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AlphaFold may offer a way to rapidly grow the number of solved proteins. AlphaFold has been heralded by the biology community as having solved a “fifty-year-old grand challenge in biology.”
based on past outcomes of clinical trials, AI can predict the likelihood of each lead candidate, and rank them accordingly. These experiments are called “in silico,” as silicon-based software simulates the actual effect of the drugs and clinical trials. After in silico efforts produce high-confidence candidates, scientists can work from the AI-ranked list.
there need to be innovative proposals such as letting people donate their data along with their organs when they die.
Robots can be used in hotels (to clean and to deliver laundry, suitcases, and room service), offices (as receptionists, guards, and cleaning staff), stores (to clean floors and organize shelves), and information outlets (to answer questions and give directions at airports, hotels, and offices).
was driven by the triple necessities of increased productivity, lower costs, and human safety. Zoom and other videoconferencing services will go down in history as the tools that kept the world turning during COVID-19. They made possible productive team meetings, joyful weddings, and active classrooms for millions of students. We can anticipate that in the near future, business meetings will be archived and transcribed by automatic speech recognition. This
track commitments, schedules, and possible anomalies, significantly improving business efficiency and management.
an omnidirectional treadmill (ODT), which was featured in Ready Player One. ODTs are already available on the market. They include a frame-mounted shoulder-worn harness, which detects the force applied by the user’s body and protects the user from falling. This ODT rotates at the same rate as the user’s movement, so as to always keep the user centered. The treadmill can be tilted to simulate hills or stairs. This allows essentially any movement without the danger of falling.
Users could also interact with and spar with purely synthesized beings (like Hiroshi in “My Haunting Idol”). With such experiences at our disposal, humans by 2041 may increasingly live in multiple worlds, one real, some virtual, and others a mix of the two.
Training will be a major XR application area. Microsoft just sold $22 billion of HoloLens to the U.S. Army over the next ten years for training to deliver situational awareness, information sharing, and decision-making.
once the tools are invented and tested, the proliferation will be very rapid. One could imagine that professional tools like Unreal and Unity may evolve into the XR version of photo filters one day.
Holography is improving over time, but it is unlikely that naked-eye holography will become anywhere as good as XR assisted by glasses or contact lenses by 2041.
today. Many people think smartphones and apps already know too much about us, but XR will take things to a whole new level.
If we learned anything from the recent concerns about the externalities of social networks and AI, we should start thinking early about how to address the inevitable issues when these externalities multiply with
The transmission of high-fidelity video with minimal latency will take a lot of bandwidth, but 6G is set to provide that by about 2030.
More data leads to better AI, more automation leads to greater efficiency, more usage leads to reduced cost, and more free time leads to greater productivity. All of these will grow into a mutually reinforcing virtuous circle that will continually and rapidly increase the adoption of AV.
Danish Straits,
there is an 80-percent chance that by 2041 there will be a functional 4,000 logical qubit (and over a million physical qubits) quantum computer that can do what was described in “Quantum Genocide,” at least as it relates to cracking the encryption used for today’s bitcoins.
1994 paper by MIT professor Peter Shor. If this algorithm is run on a QC with 4,000 qubits or more, it can break a class of cryptography algorithms under “asymmetric cryptography,” with RSA as the most well-known of such algorithms. Some people credit this paper with igniting interest in quantum computers.
A “Slaughterbot” such as the one that nearly killed the president of Venezuela could be built today by an experienced hobbyist for less than $1,000. All the parts are available for purchase online, and all open-source technologies are available for download.
Imagine, a $1,000 political assassin! And this is not a far-fetched danger for the future, but a clear and present danger.
Autonomous weapons lower the cost to the killer. While there have been suicide bombers, giving one’s life with certainty for a cause is still a high hurdle for anyone. But with autonomous assassins, there would be no lives to give up for killing.
autonomous weapons are already a clear and present danger, and will become more intelligent, nimble, lethal, and accessible at an unprecedented speed.
We will need to invent new AI algorithms to learn long-term stimulus-response amid a lot of noise.
