My predictions for the next 30 years

Submitted by z0rm t3_yvugyn in singularity

Would love if you could add some to these. Also do you agree, disagree?

Things that should happen in the 2020s for continued hope for rapid technological development:

First self-driving car (level 4)

"Flying cars" available in some large cities

AI that you can talk to.

1.5 nm transistors (or equivalent) or better

Supercomputer with around 100 exaFLOP (more talk about zettascale)

petaFLOP graphics card

Nanobots in the body are on it's way in some research hospitals

At least one 3D printed organ have been successful

Further breakthrough in radical life extension (LEV less than 10 years away according to Aubrey de Grey)

100,000+ qubits quantum computer

Starship successfully reaches orbit, possible lands on the moon

Things that should happen in the 2030s for continued hope of rapid technological development:

The first humanoid robots are becoming available to consumers, capable of some simple household tasks

Self-driving cars with level 4 are becoming relatively common, basically all new cars sold are largely self-driving, at least level 4

VR/AR is widespread and very realistic

Very good artificial intelligence that you can talk to, indistinguishable from real person, different AI exists with different personalities

At least one dietary supplement/gene therapy etc has been proven to make people live longer or be in better health for longer

Zettaflop supercomputer

Quantum computers are now commonplace and useful

Nanobots are starting to be fairly common in healthcare

3D-printed organs are becoming commonplace in healthcare

Starship lands on the moon and Mars.

Things that should happen in the 2040s for continued hope of rapid technological development:

Robots are common everywhere. There are very capable household robots and there are humanoid robots that look very human.

Several treatments are on the market to reverse aging.

First country to reach longevity escape velocity might happen towards the end of the decade.

A majority of people in the most developed countries will now expect to live long past 100.

Self-driving cars make up the majority of cars on the road and a lot of them have reached level 5.

Permanent moonbase now exists and a base on Mars is underway.

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bernard_cernea t1_iwghx5z wrote

flying cars are stupid and will never happen, especially in cities

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TheSingulatarian t1_iwi4nux wrote

They would have to be completely controlled by computers. Too chaotic for human control.

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HumpyMagoo t1_iwkn9tu wrote

we will have larger ai guided by smaller ai monitored by humans to make sure things seem ok in general

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botfiddler t1_iwgzrdf wrote

Not necessarily as cars, which would be a hybrid, yeah that would be stupid. But short range flying vehicles make sense. I think your argument is about steering, but they would fly automatically. I think it makes more sense to have them for some people which would be flying from suburban areas or between one side of the city to another.

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Takadeshi t1_iwheg7a wrote

I'm not so sure, I don't think they make any sense energy-wise and would be less safe than ground vehicles. The amount of energy for a plane to take off is far greater than the amount it requires to stay in the air. The only short-range flight I expect to see are small electric powered planes for short flights, we've already seen these spring up in a few places in the US.

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everything_in_sync t1_iwhmjhz wrote

They wouldn't be planes. I've seen videos of people that have flown on basically drones.

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botfiddler t1_iwhmv8w wrote

This is what I meant, but drones is such a bad term anyways, since the drones in nature die after flying.

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Takadeshi t1_iwjdy95 wrote

Drones are great but not exactly stable. There are just too many random variables to predict for flying cars to ever be safer or more efficient than travelling across the ground. There's not really any advantage to doing so and there's all kinds of problems it could cause

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botfiddler t1_iwhn184 wrote

It's not about everyone using these, but a minority who can afford it and maybe needs to be somewhere. Time can be more important than anything else.

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bernard_cernea t1_iwknrgw wrote

I have several arguments against them including:

  1. Noise pollution and wind currents at landing and take off;
  2. Safety. Congested airways would produce many more accidents in 3D than 2D highways among vehicles. Also intoxicated drivers becoming suicide bombers crashing in tall buildings. Also it would be harder to institute traffic rules that establish priority because there are no fixed routes.
  3. It would ruin the city landscape making it cluttered and chaotic for pedestrians.
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botfiddler t1_iwmdisj wrote

The noise of electrical motors isn't that high, and they might land and start from buildings or special stations. Congestion and accidents are not an issue if it's expensive and with autopilot. They won't be passenger controlled. I don't understand you last point.

