Category: Blog

From smart speaker systems to autonomous driving, androids and drones, Artificial Intelligence – AI – appears to be everywhere. But this is just the beginning of the AI revolution, as the debates at ITU Telecom World 2018 will explore.

At heart, AI is simply a machine programmed to make sense of data on a scale humans can’t deal with.  It is the king of the algorithm, a highly intelligent machine capable of learning from experiences and producing logical conclusions based on input. As part of the digital technology connecting people, things and machines on a big data platform, it can enable solutions saving time, energy and lives, opening up opportunities as yet undreamt of.

AI is able to unlock scale and opportunity to deal with the grand challenges facing the world today, from ageing populations to sustainable urban living, access to food, healthcare, water and education, reducing poverty and increasing gender equality. Physical AI has the potential to free humans from mundane, routine tasks, allowing them to concentrate on higher-end work and releasing creative potential.

In emerging markets and smart cities alike, AI can help overcome natural limitations to growth such as geographic size or lack of natural resources, creating new markets and new value, rather than merely improving on existing models.

Improvements on current models is, however, where AI will first be in evidence, leading to significant cost savings, increased productivity, lower production cycles and improved back end or internal processes.

In the telco industry itself, AI will accelerate the evolution of network operator infrastructure into intelligent networks able to offer smarter, faster, tailored and more scalable services.

In the financial services sector, for example, AI can reduce the hundreds of thousands of hours needed to carry out regulatory compliance to a matter of seconds; or the time, effort and investment necessary for a mortgage to a few minutes. New financial services may include mass market personalised services, opening an enormous market of lower earners, or microfinancing for the unbanked. In call centres across a range of sectors, AI can work alongside humans analysing complex data sets in parallel to the human customer-facing contact, or take calls as a co-worker as far as possible before passing on to human expertise.

In all cases, AI is a tool to augment human abilities rather than replace them. It is therefore only as good as the person inputting information and parameters into its system.

Ensuring that AI is provided with data in a way that does not reflect and perpetuate inherent bias, unconscious or not, is therefore of great importance. We need to be aware of, and work to avoid, replication of existing divides and inequalities on gender, race, geography, the urban/rural split, access to education, investment in infrastructure, the availability of talent, the provision of adequate cyber security. The danger is that AI will otherwise prolong or deepen these divides, limiting its benefits to the developed world.

Providing open public data and open APIs to allow private companies and individual developers to create solutions for public and commercial services is key to democratising AI – and fast-tracking its deployment. This means balancing access to large datasets to improve quality of life against data protection, privacy and security issues.

Preparation– and education – is critical. The international community, government, businesses and individuals should be as ready as possible for the seismic changes that the widespread adoption and deployment of AI will bring with it.

The biggest of these is the transformation of the current labour market. It is estimated that up to 75% of all jobs will be impacted by AI over the next ten years – not only routine, low-skilled jobs, but also traditional blue collar sectors such as journalism, law or financial services. Productivity and revenue should rise as costs are cut, but the societal disruption will be enormous.

Standardization is critical to enable AI to function in a multi-vendor ecosystem environment, but is complicated by the fact that AI is an active machine, learning in real time with real data. AI is often invisible, raising issues of transparency and accountability; international codes of conduct or frameworks are an important first step towards regulation.

The deployment and impact of AI will be central to debates in the Forum at ITU Telecom World 2018 – a neutral platform for key stakeholders from government, industry and academia to come together, share knowledge, explore the key issues, and make real progress.

Smart digital transformation was the topic of the ITU Telecom World 2017, which took place in Busan, Republic of Korea last month. Solving urban challenges using digital technologiesv – Smart Cities – was at the centre of the discussion as summarized in the Euronews video of the event.

I had the pleasure to be part of the Smart City Leaders Roundtable, sharing experiences with leading Asian cities such as Singapore, Seoul, Hong Kong and of course Busan, our host.

