♪♪
Humanity is at the beginning of the most profound technological and economic changes
the world has ever seen.
In from computers to artificial intelligence, a history,
we will trace the story of this remarkable transformation.
In the seventh program, 2014 to 2021,
the world holds a supercomputer in their hands.
Self-driving vehicles take to the road.
Quantum computers become a reality,
and humans begin merging with the digital technology they have created.
♪♪
Who could have imagined at the turn of the 21st century
when giant supercomputers were at the pinnacle of computing power?
That only 15 years later, two-thirds of Americans would be carrying in their pockets,
devices with greater computing power than those marvels of the 20th century technology.
♪♪
These pocket-sized supercomputers are your typical smartphones,
and they embody a law that has been driving technological innovation
for two generations, Moore's Law.
♪♪
In 1965, American entrepreneur, electrical engineer,
and Intel co-founder Gordon Moore made the startling prediction
that technological innovation in the digital world
will continue to double every year, roughly speaking,
into the foreseeable future.
This would happen because computational architecture
would indefinitely get smaller as well as cheaper.
There is no better-known representation of Moore's law than the smartphone.
In 2001, when Steve Jobs introduced a groundbreaking portable digital music player,
the iPod, to the world, PC-based email was already part of how people communicated
in business and everyday life.
In 2005, companies such as Garmin were producing portable GPS devices
that were quickly becoming a regular part of the American driving experience.
♪♪
At the same time, digital cameras had totally replaced traditional film-still cameras,
and a few years later, movie cameras.
These fast-emerging advances in technology was staggering.
Indeed, by 2015, when two-thirds of Americans owned smartphones,
it became clear that all these previous individual products
didn't have to be their own digital devices.
They could be incorporated, along with many other functions, into the smartphone.
This deflation of the cost of computational power,
information storage and software, predicted by Moore's law,
will become an ever greater part of the American economy.
An economy which will change how everything is done.
♪♪
Like Apple's Steve Jobs before him, Jack Dorsey in 2015,
reclaimed leadership of the company he helped create nine years earlier.
That company was Twitter.
The internet's social networking short message service
that enables users to send and read short 140-character messages
called tweets.
Like many of America's 21st-century entrepreneurs,
Jack Dorsey has a few simple principles that act as guidelines
for his entrepreneurial efforts and companies.
Simplicity, constraint and craftsmanship.
♪♪
Born in St. Louis, Missouri on November 19, 1976,
Jack Dorsey from the beginning was unconventional.
A dreamer. A punk rocker.
A person who was inspired by surrealistic art
and who takes his personal philosophy of entrepreneurship
from the science fiction writer, William Gibson.
And I found this great quote by William Gibson.
Anyone know who William Gibson is just by a show of hands?
Unfortunately, too few.
William Gibson is a science fiction author
and he coined the term "cyberspace."
He coined the term "cyberpunk" in a novel called "neuromancer."
And he has this great quote,
which I think really captures everything that we're trying to do
in this world as entrepreneurs, as founders,
as builders of companies and products and ideas,
in that the future has already arrived.
It's just not evenly distributed yet.
Dorsey liked the new American entrepreneurs of the 21st century.
Like many of the entrepreneurs of the information
in emerging systems age,
moved on from creating one great business such as Twitter
and create another.
In Jack Dorsey's case,
that was revolutionizing mobile payment.
In 2010, Dorsey developed a small business platform
to accept debit and credit card payments
on an electronic device called Square.
The small, square-shaped device attaches to mobile devices
via the headphone jack and acts as a mini credit card reader.
Square is also a system for sending paperless receipts
via text message or email
and is available as a free app for iOS and Android OS.
Undoubtedly, Square is just the beginning of the mobile future
and undoubtedly the beginning of the future for Jack Dorsey.
Internet entrepreneurial Mavericks Craig Newmark with Craigslist
and Jimmy Wills with Wikipedia
developed completely new paradigms
for operating highly successful websites in the 21st century.
And in doing so,
they epitomized the American economic disruptor
and risk-taking entrepreneur.
These are entrepreneurs who, through innovation,
created a new market-in-value network
that disrupts and eventually replaces an existing market-in-value network,
while at the same time creating greater common good.
They're going to arise around Wikipedia.
In fact, America has been a leader in disruptive innovation
from its founding.
What had been a necessity to survive became an economic virtue.
From introducing the steamboat that replaced sailing ships
to the light bulb that replaced the candle
to building cars that replaced the horse and buggy,
to refrigerators that replaced the ice man,
to PayPal that replaced the written check.
American entrepreneurs continue to leave the way
in building a better world for all.
Jimmy Wills and Craig Newmark share a common passion
for disruptive innovation.
They also share another set of values.