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bernard_cernea t1_iwmjsc9 wrote

electrical motors are completely silent, but propellers aren't. Even if autopilot is perfect, it would only be safe if manual control is always forbidden and i doubt people would agree to that.

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botfiddler t1_iwmkhk3 wrote

They will agree to it, there will be no other option. That's exactly your strawman: Saying they won't want what they could get, and what they want they can't ever have. But it works if we reverse it. They want and will take what they can get, and get over what they can't have.

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PunkRockDude t1_iwgy1ax wrote

Uber air taxi model is how you will largely see them first. Where I live the plan is to put them on top of a parking garage. You go there and they take you to the airport or downtown in which case regular car will take you the rest of the way. Makes sense to me. Until the self driving cars come along, cities are increasingly going to be in grid lock (though I think the timeline on those is too aggressive in the op). Other than that probably just play things for the wealthy.

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tedd321 t1_iwhkmqy wrote

Personal drones are available right now. One costs 100k and gets shipped within a year. They are called evtol.

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CaptTheFool t1_iwji9gq wrote

We already have flying cars, they are called helicopters.

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AI_Enjoyer87 t1_iwgcone wrote

Disagree with your timeline. Think we will have a form of proto-AGI in a year or two. Then literally everything else shortly after. Probably AGI by 2025 if we are lucky. As soon as we get proto-AGI we will probably get advanced BCI's and full dive vr. Once we get that I think the next 30 years will be condensed into the next 5 or so. Ik it's a bullish timeline but I believe we are at the knee curve of exponential growth.

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userbrn1 t1_iwhdrz2 wrote

> As soon as we get proto-AGI we will probably get advanced BCI's and full dive vr.

I think that's quite the leap. "full dive" vr would require us to essentially have completely mastered neural encoding both from a theoretical perspective (we're not even close) and from a practical perspective (we're not even close to being close).

It's important to realize that decoding neural signals (brain computer interface) is profoundly different than encoding neural signals (full dive vr). We're currently getting better at neural decoding, such as turning brain signals into limb movements and controlling virtual keyboard and pong paddles.

As far as I know we have virtually no success in artificially simulating sensory stimuli input. We aren't able to plug something into your brain and make you feel touch sensations, or make you clearly see images. We're not even remotely close to that. If we get even a small fraction of the way there the first thing we'd do is create prosthetic eyes, ears, skin, etc. Even the best tech today with cochlear implants requires an intact nerve to take the signal into the brain to get interpreted; we are not at the stage where we can directly encode auditory stimuli into the brain.

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nblack88 t1_iwhkuel wrote

I tend to follow John Carmack's opinion on this: Having AGI doesn't actually herald instantaneous changes in our infrastructure or daily lives. It will take time to implement these advances, and build out the framework that AGI is incorporated into. The AI may be capable, but humans take time to allocate capital, achieve regulatory compliance, and execute those advances. It's coming, faster than we realize. But there is no magic bullet for deployment.

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Danger-Dom t1_iwzilm1 wrote

I think it depends on how well the AGI can optimize itself. If the AGI realizes we're doing AGI 10(00)x less efficient than is possible, deployment timeline will increase.

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nblack88 t1_iwzjf97 wrote

An increase is possible, and if all goes well, I expect it. It will still take time, unless we've dramatically increased the efficiency, scaling, and production of our various "hard" networks: Transportation, manufacturing, distribution, et al.

I hope by the time we have AGI and are ready to implement it in some/most aspects of society, we'll have these increases to facilitate the improvement.

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Danger-Dom t1_ix0zqpj wrote

Yeah I'm just talking about purely algorithmic improvements. So if we create an AGI on the worlds largest supercomputer. If it codes itself up 10x more efficient. Now there's 100s of computers that would be able to deploy the new AGI, and we're off to the races.

Unless, of course, it can't find improvements like that and then yeah you're right we'll have to wait around to build more supercomputers and make faster chips.

But overall I think still with the former situation it'd be a couple years before we started seeing large civilization wide gains from the AI and it's progeny. Not like a next day thing as people seem to think. But not 10 years either.

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Evil_Patriarch t1_iwgq2l8 wrote

I hope you're right but all of my optimism for tech advancement has been destroyed over the past couple decades

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z0rm OP t1_iwgf9l8 wrote

This is my optimistic timeline. We obviously won't have most of these before 2030. These things take time, even if we had an ASI it would take years and years.

