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Future Stuff

Started by pauljholden, 04 April, 2016, 12:21:48 PM

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pauljholden

Help me out,what stuff is leaking in from the future, here's a list of things I'm currently finding fascinating for various reasons:

AI (obviously) deep learning. And the fact this stuff will suddenly become much smarter than we are before we're really even aware of it (great article on it here: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html ) (Also AI is starting to play roles in jobs I don't see - like figuring out stock markets and more)

Self Driving Cars - I reckon we've 5-10 years before we start seeing these on the road. Though there's some suggestion that Elon Musks Tesla 3 cars ARE self driving and we'll see these within a year (certainly his previous tesla's had a software option turned on that allowed a certain amount of self driving).

(I only ever buy second hand cars, which means I've only in the past few years had a car with electric windows, so god knows when I'll ever afford one of those - and, it may well be that by the time I do it'll be pointless because...

UBER - destabilising taxi companies everywhere (except in Norn Iron, because our taxi drivers come with their own balaclavas). Uber want to buy self driving cars though, and are pursuing this themselves.

I can see an inflection point coming, where self driving cars have low to zero insurance requirements (either insurance underwritten by the car company as a way to show that these things are safe or insurance companies themselves realising that self driving cars have low costs) in either case, I can then see normal cars having skyrocketing insurance, which will reach an unaffordable point very quickly.

At some point it may well be cheaper to have an Uber self-driving car account than it will be to have any kind of car. (And tbh, I welcome that - I know others like driving, but for me nothing but a pain).

The self driving requires a very limited form of AI - specifically around machine vision and spotting what's on the road. But as AI improves this will only get better.

Robots/Automation of jobs. We're already seeing it but it feels under the radar - every self checkout till represents a job automated away. There's stuff going on in the background I'm sure we've no idea about. Roomba's cleaning warehouses? Who knows.

I don't think we necessarily need humanoid robots or even smart robots for this to be a big threat to jobs, dumb automated checkouts aren't that bright but do require a lot of infrastructure in place to work.

Loss of jobs / Jobs not being replaced fast enough. I do think in the very long term this won't be an issue but in the short term I think we'll see vast numbers of layoffs with no new work.

Universal Basic Income - a flat amount of money handed out to everyone. Could be this isn't the solution, but it feels like - at least - an alternative for when the jobs all vanish.

and ....

CRISPR - a tool for replacing sequences of DNA. We have the technology now to take a sample of your DNA, remove genes you don't want and replace them with genes you do and inject them back in to you and (I think) using a virus replace all of your faulty DNA.

That shit is real (http://www.umassmed.edu/news/news-archives/2015/04/editing-hiv-out-of-our-genome-with-crispr/)

But isn't happening, more for ethical reasons than practical reasons.

I'm sure there's loads of other future stuff... but let's see if we can limit it to stuff we actually think we'll see in use in the 5-10 year span.

-pj

richerthanyou

Sorry to disappoint but North Korea is going to blow us all up before all of your said future technologies become commonplace. Still it's nice to dream :)
(  ゚,_ゝ゚)   

Ancient Otter

Quote from: pauljholden on 04 April, 2016, 12:21:48 PM


Self Driving Cars - I reckon we've 5-10 years before we start seeing these on the road. Though there's some suggestion that Elon Musks Tesla 3 cars ARE self driving and we'll see these within a year (certainly his previous tesla's had a software option turned on that allowed a certain amount of self driving).

(I only ever buy second hand cars, which means I've only in the past few years had a car with electric windows, so god knows when I'll ever afford one of those - and, it may well be that by the time I do it'll be pointless because...

UBER - destabilising taxi companies everywhere (except in Norn Iron, because our taxi drivers come with their own balaclavas). Uber want to buy self driving cars though, and are pursuing this themselves.

I can see an inflection point coming, where self driving cars have low to zero insurance requirements (either insurance underwritten by the car company as a way to show that these things are safe or insurance companies themselves realising that self driving cars have low costs) in either case, I can then see normal cars having skyrocketing insurance, which will reach an unaffordable point very quickly.

At some point it may well be cheaper to have an Uber self-driving car account than it will be to have any kind of car. (And tbh, I welcome that - I know others like driving, but for me nothing but a pain).

Universal Basic Income - a flat amount of money handed out to everyone. Could be this isn't the solution, but it feels like - at least - an alternative for when the jobs all vanish.


-pj

I heard one guy reckon in the USA a million people will lose their jobs as taxi drivers/delivery drivers/truckers as a result of the self-driving vehicles, so if you have a job as a driver it might be in a high-risk area that it'd be hard to program a AI for, like Ice Truckers.


Zarjazzer

Bio-hacking. We'll just hack our DNA with useful bits of other creatures. Radiation resistance, enhanced muscles and skeleton etc. Long life (for rich fucks only I suspect). Still the tech could be available to all.  Probably all code for some exotic cancers or something like Mad cow - what those prions can do...
The Justice department has a good re-education programme-it's called five to ten in the cubes.

pauljholden

Quote from: Ancient Otter on 04 April, 2016, 09:40:49 PM
Quote from: pauljholden on 04 April, 2016, 12:21:48 PM


Self Driving Cars - I reckon we've 5-10 years before we start seeing these on the road. Though there's some suggestion that Elon Musks Tesla 3 cars ARE self driving and we'll see these within a year (certainly his previous tesla's had a software option turned on that allowed a certain amount of self driving).

(I only ever buy second hand cars, which means I've only in the past few years had a car with electric windows, so god knows when I'll ever afford one of those - and, it may well be that by the time I do it'll be pointless because...

UBER - destabilising taxi companies everywhere (except in Norn Iron, because our taxi drivers come with their own balaclavas). Uber want to buy self driving cars though, and are pursuing this themselves.

I can see an inflection point coming, where self driving cars have low to zero insurance requirements (either insurance underwritten by the car company as a way to show that these things are safe or insurance companies themselves realising that self driving cars have low costs) in either case, I can then see normal cars having skyrocketing insurance, which will reach an unaffordable point very quickly.

At some point it may well be cheaper to have an Uber self-driving car account than it will be to have any kind of car. (And tbh, I welcome that - I know others like driving, but for me nothing but a pain).

Universal Basic Income - a flat amount of money handed out to everyone. Could be this isn't the solution, but it feels like - at least - an alternative for when the jobs all vanish.


-pj

I heard one guy reckon in the USA a million people will lose their jobs as taxi drivers/delivery drivers/truckers as a result of the self-driving vehicles, so if you have a job as a driver it might be in a high-risk area that it'd be hard to program a AI for, like Ice Truckers.

You might be referencing this: https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961#.2q2r8uejx which seems pretty solid.

I'm of two minds - one oh shit no one will have work! and two - wait, why do we have to work?

Hopefully we'll figure this stuff out.