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130 Artificial Intelligence for the Internet of Everything

7.5.5 Changing Roles of Stakeholders
We expect that the large-scale automation described in this chapter will have
a significant impact on the participants of WSE.
Prediction 1. The web of smart entities will have a transformative effect
on its stakeholders.
Consider an application that manages a person’s health. It ensures that we
live our lives within scientifically based parameters. One may wish to call
such an application the “guardian angel” app. Knowing that such an appli-
cation provides a kind of safety net, it is not unreasonable to assume that
many people will live their lives to the fullest; i.e., they will “die with their
boots on.” At the very least, automating the management of health will
enable people to live longer, more productive and, hopefully, happier lives.
In this context, such health management applications would be able to make
the necessary health-care appointments for those people who are reluctant to
visit doctors, and as such may bring about a situation in which illnesses are
diagnosed early, before they become terminal. Equally beneficial, such
applications may be able to identify mentally disturbed people and offer
or make them seek help long before they become a danger to themselves
or society.
Health-care providers, such as general practitioners, will likely see their
roles transform from a service provider that patients seek to individuals who
will manage and fine-tune a patient’s health. Similarly, people will likely
have personal trainers who fine-tune their exercise regimens and personal
dietitians who fine-tune their diets beyond what big-data might do for them.
On the subject of diets, we imagine that cook-book authors may transform
from writers who cook to consultants for people who like to cook. In order
to better manage mental health, we see life coaches as becoming a staple in
people’s lives, someone who will not just give advice on living life to the
fullest, but who may fine-tune personal calendars to eliminate stresses and
replace them by leisure activities.
We can see insurance companies as transforming into businesses that ulti-
mately manage and determine what people can and cannot do for some cost.
Perhaps it is not a black-and-white decision, rather a spectrum of choices
that people may make. Perhaps it depends on agreed-upon standards of care
or even agreed-upon risk a person wishes to assume.
In this context, we hope that we have outlined scenarios that either
change people’s jobs for the better or generate additional forms of
employment.