Weekly Business Insights from Top Ten Business Magazines
Extractive summaries and key takeaways from the articles curated from TOP TEN BUSINESS MAGAZINES to promote informed business decision-making | Since 2017 | Week 364 | August 30-September 5, 2024
Digital twins are fast becoming part of everyday life
The Economist | August 29, 2024
Extractive Summary of the Article | Listen
When visiting a doctor a few years from now, you can expect to be accompanied by a virtual version of yourself. This so-called digital twin will be a working model of your body that can be summoned onto a physician’s computer screen. Updated with your latest vital signs, it will help the doctor make an accurate diagnosis. It also opens the door for medicines and procedures designed specifically for you, greatly increasing recovery rates.
As the Economist Science & technology section reports, digital twins are starting to pop up everywhere. Among other things, they monitor the health of jet engines on airliners, keep track of Uber’s network of vehicles and replicate Amazon’s extensive supply chain well enough for the online retailer to accurately forecast sales several years ahead. They are helping local authorities respond to the effects of flooding and letting carmakers shave years off the development of new models by simulating test drives and crashes. Twins are also being developed to help manage factories, companies and entire cities. All this is being turbo-charged by recent progress in artificial intelligence (ai), which gives twins the ability to make predictions about their physical counterparts, and fine-tune themselves on new data.
Digital twins began as basic computer models of physical objects and systems. The use of ai takes all this much further, allowing virtual models to become more sophisticated, and to both simulate and optimise activities in the real world. You may worry that this portends a dystopian future.
Reality is more prosaic. The idea of creating symbolic representations of real-world things is centuries old. Today’s digital twins extend this process, making it easier for humans to tackle complex problems. They can act as virtual crystal balls, allowing people to peer into the future, spot problems before they materialise and test wild ideas without real-world consequences. For businesses, this should mean better designs, more streamlined operations and fewer costly blunders. For society, the promise is equally tantalising: personalised health care, cities that flow and breathe more easily and, thanks to the threats exposed by climate modelling, clues as to how the planet might avoid environmental catastrophe. Digital twins offer the ultimate sandbox in which castles can be built and tested before being made real.
Could these virtual doppelgangers go rogue? They might if they are programmed badly, or hacked into. Such concerns need to be considered, as in the current debate over the use of ai. The emergence of the digital mirror world will doubtless raise new questions, but its potential advantages are already plain to see.
3 key takeaways from the article
- When visiting a doctor a few years from now, you can expect to be accompanied by a virtual version of yourself. This so-called digital twin will be a working model of your body that can be summoned onto a physician’s computer screen. Updated with your latest vital signs, it will help the doctor make an accurate diagnosis. It also opens the door for medicines and procedures designed specifically for you, greatly increasing recovery rates. Digital twins are starting to pop up everywhere.
- Digital twins began as basic computer models of physical objects and systems. The use of ai takes all this much further, allowing virtual models to become more sophisticated, and to both simulate and optimise activities in the real world.
- Could these virtual doppelgangers go rogue? They might if they are programmed badly, or hacked into. Such concerns need to be considered.
(Copyright lies with the publisher)
Topics: Humans & Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Twins, Risk