Are most of our predictions wrong?

Submitted by Sasuke_1738 t3_10lnfy7 in Futurology

Growing up I always thought AI was years away. I even remember watching TV on my old bulky pc in 2010 and honestly I always thought all the AI and advanced spaceship engine where like 30-40 years off. But nope, ChatGPT pops up, it's cool at first then boom an entire Industry is born over night reliant on AI. Space ships where another thing. We always thought it would be years till we figured out how to get to Mars. All of a sudden we have engines being designed that in theory can cut the amount of time it will take to get to Mars in half. I'm starting to think that all the events we grew up watching in movies in the early 2000s are gonna be here in the next five years. I mean he'll even I'm using AI for my online stores. I bet you by between now and 2025 we are gonna combine AI and rocket science and build a new engine capable of getting to Mars in a week lol.

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Autumn1881 t1_j5yx656 wrote

I am very proud of a prediction I made in 1996 while being 10 years old: „I bet in the future there will be tons of TV channels were people just play video games and you can watch!“

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jdooley99 t1_j61yuup wrote

I invented digital picture frames in the 90's. I told mom we would just pop a cd in the side.

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Icy-Association-1033 t1_j61z9h8 wrote

I invented 2023 in the 90s. I said one day I’ll be 30

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superjudgebunny t1_j63xtjy wrote

They said they wouldn’t make it, they didn’t make it. We’re all naked when the day is said and done.

I’m glad you made it

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nohwan27534 t1_j67l3vo wrote

I predicted I'd be dead by now. So many new year resolutions failed.

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Icy-Association-1033 t1_j68ae2c wrote

Never know what can happen in the next 11 months. Humans are surprisingly resilient, yet weak.

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nohwan27534 t1_j68ah2l wrote

Hopefully I'll be dead.

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Icy-Association-1033 t1_j68alw3 wrote

Well swim would say that dreams without a plan are just dreams. I would say kill the current you and deed the rest of your life to the new model.

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nohwan27534 t1_j68eccj wrote

I die in my dreams too.

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Icy-Association-1033 t1_j68ef0q wrote

Idk man, try therapy. I’m not licensed for this kind of thing

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nohwan27534 t1_j68ezf6 wrote

Not trying to get help, just brushing off your attempts.

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Icy-Association-1033 t1_j68f1se wrote

Brushing off attempts would be easier without replying lol

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nohwan27534 t1_j68fcr9 wrote

I'm on reddit killing time. Besides, also sort of trying to passively get you to understand not everyone wants those kind of replies. Sure, try, but if it doesn't seem to work, might not.

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darthnugget t1_j64kh6f wrote

I had the idea for what is Paypal in 1989. Was just learning to code and at the time was focused on climbing the social ladder instead of being a Tony Stark.

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RogieSpellbinder t1_j62p7wq wrote

I legit invented the iPad when I was a teenager in the 1990s.

The only difference was there was no App Store, so you’d have to go to a newsagents and scan a barcode of a newspaper so you could read it on the tablet.

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maretus t1_j67y19y wrote

I invented big ketchup packets in 1995, only to see Chik Fil A steal my idea right out from under me….

Seriously, why do they make them so small?! Who needs exactly 1 dollop of ketchup?

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OG-Pine t1_j67siyw wrote

Hahah you idiot we have YouTube channel not TV channels with games

^(just a dumb joke don’t be mad <3)

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ZRhoREDD t1_j5yl5hd wrote

Ray Kutzweil predicted, a long time ago, that the AI singularity (when it becomes self-aware, or indistinguishable from self-aware) would happen in 2029.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Neivqp2K4
So, no, I don't think all of our predictions are very far off. Then again, watch the Jetsons. How far off were they? So ... some predictions are very far off :-)

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subhuman_voice t1_j5yrmi0 wrote

Mr Spacely popping up on Zoom just to yell at you

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isleepinahammock t1_j61bdhd wrote

Mr. Spacely demands you come into the office, even though your job consists literally of just pressing buttons that you could do from home.

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checker280 t1_j61ykdk wrote

“That Mr Spacely is such a cruel boss. This morning he made me press three buttons!”

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peter303_ t1_j61ip6w wrote

We still have 39 years until Jetson time. (Show written in 1962 to be a century in the future.)

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Ok_Sea_6214 t1_j62jcyb wrote

I, Robot was released in 2004 and is set in 2030.

On Imdb I once read a review from 2010 of someone complaining that this was an unrealistic timeline. Today it seems pretty likely.

Mind you the person didn't mention the fact that much of the technology in the movie other than robotics, such as smartphones, was already inferior to what they had even in 2010.

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jamjamason t1_j62nckd wrote

"We're going to put Cogswell Cogs out of business!" - Next year, probably.

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se7ensquared t1_j66hjyd wrote

>So, no, I don't think all of our predictions are very far off

How does the source you provided lead you to the conclusion that we're not far off? You really think AI is on track to become self aware in 6 years? Hope you're not basing that off Chat GPT, who can't even give me a correct answer to a simple programming question in 3 attempts lol

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khamelean t1_j5yrzag wrote

ChatGPT is only “AI” in the marketing sense. The AI from science fiction is called “Artificial General Intelligence”. That is still many years away.

