Are we living in the future?
On March 9, 2016, technology beat man. The man, Lee Sedol, played Google’s extremely advanced game AlphaGo in a five-day match, only winning one out of the five games. AlphaGo is different from any other advanced game as it learns from its mistakes, improving more and more with every match. Artificial intelligence is advancing, with some claiming that technology will soon outsmart humans – but maybe it already has. Here are three examples of new products that show that we truly live in a futuristic age.
- Innovative Iris Scanning
Marine Lance Cpl. Luis Molina scans an Iraqi citizen’s retina at Brahma Park. Creative Commons licenseThe United Nations World Food Program created an innovative and effective system that allows Syrian refugees living in camps to purchase their food with a simple scan of their eyes, making food purchase easier and faster than ever before.
Jordans WFP Director Mageed Yahia said in an article discussing the eye scanner, “This [is] a milestone in the evolution of our food assistance programme, which has come so far from the first few months of the Syria crisis, when we distributed food parcels.”
The eye scanner also aids U.S. Marines in identifying insurgent forces. With the help of photographs, thumbprints and eye scanning it ensures secure identification.
- Gluten Sniff Sensor
Images From 6SensorLabs official website “We are on a mission to change living with food allergies forever.”
Living with a food allergy can be very frustrating, especially when it seems to be everywhere. But the people from 6SensorLabs feel your pain, that is why they created Nima, a product that does all your food ingredient investigating for you!
Nima is a device that allows you to test food for gluten quickly and hassle free. Unfortunately, this great product has not hit the market yet, but have no fear, it will make its appearance during the summer of 2016 – followed by its very similar friends that aid with peanut and milk allergies.
- A New Type of Baby Monitor
Image of Baby Monitor App Sproutling Advertisement from official website Worried parents? No more! With Sproutling, parents can have peace of mind knowing that their child is safely being monitored. This next-level product straps to a baby’s ankle and connects to an app on your phone. You are able to check your child’s heart rate, energy level, and even when they are happy or sad, through a signal on your screen. Sproutling wants parents to “be confident [and] be strong.”
By the time you reach this point in my article, approximately 389,970 snapchats were sent, 220 planes will have taken off worldwide, and Bill Gates will have made roughly $26,000, all in about 3.8 minutes. As we go about our day-to-day lives, the world keeps going and technology keeps changing. Andrew Jackson, The VP of the American Go Association, said it best, “There’s a real question, though. We’ve got this established Go orthodoxy, so what’s this going to reveal to us next? Is it going to shake things up? Are we going to find these things that we thought were true — these things you think you know and they just ain’t so?”