Counterpoint: in December of 1903, the New York Times ran an opinion piece saying that Man wouldn't unlock the secret of flight for at least a million years. 9 days later, the Wright brothers flew their first prototype airplane.
So, you know. Don't count out those hidden breakthroughs.
AGI, nanobots, fully autonomous self driving cars, cancer cures and aging cures, significant life extension, etc are all a long way off.
Few of these have really been proven possible, much less an expected time-frame.
AGI: We are no nearer to artificial self-awareness with LLMs and other approaches than when AI research began in the 1950s.
nanobots: We have the ability to print parts at that scale but material properties are very, very different at that scale. Heat dissipation is a real problem.
Fully autonomous self driving cars: This is a subset of no self-awareness in AI.
Cancer cures: Here is where I disagree. The progress in combating the thousands of individual types of cancer in the past 50 years is astounding and the pace is increasing.
Also factor in that more people end up needed treatment for cancer because a: they live longer and b: the massive reductions in other causes of death means more people who would have died in past generations from other things live long enough for cancer to develop.
aging cures: Quality of life as we age has improved greatly but
significant life extension: yes, it seems 120ish is hard coded as the terminal age and we still don't know if we can alter that.
SF is great in that it can show possible futures but it is not prediction.
Great write-up. Thanks!
I'd be more worried about how close the end of life as we know it due to climate change is. 2050 is going to be a hoot.
The rest is probably slated to come around 2100 by which time we might not even have the society and tech to make those things, due to the breakdown we will have experienced long before then.
I kind of wish there was more emphasis on making the best out of what is currently possible instead of waiting around for scientific and technological breakthroughs that will take an indeterminably long period to come to fruition, if they do at all.
I guess I'm so used to hearing about distant solutions to present-day problems and I never hear much about how these problems could be addressed today (although in some cases, like with climate change, this inevitably involves things like lifestyle changes and societal restructuring, which themselves can seem equally like hopium).
I would tend to take the opposite point of view. Self-driving cars are here already - they are operating as taxis without human drivers in Chinese and American cities. AI is on an exponential growth path. I think its reasonable to think recursive self-improving AGI will be with us by the 2030s. Once that happens …. all bets are off for all the rest of the stuff you mentioned.
AI is on an exponential growth path.
Prove it. I would love to be wrong, but it doesn’t seem that way
It's not exactly proof, but this graph seems to support that claim to an extent.
I don't think a recursively self improving AI (a la a singularity) is something that will be made soon, if ever, especially as we push the limits of available computing power. There's no such thing as infinite exponential growth in reality, as there's always an eventual limit to growth.
I think AGI, in some form, could possibly happen relatively soon (like next three decades or so), but I'm not sure it will be of the recursively self improving variety. Especially not the sort that magically solves all of humanity's problems.
AGI, nanobots, fully autonomous self driving cars, cancer cures and aging cures, significant life extension
I don't know what AGI stands for but as for the others, I'm not sure you have a full grasp.
Self driving cars is a non issue. Cars aren't sustainable, we don't have space for them and let's not even mention pollution (yes, even electric).
Cancer research is a sliding scale. The survival rate for cancer now is much bigger than it was e.g. 50 years ago.
It's highly arguable whether a cure for aging is a good thing. The people most interested in this tend to be rich, selfish folks. Besides, that wouldn't fix things like a fucked joint, which isn't an issue exclusive to old age. This success would open up opportunity for much misery.
Nanobots are robots in the nano scale. We have been making ever smaller robots. I'd argue that this is also a sliding scale, with microbots having loads of applications and so on.
A cure to aging would be defined as an extension of healthspan, not lifespan. People living till their 80s on average but having fewer disablements and diseases of old age would be what success might look like.
I think it would be generally good for everyone, if it were to be broadly available. Removes a big strain on health care, enables people to be autonomous and independent into adulthood, and could even change this "demographic cliff" the rich fear with our decreasing birth rates.