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perrochon t1_j5z4ess wrote

As a comparison: chatGPT is like Tesla FSD years ago. Mind-blowingly awesome when and where it works, but frustrating in it's limitations, and a very long way to go before it's autonomous.

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ASAP_i t1_j5z51t1 wrote

This is an excellent point to make.

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[deleted] t1_j5xvlx8 wrote

I think we really need to stop predicting what we just don’t know. We don’t even know what’s going to happen this year in science and medicine.

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acutelychronicpanic t1_j5z5wx0 wrote

I don't agree. Its fine to make predictions that turn out wrong as long as you made a good faith effort. When we make and discuss those predictions, it helps society figure out what is important and prepare for the future.

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A_R_K_S t1_j5xwvna wrote

New forms of IVF, female sterilization & outpatient vasectomies will be approved by the FDA this year in response to the Roe v Wade debacle & governors trying to ban abortion pills. Just wait & watch.

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A_R_K_S t1_j5xwx72 wrote

Oh yeah, look up biodegradable bullets. Those are already being made but not really in circulation, probably will be this year though.

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[deleted] t1_j5xxg2a wrote

I mean for a lot of things, there are some things we have an idea of and do know, but a lot of things are still out in the open with a lot of research being put into them.

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A_R_K_S t1_j5xxljh wrote

Just gotta follow the money to see where the future is headed, the commoditization of water is well on it’s way thanks to the futures contracts you can trade through NQH20.

(See what I did there?)

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1weedlove1 t1_j61t1m8 wrote

This is a big one. A local municipality poisoned a large dirt mound by using it for target practice to much. Imagine the grounds of the Ukrainians

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Sasuke_1738 OP t1_j5xvyvj wrote

I tell ya what if neurolink gets human trials and succeed. I'm definitely getting an implant. The future is coming 10 times faster than expected, but its gonna be alright...I hope

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[deleted] t1_j5xwan4 wrote

Nothing against you by saying this, but I won’t be putting anything in my brain created by Elon Musk.

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Nobodyou_know t1_j5y1hli wrote

Elon doesn’t create anything. He hires people to create his ideas. His image might create value, that’s it. That being said, I won’t be an early adopter to chip braining

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[deleted] t1_j5zh4nx wrote

[removed]

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[deleted] t1_j5zhbmf wrote

If it could help my Tinnitus and hearing issues, then you’d be right, but I’m afraid of the problems that might arise from putting something in my head.

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ProfessionalGPT t1_j5zhtvf wrote

That’s a fair assessment. I was under the impression that the only issue for you was the it was created within one of Musk’s companies, based on your original comment.

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[deleted] t1_j5zia1e wrote

No that’s definitely the way I said it, and yeah…I admit that I’m following others, but I don’t really care about the karma.

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send_cumulus t1_j616bue wrote

You know if Elon is behind it, the tech will be way oversold

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Trietero t1_j61e94b wrote

Dont know why you're getting downvoted. Same here friend

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ElderWandOwner t1_j658ddv wrote

Honestly i think you're overreacting a bit. I don't think chatgpt is nearly as powerful as you think, which seemed to spawn this thought.

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TheGolgafrinchan t1_j5zp740 wrote

It's interesting to see how technology has advanced faster than many people expected. It's true that AI and space technology have made significant strides in recent years, and it's exciting to think about the possibilities for the future. It's also important to remember that while advancements in technology can be rapid, it still takes time for these developments to be fully realized and integrated into society. It's important to keep an open mind and stay informed about the latest advancements in these fields, as they may bring about positive changes in the near future.

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globlobglob t1_j62o4dt wrote

did chat gpt write this

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ManOfSkience t1_j63g6r2 wrote

I reckon so, classic three beginning middle end structure in a single paragraph.

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globlobglob t1_j65we28 wrote

"it's true that..." and "it's also important to remember that..." are also common chat gpt phrases

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Sasuke_1738 OP t1_j5zuy8l wrote

I'm sure they will. I just find it crazy that 1-2 years ago we thought it would take 8 months to get to Mars now they have engines that are gonna do it in a month and some change.

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TheGolgafrinchan t1_j6046s3 wrote

Yeah, that so fast! Still not fast enough to get to anywhere meaningful (outside our own solar system), but it's getting there.

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ElderWandOwner t1_j6585qt wrote

Can you link an article showcasing the new engine? I thought 7 months was still the amount of time it would take.

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maretus t1_j67y7iw wrote

Ray kurzweil has a theory called ‘the theory of accelerating returns’ which postulates that because of exponential growth, we will see the equivalent of 20,000 years worth of innovation just this century.

Because technology grows exponentially and we’re at the point on the curve where it’s happening so fast that even the rate of change has achieved exponential growth.

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TheGolgafrinchan t1_j68nhrr wrote

Yeah, I know about Kurzweil. The tech singularity is close. Maybe 20 years away, by his reckoning (though human-level intelligence is likely by 2029). Though if you follow Vernon Virge's estimations, the singularity will be sooner than 2045 - maybe before the end of this decade.