By 2041, we will not gain a full understanding of what determines our state of mind, nor will we know how long-term eudaimonic happiness works. But by that time, AI’s ability to read human emotions should be quite advanced, well beyond human capabilities, and there should be prototypes that try to improve human higher-level happiness.
GDPR is a big deal, and it got off to a good start.
GDPR stipulates that companies must be transparent to people about how their data will be used.
Users’ explicit consent for a specific purpose is needed in order for a company to start collecting that user’s data (for example, giving your address to Facebook only for the purpose of facilitating e-commerce order delivery).
Data must be protected from unauthorized use, leak, or theft. Automated decisions should be explainable, and escalation to human intervention ...
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another option when technologies mature would be a “trusted AI” to which we would give all our data to safeguard, hide, or give out.
when this “trusted AI” (let’s call it the Isle) knows everything about us, we can have it respond to all data requests for
a powerful AI assistant, but also our protector of data, and our interface to all the apps.
a new social contract for data.
The fundamental issue is that when the interest of the AI owner diverges from the interest of the AI users, the users lose.
In order to find an AI owner we can trust, we need to find an entity not pressured to optimize commercial interests—one that will naturally embrace our interests without reservations.
What entities might have interests that align with ours? “Isle of Happiness” uses the perhaps fanciful example of a benevolent monarchy of a small wealthy country.
a benevolent monarch has strong trust from his or her subjects and possesses the courage to implement major changes.
enlightened monarchs were the key catalysts to usher in the Age of Enlightenment.
I also predict that in the next twenty years, small countries governed by strong leaders with the support of the populace are most likely to make breakthrough decisions in technology adoption.
There is an emerging field called “privacy computing”
federated learning is an AI technique that trains AI across multiple decentralized devices or servers holding local data samples.
And if you still think giving our most valuable data to a third party is ludicrous, think about how most of us store our most valuable physical possessions with a secured third party, such as a bank safe deposit box.
This story, set in Australia, explores a futuristic society that has introduced two currencies for a post-scarcity world: a card that provides for citizens’ basic needs, and a new virtual currency for building reputation and respect through service to the community.
reward system called Moola. The system rewarded citizens for voluntary community work, such as caring for children and keeping public spaces pristine. Participants’ smart wristbands collected speech data from the volunteer work and quantified it with the help of AI. The score was predicated on variables including difficulty, contribution to community and culture, degree of innovation, and self-improvement, as well as the most important factor: the satisfaction of the person or community served.
We are approaching a confluence of improved solar, wind, and battery technologies with the capacity to rebuild the world’s energy infrastructure by 2041.
As the cost of energy, materials, and production fall at historic speed, we can look forward to plenitude. “Plenitude” is the word I have chosen to denote a new phase of human life, in which all people are entitled to a comfortable life, as goods prices approach free, and work becomes optional.
“dematerialization,” or an age in which many physical products are made obsolete as their capabilities are absorbed by software and platform products like mobile phones.
Synthetic biology will revolutionize the food industry. Meat can be grown in the lab using animal-sourced starter cells, with the same protein and fat profiles, and the same taste.
robots and AI will take over the manufacturing, delivery, design, and marketing of most goods. Autonomous vehicles will take us anywhere anytime at minimal cost and save us money by our not having to buy cars (“The Holy Driver”). AI service robots will do chores at home better than the best housekeeper (“Contactless Love”). AI will take over all routine jobs and tasks, white-collar and blue-collar alike (“The Job Savior”).
AI will also provide excellent service for many routine white-collar jobs. AI assistants will guide our lives better than the very best human assistants (“The Golden Elephant” and “Isle of Happiness”). AI teachers will teach engaging classes tailored to each student (“Twin Sparrows”). AI doctors will diagnose and cure patients better than human doctors (“Contactless Love”). AI entertainment will be realistic and immersive, yet virtual and thus nearly free (“My Haunting Idol”).
If you are skeptical about plenitude, consider that even today it’s already here in certain segments of the economy. We can consume all the music and movies we want, on any device at any time, for about twenty dollars a month. We can select from a large collection of ebooks and audio books at a nominal cost. We can read or watch news for free. We can buy and sell stocks for no commission. We can search and access valuable information online that was once artificially made scarce and expensive.
