Google CTO and the most famous technology futurist Ray Kurzweil made another batch of predictions.
As one of the foremost researchers on modern advances in artificial intelligence, Kurzweil has been publishing his predictions since the 1990s, many of which have gone academic. But if five years ago he often operated with long periods (2030s, 2040s), then recently chronological harmony has appeared in the predictions of the scientist. Perhaps the accuracy was influenced by his work in the largest Internet company, where the futurist was at the forefront of many innovative developments.
Kurzweil invites you to take part in an intellectual game and put together a puzzle - a picture of the future from his old and new predictions. If you collect all the forecasts made over 20 years in books, blogs, interviews and lectures, you can see that the scientist has painted the future from 2019 to 2099 literally by years.
2019 - Wires and cables for personal and peripheral devices in any field are a thing of the past.
2020 - Personal computers will achieve computing power comparable to the human brain.
2021 - Wireless internet will cover 85% of the Earth's surface.
2022 - Laws governing the relationship between humans and robots will be enacted in the United States and Europe. The activities of robots, their rights, obligations and other restrictions will be formalized.
2024 - Elements of computer intelligence will become mandatory in cars. People will be prohibited from driving a car that is not equipped with computer assistants.
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2025 - The mass market for implant gadgets emerges.
2026 - Thanks to scientific progress, per unit of time we will extend our life for more time than has passed.
2027 - A personal robot capable of fully autonomous complex actions will become as commonplace as a refrigerator or a coffee maker.
2028 - Solar energy will become so cheap and widespread that it will satisfy all the total energy needs of mankind.
2029 - A computer will be able to pass the Turing test, proving that it has intelligence in the human sense of the word. This will be achieved through a computer simulation of the human brain.
2030 - The rise of nanotechnology in industry, which will lead to a significant reduction in the cost of production of all products.
2031 - 3D printers for printing human organs will be used in hospitals of all sizes.
2032 - Nanorobots begin to be used for medical purposes. They will be able to deliver nutrients to human cells and remove waste. They will also conduct detailed scans of the human brain to understand the details of how it works.
2033 - Self-driving cars fill the roads.
2034 - The first date of a person with artificial intelligence. The film "She" in an improved form: the virtual lover can be equipped with a "body" by projecting an image onto the retina of the eye, for example, using contact lenses or virtual reality glasses.
2035 - Space technology will become sufficiently advanced to ensure that Earth is always protected from the threat of an asteroid impact.
2036 - Using a programming approach to biology, humanity for the first time will be able to program cells to treat disease, and the use of 3D printers will allow the growth of new tissues and organs.
2037 - A giant breakthrough in understanding the mystery of the human brain. Hundreds of different sub-regions with specialized functions will be identified. Some of the algorithms that encode the development of these regions will be deciphered and incorporated into the neural networks of computers.
2038 - The emergence of robotic people, products of transhumanistic technologies. They will be equipped with additional intelligence (for example, focused on a specific narrow area of knowledge, which the human brain is not able to fully cover) and a variety of implant options - from eye cameras to additional prosthetic arms.
2039 - Nanomachines will be implanted directly into the brain and randomly input and output signals from brain cells. This will lead to a "full immersion" virtual reality that does not require any additional equipment.
2040 - Search engines will become the basis for gadgets that will be implanted in the human body. The search will be carried out not only with the help of language, but also with the help of thoughts, and the results of search queries will be displayed on the screen of the same lenses or glasses.
2041 - Internet bandwidth limits will be 500 million times greater than today.
2042 - The first potential realization of immortality - thanks to the army of nanorobots, which will supplement the immune system and "clean out" diseases.
2043 - The human body will be able to take any shape, thanks to the large number of nanorobots. The internal organs will be replaced by cybernetic devices of much better quality.
2044 - Non-biological intelligence becomes billions of times more intelligent than biological intelligence.
2045 - The onset of the technological singularity. The earth will turn into one giant computer.
2099 - The process of technological singularity extends to the entire universe.
Well, such predictions are sometimes hard to believe. However, if we take into account the huge rates of development of society, it becomes clear that in the near future this is possible. For now, we can only observe.