There's a fear that this is going to be a bad thing, based on a general cyberphobia. Are we going to replace ourselves? Will computers view us as inferior and thus eventually seek war with us? Will we be attacked or assimilated like Star Trek predicted with the Borg plot line, or how Homosapiens attacked and mated the Neanderthals out of existence?

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maretus t1_j68r43r wrote

Idk, but I’m excited to find out. What a time to be alive.

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momolamomo t1_j5y5wx0 wrote

Well, the vacuum cleaner was invented when Australia became a country, about 120 years ago, Or about 2 grandpas ago. What will your childrens children be inventing?

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Omegawop t1_j5y632l wrote

Nothing. AI will probably be responsible for most of the new inventions in the next couple of generations.

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Callisto_NTG t1_j5z26tw wrote

AI is supposed to help us not take over for us. I’m worried about AI doing everything making us dumber.

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rypher t1_j5z45fm wrote

“Supposed to” has nothing to do with it.

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Callisto_NTG t1_j5z4zwk wrote

What’s that mean

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rypher t1_j5z8niv wrote

“AI is supposed to help us not take over for us”

While that may be true, it doesnt have any impact on whether that will be the outcome. AI might not help us overall (probably just exasperate the income inequality) and might take over (not like become our overlords, but slowly take more important decisions away from humans in terms of war/ medicine/ geopolitics).

Its not supposed to happen is like thinking we are not supposed to break the law, start wars, eat too much sugar. “Supposed to” doesnt really mean much.

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Callisto_NTG t1_j5zbq32 wrote

Yeah well we should be planning ahead so that these bad scenarios don’t happen is my point. We need to be in control of AI, not the other way around.

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AbyssalRedemption t1_j65uzka wrote

Well see, this is the thing: if it become even somewhat clear to the public at large that these things were going to inevitably happen, people wouldn’t just sit and take it. You lay off 20% of the work force, and people will riot. Disrupt the current order too quickly and there will be civil unrest, potentially hindering future progress.

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jomo666 t1_j61xkfw wrote

AI can’t overthrow us until it’s able to maintain its physical parts independently. Without electricity, conduit maintenance, etc. AI goes to shit quickly without humans.

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rypher t1_j61ycwy wrote

Nah man, it wont be humans versus AI like the fucking matrix. It will be extremely rich companies with AI and humans versus the other less fortunate masses. As long as there are humans alive they can be bought with money or ideology.

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FalkorUnlucky t1_j602fls wrote

Pollution and health problems are gonna be the main drivers in making us dumber. Not an AI that helps us make excel formulas or drafts a short story.

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hoshieb t1_j61jew2 wrote

I for one welcome our robot overlords.

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Ok_Gold_1435 t1_j61bsjg wrote

For now at least, but then again, look at the job market! Robots are increasingly more commonplace at factories and many other workplaces for instance! We need to look beyond suppositions, right and wrong, morals etc and adopt and embrace fully rational, pragmatic thinking, and thinking outside of the box. In other words we need to broaden our human-ape minds and adopt flexible, plastic thinking, and abandon rigid, dogmatic, traditionalist, primitive thinking of we want to adapt to change and change ourselves! I don’t think it would necessarily be a “bad” thing or “wrong” for AI/robots, for instance, to have an increasingly active and widespread role in shaping civilisation! What would be the real disaster is if we stick to our human animal limitations and primitivity, hindering or slowing down the advancement of civilisation. We need to embrace artificiality, industrialisation, science and technology; Not return to our animalistic roots or nature! Each and every one of us is evolutionarily faulty, shortcoming and have various limitations. Most of is won’t even self-analyse, let alone adopt, learn and improve! Remember that we are a newborn species at this point in time and we haven’t even learned how to walk properly yet! We must embrace scientific, industrial and technological revolutions and evolve our civilisation in that accordance. Of that means becoming (in time of course) fully artificial and synthetic, then all the better. The more rational and pragmatic we are, the less likely we are to suffer from hindrances such as physical and mental disabilities, diseases and conditions. And then who knows, maybe we could start exploring the further reaches of cosmos and even spread to other planets! As mere organic, semi-evolved, semi-intelligent, semi-educated and semi-civilised beings, I don’t think we can achieve that. We are too fragile and needy. We have just left the Savannah where we hunted other organic beings for food. Though some of us still do that!

Considering all that, I don’t much care if we survive like this. I think it’s better that an AI civilisation, able to make rational decisions, and far faster than we with our subjective and sentimental brains could ever make, would be a better option. Or maybe us but minimally sentimental and maximally rational (Not to mean barbarity and cruelty but on the contrary, far more aware, thoughtful and sympathetic than us with our current state of being)! In any case, without AI, technologies, industrialisation, artificiality, innovations, reason, rationality, logic, responsibility, acknowledgement for our faults and shortcomings, we are nothing but another semi-evolved animal species on another blue green planet, and the possibility of destroying the civilisation we have so far comprised and authored, and still trying to get a hold of and improve!

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MEMENARDO_DANK_VINCI t1_j5y8kue wrote

It’s not just gonna he ai though human needs are gonna push it to design things and likely in ways that our human intuition just can’t account for.

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momolamomo t1_j5y65hd wrote

Just imagine what the inventions will be during that time!

