2019-12-31

Predictions I made 10 years ago about 2020.

Now might be a good time to review the predictions I made 10 years ago for the year 2020. However, most of my predictions were overly optimistic. 1. Self Driving Cars. This one was not hard since progress was being made on this ten years ago. We're not yet to the point where everybody can have a self-driving car, but we are not far off. 2. Cloning Organs. Certainly, we will see this in the coming decade. Progress is being made on creating human-compatible organs in animals like pigs. Also, some progress has been made in 3D printing organs and constructing body parts surgically. 3. Intelligent Robots. This prediction was way off, but an astonishing amount of progress has been made in the last decade in Artificial Intelligence. Mostly this has been done in the area of deep mining data to allow computers to make predictions, including predictions about you personally, like what kind of advertising you would like to see. I don't think that "Sophia" counts here, as the robot mostly follows scripted responses. https://www.hansonrobotics.com/sophia/ 4. The joke about Nuclear Fusion is that it has always been 30 years away, and will still be 30 years away 30 years from now. Although the first prototype was originally predicted to come online about now, it is still about five years away. Other efforts at Nuclear Fusion has been making progress and show promise, but are a ways off. It is likely that something will be working by 2030, but not in widespread use until 2040. However, Nuclear Fusion has the potential to change our world as much as any technology that has come before it. 5. Increasing human lifespan. There are people claiming that they can do this right now by lengthening telomeres, but it is far from proven (and maybe dangerous) and may take a long time to become an acceptable medical procedure.  

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