IBM has unveiled the innovations it believes will change our lives the most over the next five years, and they're all related to the very things keeping us alive: food and water.
To meet the demands of what it calls ‘growing global populations and already stressed food and water ecosystems’, IBM researchers around the globe have been working on five new AI technologies it thinks will ‘dramatically transform the food supply chain’.
Announcing the “5 in 5” new bits of tech on stage at a Science Slam event at IBM's Think conference in San Francisco, California on Wednesday, Arvind Krishna, senior vice president of IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software, said: ‘Within the next five years, the Earth's population will cross the eight billion mark for the first time. Our complex food supply chain - already stressed by climate change and a finite water supply - will only be tested further’.
Here are the 5 ‘innovations of the future' unveiled by IBM at the event:
1) From seed: Digital twin
Using AI, IBM will capture all data aspects of agriculture - from the quality of the soil to the skills of the tractor driver to the price of melons sold at the market - known as a “digital twin”. This will help to accurately forecast crop yields, which in turn will give banks and financial institutions the data points they need to provide credit to help farmers maximise their yields.
2) To harvest: Blockchain
Using blockchain, IBM said it will get rid of many of the costly unknowns in the food supply chain and prevent more food from going to waste, with every participant in the grocery supply chain knowing exactly how much to plant, order, and ship. ‘Food loss will diminish greatly and the produce that ends up in consumers' carts will be fresher when blockchain technology, IoT devices, and AI algorithms join forces’, IBM claimed.
3) To shelf: Microbiome mapping
The third food tech innovation IBM put forward was the ability to use millions of microbes to protect what we eat. The new technique uses DNA and RNA [ribonucleic acid] sequencing powered by big data analytics and will enable the analysis of their genetic make-up in a more cost-effective way, meaning they will tell us a lot about the safety of what we consume.
4) To table: Food-detecting AI sensors
IBM said it's also en route to developing tech that the world's farmers, food processors, and grocers - along with billions of home cooks - can use to detect dangerous contaminants in their food. Using a mobile phone or a countertop with sensors, IBM showed off a prototype where portable sensors can detect food-borne pathogens within produce.
‘These mobile bacteria sensors could dramatically increase the speed of a pathogen test from days to seconds’, IBM claimed. ‘Allowing individuals up and down the food chain to detect the existence of harmful E.coli or Salmonella before it becomes an outbreak’.
5) To trash: VolCat
The last innovation talked up on stage was the transformation of rubbish disposal and the creation of new plastics. Everything from milk cartons to cookie containers to grocery bags and cheese cloths will be made recyclable, with polyester manufacturing companies able to take in refuse and turn it into something useful.
This transition, IBM claimed, will be powered by an innovation called VolCat, a catalytic chemical process that digests certain plastics called polyesters into a substance that can be fed directly back into plastic manufacturing machines in order to make new products.
‘Our researchers inspire us to imagine what else could be possible five years from now. When the eight billionth person is born on Earth, she will enter a world more connected, more interdependent and more responsive to change than the one her parents ever imagined. This is the future that awaits us all’, Krishna concluded*.
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*Article taken from: https://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/3071065/ibm-reveals-top-five-tech-that-will-transform-the-world-in-the-next-five-years