Have you ever wondered when robots will become as regular an item in our homes as a fridge, for example? Ray Kurzweil doesn’t make guesses — he names the year. And it’s 2027. What makes him so sure? Ray Kurzweil is an inventor, futurologist, and author. He’s also employed by Google to “work on new projects involving machine learning and language processing.” Ray is famous for his scientific forecasts, and some of them have already come true. For example, he predicted the Soviet Union dissolution, a computer victory over the best chess players in the world, the appearance of digital assistants (such as Siri and Alexa), and virtual and augmented reality systems.
Bright Side grouped the futurologist’s predictions for the 21st century, and it seems that something unexpected is awaiting us. Perhaps science fiction movies will soon become our new reality.
Some things are really unbelievable, but Ray Kurzweil rarely makes mistakes. In October 2010, he released a report where he analyzed all of the predictions he’d made in 3 of his books from 1990, 1999, and 2005. Out of 147 predictions, 115 were completely true, 12 were true in general, 17 were partially true, and only 3 turned out to be false. Thus, the futurologist’s efficiency is 86%.
- Humanity will conquer the diseases that kill 95% of people in civilized countries.
- The process of aging will be slowed down or even reversed.
- Computers will continue to become smaller, and their shape will change. For example, they will be a part of our clothes.
- A New World government will appear, and it will represent all of humanity.
- Starting in 2020, new “human bodies 2.0” will begin to appear, and they will be based on nanotechnologies.
- Advertising campaigns will be broadcasted individually to each person via audio channels.
- Unmanned flying vehicles and cars will be 100% controlled by computers.
- It will be the year of the premiere of ambitious nanotechnology that will help us to understand how the human brain works.
- Precise computer modeling of parts of the human brain will become possible.
- By the end of the 2020s, artificial intelligence will be created, comparable to the human brain by its capacity and complexity.
- Artificial intelligence will be capable of passing the Turing Test, which will prove its ability to think as a human being.
- By the end of the 2020s, virtual reality will achieve such high definition that it will be hard to distinguish it from physical reality.
- Nanomachines will be widely used in medicine.
- The production of nanotechnologies will become so frequent that it will radically change the world’s economy.
- Nanorobots will be capable of penetrating cells to feed them and remove waste, so the traditional eating process will become unnecessary.
- Mind uploading will become possible. People will be able to live in the internet, projecting their bodies in both physical and virtual reality.
- Virtual reality equipment will disappear. Nanomachines will be implanted inside the brain, interacting directly with the brain cells.
- The nanomachines in a human brain will help to increase cognitive and sensory capabilities, including memory.
- People will be capable of telepathically connecting with each other via wireless networks.
- It will become possible to change human personalities and recollections.
- “Human bodies 3.0” will appear, and they will not have a specific body shape. Humans will be capable of changing their exterior whenever they like to whatever they like.
- Non-bio-intelligence will exceed the capabilities of a bio-intelligence by billions of times.
- People will be spending the majority of their time in virtual reality. The Matrix is an example of such a virtual world.
- Nanorobots will be widely used to create any kind of shape and surface.
- Upgraded and “uploaded” people will have become a normal thing by this time.
- A computer a billion times more intelligent than all people together could be bought for $1,000.
- Technological singularity will arrive: artificial intelligence will exceed that of humans and will become the smartest life form on Earth.
- Singularity will change human history forever.
- The extinction of humanity is hardly possible as there will be not much difference between humans and machines.
- Earth will transform into one gigantic computer.
- People who want to keep their natural bodies will live in special reservation zones.
- Humanity will no longer be limited by the speed of light.
- Artificial intelligence will move its influence beyond Earth’s limits to the entire Solar System, and then it will move on to other galaxies.
- Stars, planets, and meteors will be transformed into a structured matter capable of sustaining life.
- By 2099, machines will be capable of building computers the size of planets.
It sounds incredible, doesn’t it? At the same time, there are people who already charged their arms back in 2016. Share your impressions of the futurologist’s predictions in the comments below.
Preview photo credit Channel 4, Pixabay
Illustrator Mariya Zavolokina for BrightSide.me
