Easy peasy:
-
Computers would beat humans at chess(happened in 1998)
-
Digital information explosion(The information on the internet rapidly becoming too much for the entire world to read)
-
Medicine becoming information technology(genomic, sequencing and crispr)
-
The inevitability of direct human computer interfacing (neuralink)
-
Life extension(cryonics/neuralink)
-
AI becoming a major industry(AI)
-
Computers built into eyeglasses(google glass)
-
Cpu processing speed explosion(Moore’s law)
-
PCs would be able to answer questions wirelessly (search engines and the internet)
-
Exoskeletons render the disabled able (3d printable prosthetic limbs)
There are many, many more correct predictions by this guy
- Sure, I’m not even going to verify this one since it’s so low stakes.
- This is ill-defined.
- Again ill-defined, and I need dates on this, we’ve been sequencing DNA for like 50yrs at this point.
- Lol, Neuralink kills monkeys, there’s zero indication of its “inevitability”.
- Lol^2, none of that shit works mate. Name one person whose life was extended with cryonics.
- AI is ill-defined, plus dates please.
- And how well did that go?
- First of all, that’s called Moore’s Law after the actual guy who made this prediction, you can’t credit someone else than Moore for Moore’s Law, wtf. Second, this hasn’t held for at least a decade now; we’ve been focusing on completely different things than raw CPU speed to actually increase compute.
- “Answer questions” there is a load-bearing term. Did he mean search engines? Is this deriberately vague?
- I’m sorry? First, a 3D printed prosthetic is not an exoskeleton, what kind of a logic leap is that. Second, citation needed on “3D printable prosthetic limbs” actually being in use right now on any scale.
ah you see cryonics does increase life expenctancy, i.e. E(life length). As long as P(cryobubonics works) > 0, which, according to Yudkowskian Probability Theory, is true for any probability, then E(life length) = infinity, since cryonica will let us live forever /big fat fucking S
“Computers will be really good at chess” was already a trope in 1960s science fiction. HAL 9000 is canonically so good that he was instructed to throw the game half the time so that his human opponents don’t get bored. The Enterprise computer is so good that Spock being able to beat it — Spock — is a major plot point.
| AI becoming a major industry(AI)
Yes, but in the same way that tax shelters and carbon offsetting are major industries. All the useful things done by “AI” tend to happen outside of the hype mills and be relatively boring statistical models like autocomplete, which nobody points to as a sign of the coming Computer God.
| Computers built into eyeglasses(google glass)
They build single-use computers into pregnancy tests. They’re powerful enough to run DOOM, despite being doomed to immediately become e-waste. Is this a sign of the imminent Singularity as well?
| PCs would be able to answer questions wirelessly (search engines and the internet)
Someone built a radio into a computer? Really? I wonder why nobody thought of that before.
Cryonics is a grift, nobody is going to be cured of death by future Dr Jesus.
Some of Kurzweil’s predictions in 1999 about 2009:
- “Unused computes on the Internet are harvested, creating … human brain hardware capacity.”
- “The online chat rooms of the late 1990s have been replaced with virtual environments…with full visual realism.”
- “Interactive brain-generated music … is another popular genre.”
- “the underclass is politically neutralized through public assistance and the generally high level of affluence”
- “Diagnosis almost always involves collaboration between a human physician and a … expert system.”
- “Humans are generally far removed from the scene of battle.”
- “Despite occasional corrections, the ten years leading up to 2009 have seen continuous economic expansion”
- “Cables are disappearing.”
- “grammar checkers are now actually useful”
- “Intelligent roads are in use, primarily for long-distance travel.”
- “The majority of text is created using continuous speech recognition (CSR) software”
- “Autonomous nanoengineered machines … have been demonstrated and include their own computational controls.”
“In the future, there will be brain-generated music”, said Ray Kay, to a young disciple.
“But Master Ray, isn’t music generally brain generated?”, the disciple asked.
“No, you fucking idiot. You fucking buffoon. How dare you question me,” replied Ray. It was then that the disciple reached enlightenment.
“Unused computes on the Internet are harvested, creating … human brain hardware capacity.”
Neuralink
“The online chat rooms of the late 1990s have been replaced with virtual environments…with full visual realism.”
VRChat
“Interactive brain-generated music … is another popular genre.”
Algoraves
“the underclass is politically neutralized through public assistance and the generally high level of affluence”
Obamacare
“Diagnosis almost always involves collaboration between a human physician and a … expert system.”
Asimo
To be fair, those words were written around the End Of History, when fascism was known to be safely extinct and nobody in their right mind would have assumed that such a phrase referred to it.
