. Blockchain supply chain management

86. Blockchain ethics management systems

87. Blockchain food tracking systems

88. Blockchain wealth management systems

Final Thoughts

Micro industries will range from manufacturing products, to collecting data, designing systems, advising, coaching, monitoring, building, disassembling, and reinventing business in unique and different ways.

With the help of thousands of collaborators, micro industries will spring to life around niches far too small for existing industries to care about. But it is in these minuscule advances that great opportunities take root.

A simple coffee mug can be redesigned in thousands of different ways. The same holds true for every toothbrush, piece of clothing, ink pen, lamp, chair, and hundreds of other frequently bought consumer products.

We are entering an unusually creative period of human history. Those who embrace change on a massive scale will be best equipped to flourish during the coming decades.

It was rare to find a tech columnist last year that didn’t make some reference to artificial intelligence. But it was also rare to find a writer who could clearly differentiate between the hype and true relevance of these accomplishments.

Keep in mind, even after decades of tech progress, we still get lost with our GPS, our digitally translated documents are often unreadable, and our smartphones still drop calls.

Even relatively simple computational tasks like scanning documents with optical character recognition is still not 100% accurate.

Still, many well meaning thought leaders have issued impassioned warnings of the dangers of general AI, which is not anywhere in sight. This does not mean we are without danger, just not that kind of danger. Not yet.

Perhaps the earliest dangers will come on the job front. The efficiencies that AI gives us will eliminate the need for many tasks, and even though many will be tedious jobs, working in undesirable conditions that few can point to as their dream position, they do serve as a current basis for employment, affecting countless lives.

At the same time, few jobs are truly secure with most continually morphing along with their industries. 70% of the tasks software engineers did in 2000 didn’t even exist in 1990.

Farmers, switchboard operators, and assembly-line workers in the 20th century were replaced by computer specialists, accountants, and dental hygienists. Over the coming decades we’ll see drone command center operators, data optimizers, experience designers, and other jobs that we can’t yet imagine.

Millions of unemployed workers will need to be retrained, but we don’t have a great track record here. With the vast majority of higher ed money going to colleges, the U.S. government spends a smaller share of resources on retraining than all but two other OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries.

12 mind-blowing advances made by AI

It’s important to consider the dishwasher analogy. While dishwashers do offer significant efficiencies, their role in the average household is quite different than what was originally intended. In addition to being dishwashing machines, they provide an out-of-sight staging area for dirty dishes and a higher bar for all-around kitchen cleanliness.

With AI, rather than witnessing a mass elimination of jobs, we will likely see a higher bar – more thorough analysis, more control, and more certainty in the way jobs are performed.

With that in mind, here are some of the mind-blowing advances made by AI over the past year.

1. Self-taught AI beats doctors at predicting heart attacks

As most doctors will tell you, our tools for predicting a patient’s health are no match for the complexity of the human body. Heart attacks are particularly hard to anticipate. Stephen Weng, an epidemiologist at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom showed that computers capable of teaching themselves perform far better than established medical processes, significantly increasing prediction rates. Once implemented, the new method will save thousands, perhaps even millions of lives a year.

2. NASA uses A.I. to discover of two new planets

Scanning space is intensely boring work. For this reason, NASA tried a new approach and used machine learning to discover two new planets. Working with old data from the Kepler space telescope, it was able to locate two new additions to our galaxy. This wasn’t the first time researchers applied AI to sift through the massive amount of data NASA’s telescopes collect, but it is a promising example of how neural networks can leverage even some of the weakest signs of distant worlds. Thanks to AI, NASA discovered a whole new planetary system.

3. AI is learning what makes you cry at the movies

AI is no expert at human emotions, but some visionary filmmakers have found a way to use it to gain insights on how to increase a story’s emotional pull. Through this process they were able to identify musical scores or visual images that help trigger the right feelings at the right time! In the storytelling industry, understanding the cause and effect relationships between stimuli triggers and human reactions is a powerful tool.

4. Using AI to converts images of food into a list of ingredients

Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed an AI algorithm to analyze food photos and match them with a list of ingredients and recipes. Starting with more than a million annotated recipes from online sites, their neural network sifted through each list of ingredients and a number of images associated with it. In the future, this kind of tool will help people learn to cook, count calories, and track our eating habits.

5. Amazon develops an AI fashion designer

Amazon has developed an algorithm that can design clothing by analyzing a series of images, copying the style, and then apply it to new garments generated from scratch. In-house researchers are working on several machine-learning systems that will help provide an edge when it comes to spotting, reacting to, and perhaps even shaping new fashion trends. Since Amazon has stated, they want to become “the best place to buy fashion online,” this seems like a logical move.