My learning can be summarized with the following three elements:

Building an Enabling Infrastructure

5G, the next generation mobile network, is required to support the development of our connected environment. A city like Busan is a leading Internet of Things (IoT) city, having massively deployed sensors to monitor its critical infrastructure. For example, the “Safe Driving In the Rain” service created by Busan, providing notifications of the degree of rainy road risks per road segment. This service is based on the data collected from sensors installed on public buses, generating real-time information about the volume of rain.

5G will bring ubiquitous connectivity; however, a second foundation is required to bring new pervasive digital services: the enabling infrastructure. Two important elements of this are Digital Identity and Cyber Security. When all citizens and businesses have a digital identity, efficiency gains can be realized in many sectors. Two examples: construction companies could request building permits online, and doctors could send digital prescription slips to the pharmacy for you to pick up your long-term medication.

Living Lab and Citizens Centric

To develop new digital services, most cities are creating Living Labs, which consists of providing an area for experimentation and creating an ecosystem around it. If pilot projects are successful, they are then rolled out across the entire city. It is a good way to develop the digital culture, “prototype, test and learn” and “fail fast to fail cheap”. An important element is to develop citizen-centered solutions and get citizen involvement in the design process, by creating a public-private-citizen problem solving.

An interesting solution being tested by the telecom operator KT is infectious diseases notification. The service under development is called “Smart Gate”: it makes use of roaming data to check if a person has visited an infectious disease area prior to enter South Korea. You can also send information to people visiting a country at risk and provide them with prevention advice or alerts when an outbreak starts.

Horizontal Disruption

Uber has already modified the taxi business, but we are starting to see some adjacent business development: in Singapore, Uber service is now being used in the retail industry to deliver goods. The service is therefore impacting the retail sector, by modifying the supply chain of goods.

This example shows that digital disruption is going to impact every sector and that governments should take measures to support the economy and especially SMEs. Singapore has launched a programme called “SMEs Go Digital” to help them build stronger digital capabilities. They have defined six focus sectors, retail being one of them. The programme includes an SME Tech Hub, where pre-approved solutions are proposed. For instance, a retailer can have access to a cloud-based application which supports him to sell online to the Chinese market. The tool includes tagging and authentication technology to comply with Chinese food import regulations.

Embracing this digital transformation

In this smart digital transformation, building an enabling infrastructure, developing living labs and running programmes to support SMEs will be the key initiatives to keep the competitiveness of a country in the future. Some countries are still well known as fiscal paradises: I think it is instead the time to foster a digital paradise, to become a leader of the digital economy.

Smart cities are becoming a reality around the world – we are moving towards a seamlessly, wirelessly, connected society, whereby the Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G are revolutionizing our lives, and innovative solutions such as TV White Space (TVWS) are helping to connect the most remote, rural, and densely populated places on earth. Yet during this evolution, somewhere along the way, billions of people have been left behind.

Four billion people, to be precise, are living without Internet access globally. This is causing a digital divide, which will only widen unless it is tackled head-on. Connecting the unconnected is an ongoing process – it won’t happen overnight. There are numerous challenges that must be solved and overcome to improve global connectivity. One such challenge of the digital divide is spectrum management.

Around the world there is a perception that spectrum scarcity is a barrier to connectivity. But in real terms, most spectrum is unused most of the time in most places – spectrum is abundant if utilized and managed appropriately. The use of spectrum sharing, through unlicensed and lightly-licensed spectrum, has the potential to alleviate at least some of the issues faced by the unconnected around the world.

The unprecedented, and ever-growing, demand for spectrum that we are currently witnessing requires new approaches to spectrum management and new tools to drive much more intensive and efficient use of spectrum compared to what we have seen before.

Dynamic spectrum management is an under-utilized approach that has the potential to revolutionize connectivity as we know it. When used effectively, it enables an understanding of what spectrum is used at any given location, and the protection requirements of the incumbent user, and an opportunistic use that does not interfere with the incumbent services.

This approach should not be viewed as a stand-alone technique, but as one of many complimentary solutions that can work in harmony, with the same end goal. There should be a balanced approach to spectrum management, which encompasses unlicensed, lightly-licensed, and licensed spectrum to get the most out of the spectrum we have available.