No monetization of their sites through advertising
always enhance the user experience
and put intense focus on customer service.
Wikipedia, on the other hand,
it begins with a very radical idea.
And that's for all of us to imagine a world
in which every single person on the planet
is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge,
and that's what we're doing.
Wikipedia is the brainchild of Jimmy Wills.
Relying on user-correcting wiki software,
it is a free encyclopedia built collaboratively
by largely non-paid anonymous volunteers.
As founding in 2001,
Wikipedia has grown to become the largest
free online reference source in the world,
with over 35 million articles in 290 languages.
Wikipedia's editors agree to a simple set of principles
known as the five pillars developed by the community
to describe best practices, clarify principles,
resolve conflicts, and otherwise further the goal
of creating and improving a free, reliable encyclopedia.
These pillars include,
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.
Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view.
Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use,
edit, and distribute.
Since its inception,
Wikipedia has totally disrupted the old hard copy information
in encyclopedia business.
In 2015, not only was it the top information website
in the world, but also it found its way
to the top 10 most visited websites overall.
As for Wills himself,
he enjoys the role of the country's most famous
traveling spokesman for Internet freedom.
Still resolving Wikipedia conflicts
and hardly a Silicon Valley billionaire,
he leads a relatively simple life.
Throughout the 20th century,
the newspaper classifieds were a place
where people and companies for a fee
could place a notification to sell goods and services,
and perhaps most importantly, list job opportunities.
Craig Newmark stumbled upon an idea
for disrupting this highly profitable business.
A brilliant software engineer,
after he moved to the San Francisco area,
he developed Craig's List in 1995
as an email distribution list to help his friends find departments.
Soon he saw that by using a website on the Internet,
he could expand Craig's List into a free marketplace
where people could come together,
largely without charge,
and exchange information formerly found in classified ads.
Today, the company is only supported by a small fee
for posting job openings.
Twenty years after its founding,
Craig's List covers the U.S. and 70 foreign countries
with over 20 billion page views per month.
In 2015, Newmark was able to buy back the Craig's List's shares
that had fallen into the hands of eBay,
guaranteeing the nonprofit status of his company.
Now Newmark has turned his attention to philanthropy.
And like the Maverick he is, he's doing it his way.
My deal is I stumble across clauses,
things that I believe in,
and I find people who are really good at supporting those.
You know, it's an intuitive, somewhat haphazard process,
but I guess it works for me.
I should add, there's nothing altruistic about this.
I'm just doing what feels right.
I'm just being in a way a nerd
because after you make enough to provide for your future
and maybe to help out friends and family,
it's much more satisfying to make a difference.
Self-driving vehicles have been a staple of science fiction
for over 100 years,
turning people from drivers to mere passengers.
At the end of the second decade of the 21st century,
science fiction has become a reality
and is set to become a major economic driving force
in America's future.
Indeed, auto companies, including Ford, Mercedes,
General Motors, Toyota, and Tesla,
as well as tech giants, including Uber,
Google, Apple, and Amazon,
found themselves racing to build autonomous vehicles
for radically changing consumer and commercial world.
It turns out self-driving vehicles are based on the latest
technological developments and robotics.
Remote sensing, LIDAR, GPS,
and particularly AI, artificial intelligence.
Like many advanced technologies,
these developments were at first driven by the U.S. military.
From 2004 to 2013,
the Department of Defense's research arm, DARPA,
sponsored a series of challenges
that pushed autonomous vehicle technologies forward.
Then in 2014,
Tesla introduced its semi-autonomous autopilot feature,
which enabled hands-free control for highway and freeway driving
for its Model S car.
During this timeframe, American agriculture was already
utilizing fully driverless planters and harvesters
to maximize production.
However, the greatest impact of driverless vehicles
on American life and the economy may be pilotless trucks.
Trucking in the United States is a 700 billion a year business
that ships 70% of all goods in the country.
In 2016, trucking accounts for 15.5 million vehicles on the road,
with 2 million heavy and tractor trailer truck driving jobs.
In 2016, Otto, a self-driving truck company owned by Uber,
successfully delivered a truck full of beer from Fort Collins
to Colorado Springs, Colorado.
A year later, entrepreneur Elon Musk
introduced his line of semi-autonomous trucks.
Now, at 80,000 pounds max gross vehicle weight,
that's the most amount of weight you can carry on at US highway.
This is the real-time acceleration of Tesla Semi.
That, on the left, the thing that looks like it's not moving
is a diesel truck.
It is clear that the future proliferation of self-driving vehicles
will demand changing America's transportation infrastructure
to accommodate this new form of moving people and products.
As a result, this new transportation infrastructure
will also play a major role in the transformation of America's economy.
Like other technological disruptions,
fully autonomous vehicles are likely to come sooner rather than later.
