IEEE Future Directions
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The proposed change of name, from “tools” to “systems” I made in the previous post is the consequence of a new qualitative dimensions of modern, computerised tools.
Yes, today’s computerised tools are way more complex than what we used just 100 years ago, but that is not the reason. Today’s tools are starting to operate in an autonomous way, thanks to a growing flexibility, an improved awareness of their environment and growing decision making capabilities.
Never before, in human history, we had tools with these characteristics. Robots are the first example that comes to mind. They come in many shapes and operate in different areas. They may different significantly one from the other, in terms of shape, dimension, functionality, cost. However, what matter most in the context of SAS is the different degree of autonomy they have, the capability of evolving (e.g. learning), the capability of interacting with their environment, among themselves and with us, humans.
Well, we are interested in SAS because all these three aspects, autonomy, self evolution and interaction are now progressing at an ever faster pace and promise to change the landscape and ourselves as well.
We have been used (like all life on Earth) to adapt our behaviour to the context, and humankind went a step forward by becoming able to change its environment to better suit their needs. What we are going to see in the coming decade is that for the first time artefacts that we have created will start to adapt themselves, and their behaviour, depending on the context, and we will be part of their context. Hence, starting in the next decade and even more so in the following ones, we will be living in a dynamically changing world where we will be responding to the behaviour of machines and machines will be responding to our behaviour in a continuously changing fabric where it will become progressively ever more difficult to distinguish between the cause and the effect.
What is happening is the establishment of a symbiotic relation among (autonomous) systems and among them and us.
There is yet another aspect that will become apparent in the next decade. The interaction of several systems, each one independent from the others but operating in a symbiotic relation with the others –us included- will give rise to emergent entities that are not existing today although we have started to recognise the abstract existence of something like a “smart city”, a “marketplace”, a “culture”. These entities are seemingly abstract concepts although they are rooted in the interoperation of independent systems.
As an example, a smart city is the result of the interplay of several systems, including its citizens as a whole ad as individuals. We can design a system and even attempt to design a centralised control system for a city but it is becoming more and more evident that a smart city cannot be designed in a top down way, as we would do with even a very complex system like a manufacturing plant where everything is controlled. Just the simple fact that a city does not exist without its citizen and the impossibility of deal/control each single citizen as we would control a cog in a manufacturing plant makes the point.
So far we felt that we could control, fully, a cog as well as a robot. Well, as robots are becoming more and more autonomous, aware and able to self evolve they will become more similar to citizens and like with citizens different strategies for control will be required.
This emergence of abstract, although very concrete entities, is probably the most momentous change we are going to face in the coming decades. To steer it in a direction that can maximise their usefulness and minimise drawback requires novel approaches in design control and communications that for the first time will have to place on the same level ourselves and our “tools”.
The SAS group in its first assessment is inclined to think that a new scientific branch, rooted in the science of complex systems and taking on board social and ethical studies, is required and promoting studies in this area is one of the goal of the Initiative.
