I grew up watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. By then, The Original Series was on re-runs and seemed hokey in comparison. Picard is my captain. The world of the 24^th century really captivated my imagination as a child.

I’ve rewatched the series recently, and in my opinion, it’s stood up to the test of time. Of course, that may be my childhood nostalgia talking, but I’m sticking with it.

Most of the science in Star Trek remains Science Fiction, but there’s one technology that is starting to become defictionalized. Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence have started to resemble one technology in the Star Trek world: the ship’s computer. There’s still a gap, but I have a line of sight to it closing most of the way in the next few years.

The computer on the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D

There are some differences between the computer in THE Enterprise, and the computer in YOUR enterprise, but increasingly fewer and fewer.

Firstly, it’s referred to as “the” computer. Singular. As in, they only have one. Many enterprises have tens of thousands of computers (servers) and thousands of discrete applications.

All of that siloed data and functionality can make it hard for enterprises to do what they want to do. Therefore, it’s become a common practice to build enterprise data lakes that contain all the enterprise data, and companies build AI capabilities on top of that.

Now that’s getting closer to what I’m talking about.

The Enterprise computer has a natural language interface

Picard talked to the computer. He didn’t use a keyboard and mouse.

We’ve had the likes of Siri and Alexa for a while, but only recently with the advent of LLMs can AI systems really speak our language. Today, you can talk to an LLM with nearly the simplicity and confidence of Picard on the bridge.

The Enterprise computer knows everything

It didn’t matter if the subject was history, literature, biology, science, engineering, culture, or anything else, the Enterprise computer had all human knowledge contained within it. Back in 1987, that was real Science Fiction. Today’s LLMs are trained on the whole of the internet and can retrieve in real-time anything it doesn’t already know.

Now, our current conundrum is, at times, the questionable quality of the information from the internet on which it was trained, but hopefully we’ll work that out over time.

The Enterprise computer knows what’s happening on the ship

It provides real-time damage assessments, security altering, engineering diagnostics, and life support system maintenance.

This is possible for modern enterprises, but it currently takes a lot of work. All of the real-time telemetry for the organization needs to be streamed into the data lake where it’s centrally available for AI to retrieve. Imagine asking the AI for an analysis for your current company performance, instead of paging through various reports. It’s possible today.

The Enterprise computer knows what’s happening in the environment around it

The Enterprise is equipped with short and long range sensors. It can automatically identify and classify substances, energy signatures, signs of life, and anomalies. It’s very good at making tactical analyses and recommendations in combat situations.

Modern AI systems can read and react to what is going on in the market. It can read and react to social media content, customer sentiment, and other external inputs.

The Enterprise computer has a universal translator

No language was too hard for it to figure out (besides Tamarian in the Darmok episode).

Back in 1987, that really seem far-fetched. Now, we can do it. Real-time AI translation is here. For $99, you can buy a pair of earbuds that translate 164 languages in real time. Clearly this is no longer Science Fiction. Video conference technologies, like Microsoft Teams, can do real-time audio translation. Eventually, I expect it to real-time deep-fake the video stream so the lip movements match, just like in Star Trek.

Putting it all together

It’s not the 24 century, it’s the 21^st century, but we’ve already got quite a bit of that. Modern enterprises can build AI systems that know all human knowledge, everything that is going on in the company, and everything going on in the market. You can talk to it. It can talk back. It can help you talk to others, regardless of the language barrier. That’s pretty exciting.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, there are plenty of technologies in Star Trek that are still well out of reach. I’d love to have myself a warp drive, holodeck, and food replicator, but I don’t see any of those in sight for now. Additionally, people may argue with me on this one, but I don’t think AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) is happening any time soon. That’s more like Lieutenant Commander Data. As far as I’m concerned, that’s still solidly Science Fiction.

If you were like me back in 1987, you were amazed by what Captain Picard could accomplish with the help of his ship’s computer. Perhaps you were jealous of his technical prowess. Well, today, the only thing stopping us is our willingness to “make it so.”

The views expressed here are my own. They have not been reviewed or approved by my employer.

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