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HaiKarate t1_j5ynalp wrote

Also, indoor air conditioning is about that old, and it didn’t become ubiquitous until around the middle of the last century. My parents grew up in a world without indoor AC, and once they had it they refused to go anywhere that wasn’t air conditioned (we lived in hot, humid southern Louisiana).

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Ghost273552 t1_j5ze5lo wrote

I grew up in GA and I can’t understand how people lived there without AC.

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FrackaLacka t1_j654qfk wrote

Same in Houston area. Pretty sure if I had no A/C here I’d simply die

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DicknosePrickGoblin t1_j5yxjfo wrote

And because of all that future generations will have to endure a life without AC at all as resources and abundant cheap energy to waste ends, the splurge is over.

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nohwan27534 t1_j67l9r6 wrote

Not a Damn thing. Not polluting the earth with me, I was a failure and it should've ended before me but by God it'll end with me.

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momolamomo t1_j6coyw3 wrote

Right… it was a figurative question. The level of advancement is compounding with age

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nohwan27534 t1_j6ebscd wrote

Gasp you mean you weren't specifically asking me to look into the future to describe the societal development of my offspring's offspring?

I am aghast, good sir or ma'am or whatever I wholeheartedly apologize for my mistaken assumption.

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A_R_K_S t1_j5xvf4k wrote

You should look up & find the “Precision Consumer 2030” pdf the WEF published & tried to wipe from the internet. It’s been saved on other sites by now but it clearly paints a picture that those futuristic ideas from the early 2000’s will be here soon enough.

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Redditing-Dutchman t1_j5yyhbp wrote

'Meat Space' as some call it (the real physical world) is quite slow. Purely digital stuff has the advantage of being relatively cheap and easy and quick to roll out. ChatGPT gets invented and we all have acces to it a year later.

Now with physical stuff like rockets you need to build actual factories. And factories need workers, land and permits. And permits are often political. The starship launch sites from SpaceX is waiting for years now to get approval because of endless red tape.

Thus, AI might give you plans for a rocket in 2025, but before it's actually build its 2035. This is something you have to keep in mind with making predictions.

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calculuschild t1_j63s962 wrote

While the actual manufacture is indeed limited by the real world, we shouldn't gloss over the fact that simulations (and AI/machine learning has already demonstrated that in some cases it can simulate complex scenarios faster than traditional slow, Finite-element algorithms) and digital design (CAD, aided by genetic algorithms, etc) can help us speed through a lot of the steps that traditionally could only be done in 'meat space'.

Right now a lot of that digital process is still hanging on a lot of the same things you already mentioned (slow humans, politics, beurocracy, need to test prototypes, etc), but I think at some point, a lot of that will go away too due to automation in those sectors. Not to mention AI can probably start chipping away at factory/manufacture lead times with better planning and logistics than humans could ever come up with.

TL;DR if the AI gives you the plans and it still takes 10 years to build, we can't forget about the 25 years it saved already by transferring a bunch of meat space tasks into a digital equivalent.

But yes, your point is very important to keep in mind. Meat space is agonizingly slow compared to the digital world.

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7grims t1_j5y7h1r wrote

Yah, i member that kid mentality of mine that by 2000 we would have flying cars everywhere

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Swarthy_Mattekar t1_j5ykku6 wrote

People can't handle driving cars on the ground. Ffs.

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7grims t1_j5ytsft wrote

with self driving cars now, we dont need to worry about that, as long has no manual mode is permitted.

but the flying car tech is far from being efficient anyway.

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DareMoist t1_j5z93sk wrote

Flying cars will never be for anyone but the wealthy

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7grims t1_j5ztui6 wrote

New tech is always super expensive at start, even electrical vehicles were not viable.

But has more and more get produced prices drop down, and they become affordable, and even competitive with whatever they are replacing.

But yah, not seeing any flying cars being massively commercial, for the next 50 years or more, since theres little to no investment in it.

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gantork t1_j604b77 wrote

I think they will become commercial once AI gets good enough for fully autonomous flying cars.

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m0llusk t1_j5yays9 wrote

There is some good analysis of these questions in the book Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner

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iNstein t1_j5yjc87 wrote

I wonder if they predicted the sales numbers of their book and how accurate they turned out to be.

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m0llusk t1_j5yt8g6 wrote

Academic results are often not particularly popular when published. If you want something popular, readable, and profitable then I would suggest you might enjoy some fiction such as Harry Potter. Let me know how my prediction turns out.

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divers69 t1_j5z99vt wrote

In 1980 I predicted that the future would not be how I expected it to be. I was right.

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somohapian t1_j61smt1 wrote

In like 2001 I remember telling my BF that those phone cameras will never take off. Just a silly niche thing who would want that instead of a real camera. Obvi my track record on tech predictions is visionary.

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Person_reddit t1_j629pxi wrote

You need to learn more about machine learning. It’s not magic and the current path isn’t suitable for general AI.

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Juls7243 t1_j5ykd9x wrote

Yes.

Predicting the future is INSANELY hard. For example, most of the companies on wall street hire the smartest people on the planet to try and figure out what will happen to stocks only 6 MONTHS into the future and are more wrong than right.

