Io T and AI

"Is there a dark side to all of this? You bet. Hello hackers. The security features will need to be one step ahead of dark forces each and every day of the week."

Wake up folks. While we were all doing other things the past few years, the future came calling. And now the future is here. We are on a steep and slippery slope, sliding towards a brave new world. One like our parents and grandparents could have never have imagined. Today I will be talking about the Io T - the "Internet of Things". Yes, the Io T is taking the internet to a whole different level.

Actually, the Io T has been with us for a while now, slowly developing. It is now starting to get more sophisticated and pervasive. Have a smart phone? You are there. In fact, one scientist believes that any item you drive or have in the house with an on and off switch is a candidate to be a member of the Io T.

More and more devices are becoming "smart" - in other words, more and more devices made contain some kind of chip. Very soon, these "smart" devices will be able to "talk" to each other. And as chips become cheaper and denser (more memory thanks to where Moore's Law has taken us), more devices will become "smart". How many more? According to the analyst firm Gartner, by 2020 (which is right around the corner), there will be over 26 billion connected devices. In fact, some believe that number might be closer to 100 billion.

One article I read not too long ago said we are rapidly approaching the perfect storm (in a good way) of technology for the Io T.  Even though chip manufacturers are stuck on a clock speed of 3 GHz, the size of chips keeps shrinking. IBM has recently announced a breakthrough of chip with 7 nano-meter features. 7 nano-meters is only slightly thicker than a strand of human DNA.

Now to really stir the pot, add in the developing feature of AI. AI will need to be the savior for the Io T. Why? There will be an ocean of data which will need to be managed. And how big is that ocean? Big - really big. Right now, IBM estimates there is over 10 Zettabytes (that be a trillion gigabytes) of data in the Io T. That is estimated to grow to a jaw dropping 180 Zettabytes by 2025. AI will need to the glue that holds all this data together which will allow us (and the machines) to make sense out of it.

Is there a dark side to all of this? You bet. Hello hackers. The security features will need to be one step ahead of dark forces each and every day of the week. If somehow all this data became corrupted, you could only imagine the mayhem we would have.

Anyhow, politics aside, the future is unfolding in front of our eyes. My bet is the Io T, AI and nanotechnology are going to make our lives even better than today. Have to go now - my smart phone is calling me.