HONG KONG SAR - Media OutReach - 3 January 2023 - With several global crises occupying our daily lives, it's important to see where we can use technology to solve these hard human problems. Today, we have more access to data from wearables, medical devices, environmental sensors, video capture, and other connected devices than we have had at any point in the past. When combined with cloud technologies—like computer vision, machine learning, and simulation—we are starting to get a glimpse of where that powerful blend of information and application can take us. The next wave of innovators and inventors—a few of whom I was fortunate to have met while filming Now Go Build—are already building solutions to reforest the planet, keep our youth active, and re-imagine the supply chain from the warehouse to delivery. And this is truly just the beginning. As access to advanced technology becomes even more ubiquitous—as every facet of life becomes data that we can analyze—we will see a torrent of innovation, and this will proliferate in 2023. Prediction 1: Cloud technologies will redefine sports as we know them Like music and video, sports will become data streams that we can analyze. The insights that these will unlock in the coming years will transform the entire sports industry and redefine what it means to play—and experience—every game. Sports are part of the human fabric. They transcend time, cultures, and physical borders. At this moment, one of the largest sporting events in the world is happening—the World Cup. An estimated 5 billion people are expected to watch. Until now, broadcast television has had the biggest impact on the evolution of professional sports, paving the way for what is today a $500 billion industry. The next game-changing technology advancements are on the horizon. In the coming years, every facet of every sport will undergo a digital transformation, and this will happen at every level of play, from youth basketball to professional cricket. Companies like Veo are leading this charge, making use of cloud technologies like machine learning, computer vision, and stream processing, to narrow the digital divide between amateur and professional athletes. While Veo has created a broadcast-like experience for viewers of amateur sports, it has also built a deep neural network that allows it to automatically create highlights from video streams. This allows players, coaches, and recruiters to easily find key plays, improve tactics, and share all of that in ways that simply weren't possible before. As technologies like Veo become more widely used across all levels of all sports, imagine what comes next. Top leagues, like the Bundesliga and the NFL, have started using video streams, wearables, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, and more for real-time analytics and insights. Looking ahead, these capabilities will continue to advance, and the technologies will become an omnipresent force in nearly every sport, at every level. Imagine a scenario where a coach can use computer vision and biometric data that is analyzed in the cloud in real time to pull a player before they cramp or concede a goal, replacing them with the most well-rested teammate, something now quantifiable. This simultaneously improves player safety and increases the game's competitiveness. At this point, the sports themselves will truly start to become a data stream that we can analyze and make decisions on in real time—player hydration, ball movement, field saturation—all of it, aggregated and richer than anything we see today. And with more data comes further innovation. In the not-so-distant future, we will reach a point where teams are running constant "what-if" simulations in the background during every game, enabling them to better predict the impact of their decisions in the moment. Technology itself will become the competitive foundation for professional sports. Whether in person or on a screen, the fan experience will also change. Stadiums will rapidly adopt some of the innovations that we've seen in industries like retail, such as Amazon Go stores, where the use of computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning will enable ticketless entry and grab-and-go purchasing. We will also start to see the next generation of data overlays and real-time insights that go down to the player level, augmenting the game and bringing sports closer to what we expect in the most visually informative video games today. Co-viewing and personalized viewing experiences will continue to evolve, more closely connecting those 5 billion viewers than ever before. The sports world is currently on the verge of the biggest revolution it has ever seen, and cloud technologies are at the center of this change. Prediction 2: Simulated worlds will reinvent the way we experiment Spatial computing. Simulation. Digital twins. These technologies have been slowly maturing for years, but the...