Industries of the Future by Alec Ross

The description of this book shared that Alec Ross, as Hillary Clinton’s senior advisor on innovation, traveled to 41 countries. 41 countries wow. I wanted to learn about that experience and how it shaped his views. People are always talking about how different the world is now from years in the past. The speed of change is accelerating largely because of technology and I was eager to learn more.

The author first explained the difference between weak and strong AI. Currently, most of the AI that is present within the world is weak AI and the robots are only specializing in specific functions rather than developing human-like intelligence. Along with that, the rate of advancement is drastically different for each.

Weak AI: whereby robots specialize in a specific function is advancing exponentially.

Strong AI: whereby robots demonstrate human-like cognition and intelligence is advancing only linearly.

This was the most important reminder to me from the book was the way to manage things in the next time. In the coming years, I agree with the author that there will be various decisions and norms established. The difficulty, as the author explained, will be that these will be nearly impossible to reverse after they are implemented, and I think that is essential for leaders to be cognizant of as things are implemented.

The choices we make about how to manage data will be as important as the decisions about how to manage land during the Agriculture Age and how to manage industry during the Industrial Age. We need to blend qualitative and quantitative data and remember that tools work best with humans governing the judgment. Humans need to accept responsibility for establishing the norms that will be nearly impossible to reverse.