Some of Kurzweil’s predictions in 1999 about 2019:
A $1,000 computing device is now approximately equal to the computational ability of the human brain. Computers are now largely invisible and are embedded everywhere. Three-dimensional virtual-reality displays, embedded in glasses and contact lenses, provide the primary interface for communication with other persons, the Web, and virtual reality. Most interaction with computing is through gestures and two-way natural-language spoken communication. Realistic all-encompassing visual, auditory, and tactile environments enable people to do virtually anything with anybody regardless of physical proximity. People are beginning to have relationships with automated personalities as companions, teachers, caretakers, and lovers.
Also:
Three‐dimensional nanotube lattices are now a prevalent form of computing circuitry.
And:
Autonomous nanoengineered machines can control their own mobility and include significant computational engines.
And:
ʺPhoneʺ calls routinely include high‐resolution three‐dimensional images projected through the direct‐eye displays and auditory lenses. Three‐dimensional holography displays have also emerged. In either case, users feel as if they are physically near the other person. The resolution equals or exceeds optimal human visual acuity. Thus a person can be fooled as to whether or not another person is physically present or is being projected through electronic communication.
And:
The all‐enveloping tactile environment is now widely available and fully convincing. Its resolution equals or exceeds that of human touch and can simulate (and stimulate) all of the facets of the tactile sense, including the sensing of pressure, temperature, textures, and moistness. Although the visual and auditory aspects of virtual reality involve only devices you have on or in your body (the direct‐eye lenses and auditory lenses), the ʺtotal touchʺ haptic environment requires entering a virtual reality booth. These technologies are popular for medical examinations, as well as sensual and sexual interactions with other human partners or simulated partners. In fact, it is often the preferred mode of interaction, even when a human partner is nearby, due to its ability to enhance both experience and safety.
And:
Automated driving systems have been found to be highly reliable and have now been installed in nearly all roads.
And:
The type of artistic and entertainment product in greatest demand (as measured by revenue generated) continues to be virtual‐experience software, which ranges from simulations of ʺrealʺ experiences to abstract environments with little or no corollary in the physical world.
And:
The expected life span, which, as a (1780 through 1900) and the first phase result of the first Industrial Revolution of the second (the twentieth century), almost doubled from less than forty, has now substantially increased again, to over one hundred.
Three‐dimensional nanotube lattices are now a prevalent form of computing circuitry.
I’ve reread this sentence a few times now and I am just gobsmacked as to what it was intended to have meant. never dug into this particular espouser because from the moment I came across their name I smelled the kook, but I’m not now almost deathly curious to know exactly what the context of this particular prediction was (which near certainly was some shit riffed on from half a bit of statement of research people were looking into)
(e: whoops hella-freudian typo)
The all‐enveloping tactile environment is now widely available and fully convincing. Its resolution equals or exceeds that of human touch and can simulate (and stimulate) all of the facets of the tactile sense, including the sensing of pressure, temperature, textures, and moistness.
I’m picturing the VR dildo-suit from Upload.
Kurzweil really is indistinguishable from a shitty phone psychic, including the followers who cherry pick “correct” predictions and interpret the incorrect ones so loosely they could mean anything (I’m waiting for some fucker to pop up and go “yeah duh Apple Vision Pro” in response to half of those, ignoring the inconvenient “works well and is popular” parts of the predictions)
“Humans are generally far removed from the scene of battle.”
if you have budget for that, against an enemy that doesn’t
If only there was any large active warzone that has largely devolved into positional warfare for two years now to disprove that claim, damn.
“Humans are generally far removed from the scene of battle” (if you don’t count the people that the drones are blowing up)
are these meat popsicles in the room with us?
gif, sorry for being annoying
@Varyk @jonhendry Neuralink? How’s that going? I presume extremely well with no problems, I haven’t got time to check right now
Why did you think it was working well with no problems?
Literally the first human-cpu interface?
You hecka optimistic.
I mean, it’s pretty crazy how well the design did work considering it’s the first of its kind.
The latest thing I saw, a bunch of the wires are becoming detached from the very first prototype, which of course is being worked into the subsequent models.
Literally the first human-cpu interface?
I wish I had the confidence of a techbro who thinks any of the BCI tech in neuralink is new and isn’t just a set of techniques that have existed for decades and have a shitty track record
the only thing neuralink seems to add is wireless control, which doesn’t work, partially due to impossible bandwidth and compression requirements, but mostly because it’s a project driven by Musk’s whims
