Trends Identified
India's take-off?
At US$2 trillion in value, India’s economy is one of the world’s great engines of growth. It stands poised to reap a demographic dividend: around half of India’s 1.2 billion people are under the age of 26, and by 2020, India is forecast to be the youngest country in the world. Crucially, PM Narendra Modi has embarked on structural reforms (such as demonetisation, goods and services tax reform) that could lay the foundation for long-term growth. India’s future may yet arrive
2017
Foresigth
Singapore, The Centre for Strategic Futures
The human cloud in the future of work
While the risk of job displacement due to advances in artificial intelligence and robotics preoccupies many commentators, another pressing problem deserves attention: the mismatch between workers’ skills and available work. If only employers and workers could connect across the barrier of geographical distance, perhaps this mismatch could ease. Could the “human cloud”—a global pool of skilled workers working remotely for employers and clients—be a solution?
2017
Foresigth
Singapore, The Centre for Strategic Futures
Growing healthy in a sluggish world
How can Singapore grow more dynamic and resilient as an economy, given concerns about sluggish global growth and the implications for Singapore.
2017
Foresigth
Singapore, The Centre for Strategic Futures
The rise of the sharing economy
As platforms for home sharing and ride sharing have grown popular, the Centre for Strategic Futures (CSF) has been exploring the sharing economy and its implications for Singapore.
2017
Foresigth
Singapore, The Centre for Strategic Futures
Who's afraid of artificial intelligence
After losing three games of Go to Google Deepmind’s AlphaGo, the world’s second-ranked Go player in 2016, Lee Sedol, said, “I will have to express my apologies first. I should have shown a better result, a better outcome.” While Lee was apologising for his play, many also understood his statement as an apology for the limits of human intelligence and the advent of a superior form—Artificial Intelligence (AI).
2017
Foresigth
Singapore, The Centre for Strategic Futures
Igniting the neuroscience economy
Imagine exploring one of the last frontiers of science: the more than 90 billion neurons that make up the human brain. What if a Google Maps of the brain existed and anyone could see “street views” of neural connections and explore the topography of neurons? This is what neural mapping hopes to achieve. Since they started in 2013, the US Human Connectome Project and the European Commission’s Human Brain Project have driven research about the brain’s circuitry—how the brain and thinking work. Such work has spurred innovative techniques, such as algebraic topology analysis, which uses complex algebra to explore the brain’s 3D structure.
2017
Foresigth
Singapore, The Centre for Strategic Futures
The death of ageing
The rich and powerful have long dreamt of the death of ageing, if not of outright immortality. There is now serious money in it. Anti-ageing startup Unity Biotechnology raised US$116 million in 2016 from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel and others to further its research in rejuvenation therapy and prevention of senescence (that is, wear and tear with age). Google-backed biotechnology company Calico and biopharmaceutical company AbbVie invested US$250 million each in 2014 to jointly develop drugs targeting diseases associated with old age.
2017
Foresigth
Singapore, The Centre for Strategic Futures
Feeding the future
How will the world feed a population projected to grow from 7.6 billion in 2017 to 9.8 billion in 2050? Climate change will accentuate weather volatility and the amount of arable land is projected to decline from 0.23 hectares per person in 2000 to 0.15 by 2050 due to environmentally unsound practices. Precision agriculture and biotechnology are promising solutions for achieving sustainable and stable food production. Reflecting this view, investment in agriculture technology grew, on average, 63% yearly from 2010–2015. In smart farms, moisture sensors in the soil are linked to the farm’s irrigation and humidity systems, while operations like weeding and harvesting are performed by agri-bots. With farming processes mirroring tightly-controlled factory operations, food production could become more stable, efficient and cost-effective.
2017
Foresigth
Singapore, The Centre for Strategic Futures
Satellites down
In August 2016, a 1-cm-wide man-made object collided with the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Sentinel 1A satellite, creating a 40-cm crater and a change in orbit. As more and more satellites are launched, the risks of space debris disabling satellites and disrupting navigation and communication systems will rise. Indeed, roughly one in ten functioning satellites in the Earth’s orbit had experienced collisions like that of the Sentinel 1A. The frequency of such collisions is rapidly increasing; it is predicted that over the next two decades, the average time interval between collisions could shrink from 10 years to just five.
2017
Foresigth
Singapore, The Centre for Strategic Futures
Climate winners and losers
Climate change is about more than melting icecaps and flooded coastal cities. Climate change action, or inaction, will affect which nations and economies become tomorrow’s economic and geopolitical winners and losers. Food production could shift. Canada, Siberia and potentially even parts of Antarctica could become more habitable and productive, while current bread-baskets in the US and China face increasing desertification and extreme weather.
2017
Foresigth
Singapore, The Centre for Strategic Futures