Today, semiconductors exist inside smartphones and servers. In the future, however, this may be reversed.

Rather than computers containing humans, it will become a world in which humans live inside spaces surrounded by semiconductors.

For example,

・Walls recognize the environment

・Desks process information

・Windows become communication nodes

・Floors perform personal authentication

・Clothing analyzes health conditions

Every object in the city becomes a computing node, and the world itself becomes a giant computer.

We will shift from an era of owning computers to an era of living inside the computer.

Today, humans extend their knowledge with smartphones and the cloud.

In the future, however, this relationship may become even closer.

・Brain-signal interfaces

・Retinal projection displays

・Always-connected AI

・Biosensors

When these technologies are integrated, humans will have another intelligence outside themselves.

For example,

・Instantly understanding unfamiliar languages

・Making complex judgments together with AI

・Recalling past memories from external storage

・Constantly predicting future risks

Human intelligence will function not only through the individual brain but as a collective of humans + AI + semiconductors.

Even today, AI is used in part of semiconductor design.

In the future, however, this relationship may advance even further.

AI will

・Design circuits

・Select materials

・Optimize structures

・Adjust manufacturing processes

And the chips that run that AI will also be designed by AI itself.

Once this loop starts to turn,

AI → semiconductor design → new AI chips → even more advanced AI: a self-evolving technology loop will be formed.

The role of humans will change from that of designers to one that sets the direction.

Today’s computers are built around high-performance single chips.

In the future, however, they may become structures in which hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of small computing units are dynamically combined within a network.

Features:

・Computing nodes gather only when needed

・Overheated nodes automatically shift their load

・The swarm as a whole compensates for failed parts

・The system structure is constantly changing

Semiconductors will become not fixed machines but an autonomously reconfiguring intelligent network.

When semiconductors and AI are deeply embedded in social infrastructure, a city will no longer be merely a collection of buildings.

For example,

・Optimizing traffic flow in real time

・Predicting disaster risks

・Controlling power consumption at the city level

・Automatically coordinating logistics and medical care

The city will evolve from mere infrastructure into a giant decision-making system.

The city will change from a place into an entity that thinks.

As memory technology evolves, the meaning of data storage will also change.

In the future, things such as

・Personal behavior histories

・Decision-making patterns

・Values

・Emotional responses

may be stored as long-term data.

Semiconductors will become not devices that store files, but devices that store fragments of personality.

For example,

・AI that reproduces past decisions

・AI that passes on an organization’s knowledge

・Dialogue models that reproduce the thought patterns of the deceased

may appear.

Future competition between nations will not be decided by territory or population alone.

What will matter is

・Semiconductor manufacturing capacity

・AI infrastructure

・Data

・Computing power

Just like energy and resources, computing power will become the foundation of national security.

Semiconductor factories will be treated not merely as industrial facilities but as national infrastructure.

As AI and semiconductors become more advanced, the structure of companies will also change.

In future companies, a structure in which

・AI designs

・AI procures

・AI optimizes production

・AI performs market analysis

may become common.

In an extreme future,

a company of one human + hundreds of AIs could also exist.

A company will become not a human organization but an intelligent network.

In future manufacturing, factories may have the following capabilities.

・Learning product designs

・Automatically adjusting manufacturing conditions

・Self-correcting quality problems

・Autonomously optimizing equipment

In other words,

the loop of design → manufacturing → quality → improvement will turn in real time.

The factory will become a self-evolving intelligent system.

The more technology advances, the more human evolution may split into two directions.

One is the intelligence augmentation type.

Through AI and semiconductors,

・Humans whose knowledge, memory, and judgment are augmented.

The other is the return to humanity type.

The stronger AI becomes, the more human values such as

・Nature

・Physicality

・Art

・Handcraft

will be reappraised.

The more technology advances, the stronger the question of what it means to be human will become.

When semiconductors spread throughout society, one of the industries that will change the most is agriculture. Today’s agriculture depends heavily on weather, experience, and intuition.

In the future, however, agriculture may change into a global-scale data industry.

Countless sensors will be embedded in fields, constantly measuring

・Soil moisture

・Microorganisms

・Nutrient status

・Temperature

・Sunlight

In addition, by combining

・Drones

・Agricultural robots

・AI weather forecasting

・Autonomous tractors

agriculture will become a fully data-driven production system.

In future agriculture, farmers will be closer to engineers who design ecosystems than to people who till the fields.

For example, a world will emerge in which

・AI proposes the optimal crops

・Seeding positions are controlled to the centimeter

・Harvest timing is predicted with climate models

・Microbial environments are designed to maximize yield

Meanwhile, even more extreme forms of agriculture will emerge in cities.

・Plant factories using only artificial light

・Underground farming

・Offshore farms

・High-rise building farms

Food production may change from an industry left to nature into an environmental control industry powered by semiconductors and AI.

Fishing itself may change significantly.

As ocean sensors, ocean current prediction, autonomous fishing vessels, and underwater drones become widespread, the location of fish schools will become predictable with fairly high accuracy.

In future fishing,

・AI predicts fish schools

・Autonomous vessels do the fishing

・The marine environment is monitored

and this kind of fully data-driven fishing may become mainstream.

However, the opposite phenomenon may also occur here.

When technology advances too far, people will probably come to seek “uncertain experiences” instead.

For example, primitive-style fishing such as

・Fishing without fish-finding AI

・Fishing with sensors prohibited

・Fishing by natural intuition alone

may come to have value.

In other words, in the future,

・AI fishing

・Human fishing

will coexist.

The more semiconductors spread to every corner of society,

the more people may, conversely, come to seek time to face nature directly.

The vision of the future presented so far is quite bold.

That is because we tried to put into words the images of the future depicted in films set beyond 2050 and in Doraemon.

However, no matter how far the future advances, the following technologies will always become the issue in the end.

・How to dissipate heat

・How to suppress electromagnetic noise

・How to stack materials

・How to process at the μm level

・How to ensure reliability

The semiconductor society of the future will be built on both cutting-edge theory and unglamorous processing technology.

In other words, future technology will always come back, in the end, to materials, processing, and assembly technology.

If we did not think this way, manufacturing would lose its dreams, and a world without dreams could never go well.

 

Column Supervisor: Koji Kakumoto (President, OTIS Co., Ltd.)

After studying abroad and working in planning and development at a trading company, he joined OTIS Co., Ltd. in 2011. While primarily working in the Corporate Planning Department, he has also served concurrently in manufacturing and technical divisions, and since 2018 has served as President, working to drive business growth and strengthen the organization.

 

This article is a general technical explanation intended for educational purposes and does not refer to any specific company, product, or technology.