6. Resistbot, an ingenious AI chatbot will contact lawmakers for you

If you’re looking for a more efficient way for your voice to be heard, pay close attention to Resistbot. This AI-powered chatbot makes it easy to contact your political representatives. Users simply text the word “resist” to 50409. The automated bot will ask for a name and zip code to determine which public officials to contact. Since users create their own messages, creativity and clarity are critical for this service that pride’s itself on avoiding standard “form letters.”

7. China is using AI to predict who will commit crime next

Taking a page out of the movie “Minority Report,” China is developing predictive analytics to help authorities stop suspects before a crime is committed. With their unchecked access to citizens’ histories, Chinese tech companies are helping police develop artificial intelligence they say will help them identify and apprehend suspects before criminal acts are committed. By tapping into facial recognition tech, and combining it with predictive intelligence, they hope to notify police of potential criminals based on their behavior patterns. Even though it sounds like promising tech, applications like this are getting tons of scrutiny.

8. AI beats world’s top poker players

Humankind has just been beaten at yet another game, this time Heads-Up No-Limit Texas Hold’em poker. Since poker is a game of uncertainty, players don’t know what cards the other players have or what cards will be dealt in the future. In a game like chess or Go, all players can see the board, meaning that everyone has complete information. This makes chess and Go much easier to program than poker. Poker also requires understanding the psychology of the other players – are they bluffing, should I fold, or should I bluff? Poker also involves betting – when should I bet, how much should I bet? Does this mean the gambling industry is doomed?

9. Researchers create a lip-reading A.I.

If you wonder why NFL coaches are now covering their mouths when they talk into their microphones, it’s because someone or something might be reading their lips. Working with Google’s Deep Mind neural network, researchers developed an elaborate training process using thousands of hours of subtitled BBC television videos. The videos showed a broad spectrum of people speaking in a wide variety of poses, activities, and lighting to simulate real life conditions. While still not perfect, their algorithm achieved promising results.

10. ‘Mind reading’ AI is able to scan brains and guess what you’re thinking

Carnegie Mellon University scientists have developed a system that can read complex thoughts based on brain scans, even interpreting complete sentences. Using data from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, the team was able to demonstrate different brain activations being triggered according to 240 complex events, ranging from individuals and settings to types of social interaction and physical actions. Using the smart algorithms they developed, the team was able to discern a person’s thoughts with 87% accuracy.

11. AI learns to write its own code by stealing from other programs

A team of researchers at Microsoft and the University of Cambridge created a system called DeepCoder for solving coding challenges like those used in most programming competitions. Without teaching it how to code, DeepCoder uses a technique called program synthesis to piece together lines of code taken from existing software, similar to what most programmer do. Framing the outcome around a list of inputs and outputs for each section of code, DeepCoder learned which pieces of code were needed to achieve the desired results.

12. Google’s AI was used to build it’s own AI, and it outperformed those made by humans

The creation of an AI capable of building its own AI does raise more than a few concerns. For instance, what’s to prevent the parent from passing down unwanted biases to its child? What if it creates systems so fast that society can’t keep up? It’s not very difficult to see how it could be employed in automated surveillance systems in the near future, perhaps even sooner than regulators could put something in place to control such systems.

12 critical takeaways to put AI in perspective

After scanning through each of these accomplishments, it’s easy to assume that AI is right around the corner. But a successful experiment does not a finished product make.

We are very much in the primitive early stages of AI. People in the future will often look back shaking their heads saying, “what were they thinking?”

Here are some important takeaways to help sort the reality from the hype.

A. AI is based on algorithms

Even though today’s AI’s algorithms are very sophisticated, giving them the appearance of “humanness,” they’re still only fallible machines.

B. AI skills will be developed in a fraction of the time of human skills

Go-master Lee Sedol began serious training when he was 8 years old for 12 hours a day. In just a few days, AlphaGo reviewed over 30 million human games and played an additional 30 million practice games with itself before taking on Lee Sedol. That means AlphaGo received at least 500 times as much practice as Lee to win the competition.

C. There’s no such thing as a perfect AI solution

Researchers have had much more success tailoring individual AI systems to specific problems than building a logic machine capable of general intelligence. Just as AlphaGo could never be used to pilot a driverless car, AI algorithms are designed to work on specific problems.

D. AI is forcing us to rethink what it is that makes us human

We live in a very human-centric world. Human need is what creates our global economy. There is generally no economy for things that do not benefit humankind. But what is it that sets us apart from AI and the machines that use it? We’re still a long ways from understanding where AI capabilities end and uniquely-human skills begin.

E. As AI grows progressively ubiquitous, it’ll become increasingly invisible

AI will touch virtually every aspect of our lives, finding its way into our cars, TVs, phones, lighting, and music. With this level of ubiquity, we will quickly lose our reference points as to what life was like before AI.