The smartest, most educated people, (on a given subject) are MORE WRONG than they are right in predicting the future in their specialized area. The default assumption is that you are WRONG.

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Drakolyik t1_j5zn8y3 wrote

That's because Economics is as much a science as Astrology is. Also, Human societies are messy and unpredictable and a lot of the assumptions made about human behavior are flat out wrong, especially from the mind of someone indoctrinated into the Capitalist clergy.

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Juls7243 t1_j5zpkh7 wrote

It’s not just economics - it’s any science. What math problems will be solved in 50 years? Chemisty? Martials science? It’s every subject

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R3D4F t1_j5z67qd wrote

Should consider using AI to spellcheck your post to make it more legible.

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elehman839 t1_j60e9xn wrote

For people not watching the AI/ML field closely (which is most, I suppose), I can imagine it felt like ChatGPT just "popped up". One day, AI was science fiction, and the next day it was (with qualifications) here.

But for people working in this field or watching closely, ChatGPT is just one of many, many data points on a performance curve that has been rising rapidly and consistently for about five years. Leaderboards on test suites (like this one) were skyrocketing month-by-month. So predicting that something like ChatGPT was coming was as simple as, "I bet that line that keeps going up is gonna keep going up."

One implication is that ChatGPT is almost surely not the end of the line; rather, we can be near-certain that ChatGPT will be "old school" by this fall.

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Still_Difference5461 t1_j5z519t wrote

Yes our predictions are wrong and we still need to figure out how to block radiation from the sun before we can send a person to mars

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nohwan27534 t1_j67lf1v wrote

Not really Build the base in a cave. Or just cover it with iirc 3 inches of dirt.

Or whatever the shielding used in every fucking thing we have in space right now. We've already worked that out for just "sending a person" there.

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Still_Difference5461 t1_j6a3hoj wrote

The shielding we currently use in space is the earths magnetic field. Astronauts would be likely to get a lethal dose of radiation on the way to the mars cave base.

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nohwan27534 t1_j6eaxqh wrote

Alright, fair that some might not be shielded.

But we do have shit outside of the magnetosphere that does need to be shielded still. Electronics don't like radiation either. It's still an already solved issue, just not really for living en masse on Mars outside of domes.

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Still_Difference5461 t1_j6gr35f wrote

It’s a lot easier to shield electronics tbh. Some of the issues we still experience with mars is water, food, keeping the astronauts sane both in transit and on mars, and the perchlorate in the Martian soil. Another big issue is there’s no real point to making a city on mars right now, so without a purpose it will be difficult surmounting these huge problems.

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nohwan27534 t1_j6igey9 wrote

Agree to most of that. But shielding isn't really the thing slowing our roll atm.

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Simmion1976 t1_j66erhm wrote

About 84% of predictions are wrong, including this one.

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Least-Media t1_j5z2bzg wrote

AI, as we know it, has been around since the early 1950s. Some advances have been made recently thanks to newly available computing power, but they're just implementing theories from decades ago.

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massnerd t1_j5zctqm wrote

This post reads like the OP doesn’t know the world existed before the year 2000 and how long people have been pursuing AI and rocket ships.

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MisterManWay t1_j5zlv4w wrote

People are absolutely terrible at predicting the future. Think of all the major events we just didn’t anticipate. The rise of China our lifetimes. Took everyone by surprise. The fall of the Berlin Wall. Covid. Etc. we are truly awful at this

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floating_crowbar t1_j61bf02 wrote

Prediction is hard, especially about the future. Yogi Berra

Nixon actually did say that China had a lot of potential and could really grow, given the strong work ethic and emphasis on education etc. (Too bad that its still an authoritarian state)

As a kid growing up in a communist country and then moving to the west, I never ever expected Russia and Communism to collapse but heck, even the best minds in the CIA and US intelligence failed to see it coming as it happened so quickly at the time.

Though in 1980 I read Alvin Toffler's the Third Wave and it was all about de-centralization including the break up of Russia, he even speculated the US might break up.

Growing up in the 70s and studying computer science in the 80s I remember even then debating with other computing science students (I said I want at least a megabyte of memory on my first computer - they were "what would you ever be doing that you would need that much memory) In 1985 the mainframe at our uni was being upgraded to 32mb of ram. I also recall hearing about a bank robbery that was reported to the police in our city (early 80s) while it happened - the thing is it was reported by something called a cellular telephone (the size of a briefcase costing $5000)

Now my smartphone has nearly 200gb of memory and even a 64gb usb stick is a few bucks.

But there's a lot of stuff that currently is being predicted that is all hyperbole, robots will take all our jobs etc, self driving cars (are still a long way away) I certainly don't buy the Ray Kurzweil bs.

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mikevago t1_j5zmcr5 wrote

Look at Back to the Future II — everyone has a flying car... and several fax machines. Virtually no one predicted the internet or smartphones, virtually everyone predicted flying cars and people living on the moon.

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CatOfGrey t1_j60vtdj wrote

Random thought:

If you go back to about 1880 or so, you'll see the start of an explosion of writers about the future, including the early influences of what would become science fiction, as well as the first detailed hypothetical exploration of the future.

It's amazing the things that they got right. Information and communication, especially. Transportation, the role of machinery and manufacturing, those folks did a good job of things.