This approach is already being implemented around the world through TVWS technology, which is enabled through broadcast spectrum and is currently being trialled in the United States, Africa, and in parts of Scotland and Wales in the UK. The Citizen’s Broadcast Radio Service (CBRS) in the US is taking dynamic spectrum management to the next level by coordinating incumbent, licensed, and lightly-licensed users, to drive a much more intensive and efficient use of spectrum.

This kind of unifying approach will be crucial to the future of connectivity around the world, as we attempt to connect the remaining four billion, while also reducing the current digital divide and ensuring this kind of inequality does not gain momentum.

The demand for spectrum, for future data-hungry services including 5G, the IoT, and ‘smart’ applications, will be significant and there is no realistic chance to displace the number of incumbent services necessary to clear that spectrum in the traditional manner – particularly in the timeframe necessary to provide these services. Dynamic sharing provides the most efficient way to make new spectrum available because it starts by protecting the incumbent services. Sharing and co-existence must be part of the solution going forward.

I look forward to attending ITU World Telecom in September (25-28, Busan, Republic of Korea) and participating in a lively discussion on ‘New Trends in Spectrum Management’, which will cover aspects of this blog post in more depth.

I write this having just concluded the annual CTO ICT Forum in Maputo, Mozambique, where we examined the vast potential for economic growth in a digital future comprising virtual environments, IoT and augmented reality applications. However, with over half the world’s population still not connected to the Internet, how will these people, communities and economies reap the benefits a digital future has to offer? The allocation and regulation of spectrum in this environment will play a vital role – both in ensuring that everyone has access to this digital future and ensuring that the digital future becomes today.

Information and communication technologies have a significant role to play in delivering the objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals. And so the Internet, and increasingly a mobile connection to the Internet, is critical for us to meet these goals. But 3.9 billion people – over half of the global population – still do not have access to the Internet and the digital divide continues to grow.

The most recent report from the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development has also found that gaps in transmission speeds are increasing – a worrying finding as this will impact on the ability of citizens to make use of the technologies of the digital future.

The radio spectrum is an essential resource for wireless communications. Demand for spectrum has increased exponentially as mobile data becomes increasingly prevalent. This demand is only likely to grow as we make more use of the potential available to us through e-health, e-education and e-government initiatives. As we look to progress smart cities, spectrum must support this interconnection. The possibilities offered by IoT and augmented reality applications are still unknown, but what is certain is that spectrum will be required to realise this promise.

So it is clear that reaching this digital future is dependent on good spectrum management. As we celebrate the 90^th anniversary of the CCIR/ITU Radiocommunication Study Groups, and the 111^th anniversary of the Radio Regulations, it is good to examine the important role the ITU plays in spectrum allocation.

Through the important process of the World Radiocommunication Conferences, the ITU ensures that radio-spectrum frequencies are allocated appropriately. Without this crucial role, digitally connecting the world wirelessly would not be possible.

The Commonwealth has a role to play in the international process of spectrum use. As a distinct sub-set of the world’s countries – including developed countries, developing countries, least developed countries, small island states and landlocked countries – spanning every continent, the Commonwealth is bound together by shared values and principles, cooperating in the common interests of its peoples and working as an effective network for promoting development. So gaining consensus among Commonwealth countries on key issues relating to ICTs, such as spectrum, can play a critically important role in fostering wider international agreement.

It was in this spirit that the CTO organised a preparatory meeting for WRC-15, providing a platform to examine different regional stances on key issues and reaching consensus on some agenda items in order to assist with the WRC-15 process. We have since followed up by launching a new conference series on spectrum management, the Commonwealth Spectrum Management Forum, with the aim of building the capacity of our stakeholders in managing spectrum as well as helping them to prepare for, and implement WRC outcomes. Our next event will take place in London on 25 – 27 October 2017.

There are many important spectrum issues for consideration in this exciting time for the digital future and I look forward to discussing them with colleagues from across the international ICT community at ITU Telecom World.

Shola Taylor will be speaking on Enabling and shaping the wireless ecosystem: Celebrating the 90th anniversary of CCIR/ITU-R Study Groups on Wednesday 27 September at 4.45 pm. You can also find out more about the CTO by visiting stand 1210.05 at the ITU Telecom World exhibition.

