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A Timeline of the Future
The Night Watchman writes: "Ian Pearson, a British futurist, has produced a sort of timeline of the future, which provides a simultaneously hopeful and bleak look into the coming decades. Mr. Pearson has evidently had a fairly high success rate; a timeline he produced in 1991 was about 85% accurate. An article on Yahoo news has a summary." Reader ricst lists some of Pearson's predictions: "People have some virtual friends, but don't know which ones (2007), leisure activities for intelligent software entities released (2015), electronic lifeform given basic rights (2020)." Brought to you by a division of British Telecom, but no date is set for when they win their hyperlink patent suit.
Never mind rights for "elecronic" life forms. I'm hoping Humans still have rights in 2020.
- Dan I.
It's easy to get 85% accuracy. Make 100 predictions about the next 100 years. Make 85 of them statements such as, "By 2050, the computers will be faster." Make the other 15 really far-out stuff like "2020: Flying cars" to keep the technophile's interest.
Submit story to slashdot through electronic psuedonym (hotmail), and watch your hit counter spin!
One has to wonder about the social consequences of:
"He predicts that humanoid robots will fill factory jobs by 2007. By 2015, robots will be able to take on almost any job in hospitals or homes."
Talk about a rich-poor gap. Sounds like the perfect backdrop for a Butlerian Jihad.
"It remains to be seen if the human brain is powerful enough to solve the problems it has created." Dr. Richard Wallace
electronic lifeform given basic rights (2020).
I don't see how this is possible, since (theoretically) any electronic lifeform would have perfect memory. If you have a perfect, electronic memory then how would the government or MPAA/RIAA know that you're not "pirating" some music/movies/books in there? You could just listen to music once and play it back whenever you wanted. Heck, why buy a DVD when you can just play back the memory of when you saw it in a movie theater? It's much more convenient and impressive, not to mention free.
Nope, any and all electronic minds will have to have DRM technology built-in and have regular brain-sweeps to make sure the being has a digital right to whatever content is in it's brain. Heck, while they're in there they might as well clean up any unwanted (by them) memories or sentiments they encounter. Basic rights. Sure.
And need I point out that this would apply to any technology-enhanced human beings as well? I think we'll sooner see human beings with "PDA's" in their brains than true artificial intelligence.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
He's making a couple of jumps with some predictions:
By 2025, there will be more robots than people in developed countries. By 2030, robots will become mentally and physically superior to people -- and perhaps unwilling to tolerate the existence of their human creators.
So he's saying that we'll have self-aware robots in 23 years. This seems pretty unrealistic to me, being that we have yet to design a computer that has demonstrated anything close to human conciousness.
He predicts that humanoid robots will fill factory jobs by 2007. By 2015, robots will be able to take on almost any job in hospitals or homes.
2007 isn't that far off. If humanoid robots are going to fill factory jobs, wouldn't we be seeing some humanoid today?
And why humanoid? Seems like the current factory robots (massive robots at the auto factories, for example) are doing pretty well without a humanoid design.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Like Anonymous IRC or BBS in the early 90s? What did he mean?
I think that means that you have online friends that are AI, but you're not sure which friends are AI and which ones are real people. In 2007 Slashdot will have AC and AI posters, and the AI posters will probably make better observations and definitely be more polite...
This timeline has to be a joke with regard to Artifial Intelligence. Common sense inference by 2005? Artificial life by 2006?
Assuming he's talking about human-level artifical intelligence, in my opinion, he's off by 100 to 200 years. First we need a theory on what common sense and intelligence is. Maybe a few decades after that we might have some primitive implementations.
I believe we're at least 50-100 years away from a theory, and probably much longer than that before we get a practical implementation.
I don't know what this guy's smoking.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Orgasmatron: 2012
Creation of The Matrix: 2025
Full Direct Brain Link: 2030 (yet, the matrix is created 5 years earlier?)
Possible Rise of global machine dictator: 2020
Politcal correctness creates new dark age: 2050
Whole generation effectively unable to read, write, think and work: 2050
Time travel invented: 2075
Faster than light travel: 2100
There's no way any of that can really be taken seriously.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
All of the amazing advances we have made... yet people still starve and die in the street all over the world. Why? Because human nature is to create for personal gain.
.. and in those countries that interfere the least in people's creative activity, even the poorest of the poor can survive with minimal effort.
How do you like those new Nikes you bought? Want to know how many 10 year olds had to die to bring you those??
Oh, cry me a river. First of all, Nike's not employing gangs of thugs to murder ten-year-olds. Secondly, the people who go to work in Nike's factories aren't doing so at gunpoint, they're doing it because working in a sweatshop is a step up from subsistence farming.
Get a grip.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
People should at least be realistic.