But ya know what they completely missed? Things like "Women in the most modern nations will predominantly work outside the home, as equals with men."

I say this not with any angle on feminism, but rather how easy it is to be wrong about the future. Things that seem obvious end up not being obvious. Things that seem untouchable and fixed are surprisingly vulnerable.

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peter303_ t1_j61k5ew wrote

The idea of technological progress is fairly recent, 2-3 centuries old. Before then your life was pretty similar to your grandfathers and grandchildrens. Now we are used to seeing new gizmos every year.

There was concept of progress, or degeneration in other spheres. Some believe in spiritual progress as becoming more perfect. Or we have degenerated from Eden and continue downward.

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nohwan27534 t1_j67lljs wrote

Tbf most of them weren't in any way predictions, really. It's all just shit they figured was coming eventually that they got right, not really an actual "we'll have this by 1990" declarations of the future.

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massivetypo t1_j61yew4 wrote

Most predictions are wrong. It’s just that we have a bias to remember the ones that are correct. Humans are actually no better at making prediction than a random generator.

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fuckaliscious t1_j6209dq wrote

The predictions aren't wrong, but timing is a bitch to get right.

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Ok_Sea_6214 t1_j62j4i4 wrote

I predicted all this up to a decade ago, down to the year, back then people said I was crazy.

Now when I point out that I was right, they go "oh ok Nostradamus, then tell us what happens next".

I tell them, and once again they say I'm crazy, and they don't see what's wrong with that.

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Sasuke_1738 OP t1_j62j6mw wrote

So...what happens next?

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Ok_Sea_6214 t1_j62kw8c wrote

80% of people will die within 4 years.

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Devlos00 t1_j66eow8 wrote

As someone born in mid 80’s 2020 was the future. I used to think ‘wow imagine in the year 2020’ blah blah whatever the hell I was talking about. We are here now. And this was just my future. Other people futures are already gone. Many people haven’t made it yet.

The best example of an incredible future is my granny. She was born right about 1907 She saw everything that happened until she died in 2008. I mean she saw everything. From 1900 to 2000 the world changed so much the when she was a little girl tv hadn’t even been invented all the way up to the whole internet when she died. She could have had her own YouTube channel but when she was born the only thing remotely like YouTube was….. I have no idea maybe a circus.

I know it’s like that for a lot of times in history but I don’t really believe anything like electronics has a comparison.

What will happen in the next 50 or 100 years, or 10 years is anyone’s guess. We could figure something out that we didn’t even know we were looking for and it change the direction of almost everything else. If we figured out how to make people live for 1000 years comfortably in the next 10 years I don’t know what the future looks like. Say that doesn’t happen but we do get 200 year lifespans instead. So many things can happen.

What if we end up in a massive world war and we spend the next 25 years recovering.

As far as predictions go, some have happened and some have not.

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halpstonks t1_j5yhcr6 wrote

You forgot age reversal which is coming and will make AI look tame in terms of societal disruption.

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nohwan27534 t1_j67lytv wrote

Eh, that's pretty weird prediction shitty too.

People act like it's right around the corner, but as of last year when my PC crashed, there was still no known experiments actually showing age reversal, or even slowing down, technology with peer reviewed tests done.

It'd be like people crazy about teleportation news when there's been no legit teleportation testing done yet everyone assumes it'll be the hot new industry this time next decade. Even worse, actually, as aging experiments take longer to get results in.

It feels like scientists are getting investors hyped and everyone else assumes the major breakthroughs are coming a mile a minute.

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halpstonks t1_j68nb2o wrote

https://hms.harvard.edu/news/loss-epigenetic-information-can-drive-aging-restoration-can-reverse

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nohwan27534 t1_j68onbh wrote

Cool - probably still needs peer reviewed, but seems promising. At the very least it's a first step in a field that basically had no foot in the doorway for decades despite fuckers still leaning in and hissing "soon".

It not being related to DNA damage is especially nice, given we don't need something like crispr to edit our DNA with DNA from a past version or whatever.

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Adept-Variation587 t1_j5yk4vr wrote

Damn, here I’m thinking 2010 was when you grew up?? I was thinking more like 90s. In my day, we were supposed to have flying cars by now.

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electrowiz64 t1_j5yv528 wrote

What was mind blowing was the Mac mini M2 Pro surpassing the Mac Pro 2019 in power consumption, it’s insane bro

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Semifreak t1_j5yxk7d wrote

I'm constantly surprised by the speed of progress. Things I thought will happen in 2100 will happen in 2050. And things I thought will happen in 2050 are happening in the 2030's.

It is a remarkable thing. And with each innovation, it seems the speed gets faster. Just imagine what A.I and quantum computing can achieve when both mature enough and work together!

"Computer, solve the mysteries of the universe!"

"Computer, find a cure for cancer!"

"Computer, formulate a theory for quantum gravity!"

"Computer, design a space telescope that would but Webb to shame!"

&#x200B;

It's an amazing age we live in.

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ChewyRib t1_j5z0qf5 wrote

Thats what I thought about the internet and cell phones in the early 80s.