From September 25^th to 28^th, 2017, I attend the ITU Telecom World in Busan, Korea and will participate in the Leadership Summit panel, titled Digital transformation: visions of smart societies on September 25^th.

The term smart means communities that are both economically and environmentally sustainable without sacrificing the comfort and quality of life for its citizens. It is the convergence of physical and digital infrastructure, where ICTs are used to make life more efficient and sustainable.[1] The scope of Smart Societies can encompass infrastructure and governance; energy and climate change; pollution and waste management; and applications regarding social, economy, and health initiatives.

However, there cannot be any real discussion of creating Smart Societies without making significant strides in connecting the unconnected and promoting digital inclusion. There are several different facets of digital inclusion: implementing infrastructure that facilitates coverage and connectivity, and social policies that promote access and use of ICTs and digital literacy. Those who are on the “have not” side of the digital divide are often the poor, marginalized sectors of society as well as those in rural, remote or geographically challenged areas.

In order to connect these vulnerable populations, it is necessary to look at different combinations of broadband technologies. Satellite-based solutions can help bring vital services to under connected populations either on their own or in combination with other technologies because:

• Satellites are point-to-multipoint systems, i.e., they do not end at a single, specific point, but can reach all geographic targets within a given area, thus giving instantaneous coverage over a region.
• Satellite technology is well suited to provide full coverage, in metropolitan as well as in rural or most remote areas, including mountainous regions, islands, the seas and the skies.
• Satellite infrastructure already exists, the provision of services only requires the purchase of ground equipment.
• The cost of services is independent of distance or number of subscribers.
• Satellite operators can also work in commercial partnerships with terrestrial telecommunications networks to offer integrated service to users.

By using satellite-based solutions, it is possible to achieve maximum efficiency and effectiveness and thereby bridge vast distances to bring knowledge, assistance and resources to those who need it, wherever they are, in a sustainable manner that fits into the paradigms of Smart Societies. Satellite can also be a great asset to important aspects of Smart Societies such as service quality, environmental sustainability, resilient infrastructure, mobility, and responsiveness to IoT requirements.

For instance, in order to keep continuous service to Smart Societies, it is necessary that infrastructure be resilient enough to withstand natural and man-made disasters, so as to kickstart relief and reconstruction efforts. After a catastrophe, terrestrial infrastructure could be affected in such a way that connectivity is destroyed, making it impossible for government agencies and humanitarian organizations to deploy their relief efforts. Satellite infrastructure is an important part of resilient infrastructure because it is independent of terrestrial infrastructure and can be a dependable resource during earthquakes, tsunamis and any other kind of catastrophe to ensure that a nation’s telecommunications infrastructure is still functional.

Moreover, Smart Societies must take into account the increasingly mobile nature of broadband. Satellite technology is an important resource to mobility because it can provide mobile broadband on its own and serve as a valuable resource to mobile networks through its backhaul capabilities. Mobile satellite terminals can bring broadband to notoriously hard to reach sectors.

At the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (ITSO), one of our main objectives is to ensure global coverage and connectivity through the use of satellite communications and the ITSO treaty presents a powerful commitment to making available the necessary tools for countries to implement ICT projects such as smart societies and other elements of the Sustainable Development Goals.

In conclusion, I hope we can all work together to ensure that inclusive smart societies are attainable by all countries no matter their level of socio-economic development.

[1] See https://wftp3.itu.int/pub/epub_shared/TSB/ITUT-Tech-Report-Specs/2016/en/flipviewerxpress.html for more information.

There are profound implications of global changes resulting from rapid urbanization, demographic shifts and increasingly advanced digital technologies. The United Nations predicts that by 2050, nearly 70% of the world’s population will live in urban centers.

