TECH ADVANCEMENTS, THREATS & OPPORTUNITIES LUNCHEON

LUNCHEON SPEAKER ADAM BENGTSON’S SPEECH

BRINGS THE FUTURE “CLOSER THAN IT APPEARS”

In September, we had a speaker whom everyone loved who educated us about the “dark net” and other fraudulent practices. Last week, we had Adam Bengtston of Endorse Communications take it a step further. Based on comments we heard afterwards, people we left in awe of what is happening all around us right now, not just in the future. Adam spoke of the technilogical curve where every two years, technology doubles. Robots within 4 years will equal humans in knowledge and by 2050, equal the knowledge of the entire human race. All of us were stunned when he showed photo after photo of people only to learn not one of them were real but all computer generated. Even President Obama spoke only for us to learn that everything he said before our eyes, he never actually spoke but was computer generated. Amazing how we will never believe what we see anymore. He demonstrated google assist actually having a full conversation with customers that fooled us all. He went on about driverless Waymo Google cars already on the streets of Phoenix, Kroeger’s Grocery delivering driverless groceries right now, Uber Elevate pilotless drones carrying us like a taxi over traffic in the air, Elon Musk Space X to anywhere in the world within 20 minutes and not longer than an hour.

Adam dove deeper into changes in energy, battery low costs, connectivity etc. We were amused at all the changes the last few years looking back as it hasn’t been long since Blockbuster and Blackberry. He ended a great informative presentation about what each of us can do, right now today in our homes and businesses to protect ourselves and our customers. We all wished there was more time for Adam as he opened eyes right down to details such as the loss of city revenue for example in driverless cars that can’t speed, get a DUI or the use and abuse of each of our DNA. He made clear that the changes are already here and we all need to know them, be able to see what is a threat and what is a golden opportunity as well.

Adam we might note is not only brilliant, but he has built Artificial Intelligence for Apple Valley Chamber’s website as well as for our CVB (Tourism site) which we also operate. You may know Adam also as the person who wrote the code and operates our entire Gala Cellphone Auction for three years now and he was also President of Bloomington Chamber of Commerce for half a decade. If you were not there, you missed a great one.