F. As we become more reliant on automation we will experience a degrading of skills and readiness when things go wrong

And yes, something will always go wrong, eventually!

G. Blind faith in technology will cause blindness to danger as well

Once something works well, we begin to trust and rely on it. However, there is no perfect technology and the complexity of AI will make the true danger of hidden flaws nearly undetectable until it is too late.

H. Artificial intelligence can never achieve 100% accuracy

It may indeed be quantum leaps better than anything we’re using today, even surpassing six-sigma reliability, but 100% is still not possible.

I. The greatest dangers associated with AI will involve human failure

Sometimes the danger will stem from human ignorance, lack of oversight, or poor monitoring, but we must be constantly vigilant when it comes to spotting the purposeful failures that nefarious coders bury deep within a system.

J. Businesses that become over-reliant on AI will fail

Admittedly there is a fine line between being over-reliant and not-reliant-enough, but hard lessons will be learned by those who fail to employ the proper checks and balance systems to oversee their AI operations.

K. Human-based common sense will remain indispensable for the foreseeable future

Humans will continue to surpass machines for some time in areas like appreciating contextual nuances, weaving together disparate ideas, comprehending human motive and intent, integrating interdisciplinary conceptions of the world, and general intelligence. AI is simply not at our level yet.

L. AI will soon prove to be just as good at job creation as it is at job destruction

There are currently 1 million truck drivers in the U.S., earning on average $21 an hour. It’s hard to imagine a future where those numbers don’t dwindle. But that’s only half of the story. Properly directed, AI will be able to tell us where humans are most needed in every system, process, and business operation. But beyond that, AI will be able to roadmap emerging technologies and identify the skills needed for new positions months if not years before the openings occur.

Final Thoughts

Every new technology brings its own set of dangers, and AI is no different. However, with this level of complexity, the types of danger become exponentially more difficult to understand.

It’s important to understand the symbiotic relationship, if the human economy collapses, so will the AI economy.

While we’re not going to let the bots take over just yet, it’s clear that bots are going to be meeting many of our needs, offering proactive advice, and serving us in favorable ways. Since the best possible interfaces come from the inside out, working with AI will be far less about us trying to understand the technology and far more about technology trying to understand us.

Over the past decade, the digital revolution was about us becoming accustomed to using computers all day, sending texts, connecting with each others over social media, and even learning to code.

In the AI era, technology will slide further behind the curtain into more of an assistive role, one that is not meant to be all about shiny new gadgets and operating system updates. Over time, the gadget craze will subside, as we shift our collective attention to rethinking the human experience.

Television producers have never been more in demand. With both Facebook and Apple recently announcing their own $1 billion budgets for creating original television content, the entertainment industry is about to enter a whole new era, with premium content creating the latest high stakes battlefield.

The amount of money being directed toward the production of original content is now reaching epic proportions, with Netflix, Amazon, and HBO alone adding over $12 billion this year to the mushrooming video storytelling economy.

Once reserved for the movie-making elite, the production of modern television shows is now the playground of choice for a less Hollywoodish tech industry, one that also specializes in extreme data manipulation.

Combine this with the fact that video is the most influential medium of our times, and we can begin to get a glimmer of how tech companies will leverage their newfound influence in unusual ways.

Over the coming years we will see a shift from simply selling ads to the sale of custom tailored hyper-influence packages.

Today’s intricately detailed viewer analytics, coupled with instantly modifiable content, and tightly monitored feedback loops; we move from merely targeting industry segments to laser focusing on an audience of one.

That’s precisely where we will begin to see scandals unfold.

Critical decision makers are few and far between, and the influence they wield can be staggering. For this reason, finding inconspicuous ways of swaying the mind of key individuals can be worth millions if not billions.

As an example, one of today’s hottest topics in the tech industry is immigration, with strong arguments being formed on both sides. We also see huge, game-changing decisions in this area being made by a handful of people.

If a series of campaigns were established to specifically sway the thinking of those people, their colleagues, staffers, and families; some of the tools may include persuasive comments uttered by influential characters on a sitcom or action dramas.  This could include personally relevant background stats dropped into news blurbs, hidden messages, subliminal underscores, and mind-shifting plot twists all accompanied by an intricate web of social media conversations.

This style of intricately woven “push points” will be designed to modify opinions and move the influence meter ever-so-slightly one direction or the other. Those who show signs of being swayed will be rewarded with warm hugs of subtle recognition and “attention smiles” beamed-in in ways that will seem nothing short of magical.

The Moneyball of Influence

We are quickly moving into the Moneyball phase of data-crafted influence.