Digitalization is empowering cities to respond quickly to these demographic and economic shifts, and responsive, scalable technology is what will make smart cities “smart”. While the advancement stages of smart cities vary across the world, the overarching goal is to leverage technology to improve public services, optimize the administration of the city and better the lives of its citizens. This could mean new solutions like intelligent transport systems for traffic flow in real-time to reduce congestion, improvement of public safety through automated surveillance, or e-government services to improve efficiency. In Asia, for example, the Smart City Playbook commissioned by Nokia found that Singapore was one of the most ‘sustainable’ and ‘smartest’ cities in the world. With mature and intelligent transport applications, it is well-placed to capitalize on its stable economy, efficient public administration and co-creation approach to take its Smart Nation vision into reality.

The success of any smart city will depend on the effective combination of ubiquitously embedded intelligence in the form of connected sensors and tags, software that power various solutions, and the digital telecommunication networks that serve as the backbone of the city. What’s concerning, however, is that some networks today in Asia may not be entirely equipped to manage the growing bandwidth and latency needs of the millions of connected devices that will power smart cities. Our Nokia Bell Labs Consulting report found that surging consumer and business demand for mobile data, either at home or on the go, will outpace the network capabilities of service providers by 2020. In fact, nearly 20% of mobile traffic demands will not be satisfied based on current and projected economies.

In the next decade, the digital economy will impact everyone and will demand for cities to create connectivity through next generation networks – the essential ingredient that make smart cities attractive to businesses and citizens.

The pressure is now on local governments to manage these large volumes of data, while huge investments in time and capital are needed to make even the most basic features of a smart city possible. Banks, for example, are already utilizing the predictive power of analytics to shape customer relationships. By leveraging the data power of the private sector, banks may be able to help emerging smart cities become more established. With smart cities being built on data, the ‘smart banking’ concept is likely to play a critical role in the development of smart cities. ‘Cashless’ transactions mean you no longer have to carry around cash – or even plastic cards – nor will you have to queue up at an ATM. A concept that may feel strange to some but in countries like China and India, the ‘digital natives’ identified as the millennials and Gen-Y are more accepting towards new technologies. Their desire to be hyper-connected and the need for instant gratification allows them to take on high financial risks. Roughly half of Chinese consumers use fintech for payments compared to less than 1% in markets such as Indonesia and Thailand. Services such as peer to peer lending or blockchain are already set to disrupt the sector and we are seeing regulators reacting. But is it fast enough? The agility we show as a collaborative community will be fundamental to making daily life for citizens more convenient, efficient, sustainable and most importantly, safe.

As we accelerate towards this digital future, we are also reminded of the painful reality that cybersecurity is and will be part of the equation in a data-driven world. The increased number of connected devices means potentially higher security risks and vulnerabilities – both to malicious attacks and unintentional incidents. In fact, the Nokia Threat Intelligence Report revealed a sharp increase in major IoT device security vulnerabilities, while smartphones accounted for 85% of mobile infections. As the industry tackles the advancements on security solutions, the real threat comes from lack of regulation for data privacy. Today, data is captured at every instance, whether it is the type of music, the places we visit or our financial and health records. We live in a time when TV shows are designed based on user analytics. Hence the way this information is used creates an explosive risk factor. A simple hack today can result in us losing our personal information such as credit cards, social security or more. And, in the future, with the advent of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence, we will see the emergence of a new type of cybercrime. This calls for an urgent need for the public and private sectors to collaborate even more and build regulation for smart cities to thrive and prosper.

Ultimately, to support the growing needs of IoT-driven smart cities, future networks will need to be safe, designed to prevent congestion, support edge cloud architecture for ultra-low latency required by mission-critical IoT applications, be cost effective, which can be achieved through virtualized network functions, and be highly scalable. To build such a network, governments, network operators and telecom equipment providers need to collaborate to design and architect the essential building blocks of the smart city: City-wide connectivity, network, the cloud, IoT platforms and an ecosystem of trusted partners.

The process of making a city smart is extremely complex. The possibilities are there…but they are not a foregone conclusion. We are on the cusp of a revolution in changing the way we live, work and play, so we must strive for innovation and invest towards infrastructure.

The question is, are our networks resilient enough today to accelerate this digital future?