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sambull t1_j5z2e5j wrote

it's always been stopping when we get there that's the problem

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bcanddc t1_j5z70ki wrote

Most of our predictions are always wrong frankly. The people making the predictions can’t possibly know all there is involved in whatever they are predicting.

Somebody told me something once that stuck with me, “we don’t know what we don’t know.”.

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AgentBroccoli t1_j5z9w7r wrote

I would argue our predictions are correct but just not correct enough. For example in the mid-2000's everyone was predicting that with the "Internet of things" our refrigerator would be able to tell when our milk was low and order more. The internet of things is defiantly a thing but refrigerators aren't really a thing, it's more thermostats and lighting. Did that make the prediction wrong, in a way yes but also no.

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skindarklikemytint t1_j5zdttx wrote

There’s kind of a Dam effect with technology. It bubbles below the surface, building pressure until it finally exploded.

We’re now witnessing the explosion of what’s been building for decades.

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Delphan_Galvan t1_j5zi2fz wrote

I'd say it boils down to our technology is significantly more advanced then the layperson believes, along with no one notices the incremental advances until it's combined into a greater whole. AI (expert systems really) and aerospace have lineages going back decades.

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n0v3list t1_j5zjc7v wrote

I strongly believe that technology and the pursuit of technology is inherent to our species. Never underestimate the ingenuity of necessity.

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unholyravenger t1_j5zv1ne wrote

I'll talk about one of the reasons AI is difficult to predict.

We have some ingrained bias's about what is easy and hard for an intelligent machine. However, the way AI progresses does not follow those intuitions. For instance, in the 90s we were able to make a chess computer that was able to beat the best chess player in the world. It was until relatively recently that if you took all the chess pieces and threw them into a trash can, and ask a robot hand to set them up correctly on a chess board it was able to do it. It was like a 20-year gap between AI being the best at playing chess to being able to setup a chessboard.

This is not intuitive at all. I remember pretty recently reading art was going to be one of the last things AI would be able to do. Turns out we were pretty close to good text->image. It's going to be really hard to predict the path that AI takes. Problems we think are hard are going to be easy, and problems we think are easy will be hard.

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JerrodDRagon t1_j5zv4k0 wrote

I think people who think we will adapt are naive

Look at what happened during, where did all money go? Not to you

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Delta19four t1_j602a2b wrote

Singularity should speed things up tremendously and experts are saying 5 to 7 years for that so it will certainly be interesting to see what happens!

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s0ciety_a5under t1_j606alj wrote

It's fairly difficult to predict anything of note. Sure you can do some minor predictions for the 10-15 year scale. After that it's way more difficult to imagine what the potential changes people will enact with policy or technology. It's fairly apparent we are going to move away from fossil fuels, but that will take time. Fairly frequently enough that we have many notable inventors and scientists throughout history, a really smart person makes something that leaps our understanding of the world forward. Completely changing our worldview and alters the trajectory of our technology.

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Quixotegut t1_j60hj68 wrote

We'd probably be spot on in predictions were it not for the massive lengths the upper echelons of power go to reign in their control over the masses.

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Ok-Lawfulness-5739 t1_j615tms wrote

Yep predictions are way off. At this point the decline and regression of human society is more likely than fully autonomous cars.

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fakeuboi t1_j61o1ls wrote

The AI industry was already exponentially growing I don’t know if chatgpt really boomed it over night just put it the public eye more, most companies have been relying on AI and machine learning for quite a while now

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beeekeeer t1_j61us7m wrote

I guess movies aren’t a reliable source of information.

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bradland t1_j62465d wrote

The thing to remember is that progress does not follow a linear curve. ChatGPT is remarkable, but it is far from a true AGI. Just like we have seen with autonomous vehicles, it’s probable we see significant periods of stagnation punctuated by brief periods of advancement.

We shouldn’t be discouraged by this the opposite really. It should give us the resolve to see things through when it seems little progress is made. When the payoffs come, they will be significant.

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Chance_Age_5869 t1_j624nsb wrote

I was 8 years old watching Star Trek the Next Generation thinking I would never see any of this ever.

Now I have a phone and MacBook that does 95% of that show and the only reason we don't use laser guns is because they can't kill the Borg like a real gun. The only thing they have I don't is a Space Ship, Transporter, and Universal Health Care ... And we've proven the transporter works if you don't care where the molecule ends up. I've even got shitty robots that do a better job than Data, sure it won't bitch every episode about humanity, but the fucker can carry my shit and call a drone army if I need artillery support. I don't say "computer", I say "Siri" and it calls the Internet .... from a computer linked to the things in my ears so it's almost just as magic. If I really need food now I throw a bag this side up in the microwave and wait 2 minutes - it's not great but it works just like it did 50 years ago.

Before you say that's all a shitty version ... we have outclassed 2364 OVER 2 centuries QUICKER WITHOUT the aliens showing up to take pity on us! That leaves us plenty of time to have a WW3, fix this shithole, build an enterprise, and go slay some alien poon. And I'm pretty sure that was the point of Star Trek, some unknown creator made a bunch of aliens that liked to fuck and fight with cool spaceships.

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nohwan27534 t1_j67merm wrote

Lasers can be good weapons, especially in space.