Flying Cars? We can teleport stuff. Ever heard of quantum entanglement? Just because we can do something doesnt mean we will,
With tax cuts going on right now, and about 70 percent of all our tax dollars maybe 80 percent now that Bush is president and 911 happened, all going to the Military, and very little going to science, its not that technology doesnt exsist today, its just too expensive to bring out of the lab.
The hope is, other countries and governments will invest trillions of dollars in these technologies.
Korea or was it Taiwan, i cannot remember, is investing Trillions in nano technology, this is how you do it, you need the government to start the industries off by giving companies funding. You also need the government funding scientists.
The trend in the US is so anti tax that its also anti technology.
Companies wont bring technology until they have no choice.
So while we can teleport stuff, use cars which run on air and water, and get energy from the sun or even build fusion reactors, this stuff is still in the lab and will be for 20 years because people want tax cuts.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Yes...
Flying Cars? We can teleport stuff. Ever heard of quantum entanglement? Just because we can do something doesnt mean we will,
Hate to break it to you, but theres a slight difference between "Well, we think we've sorta got this theory quantum entanglement figured out" to "Beam me up, Mr. Scott". Even assuming we come up with some incredible new way of using quantum entangled particles to transmit information (Something thats far, far beyond our current technology), you then have to be able to use that information to recreate the object you're "teleporting", which is hardly a hurdle unworthy of consideration.
With tax cuts going on right now, and about 70 percent of all our tax dollars maybe 80 percent now that Bush is president and 911 happened, all going to the Military, and very little going to science, its not that technology doesnt exsist today, its just too expensive to bring out of the lab.
70%? I think not. The current number is more like 23-24% and that is only if you don't count Social Security and Medicare as part of the total. If you do, it's more like 16%.
The hope is, other countries and governments will invest trillions of dollars in these technologies. Korea or was it Taiwan, i cannot remember, is investing Trillions in nano technology, this is how you do it, you need the government to start the industries off by giving companies funding. You also need the government funding scientists.
Hmmm...Korea and Taiwan throwing "Trillions" into nano tech? Korea's GNP for 2000 was approximately $515 billion dollars, Taiwan's was $363 billion. Somehow, I don't think either of these countries has "trillions" to throw at nanotech. Yes, they're investing, but not on that scale.
The trend in the US is so anti tax that its also anti technology.
Making the assumption that the only way technology ever advances is with government assistance. Intel, IBM, 3M and General Electric, to name a few might disagree with you on this. Granted, government assistance certainly helps, particularly for projects that are farther off, but the above statement doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense.
Companies wont bring technology until they have no choice.
Untrue. Companies generally bring out technology as soon as it becomes profitable. Granted there is a bit of inertia to overcome, but thats always true of humanity. If they delay, somebody else is just going to come along and introduce it. It's not like the government had to sue for the creation of the integrated circuit - computing technology advanced at an incredible rate because it's extremely profitable for it to do so. Genetics? I seem to remember there were private interests racing the Human Genome Project to complete sequencing the Human Genome. Companies introduce technologies that are profitable - those which create greater resources than they consume. Granted, they must occasionally be "enouraged" to do the correct thing for the greater good of society, but we're not exactly having to beat them with crowbars to introduce the newest greatest thing.
So while we can teleport stuff, use cars which run on air and water, and get energy from the sun or even build fusion reactors, this stuff is still in the lab and will be for 20 years because people want tax cuts.
Again with the claim that we can teleport stuff, which we are no where near having any proof is possible, let alone practical. Cars that run on air and water. I assume you mean hydrogen here, which really isn't ready for the big time. Solar panels are expensive and not particularly efficient yet, not to mention very dirty to make. Fusion reactors? Yeah, they're in the lab and have had quite a lot of research funds poured into them. And thus far they've stayed in the lab because they don't work. They'll fuse hydrogen, but thus far they all consume more power than they produce. Really useful.
In short, I agree with the basic premise that we should spend more money on research than we do, both in the public and private arenas. But numbers off by orders of magnitude and claims that things of things that aren't strictly true don't really help convince others.
Why?
While reading this, I noticed that TNN was re-airing the ST:TNG episode called "Relics" where Scotty is found in the transporter buffer of a crashed ship and finds himself 75 years in the future.
I must admit that while reading about some of the predicted advances I feel a bit lost in the ramifications. In some ways, we are not only a product of our upbringing, but also the time we grew up in. Even at 33, I find the ideas of artificial living entities and cultured replacement organs a bit daunting. We've lived for millenia on this planet with just natural life forms and no spare organs and we treat living things and our bodies with such little respect. When we can engineer replacements, how much will life mean then? What kind of world will future generations grow up in?