Danial Mausoof will be speaking at the session on The value of smart banking: the operational key to making smart cities work at ITU Telecom World 2017

There is an ambitious, and necessary, goal shared by many in the technology industry to connect at least the next 1.5 billion world citizens to the Internet by 2020. This goal is not just about technology infrastructure, though that is a critical component. To compel people to connect, and to make the Internet relevant, it must be open, interoperable, accessible, easy to navigate and practically useful.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), of which I am a Board member, helps, with other players, to coordinate the Internet’s unique identifiers to ensure a secure, stable, open and interoperable Internet. ICANN through the Domain Name System (DNS), the naming and addressing system, allows any device, person or entity to securely reach another on the Internet.

As more and more Internet users connect, it’s important that they are able to find content that’s relevant to them and their communities in their chosen language. Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) enable people around the world to use domain names in local languages and scripts. IDNs are formed using characters from scripts other than the Latin script such as Arabic, Chinese, or Cyrillic. This helps Internet users across the world and engage online using a domain name system entirely in their chosen language and script.

ICANN’s IDN program is primarily focused on the planning and implementation of IDN top-level domains (TLDs), including IDN country code TLDs and generic TLDs. The IDN Program also supports other activities geared toward a more effective use of IDNs at the second-level of the DNS.

ICANN also encourages Internet application developers to adopt best practices to achieve Universal Acceptance; a concept for Internet applications and systems to treat all TLDs, including IDN TLDs, in a consistent manner, so that users around the world can navigate entirely in local languages using familiar scripts.

Our work on IDNs also contribute to Action Line 8 of WSIS and to target 10.2, under Sustainable Development Goal 10 of the UN SDGs. We firmly believe that a multilingual Internet will foster the creation of local content in local languages, so there is more demand and more benefits on the ground, as the next billion users get connected to the Internet.

It is one of topics I will discuss in the Forum session When connectivity is not enough: driving meaningful digital inclusion, exploring how to improve access to broadband services and applications throughout the world at ITU Telecom World 2017 next week.

Because when we look ahead at the future of the Internet and connectivity, we know there are a host of challenges. At ICANN, we will do our part to help increase global Internet access by making the Internet more accessible in multiple languages around the world.

In medicine, vital signs (or simply “vitals”) represent the most critical indices of physiological function and life. The pulse tells the doctor that a patient’s heart is beating. Temperature indicates that homeostasis is stable. Respiratory rate confirms ongoing circulation of oxygen and carbon dioxide. And blood pressure signifies that vessels are receiving an adequate amount of energy and oxygen. Not only are these vitals important signs of life, they are also fairly easy to measure via hand or simple equipment.

In newborns, vitals can be a little harder to measure. For example, a proper reading of respiratory rate by observation of the rise and fall of the abdomen is problematic if the child is crying. Likewise, a pulse may not always be detected by a finger on the wrist. It is thus common practice that clinical caregivers wait for the newborn to be at rest or sleeping before taking its vitals. In the case of urgent disease diagnosis, the use of more complex and invasive methods for vitals measurement such as blood gas analysis may be necessitated.

In its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the UN identifies that infant mortality remains a grand challenge. Every year over 3 million infants die within the first month of life. The majority of the casualties occur in resource-poor regions of the world where the more sophisticated vitals measurement options are simply unavailable due to costly equipment and lack of skilled personnel, amongst other logistical factors. There is a critical need for diagnostic methods for newborns which address the challenges of cost and skill, yet lend themselves to early detection.

The cry is the most bounteous signal one could get from an infant. Presently, it already serves a number of vital purposes. At birth, the absence of a cry is usually a sign of intrapartum asphyxia. Post-birth, parents rely on the cry to know when the child is awake or requires attention. Over decades researchers across clinical domains have hypothesised that the infant cry holds a rich amount of information about its physiological well-being, chiefly because crying is the primary communication mechanism of the infant; and is a direct, unfiltered response to internal stimuli which the newborn has no control over. The particular connection between infant cry and breathing has also been identified due to the alignment between the physiological process that governs both.

