It's time for Deep Techceleration

There has been great technological acceleration during the Covid era, with no let-up in its pace. Pushed to the wall, the world has come out with innovative solutions to all kinds of problems and taken tech beyond the limit

- Sunil Rajguru 

Technology is no longer in silos. Any emerging tech can be combined with any other and applied in any field. It has become merging tech. Lines have been blurred. All the tech companies are getting into all the emerging technologies. They are deep into it. This new term is catching the fancy of one and all: Deep Tech. It has no clear definition. Different players have a different take on it. There are a broad number of categories that are considered Deep Tech by someone or the other. A look at them and the advances that have taken place in the Covid Era.

The all-encompassing AI

Narrow Artificial Intelligence. Weak AI. Shallow AI. Call it what you will. We are already there and want to move on. We want to go directly to Strong AI or maybe even Super AI. There are enough references in movies. HAL from Space Odyssey. Skynet from Terminator. Or more recently Vision and Ultron from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In one Isaac Asimov short story (he started writing in the late 1930s), AI has reached such perfection that it becomes President of the world and solves all its problems. What will our AI lead to? Utopia or dystopia? Take your pick.

What about AI merging with humankind? That is called the Singularity and Silicon Valley billionaires are obsessed with it. It will be their way of gaining immortality. What’s the point of having billions if you are going to die at the end of it like other mere mortals? A movie which experimented with this concept was Transcendence (2014) where the character played by Johnny Depp has his consciousness uploaded into a Quantum Computer.