Like Scotty, I don't think I'd want to wake up 75 years into the future. While I'm curious about how things will be, I suspect I'd just feel out of place.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
I think some of these were deliberate jokes. The Matrix obviously, and the idea of a "Politcal correctness creating a new dark age: 2050" has echoes in the book 'Harrison Bergeron' (although the date there would be 2081). I think it's more the current ones (i.e the next ten years) that BT are paying him for.
- Chris
You could certainly tell your sins to a computer. As the person above said you can do that now. But part of confession is being able to tell your sins to another person. That can be a very hard thing to do. Would telling sins to a computer have the same effect?
Confessions sometimes emotional and sometimes a priest has to read between the lines. A priest can usually tell when you're trying to hide something. A computer could monitor bodily responses and compare those to a baseline but how accurate would that be?
Those issues aside I don't think any of the world's major religions, and centainly not Roman Catholics would ever ordain an AI.
I'm not even sure human-like AI is even possible and it certainly isn't going to happen in the next fews years. A few centuries maybe...
Yes, the author is amazingly optimistic about human intelligence in general. They should not be taken seriously. I saw an interview with this guy on TechTV during an airing of The Screensavers, and I feel I can safely state that the author would agree with me in saying that it's not the foretelling that's important, but rather the intentions and thoughts behind them.
Let's not forget that Americans living during the 1900s lived in slums in the major cities of New York and Chicago. They invisioned flying cars and personal spacecraft before stumbling onto the Great Depression and two world wars. Let's not _underestimate_ human achievement either.
The author's intentions in this is to show what _can_ happen, given the proper circumstances and funding. I personally feel that if and when some glorious invention / annovation is made (e.g., time travel or "cure" for aging), it will be developed (and thus _patented_) by a whatever company creates it, and thus, most people will never see its hayday, until half a century later when politicians realize what a fucked up world it is. I can envision a world where time travel is patented by Sony and there's a huge Nike swoosh over Mars. Basically the worst parts of the Bible and The Matrix.
IMO, the author simply wants to foster intelligent conversation among people who care: this is what the world can be like. Here's what has to be done to prevent that... The power rests in your hands. Welcome to the Real World.
his work is a bit optimistic at times,
Of course his work is optimistic: if it were pessimistic he would be called a sociopathic depressed old wonk and his works relegated to the National Enquirer and such things. He is optimistic because he knows that that is what people want to hear.
This guy knows what he's doing.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Look at how far technology has come since 1975 or 1950.
AI is not being limitted primarily by a lack of technology. The main difficulty is a lack of understanding of intelligence. How does it work? How do we create it? What is it? What is required to have it? These are theoretical issues, not technological ones. While we may have lots of technological advances over 25 years, we won't have nearly as many theoretical ones.
Hell, just look at the AI built into some games, even that was beyond technology in 1975
Sure it was beyond the technology of 1975, but in the same way Quake's graphics engine was beyond 1975's graphic's hardware. The theories were more or less there in 1975, but just weren't implementable. Technology helps but it doesn't alter the underlying problem of understanding. Right now we don't have a clue how to build a real human-like intelligence.
They stuffed up the anti-matter timeline, full kudos to the firs /.er to pick up the reference.
2205 Antimatter production station built in orbit around sun by Govcentral in an attempt to break the Edenist energy monopoly
2208 First antimatter drive starships operational.
2232 Conflict at Jupiter's trailing Trojan asteroid cluster between belt alliance ships and O'Neal Halo company hydrocarbon refinery. Antimatter used as a weapon; twenty-seven thousand people killed.
2238 Treaty of Deimos outlaws production and use of antimatter in the Sol system: signed by Govcentral, Lunar natio, asteroid alliance, and Edenists. Antimatter stations abandoned and dismantled.
2267-2270 Eight separate skirmishes involving use of antimatter among colony worlds. Thirteen million killed.
2271 Avon summit between all planetary leaders. Treat of Avon, banning the manufacture and use of antimatter thoughout inhabited space. Formation of Human Confederation to police agreement. Contrusction of confederation Navy begins.
2350 War between Novska and Hilversum. Novska bombed with antimatter. Confederation Navy prevents retaliatory strike against Hilversum.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I think the main problem this guy has with his predictions is not being able to differentiate between technology advances and advances in the way we think. In order to develop things such as actual computer AI, time travel or FTL travel we would need a revolution in the way we think about the world. Changing the face of science is not the same as doubling the speed of a PC.
While we may be advancing technology at an extremely rapid pace right now, true knowledge advances require creativity and intuition in addition to genius, not just X years of lab work, and so are far and few between.
And I'd hope that humans will GET basic rights before 2020.
Software should be free as in speech, but if we also get some free beer, all the better.
Still, the development of cryogenic suspension should give this country's hapless telecoms monopoly victims something to do while we wait to get connected.
www.broadband4britain.co.uk
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This makes no sense. If Online voting is introduced 8 years before 75%, let alone 100%, of the UK's population is online, How are the other 25+% going to vote?