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ActuaryGlittering16 t1_iwhgzti wrote

No way. The regulatory/political issues alone would kill this bullish timeline. Flying cars and nanobots in the body and household robots and a literal base on Mars in 5 years? Absolutely not.

I think OP’s conservative timeline is much more likely than this one.

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tedd321 t1_iwhmney wrote

Politics is the bottleneck. If you vote for legislation that focuses on science then you get singularity. If you vote for humans who are ‘afraid of change’ or ones who want to maintain the status quo, you will get nothing.

It’s really simple

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ActuaryGlittering16 t1_iwiekdd wrote

I don’t think the politicians on either side here in America want anything to do with this technology. The left views it as a few privileged elites in the tech world playing god. The Christian right views it as the end of times.

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tedd321 t1_iwjy2f8 wrote

Which future is closer to the truth

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idranh t1_iwi1y4c wrote

I really hope you're right. OP does make a good point though, that even if we have AGI wouldn't the real-world application of its solutions take years?

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Homie4-2-0 t1_iwg51pz wrote

Add to that list nuclear fusion and super-critical geothermal energy. (Quaise)

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Phoenix5869 t1_iwgbzbm wrote

Apparently were gonna have a 64 exaflop supercomputer by the end of the year

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z0rm OP t1_iwgfdx2 wrote

You mean by the end of the decade?

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Phoenix5869 t1_iwgj8kj wrote

https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/tachyum-to-present-human-brain-scale-ai-supercomputer-at-expo-dubai/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/01/20/the-human-brain-scale-ai-supercomputer-is-coming/

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z0rm OP t1_iwgz5sn wrote

If that really is true it's amazing, however the current fastest is only 1 exaFLOP.

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ihateshadylandlords t1_iwh8w7z wrote

I don’t think it’s made it into production yet. Here’s a list of the fastest supercomputers as of June 2022: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/fastest-supercomputers-frontier-exascale/

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userbrn1 t1_iwhf0by wrote

This is the known publicly disclosed list of fastest computers. China stopped sharing info on theirs for national security reasons; they are suspected to have at least one that's higher than the top on this list. It would not be surprising if other countries like the US had military-funded supercomputers larger than the top one on the list as well.

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TemetN t1_iwhul0v wrote

AI supercomputers are not the same as a normal supercomputer (though the author may not have intended to refer to normal supercomputers given the response). Different precision, AI supercomputers already way ahead. That said, a lot of this stuff already did happen.

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DedRuck t1_iwh10nh wrote

you can already talk to very good ai

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Denpol88 t1_iwh0eii wrote

Next 15 years not 30 i think.

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Kinexity t1_iwh66ng wrote

Let's break it down without wishful thinking:

>Things that should happen in the 2020s for continued hope for rapid technological development:
>
>First self-driving car (level 4)

Maybe but I have my doubts if current approaches to ML are sufficient.

>"Flying cars" available in some large cities

Flying cars are a cluster of American indvidualism and misguided vision of the future from the 50s. Normal cars are already problematic.

>AI that you can talk to.

You can do that already it's just not that great.

>1.5 nm transistors (or equivalent) or better

"1.5 nm" transistors probably. Definitely not 1.5 nm transistors.

>Supercomputer with around 100 exaFLOP (more talk about zettascale)

Highly likely. Intel aims for zetaFLOPS by 2032 but they may be too optimistic.

>petaFLOP graphics card

Possible in tensor ops but not really if we talk about shading units.

>Nanobots in the body are on it's way in some research hospitals

Doubt unless you're talking about specially prepared bacteria.

>At least one 3D printed organ have been successful

Plausible.

>Further breakthrough in radical life extension (LEV less than 10 years away according to Aubrey de Grey)

Nope. Nowhere near. Life extension probably 30 years away.

>100,000+ qubits quantum computer

Plausible.

>Starship successfully reaches orbit, possible lands on the moon

Plausible.

>Things that should happen in the 2030s for continued hope of rapid technological development:
>
>The first humanoid robots are becoming available to consumers, capable of some simple household tasks

Doubt. Probably more smaller robots could happen though.

>Self-driving cars with level 4 are becoming relatively common, basically all new cars sold are largely self-driving, at least level 4

FSD lvl 4 - yes. Common - no.

