The emerging technologies in science and tech that the UK can capitalise on

What is really going to change the world in tech? We're now living in a world in which a lot of our day-to-day tasks are being done by technology. In this video, Mike Lynch discusses the impact that advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and personalised medicine are having on peoples' lives, commerce and the economy.

Mike Lynch: “One of the phrases that you can't avoid now if you read the paper is Artificial Intelligence. A lot of what is out there is not very well informed extrapolation. But putting that aside, underneath that there is something absolutely fundamental that is going to change most aspects of our world."

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What are the emerging technologies in science and tech on which the UK can capitalise?

Well, it's always difficult predicting what's going to completely change the world in tech; that's the wonderful thing about it. But what you can do is look at where the significant changes have happened that have actual impact on peoples' lives and commerce and the economy. And one of the phrases that you can't avoid now if you read the paper is Artificial Intelligence. A lot of what is out there is not very well informed extrapolation. But putting that aside, underneath that there is something absolutely fundamental that is going to change most aspects of our world. So, if you put it in the grand scheme of thing, we saw the effect of the industrial revolution where we saw machine replace muscle. There was actually another which was around the end of the late 60s where we got machines to do tasks that were simple and repetitive, so you know the whole IT industry – a computer can add up the payroll, but what it can't do is deal with more subtle, complex ideas, and so those tasks have always been done by people, well suddenly we've had some really fundamental breakthroughs with the technology, and now we're seeing a world where a lot of those tasks will be done with technology and they bring some of the advantages that machines have: they can look at vast amounts of information in one go, they can carry on and not get bored, they can go to places that people can't, and so that is going to change pretty much everything. There will be some false starts, there will be some over-promising, but we are at a period of incredible change.

And then in other areas, and you know these things are interdependent, sometimes it's the AI that allows you to make a breakthrough somewhere else and things like that, but you know, genetics is another one – the ability to understand and manipulate genetics is going to affect medicine at a level that we have never seen before. At the moment our whole concept of medicine tends to be about the idea of cohorts, and the idea that everyone is going to react in a fairly similar way to something. Well, a completely radical idea now is personalised medicine. The idea that actually the outcome for a medical intervention is going to be highly personalised, and genetics is a key driver of that, and what's called epigenetics which is another related area. So those are two very fundamental examples there – one on the IT side, one on the biological side. That's before we start looking at the Dark Horses – so one area for example is quantum processing, now this is a more interesting one. The first two that I have spoken about are definitely here and now, that we are at the beginning of those. Quantum is one of those things where, we're not quite sure if we're there yet, but if we are it is a phenomenal change. So, for example it will affect all sorts of areas like security and cyber security, but it will also affect computing in a fundamental way – you will be able to do things you just couldn't do before. So, it's a rather unique time in human history, you've suddenly got this almost singularity in terms of technological change – things are coming together. So, what that means is that it is very difficult to predict where things are going, but you know where you have to have something in the game.