♪
It is said, money makes the world go round.
Gold, silver, coinage, greenbacks, credit cards.
And, of course, there have always been the moneykeepers.
Banks, money lenders, stockbrokers.
An entire financial system.
A financial system with middlemen.
Middlemen who are entrusted with keeping financial records secure.
And middlemen who take a piece of the action on each transaction.
Then, in response to the financial crisis of 2008,
a new disruptive financial innovation came along.
An innovation designed to replace the old financial system.
It's called the blockchain.
A distributed database that stores information in different locations
and maintains a continuously growing list of ordered records called blocks.
The first major innovation derived from the blockchain was Bitcoin,
a digital or cryptocurrency.
In the old financial system, money was regulated and verified by a central authority,
usually a bank or government.
But Bitcoin is not controlled by any person or government.
Instead, transactions made in Bitcoin are verified by a network of computers.
This is what is meant by the Bitcoin network and blockchain being decentralized.
Remarkably in 10 years after its innovation, in December 2017,
Bitcoin reached a value of $19,783.
However, earlier in 2017, the first big step in adopting this revolutionary new way of dealing
with financial transactions came from IBM.
The blockchain is one of the most fundamental technologies since the early days of the Internet.
Blockchain is going to change transactions.
While the Internet did for information, the blockchain will do for transactions.
And when you ask, "How is it going to do that?"
It's the first time we can have trusted transactions between multiple parties
and that's what blockchain enables.
By 2020, there was a plethora of new cryptocurrencies.
In addition to Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple each provided their own innovative touches
to blockchain technology.
Such a fundamental restructuring of a core part of the world economy
is a big challenge to every industry in America.
Preparing for these changes means investing in research and experimentation.
Those American companies in industry who do so
will be placed to thrive in the new emerging financial system.
With Azure Quantum, we're bringing quantum solutions forward to that environment.
We're bringing quantum impact to your fingertips.
We're working with enterprises and companies around the world.
Energy, optimization, risk and financial analysis in medical diagnostics
to identify where quantum solutions will bring about impact for their businesses.
In the fall of 2019, Microsoft introduced a new service.
A new service that took quantum computing to the cloud.
Chris and Azure Quantum, this platform integrates quantum programming tools
based on its quantum computer with Microsoft's cloud service.
This cloud service was designed to compete with quantum cloud-based services
offered by Amazon and IBM.
Started during World War II, the computer revolution has changed nearly every aspect
of American life.
Since then, as predicted by Moore's law, the speed and capability of computers
have doubled every two years.
At the same time, the cost of computation has decreased
on the same exponential curve.
However, with regard to certain problems, supercomputers have reached their limit.
Enter quantum computers.
Computers that do calculations at speeds that are inconceivable with conventional computers.
Indeed, conventional computers perform calculations by processing bits of information
with each bit holding either a one or a zero.
Based on quantum mechanics, quantum computers use quantum bits or qubits.
They rely on the mind-bending way subatomic particles can exist in more than one state,
that is, one and zero, at the same time.
Two qubits can hold four values at once.
And as the number of qubits grows, a quantum computer becomes exponentially more powerful.
As major tech companies and the military pour more money into quantum computer research,
it is possible this new revolution in computation may be as profound for American life, business,
and industry as the first computer revolution more than 80 years ago.
On January 31, 2021, Elon Musk announced that his brain-computer interface company,
Neuralink, wired a monkey to a computer to play video games.
The brainchild of Tesla CEO, Elon Musk,
Neuralink is developing a brain-computer interface called Neuralink.
Neuralink will be surgically connected to the human brain to allow a user to interact directly with the computer.
The field of the brain-computer interface, BCI, has been around for much of the 21st century.
Early on, BCI successfully allowed paraplegics using feedback and training
to bring their limbs back to life and function,
as well as letting people with other impairments use the brain-computer interface
to communicate and manipulate objects.
Neuralink is exploring how BCI could alleviate the symptoms of chronic medical conditions,
including epilepsy, Parkinson's disease,
and provide rich visual feedback to the blind.
According to Musk, the ultimate goal of Neuralink is to create a symbiosis between the human brain and AI.
He also said, "BCI is needed to confirm human supremacy over artificial intelligence."
The future of BCI has vast potential in every industry,
and is set to disrupt the world in a way other digital technologies such as the Internet,
smartphones, and artificial intelligence have done.
Indeed, the combination of humans and technology could be more powerful than artificial intelligence alone.
In fact, BCI is already here,
and like what happens with other cutting-edge technologies of the past,
it is just not evenly distributed yet.
From computers to artificial intelligence, a history,
as the digital revolution continues to accelerate exponentially,
the only certainty is that the next 20 years will bring unimaginable change
to every aspect of economics, society, and life.
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