>VR/AR is widespread and very realistic

Widespread - probably if it stops being prohibitively expensive and takes off. Very realistic - doubt if graphically. Definitely not in anything else (sorry guys, no SAO yet)

>Very good artificial intelligence that you can talk to, indistinguishable from real person, different AI exists with different personalities

Hard to distinguish but not indistinguishable.

>At least one dietary supplement/gene therapy etc has been proven to make people live longer or be in better health for longer

Low probability by the end of the decade.

>Zettaflop supercomputer

Plausible.

>Quantum computers are now commonplace and useful

Maybe common in enterprise and research but definitely useful.

>Nanobots are starting to be fairly common in healthcare

You watched too much scifi with nanobots.

>3D-printed organs are becoming commonplace in healthcare

Plausible.

>Starship lands on the moon and Mars.

Plausible.

>Things that should happen in the 2040s for continued hope of rapid technological development:
>
>Robots are common everywhere. There are very capable household robots and there are humanoid robots that look very human.

Give it 10-20 more years.

>Several treatments are on the market to reverse aging.

Doubt.

>First country to reach longevity escape velocity might happen towards the end of the decade.

Impossible. We'll probably need AGI to help us do the research for that and don't expect it to do that overnight (AGI 2040-2060 but rather sooner by my guestimate)

>A majority of people in the most developed countries will now expect to live long past 100.

Same as above - hard doubt.

>Self-driving cars make up the majority of cars on the road and a lot of them have reached level 5.

Doubt.

>Permanent moonbase now exists and a base on Mars is underway.

Plausible.

​

​

If I say "Doubt" it mostly means that I don't think technology will progress that fast.

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botfiddler t1_iwhrkth wrote

You probably won't know when we reached LEV. No one claims that there will be one or some treatments and then we'll know that we'll live forever. It currently looks quite good to me. That there isn't more research and hasn't been during the last few decades is also one of the biggest scandals of our time.

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roidbro1 t1_iwh0s1p wrote

So where in your predictions do you take into account the impending financial collapse in the global economy, the ongoing proxy war, and the climate catastrophes also well documented to be on their way once the tipping points are tipped?
Both the war and climate issues like drought and heatwaves are going to cause widespread famine and mass migrations in the next few years.
How does society continue in these scenarios when supply chains break?

Sorry this just looks like a xmas wish list that doesn't take into account any real world variables.

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botfiddler t1_iwhpnbg wrote

I had similar thoughts. The future will be a mix out of post-apocalyptic and things which look now like scifi. However, we probably won't have widespread famines in the developed world that fast. Same for a global breakdown. I also don't believe in a complete breakdown of supply chains and end of shipping. Shipping and using a global economy is energy efficient per ton. It might end, when we have more automatization in the developed world or low wage refugees, or both.

There will be pockets of technological progress. The people working on self-driving at Tesla are only 150 engineers.

Tipping points being reached doesn't mean the bad things happen directly after that point, only that it is to late to reverse it, either with current knowledge and technology or in definitely.

Global mass migrations are also just lefty propaganda. You can't have lack of food and people wandering around for hundreds of miles. It's not possible. Same for the openess of target countries. Also, it probably wouldn't matter, only create more inequality and a bigger market for surveillance and weapons.

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PolarsGaming t1_iwh3m9l wrote

Agreed odd climate change wasnt taken into account

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rixtil41 t1_iwh6o5d wrote

Unless you think climite change is going to collapse society in less than 25 years then we will get there before climite collapse.

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PolarsGaming t1_iwhydvd wrote

Get there where try it be specific.

It’s realistic to take all variables into account im not implying society will collapse but a broad perspective can further be beneficial in achieving what we all want

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Quealdlor t1_iwpmb37 wrote

I hope for very substantial developments in ending aging and in human augmentation. Because with these two, we are not in such a hurry for tech developments. I don't mind computers evolving only +20% per year, if I can live for hundreds of years in good health. The reason I'm bothered by current pace of change is because we cannot wait like that. It's not about being impatient, but about the fact that billions of people won't make it and some will. We do not know if we will be in that second group. And I also hope for a completely new paradigm of computing that is very scalable like silicon integrated circuits were. Furthermore, I hope that people will be careful, levelheaded and thoughtful with development and use of AI. I don't expect the Singularity in the 2030s or 2040s. 2060s is the earliest possible time.

