Advances in AI over the past decades have been slowly influencing human behaviors more and more each day, quietly blurring the lines between human and digital intelligence. Simple examples are all around us, such as the algorithms social-media networks use to more effectively advertise products to potential consumers or those that music services rely upon to create personalized recommendations for their users.
The more pervasive AI becomes, the more it impacts the way we as individuals think and behave. And because we are all part of a larger whole, these individual behavior changes combine to create seismic shifts in society, as well.
As we continue to march forward into the 21st century, how will we ensure that technology is centered around and driven by human needs — improving lives, saving lives, and making our lives more enjoyable? How can we work together to make AI even smarter, serving both the “haves” and “have-nots”?
After all, today’s technology can provide benefits that go far beyond helping us discover our next favorite song or fashion trend. We have the tools to integrate and combine artificial and biological intelligence to serve us in ways we can scarcely imagine.
Envision the possibilities
Imagine a time when physical, biological, and digital systems could come together to solve the unsolvable. Picture a system, for example, that used animals to predict the exact place and time that a massive tsunami would hit, potentially knocking out electricity and communication networks and injuring hundreds of people. Now imagine that we could leverage this knowledge to summon hundreds or thousands of drones to stitch together an air-based network, so if there was a network failure on the ground, the air network could take over and ensure continuity of service.
This time is closer than you might think.
To harness this tremendous potential, we will need global cooperation and governance to ensure that we keep human benefit at the forefront. If we can act as one giant, harmonious planetary ecosystem — working for the good of all human beings — the possibilities will be endless.
But how, where, and when do we begin? What will it take to make this dream a reality?
Introducing the Grid and the Open Grid Alliance
VMware has co-founded the Open Grid Alliance (OGA), a collective of industry leaders seeking to redesign how the Internet delivers content bound by modern network requirements. It calls this next step in the evolution of the Internet “The Grid.” OGA seeks to create a new set of specifications that will enable:
- Resource producers and consumers to freely exchange assets
- Borderless datacenters encompassing large geo-distributed pools of logical adaptive compute resources
- Networks to be self-optimized and self-organized through autonomic control
- Perfectly placed and timed resource allocation for applications in real time
The OGA will lay the groundwork for this planet-scale automation, which will not stop at the cloud, or even at the edge. The goal is to create an inclusive, worldwide, multi-sector with multi-dimensional thinking. By transforming today’s Internet (a communications hub) into a global, shared platform, we believe we will create a better world — one with digital equity and without any technical or operational hurdles. A world where thinkers and visionaries are encouraged to solve unsolvable problems and answer questions that haven’t yet been asked.
Ready to learn more? Read our new white paper “Imagine Life.”
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