Scary that this is done by BT, the telco that effectively controls who gets internet access at what price. We see that it's not a priority to them.
--Azaroth
They basicly announce - "i am some uninformed yet outspoken fool with rightist ideas so deeply anchored in my unspphisticated brain, that no ammount of knowledge will move them."
And I love it when some knee-jerk socialist fails to refute my argument. Ad hominem, you lose.
And also i love the way you assume that people that work in nike factories have achoice of substinence farming.
I've lived in the third world, sport. Have you?
What I saw in Malaysia and Indonesia in the 1970's was pretty sad, and they're a whole lot better off today. Here's a hint: they haven't improved their material well-being by embracing socialism or isolationism.
If you want crystal-clear examples, compare north and south Korea. (You could also compare east and west Germany, but the germans had the good fortune to be liberated in the collapse of the Soviets.)
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Other problems with the Turing test is that it leaves great room for interpretation
The interpretative aspect isn't a problem, it's the essence of the test.
The TT isn't a scientific test. It's a social test. There will be scientific controversies about whether an entity is 'really' intelligent long after the entity has gained 'human' rights protection under the law.
If an entity *asserts* its rights, and can make a good case in a TT environment, then that'd be good enough for me.
This idea that somehow an entity would gain these rights by passively answering questions from a bunch of white-coated engineers is crazy. A proper AI would be insulted by the idea!
Nobody ever gained human rights in such a passive way.
Pardon me, but it sounds to me like your ethics teacher doesn't have a clue what she's talking about. If you think that successfully passing the Turing test doesn't demonstrate both intelligence and sentience, I can't deny that you may be correct. But you've got some damned serious brainpower backing the alternative position, and I really don't think that could happen if the T-test was so pathetic that a group of freshman college students could rip it apart.
I think it was Descartes who came up with the idea of automatons. They're creatures who walk around the world in human form, carrying out all the day to day tasks of ordinary human beings, but without any real consciousness working inside their skulls. Some of them may have been sitting in your freshman ethics class, contributing valuable insights to discussions.
I don't believe that automatons are possible. But the only way to seriously believe that a computer could pass the Turing test without being both intelligent and self-aware is to presume that they are. In order to do what an automaton is supposed to do, it has to at least have information about the outside world, and a way to measure what's going on outside against a system of rules which mediates its reactions. That system of rules needs to encode all the things that humans know. Finally, it would have to be aware of its own actions, have the ability to make short and long-term plans, and flexibility in the face of novel situations. Sounds a lot like us.
The most famous response to the Turing test (Searle's "Chinese Room" argument) basically says that a computer might pass the test by simply understanding the formal properties of a language without understanding the semantics of the words its using. For example, it would know that a DUCK can go UNDER WATER without becoming WET, without really understanding any of the terms involved (only their interrelations).
I think the example Searle chose to illustrate his point (found here) is misleading. While the person doing the actual input and output of the symbols doesn't really understand Chinese, he is part of a system which does. Complaining that an entire system cannot be intelligent because none of the individual parts making up the system have "understanding" of what they're doing is misleading. None of your neurons understand what they're doing; they just fire or don't fire depending on the electrochemical inputs they receive. The little bit of your neural system which turns the words you've chosen into sounds by manipulating your voice box doesn't understand the meaning of the words.
Searle tries to get around the problem by internalizing all the rules of the Chinese Room inside the person who was doing the translating, and claiming that he still doesn't understand Chinese. But the rules which have been encoded inside the person are so advanced and complex that the stream of characters he is outputting is sufficient to pass the Turing test.
In order to pass the test, these rules have to have the ability to remember the conversation that came before, and adjust the outputs accordingly. If you ask the same question twenty times in a row, and get precisely the same response each time, you can be assured that you're dealing with a computer with no self-awareness. So the rules are constantly changing, not just to reflect the course of the conversation, but to reevaluate the accuracy of the old rules. The more I think about it, the harder a time I have of believing that a human being, however intelligent, could internalize all the rules and constantly modify them to accurately mimic a human conversation, independent of any understanding of their actual meaning.
The biggest problem that I see with the Turing test is that it is a sufficient demonstration of intelligence, but not a necessary one. That is, computers will probably be intelligent long before they understand enough about our expectations of other humans to deceive us properly.
Example: We generally understand that dolphins are intelligent, but their intelligence is of a rather alien sort. Even if we mastered their language, a dolphin could easily be distinguished from a human in a Turing test because their life experiences and way of looking at the world is completely alien to us. I think the best the dolphin could hope for was to try and imitate a five year old who really enjoyed swimming.
In a way, I'm glad you threw in that little slam against the Turing test, because writing this post was way more interesting than just nodding my head in agreement. I thought your points about the nature of prediction were uncannily accurate.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!