Exponential Technology

摘要

What if I were to tell you that the nursing profession would cease to exist by the year 2050? What would you do differently today? Those of us who have been in the nursing profession for a long time can look back and see that much of what we were taught at nursing school has evolved. Science moves forward with new discoveries and new knowledge, and nursing science is no exception. Will developments be different going forward? Will the changes in the next 30 years of nursing differ from changes of the past 30 years? The answers are “yes,” and the differentiator is technology—not just the existence of technology but the pervasive nature of technology.Humans are incrementalists by nature, whereas technology increasingly is exponential.1 Thus, future changes, which are being led by technology, should be viewed as exponential and different from the incremental changes of yesterday. Incremental change requires planning and building on what has existed before, using the processes of stepwise change. Exponential change involves leapfrogging forward into the unknown and doing things never done before.2 As Boncheck2 states, “The incremental mindset focuses on making something better, while the exponential mindset makes something different. Incremental is satisfied with 10%. Exponential is out for 10X.”This column of Technology Today focuses on exponential technology—the increasingly rapid advances in the power of technology. Why is exponential technology significant to the future of the profession? Exponential technology will enable the nursing profession to be something different, and understanding the concept is key to our field’s survival.In June 2017, Bresnick3 published a newsletter article titled “Artificial Intelligence Could Take Over Surgical Jobs by 2053,” which highlights a study by Oxford and Yale researchers titled “When Will AI Exceed Human Performance? Evidence From AI Experts.”4 This topic is not new in informatics literature, but differing opinions about the role of AI exist.5Artificial intelligence already is transforming health care, with the most notable advance being IBM’s Watson.6 Partial and complete automation of health care jobs are developments to come. Which jobs and when? How can we predict the state of surgical jobs in 2053? The Oxford-Yale study predicts that in the years to come AI will outperform humans in many activities such as translating languages (by 2024), writing high-school essays (by 2026), driving a truck (by 2027), working in retail (by 2031), writing a bestselling book (by 2049), and working as a surgeon (by 2053).4 The researchers predict a 50% chance of AI outperforming humans in 45 years and automating all current human jobs in 120 years. Notably, the survey respondents from Asia expected these events to occur much sooner than did the respondents from North America. We will look at why people in different geographical locations have different expectations about technological changes in the next column of Technology Today.The key to understanding these bold predictions, including exponential technology, is Moore’s law.7,8 In 1965, Intel cofounder Gordon Moore predicted that the number of transistors fitting on a chip would double every year—later changed to every 2 years—for the following 10 years. Moore’s law predicted that computing power would increase exponentially as the numbers of transistors that can fit onto a silicon chip doubled every 2 years, and the law has held to the present.The doubling of computer power every 2 years has allowed for faster and cheaper devices, thereby enabling exponential technology. Think about smartphones, introduced 25 years ago, and compare the smartphones of even 2007 with those on the market today. Whereas smartphones may not seem cheaper today, the cost per feature is a lot less. Think about the computing power and features. You now get a phone, camera, video recorder, book library, and film library; moreover, you can do things such as watch television