Tech start-ups to dominate in AI-driven "mirror world": futurist writer

Mixed Reality (MR) glasses and the AI-powered "mirror world" will create all kinds of new products and services and start-ups that will outshine the existing tech giants and become the dominant players in this arena, renowned "digital prophet" Kevin Kelly told China Central Television (CCTV).

On April 20, 1994, China achieved a fully functional connection to the Internet, becoming the 77th country to access it. Three decades on, the country has nearly 1.1 billion internet users and witnessed a rapid rise in digital prowess.

CCTV invited Kelly, a visionary tech writer who has multiple successful predictions about technological trends in his book "Out of Control" published 30 years ago to share his insights into the future of digital technologies such as AI.

Kelly predicts that MR glasses will be the next big thing after the phone, envisioning a "mirror world" that will be a virtual replica of the physical world.

"The mirror world, let me explain what it is. The mirror world is a digital twin of the real world at the same scale. So in theory, we'll eventually have a version of this room, and we'll be able to see the room at the same scale. And it’ll have everything in it, the bookcases, and the table, and lights, and maybe even avatars of people. You can have smart glasses, you can have an iPad, you can have telepresence. There are lots of ways to view it, meaning that the AIs can read it, the AIs can understand it, and that's really, really big," Kelly said.

The futurist believes humanity will take a big step forward in the path from digitalizing information in documents to digitalizing the whole world, which will create a great many new jobs and products.

"Thousands of startups and jobs will come from that. Millions of people will be able to work with that digital version of the world, and all kinds of new products and services will come from it. Just like when we first digitized all the information in all the documents, that was Google and Baidu. Then you had all these services that you could get to once you had everything digitized. Well, with all the information digitized now, we're digitizing the real world. That's bigger," he said.

Kelly noted that the winner in this race will not be established companies such as Apple and Microsoft.

"I would be shocked if Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft was either the leader in AI or in the mirror world arena. The advantage is to the startups. So there will be a startup in the MR, mirror world. Facebook and Google and Apple are not going to be the dominant players," he said.

As the world sets its sights on next-generation 6G technology, Kelly said the communication base for a "mirror world" could be 10G, suggesting that there is still a long way to go to see that scenario.

"I think you need 10G. The amount of data that when you have millions of people sharing the world in three dimensions, volumetric, and AI processing, the scale is so, so huge. So, that's why it's going to take a while," said the writer.

Tech start-ups to dominate in AI-driven "mirror world": futurist writer

Serbia's cooperation with China has been the best as the two countries enjoy rock solid friendship and trust, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's upcoming state visit to the European country.

The Serbia president made the remarks in an exclusive interview with the China Central Television (CCTV) in Belgrade on Wednesday.

Vucic hailed the real friendship between Serbia and China.

"That time we were discovering each other. Now we know that there is a real friendship that's been established. Since then, we developed substantive trust between the top leadership of both countries. But I believe that there is a big change. We have never had anything against Chinese, never, ever. But now we like and we love Chinese people here, and we have nothing bad to say about our cooperation with China and Chinese state and Chinese people," he said.

"There were thousands of attempts from outside of the country in order to persuade us, to convince us that taking loans from China will create a dubious situation for fiscal systems of Serbia. But as you can see, an average public debt to GDP ratio in Europe now is 89.5 percent. And in Serbia it's 47 percent. We have no problems. We have always been cooperating in a very best manner with China," said the president.

The Serbian president hopes that more Chinese people will come to visit the country to better understand it.

"Apart from creating this trust and confidence in each other's decisions, in each other behavior within international public political arena. We developed our economic ties, trade ties and now it's time to go to another stage, a strategic partnership or how do we see a common future together. And at the same time, it's a also about people connecting to each other. That is, I believe, our task. And we expect more Chinese people to come to Serbia. I believe they feel at home here, and we like them and hope that this will bring more initiatives, different kind of initiatives, more businesses, more tourists, more people that would get to know many things about Serbia, Belgrade's history," said Vucic.

Xi will pay state visits to France, Serbia and Hungary from May 5 to 10.

Serbian president sees cooperation with China as best amid rock solid friendship, trust