Exploring "Living Intelligence," a Merging of AI, Sensors, and Biotech

At this year's South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, Future Today Strategy Group founder and CEO Amy Webb unveiled a fascinating emerging trend in her highly anticipated annual report. The technology is called "Living Intelligence," or LI.

This cutting-edge field represents the convergence of artificial intelligence, sensor technology, and biotechnology. For investors looking beyond the quarterly hype cycle, this emerging sector could represent significant long-term opportunities.

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Some well-known companies will likely be a part of this trend, such as Nvidia, whose Jetson platform is a key part of the AI revolution. But according to Webb and her colleague Nick Bartlett, forward-thinking investors should also be looking beyond established players to smaller companies pioneering breakthrough technologies in this space. Webb also suggests looking at smaller players in biotech, advanced sensors, and component suppliers rather than focusing solely on giants like Taiwan Semiconductor.

In the video interview below with Motley Fool analyst Rex Moore, Webb and Bartlett delve deeper into how power requirements represent both a challenge and opportunity in the Living Intelligence landscape.

A full transcript follows the video.

Transcript:

Amy Webb: Living intelligence is an emerging very, very early days, emerging area of science and technology that describes the interplay between artificial intelligence and sensor technology and biotechnology. And together this forms a new system of continual data ingestion, decision making and action.

Rex Moore: Okay, so, Nick, how do we how can we tell which companies have that vision and are looking at companies that are preparing for LI?

Nick Bartlett: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, the organizations that are most focused on the future are the ones that are not getting caught up in next quarter's hype. They are, you know, we talk a lot, Amy mentioned you on the stone shoe. We see a lot of companies that are particularly in, like, financial services and thinking about investments.

They become very reactive to what's going on. And if we get them focused on, you know, those upcoming advancements, maybe things that are going on in the academic fields or, you know, different types of advancements that are happening in scientific laboratories rather than just pushing out the next product or service. Folks that can partner with those types of organizations are really going to be the ones that are set up to, to benefit the most in the future.

Rex Moore: And we're not giving investment advice here, obviously. But you have you seen examples of companies that have that kind of foresight?

Amy Webb: There's a brand new company. So again, we're not making investment advice here. There's a brand new company called Cortical Labs, which is. And, Australia, which is a company that created the world's first bio hybrid computer. So this is a computer that is part silicon, part human brain. So they have built and grown human neurons into hardware, which and in the process created even a new operating system called Bios, which is biologically inspired.

So Cortical Labs, right now, this is a computer that is about $35,000, and you have to get on a list to get one. So this isn't mass market yet, but it is a huge sign of things that are to come. And cortical is at the center of that. So another company called Final Spark, which was built a sort of cloud computing platform for living intelligence.

And then of course, I would look at companies like Nvidia who, you know, investors have a little patience. Nvidia is a company that is building, the next generation of compute for embodied AI, which is a part of living intelligence. So these are the systems that will go into robots, that will start to see coming out.

But the platform is called Jetson. And we'll see more of that, you know, this summer and into the fall.

I would look very closely at those companies, and there are, like, now is a good time for investors to be looking, as Nick said, not at the established bigwigs and the big players, but rather all of these smaller companies that have had, you know, robotic, have had biotech, have had all of these different ideas brewing.

But there was some missing piece that just wasn't there yet. So living intelligence is now the missing piece that helps a lot of these start to, to, to to launch and to scale. So I would be looking at the smaller players for right now in biotech, advanced sensors, not TSMC, but like all the ancillary companies in the ecosystem. And there's a lot.

Nick Bartlett: I would add I think there's a great opportunity here to think about who the suppliers are going to be as well, just like we've seen with every other industry. Sometimes the best players with a smaller like unheard of companies that are, you know, building other components that go into some items like this. And one of the big things I think to consider now with living intelligence is, is battery life.

So as we see all of these things start to unfold, how are we going to be able to power some of these devices, whether they be wearables or, you know, we've talked about vehicles and robotics. There's a great company called Exeger that is creating flexible solar panels that they have actually found ways to put them on, like headphones.

So you could theoretically have unlimited energy, powering those headphones. And if you think about transitioning that to something like robotics, or even solar vehicles, you can now start to see that you can power these devices almost infinitely, as long as they have some exposure to, like, you know, UV rays.

Amy Webb: That's that's a really good point, because if anybody remembers the original Google Glass that came out, these were the, they look like a Star Trek headband with a tiny piece of, of, plastic. I remember people seeing, like they were wearing them all day long. That thing had a battery life of 30 minutes. Now, if you think about robots, robots require significantly more power than a tiny little Google Glass device.

So, as Nick said, if you, you know, one of the things that has held back robotics isn't just the lack of embodiment. So the lack of context for the world around them. It's also battery life. You know, you can't have a robot meant to do different things and then sort of power off. And then in the middle of making dinner or whatever it is that you want the robot to do.

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Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Rex Moore has positions in Alphabet and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Nvidia, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.