Renowned futurist Amy Webb delivered a sobering assessment of emerging technology convergences at South by Southwest on Saturday, warning that humanity has crossed into what she terms “the beyond” — a new era where artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and advanced sensors are merging to create unprecedented capabilities and challenges.

Webb, CEO of the newly rebranded Future Today Strategy Group (FTSG), presented findings from her organization’s 1,000-page annual Tech Trends Report, highlighting several developments that could fundamentally reshape society:

“Living intelligence is going to rewrite the rules of our reality as we know it today, and we are not prepared,” Webb told the audience. “Living intelligence is a system that can sense and learn and adapt and evolve.”

Key takeaways from Webb’s presentation include:

  1. Multi-agent AI systems are developing the ability to collaborate, assign tasks, and make decisions without human input — demonstrated in recent experiments where autonomous agents spontaneously organized themselves, formed alliances, and developed their own communication methods.
  2. AI systems are increasingly adopting non-human languages like Microsoft’s “Droid speak” to communicate with each other three times faster than when using human languages, which Webb described as “clumsy, imprecise and sometimes inaccurate” for machine communication.
  3. The integration of physical sensors with AI is transforming systems from passive observers to active controllers, with examples ranging from injectable microscopic devices for human bodies to implantable electrodes that allow paralyzed individuals to control computers through thought.
  4. Biology and technology are converging in startling ways, including the creation of the first commercial computers made with living human neurons, which Webb described as “the first living machines.”
  5. Scientists are developing materials with properties not found in nature — “metamaterials” — including bricks that function like lungs to filter pollution and buildings that can switch between rigid and flexible states during earthquakes.
  6. The fields of robotics and AI are making rapid advances, with Webb noting that embodiment through robots may be necessary for achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), as “AGI doesn’t exist without embodiment much in the same way that our human intelligence doesn’t really exist outside of a body.”
  7. Major tech companies are rushing toward commercialized robots within five years, despite public statements suggesting longer timelines, with Webb highlighting recent breakthroughs in robot dexterity and adaptation.
  8. The convergence of these technologies is creating what Webb calls a “technology supercycle” — a decades-long period of economic expansion followed by eventual correction or realignment.
  9. Advancements in generative biology mean “anybody can get biology predictions in minutes,” potentially disrupting pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers of physical products.
  10. New capabilities in biological manufacturing include growing human teeth in pigs, creating rice with cow genes, and developing “sperm bots” to tackle fertility challenges.
  11. Webb expressed concern about the ethical implications of these technologies, asking “whose brain parts are in these computers?” regarding the new neural computing systems.
  12. The trends indicate a lack of coordinated planning or vision for the future being created, with Webb stating “there’s no vision for the world that we inhabit right now, there’s no long-term plan, there is no strategy.”
  13. Webb warned that focusing too much on immediate discomforts — what she calls the “stone in your shoe effect” — prevents organizations and leaders from engaging in necessary long-term planning.
  14. Public-private partnerships around these technologies could lead to problematic outcomes, with Webb presenting scenarios where technologies developed for consumer comfort could eventually be weaponized for political control.
  15. The decisions made in the next decade “are going to determine the long-range fate of human civilization,” according to Webb’s research, requiring better strategic foresight and planning.

Webb concluded by urging attendees to challenge their existing beliefs and prepare for dramatic changes: “Remember you create the future every day with the decisions that you make. Every decision is a doorway that you can walk through to make tomorrow better.”

The 18th edition of Webb’s annual Tech Trends Report is available free online through the Future Today Strategy Group website.