While most people are aware of things like product placement, few are aware of the other emerging tools of hyper-influence like:

• Cause placement – As our ability to communicate, influence, and organize increases, the likelihood of violence decreases. Every cause masterpiece can be repainted with a new kind of “noble purpose brush.”
• Contextual narrative arguments – Many times writers feel passionate about a controversial issue but realize traditional arguments will fall on deaf ears. In these situations, the context can be rearranged to shed an entire new light on outdated reasoning.
• Character endorsements – Sometimes an endorsement by Hans Solo is far more effective than one by Harrison Ford.
• Subliminal hidden-agenda music – Catchy tunes with a message inside the message.
• Inner circle campaigns – Directed specifically at the inner circle of those who influence the person responsible for making the ultimate decisions.
• Hyper-individualized programming – Where plots, character clothing, speech, and background sets shift to match demographic models for each distinct viewer household.

Over the coming years the number of tools inside the influencer toolbox will grow exponentially.

We are moving far past the original experiments that created Netflix’s hit show, “House of Cards,” where they tested storyline themes for maximum appeal and reverse engineered the plot to not only hook the viewer but also amplify ratings.

Stepping past the established fixed product approach to programming, the same “Game of Thrones” episode you just finished watching may indeed be different than the one watched by your neighbors because of an A.I.-infused plot modulator designed to contextually rescript key scenes based on each viewer’s personality quirks.

The Power of Video

This year, video content will represent 74% of all Internet traffic. When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of it three days later. However, if that same information is paired with a video, retention jumps to over 65%.

Here’s a quick snapshot of video’s growing role in our daily lives:

• Cisco projects that global Internet traffic from videos will make up 80% of all Internet traffic by 2019.
• 76.5% of marketers and small business owners in an Animoto survey who have used video marketing say it had a direct impact on their business.
• 34% of B2C marketers say pre-produced video will be critical to content marketing success in 2017.
• 4X as many consumers would prefer to watch a video about a product than to read about it.
• More than 60% of marketers and small business owners said they planned to increase investment in video marketing in 2017.
• 62% of B2B marketers rated videos as an effective content marketing tactic in 2016.
• Even using the word “video” in an email subject line boosts open rates by 19% and click-through rates by 65%.
• Facebook users watch 8 billion videos per day, while Snapchat users watch 10 billion videos per day.

When is it ok to distort the truth?

With this newfound power there will naturally be some who choose to use it for evil rather than good, and indeed there will be a very fine line ethically between being a purveyor of lies and those who spin the arguments in their favor.

Using the previous example on immigration, having all the characters that people love-to-hate make profoundly stupid arguments in support of immigration bans will likely cause people to form the opposite opinion. For those firmly guided by their own moral compass, will that still be ethically within bounds?

If someone uses fabricated statistics to heighten anxiety and create a false sense of fear, does the ends justify the means?

To me, the most troubling part of these campaigns is that most decisions will be made in dark rooms, far removed from the check-and-balance of open scrutiny.

If a judge were to subpoena the exact episode seen by a specific person at a designated time and place, the defense team may very well respond with, “we don’t know which one it was exactly, but it is one of 150,000 possible versions, so we will send you all of them.”

Sadly, the fact that these hyper-individualized promotions will be super discrete, done in total anonymity, may be their most compelling feature.

The role of A.I. in influence marketing campaigns

It’s easy to envision a number of ways that A.I. can be added to these campaigns, but once a target or set of targets has been established, a list of objectives can be put into a special campaign driver along with a list of the primary tools to be used.

At a certain point, the amount of data sorted through for an effective campaign will far exceed any human’s ability to orchestrate it.

As the A.I. campaign progresses through a series of trial and error approaches, getting smarter with every feedback loop it completes, the number of targeted impressions will climb until either some defining action has taken place or a predetermined end date has been reached.

If it sounds like people are as easy to sway as unwitting pawns, it’s because most are. Virtually every “yes,” “no,” or “buy” decision boils down to the right combination needs and stimuli.

Final thoughts

Marketing campaigns are about to get far more sophisticated, and the metrics we use to quantify success, much more refined.

What we view as a first-rate influence marketing campaign today will soon appear crude and unrefined just a few months from now. Each will grow in complexity and cleverness as the tools at our disposal grow exponentially.

Most of the techniques I’ve mentioned are already in play. The big difference, though, will be the turbocharged, fully automated, instantly responsive, ten-thousand-stimuli-a-second version of them.

To many, this may appear to be a scary, even alarming perspective of our future, but wherever there’s a problem, there’s also an opportunity.

As these kinds of tools for influence and control become more common, so will the tools for defeating them. Throughout history, as long as people have lived on earth, we’ve had an arms race of influence. Even though the tools look vastly different, it still boils down to a controller vs. controlee battleground, and that will never change.

By Futurist Thomas Frey

Author of “Epiphany Z – 8 Radical Visions for Transforming Your Future”