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justowen4 t1_iwggy30 wrote

I like the conservative approach, and I’d mix in BCI somewhere here which will have a big impact

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tedd321 t1_iwhn5ss wrote

You can literally buy a human operated drone right now on the internet as easily as you can a Tesla.

It’s happening folks.

AI isn’t one entity. It’s a million different super optimized neural networks used at your current place of work.

They don’t talk to each other at all but they are out there and doing whatever task we give them.

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Either-Championship2 t1_iwhz1dp wrote

You lost me at flying cars. This guy is too far down the singularity rabbit hole.

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z0rm OP t1_iwi04up wrote

Flying cars is in quotations for a reason, I count any vtol as flying car too, there already exist several different "flying cars", some have already flown. Some companies are Kitty Hawk, Terrafugia, Moller International, PAL-V and Airbus.

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Dramatic_Credit_1500 t1_iwjmahi wrote

My dream of flying cars is: magnetism on edges of skyscrapers top to bottom. Magnetic floors on the ground...have a safety railway in between, also magnetic, that can hold the force.

Basically, magnets.

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tiberius-Erasmus t1_iwgl909 wrote

What's your prediction on AGI?

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z0rm OP t1_iwgr3sg wrote

Probably between 2025-2040 depending on different peoples definition of AGI.

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[deleted] t1_iwj1qzq wrote

[deleted]

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RavenWolf1 t1_iwk3til wrote

Him being ceo doesn't mean that he is right. Most ceos aren't with their predictions.

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SFTExP t1_iwgzh8j wrote

Or nuclear war 🤔

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ihateshadylandlords t1_iwh4o9d wrote

I don’t see a lot of those happening, but I’m just guessing too. I think a lot of these predictions will still be in the lab/discontinued by 2030, but the ones that make it out of the lab will be noticeable in the late 2030’s.

Edit: I think you can talk to “AI” now. I’ve seen interviews with a GPT3 bot, but it was underwhelming in my opinion.

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Ivanliuks t1_iwh7wz1 wrote

Prediction:

Electric Vehicles and self driving vehicles won't take off except as public transportation, which will usurp cars after they are phased out.

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botfiddler t1_iwhqeu6 wrote

Maybe there will be fewer cars and personal vehicles, but not anywhere close to zero. Maybe more so for bigger cars and city dwellers. Cybertruck is made for land owners. Poorer city folk will walk, go with a bike or some scooter, aside from public transportation. Others will fly in electric drone-like devices with auto-pilot.

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botfiddler t1_iwieute wrote

Your predictions would be more convincing if you had some sources, maybe a little website with snippets from sources on which each prediction is based. Otherwise everyone will see it as a mixed bag where they agree with some and disagree with others, while wondering who you are that we should care.

Anyways, virtual reality, holodeck alike mixed reality, comes in surprisingly fast: https://youtu.be/23RS3RAg16k

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GloveBusiness855 t1_iwkr5e9 wrote

Tbh I think 100 exa flop super computers by 2050 is pessimistic by 2050-2053 the fastest super will probably be 1000x faster then the current one but more realistically based on past trends I wouldn't be surprised with the top supercomputer then being 1 million times faster

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z0rm OP t1_iwkrbkn wrote

I agree, I think we will reach it in late 2020s, which is what I said in my post :)

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Quealdlor t1_iwu7qyo wrote

As I have failed in my predictions to this day, I'm not so eager to make predictions anymore. I think that things will gradually move forward, with some problems along the way. World GDP seems to double every 15 years for example. Computers will certainly get faster, but I don't know how quickly. Medicine will also certainly get better. I don't think that flying cars make much sense, I'm much more interested in VR and AR. 🙂

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Akimbo333 t1_iwghws5 wrote

What are these levels?

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botfiddler t1_iwh0mt5 wrote

Many men will have some form of synthetic girlfriends, like animated dolls, much earlier. It might take 15-20 years to also have them doing all or most chores at home. Many childcare tasks would be easier and many chores could be done by other robots. Combine that with guys being able to work from home, live on capital returns or getting UBI.

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3deal t1_iwg4xg4 wrote

Starship successfully reaches orbit, possible lands on the moon

​

Nah

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TheLianeonProject t1_iwg6ri5 wrote

Of the above, this is one of the most likely. Starship literally fired its engines yesterday.

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