Today, the fourth industrial revolution heralds technologies like artificial intelligence (machine learning, deep learning) and the Internet of Things (IoTs). These technologies are allowing us to sense, process and transform raw data into actionable knowledge in ways that were never possible before. AI technology can be developed to learn intricate patterns within the cry of an infant and automatically identify patterns which signal pathology (such as breathing difficulty). Deployed via mobile phones or wearables, this technology could dramatically improve how early we are able detect conditions affecting newborns. Insights generated will ensure that infants can be taken, early enough, for potentially life-saving care.

Ubenwa is a cry-based diagnostic app for birth asphyxia

Finally, harnessing the cry as a vital sign could give way to diagnostic methods that are affordable, non-invasive and requiring little or no expertise to use. In the long run, this will help reduce fast-rising healthcare costs in developed countries and also increase access to care in less-developed countries of the world.

Find out more on Ubenwa at the Nigerian National Pavilion at ITU Telecom World 2017 in Busan, Republic of Korea. Ubenwa have also entered the ITU Telecom World Awards at the event.

In fact, it already has started –  and has been running autonomously for over 8 years. It’s called Multi Agent System, one of the branches of AI. It has evolved rapidly into many different forms, but most impressively one of its forms is autonomous. It pays for itself, it lives independently, and the first successful implementation has been living on this planet for over 8 years now. Not only does it earn its living, it also incentivizes people to work for it.

For the very first time, we have an unstoppable autonomous living organism built by us, not owned by us but owned by itself. It currently consumes over $3Billion USD a year in resources, and many AI top global experts are starting to embrace and understand its autonomous nature. Initially, most of them did not think it was AI, or even take the time to understand it, maybe because it was not created in AI Labs or academia and didn’t evolve as an AI project, but rather through a series of organic evolutionary steps toward financial independence from third parties to reduce transactions frictions

The technology was built by elite cryptographers and computer scientists, game theorists and lawyers. Don’t let the name of this group name fool you into thinking it is lacking in sophistication. Cypherpunks created many versions of electronic decentralized value exchange systems until one took off: it’s called Bitcoin. Since then, it has created over 20 million jobs and is thought by many to be the start of the next major revolutionary innovation, bigger than the internet.

Now, it is about to get additional AI components and protocol upgrades, and will soon be living jointly on almost every electronic device, not necessarily in its current protocol but certainly in an evolved, efficient and scalable version. It may not be even called Bitcoin, but while the evolutionary steps are referred to as layer 2, layer 0, version 2.0, 8.8 or whatever it is called, the fact remains that the start of this revolutionary technology began with Bitcoin.

It will continue paying for itself and for the people working on it. Many refer to the same technology as blockchain. Currently, blockchain represents at the very least, a living proof of autonomous electronic life and independence. Like it or not, it will soon become the backbone of our entire financial system, real estate, internet, cybersecurity and anything of value to be exchanged or transmitted.

In its initial state, several components were missing, which are now in the process of being implemented to truly disrupt current systems by enabling efficient access to the emerging market for financial inclusion in a complete decentralized setting.

The three major components currently being implemented are:

1. True and immune decentralization. Most people on the planet do not have the capability to own large computers, servers or any of the existing sophisticated machinery to operate a node into the system, but they do have smartphones.
2. Scalable and Efficient. These two go hand in hand. Scalability needs to have a throughput of millions of transactions per second, on-chain. And the efficiency must be increased by a factor of 80 to 90 in order to be considered disruptive while run secure by design.
3. Open and unrestricted access to everyone on the planet, just like oxygen and water. People work for their money and must have full, uncensored and unrestricted access to their own money.

This technology could utilize servers, cloud or other servers but it must not depend on them, not in any shape or form. Decentralization is a cyber security feature and like any cyber security, it is only as good as its weakest link. So if the entire system depends on an elected group of nodes, the elector may even become corrupt and then we are back to square one. Blockchain, just like the Internet, will not and can not have any centralized elements that it depends on, or else it risks becoming an inferior intranet. However, it could certainly have peripheral systems such as tax and financial services. True decentralization must enable the entire system to be dependent only on what everyone has access to: smartphones, 10 seconds to install, nothing else.

• Toufi Saliba will be speaking at the sessions on The value of smart banking: the operational key to making smart cities work and Smart ABC: Digital Finance Roundtable at ITU Telecom World 2017