‘I love the techie apps for personal banking. I’m all for efficiency and multitasking’

Cyborgs, driverless cyber-psychologists, cars, organ printing and chips inserted into our fingertips to control our finances and devices... Sounds like science fiction – but all this will be showcased at the upcoming Tech Summit in Cork. GILLIAN BERGIN, director of it@ cork and co-lead for the summit, tells us about it – and her finances. So we have driverless cars, robojournalists, and robo-advisers… What next? Robocops? We’ve seen the movies. It never ends well. Should we lock ourselves indoors where we’ll be safe when the machines take over? Not at all. We should feel excited and liberated. We are living in such dynamic times when it comes to technological advancements – it’s exhilarating. We’ve experienced so much change and innovation in our lifetime and there is so much yet to come – personally, I wouldn’t want to miss it for the world. Seriously though… what is next? Chip & pin and tap-to-pay technology brings convenience into our lives. A few steps up from this are ‘smart implants’ (where a chip is implanted inside you rather than in your credit or debit card). We’ll have a live implant demonstration at the summit (placed in the tip of a finger). These implants allow people to pay for goods and services, start their cars, open doors. Who knows what’s next after that? Isn’t it getting a bit scary when we have cars zipping around with no one driving? Autonomous cars are actually safer than human drivers. They don’t text or drink-drive. Some form of driver error contributes to more than 90% of car crashes in the US. Organ printing and facial recognition will be discussed at the summit. Will we be able to print off a new kidney when we need one? Actually, yes. Axial3D are the innovators who 3D-printed an exact replica of a donor kidney, enabling surgeons in Belfast to successfully perform a complex and life-saving transplant on a 22-year old Belfast mother living with late stage kidney disease. It enabled them to operate with a level of knowledge-driven precision not seen before for this type of surgery. The facial recognition software developed by Prof. Paul Walsh and the artificial intelligence research team at CIT in Cork is built to recognise the onset of distress in people suffering from dementia, Alzheimer’s and stroke and take some action accordingly. But 10%- 15% of men (in particular) apparently drive for a living in some people way. in all Robots walks are of life. replacing Won’t we real all be redundant? Automation is not the enemy. The ICT industry creates hundreds of thousands of jobs worldwide every year. Look at how productive we could be if we could concentrate on other things instead of watching the road. Artificial intelligence is going to change the way we do business and our roles within the new landscape, but it’s up to us to ensure these changes disrupt our lives positively rather than negatively. How do you bank – high-tech I presume? I love the techie apps for personal finances. I’m all for speed, efficiency and multitasking, so if I can bank-onthe-go and apply for loans online, etc. I’m all for it. We can transfer funds using mobile money, tap-and-go card payments, and mobile credit checks. Soon, we won’t need to carry cash at all and our mobile phones become our wallets, driver’s licence, IDs, donor cards etc. Your best financial decision? Buying a house when I did. I wouldn’t like to be trying to do that now. Oddest impulse buy? A wheelchair on the internet for my great aunt. What would you do if minister? Enable all secondary schools to offer technology as a Leaving Cert subject. We welcome its introduction but it’s only one piece of a large puzzle. We must entice more school-leavers to the sector… but we need to engage them from an early age. We also need to place an even greater focus on attracting women and girls into tech. We’re seeing a greater percentage of females in the workforce, but it is still dominated by men and we need to balance this out.

The Tech Summit will be held in Cork on May 3 at Cork’s City Hall. See techsummit.ie for more information.