Meet Kirsten Benedict!

Video Transcript

Brian Dlugos 0:05
Hello, I'm Brian Dlugos and I'm a member of the Lockheed Martin Leadership Institute part of cohort 10. Today I'm here with Kirsten Benedict, a junior mechanical engineering major from cohort 9 to discuss Envision 2040, which is a collaborative project that predicts how the future will look in the next 20 years. Welcome Kirsten!

Kirsten Benedict 0:25
Thank you.

Brian Dlugos 0:26
To start off our discussion, tell me about the Envision 2040 project and what your focus area is and why it's important to you.

Kirsten Benedict 0:35
So the Envision 2040 project is a project that is looking into what our life in the future is going to be like. So us as future leaders, are trying to see how to best prepare ourselves for our daily norm. And especially like through the COVID pandemic, we've seen, like how the amount of technology in our lives has increased dramatically. And that's what my focus focus topic is. And this is important to me, because being an engineering major, and seeing how much technology is being used in our field, and also see how much technology is being used for us to learn now is increasing. And it's just important for me and for everybody else to see how, like we need to move with technology into the future to make sure that doesn't overcome our lives.

Brian Dlugos 1:20
Yeah, that's really interesting. What insights have you gotten in exploring this topic?

Kirsten Benedict 1:26
So more specifically, my topic has to do with artificial intelligence and how, by the year 2040, they're expecting that artificial intelligence is going to exceed human intelligence. And they're saying that they're sorry, technology is growing exponentially, and that we're on an exponential curve of growth. So they're saying that, by the time 2040 rolls around that the technology is going to be performing jobs that are being currently performed by humans. And it's important for us as leaders to guide this growth of technology because we, as leaders, we humans are able to be resilient and adapt to change. And that's something that computers cannot do. So like I said, like we make sure that we're being mindful of what we're doing on the internet, because if we're not, we could see ourselves being controlled by technology in the future.

Brian Dlugos 2:23
Yeah. With everything you've learned from working on this project, what are you personally going to prepare for for the future?

Kirsten Benedict 2:32
I've learned so much through this project, especially seeing how much technology it's going to increase in our lives in the next 20 years. But I think like being a leader, myself, I'm going to educate not only myself but others of being mindful of what they're doing on the internet, because the computers are time stamping and mapping us. Every time we do something on the internet, every time we Google Search something, they're like, keeping track of what we've been doing. And I think we should just limit that because that's feeding into the issue of technology overtaking our lives.

Brian Dlugos 3:06
Got it! Well, thank you for sharing your ideas and plans with us, Kiersten, and I'm excited to see what you guys have planned.

Kirsten Benedict 3:12
All right. Thank you.