In atmosphere, water vapor, energy requirements, etc can fuck up a lasers effectiveness. But even here it could be far more destructive than a bullet.

In space, where firing a bullet at something 186,000 miles away would take about a hundred hours to get there... or a laser a second. Not to mention space is a balance between too hot and too cold, and targeting specific things might cripple an opposing starship easily.

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Ok_Fox_1770 t1_j625ak9 wrote

AI coming in like Napster and same reaction from artists, but it’s here, and boy it ramped up fast from making weird pictures with melted eyes, be neat to ai create your own AAA game with such ease one day, it’s gonna change all forms of media making waves but it’s here. Ai chat said it will be possible to convert brain to digital data but knows shit about emotions or food joys, it lacks human qualities, more like an autistic friend. See where it goes. Already calls us animals…

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fwubglubbel t1_j62bkvg wrote

TVs shows and movies are not predictions. In fact, there are very few actual predictions, at least by anyone knowledgeable. Professional futurists, with very few exceptions, realize the futility and don't bother. Instead, they make "forecast"' which give a sense of which direction we are heading in and a rough idea of how long things will take, but there are always too many uncertainties to predict with accuracy. Breakthroughs and discoveries by definition cannot be predicted and have the most impact on the future.

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Ragnarotico t1_j62i7ob wrote

I wouldn't hold your breathe. We're not putting a man on Mars anytime soon. The challenges go beyond just an engine that can get someone there. In theory we can do that now (just takes a long ass time), the challenge is keeping people alive and sane in the process and then just the small challenge of what to actually do on a desolate red rock once they arrive.

And the "AI" we've received so far is largely just very advanced machine learning models repurposed to "create" chat responses, "art" (8 finger humans geez), etc.

The future is exciting, but it won't happen as quickly as you think. AI especially is largely just marketing right now. We're not close to sentience.

Some of the world's largest tech/auto companies have been working on driverless cars for almost two decades. We can't even build one to consistently drive down the street without killing people. We're nowhere close to actual AI.

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ChesterNorris t1_j62m1m3 wrote

I'm still waiting on flying cars and a planet ruled by damn dirty apes.

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rayjensen t1_j62rf0j wrote

It’s extremely difficult to make predictions in highly complex systems like this. Literally anything could happen

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nohwan27534 t1_j67mgx0 wrote

Not literally anything, but the probabilities are pretty drastic.

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Blue_Robin_04 t1_j63ltzf wrote

I laugh at the artists or other people who deny the impact of AI, while failing to acknowledge that it's so new, and it should improve in quality and efficiency at an exponential rate. Those hands have to look good eventually.

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Ok-Wrongdoer-9647 t1_j64pa7y wrote

Future predictions are always wrong because you cannot account for truly new technologies and the scope of view is often too small to capture global events, impacts of other inventions, and impacts of other disciplines.. hell you could argued 20 years ago that people today wouldn’t be having any kind of body issue thanks to stem cells.. well then the religions nuts got involved, swayed their party and manipulated the information so it seems bad and viola minimal progress has been made in 20 years compared to what it could’ve been

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Ok-Wrongdoer-9647 t1_j64ph4t wrote

You can provide a rough outline but the further you go out there are exponentially more variables and some of which you can never account for

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strawhatArlong t1_j66cw4v wrote

to be fair, "AI" and "sentient AI" are two different things (growing up as a kid, I'd always conflated the two).

I'm very curious (but skeptical) that we'll invent sentient AI in the next few decades, but on the other hand I've learned not to underestimate the human race. I think the invention of the Internet is basically the Industrial Revolution 2.0. Being able to share and access knowledge from pretty much anywhere on the planet instantaneously is going to have an exponential effect on how quickly we make intellectual progress.

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eatingkiwirightnow t1_j66vvds wrote

It's funny how I used to think AI would replace manual jobs first, because they are the "brain-dead" job that most people can do and learn quickly. I am very wrong.

It seems like "brain-dead" job like flipping burgers and doing plumbing/construction/mechanic require so complex neural network that is the biological brain that it is extremely hard to replicate in AI/robotics.

On the other hand, accumulating knowledge and spitting it back out is now technically easier and computers can accumulate so much more knowledge and so much faster than a human brain could.

Like calculators made math easy, AI is going to make processing/storing/searching knowledge easy. Like asking a calculator to add 1+1, I could see myself asking AI to find information for me more comprehensively than a Google Search where I have to filter and process the search results.

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Virtual-Study-Campus t1_j67hdvp wrote

Numerous studies detailed the forecasting failures of even so-called experts. Predicting the future is just too hard

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maraca101 t1_j67j19o wrote

If you look at lab diamond prices, it’s actually insane. It was more expensive than a mined diamond just a few years ago, and I’ve checked monthly and the prices drop like 50% each time. I just saw a 4 carat F VS 1 round ideal cut selling for $1500 usd on Ritani. About 1.2% of the mined diamond equivalent. It was posted today and it got snapped up so fast. Technology is crazy

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nohwan27534 t1_j67l0xm wrote

Yeah. Just too many people making too many predictions about too many subjects.

I mean even the end of the world, millions assume it's within the next 5 years, and have for seemingly quite a while. So pretty much every 5 years that's millions of wrong predictions.

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