You predict we’ll reach a point with artificial intelligence that you call the singularity. How will that affect us?

By the time we get to the 2040s, we’ll be able to multiply human intelligence a billionfold. That will be a profound change that’s singular in nature. Computers are going to keep getting smaller and smaller. Ultimately, they will go inside our bodies and brains and make us healthier, make us smarter. We’ll be online all the time. Search engines won’t wait to be asked.

Probably nothing new here for those well-versed in Kurzweil’s ideas, but it’s still neat to see transhumanist ideas being published in a magazine with as wide a circulation as TIME.

He also provides his opinion on who is helping bring about this potential future:

Ok, so who is working towards this eventuality? Well, if it happens this way, pretty much everybody in the NBIC fields – everybody working on nanotech and biotech and AI and brain science, whether as citizen scientists in a collaborationist project or working for a corporation, or those wacky surrealists at DARPA – they’re all pushing this potentiality forward. Of course, we may have to “hijack the singularity” from them eventually – or even now (think gene patent v. open source bio). But mainly, I think all the people who are engaging in open source collaborationist tinkering and culture, the citizen scientists – particularly the more sophisticated and educated young people that are choosing to invest themselves in “garage” projects – I think they all may be taking us there.

I also think the best, smartest critics and skeptics and SF writers and creators are helping – by problematizing these scenarios in advance, by giving us arguments and narratives that remind us about human behaviors and emotions and political and economic and scientific realities. Brilliant fiction adds to our foresight… our pattern recognition… by playing out dramatic, difficult, dark, challenging, ambiguous or dystopian scenarios based on similar technological possibilities.

Like all of R.U. Sirius’ writings, it’s well worth reading.

While that computer was built for a particular function and with the best intentions in mind, so are other computers built with the best intentions. We currently have computers that are armed with missiles flying over foreign countries. While these are of course controlled by a human, and rely on a system of at least four control planes to provide radar support, it’s only a matter of time before they are autonomous.

Advancements in robotics are taking major leaps every day, soon we will see completely independent robots and androids. Similar to the science fiction we read, they will start out as our slaves. History has taught us the slavery lesson pretty well. I know it’s hard to fathom, robots rising up against their human masters and demanding equal rights and freedom, but with how inundated we are with science fiction is it really that hard to imagine?

The Navy Times is looking at what the future holds for the wettest branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, and the sailor of 2030 could be far more enhanced than those of today, boasting surgeries and bionic implants that enable them to see in the dark or control devices through thought:

Surgical enhancements may be commonplace. In the 1990s, aviators began getting LASIK surgery to correct vision problems. In the future, special warfare troops may get surgery that improves their night vision.

Meanwhile, the way sailors use tomorrow’s technology may move beyond today’s joysticks, keyboards and computer screens, said Peter Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of “Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.”

“That could be very simple. Take the vibrator on your cell phone: You don’t hear it — you feel it,” Singer said.

He also talked about advancements in neuroscience that allow the brain to control devices directly. Doctors have learned how to wire the brain to control computer cursors or even prosthetic limbs. In the future, a skullcap with sensors may allow a user to translate thoughts into actions and operations, Singer said.

(Via io9)

• Lunar mining
• Medical miniaturization
• 3-D printing
• Smarter smart phones
• Cloud computing
• Nanotechnology
• Flying on algae (algae-based fuels)
• Living forever
• Biotechnology
• Alternative energies

We’re already seeing most of these in practice and over the next ten years we will certainly see significant advances. I’m skeptical of the suggestion that we’ll be setting up mining operations on the Moon anytime soon, however. To make mining helium-3 on the Moon profitable, we first need to develop practical nuclear fusion on Earth, and that is a *big* stumbling block. Second, we’d need to develop mining equipment that functions in the lunar environment, and build the means for workers to live on the moon. All massively expensive and very complicated.

Otherwise, I thought this was a neat list. It’s interesting to see additional mainstream coverage of these issues – particularly acknowledgement that humans may develop the means to effectively live forever (or at least reach “actuarial escape velocity“) in the next decade or so. No mention of robotics or artificial intelligence advances, however, which might be a big hole when we start looking back at these predictions in 2020.

# A “skycar” that can take off and land like a helicopter will hit the market – San Antonio Express-News

While I don’t think flying cars will be around for decades if ever, the technology for this is just about there. However, will this technology be very attractive to drivers? After all, a minor “fender bender” in the sky will lead to almost certain death, and a collision with an airliner, say, would lead to the death of hundreds (or thousands, depending on where the crash takes place).

Not all of these predictions were so far off, however:

# “Within five years, 7 percent of the new cars sold in the U.S. will be connected to the Internet.” —- InfoMove, a manufacturer of customized Internet content, quoted in Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine

A bit premature, but this is becoming increasingly common today. Plus, mobile phones are interfacing with cars to use their Internet connections to pull down music, make calls, and display maps for navigation.

# We’ll see “smart mobile robots used in homes and factories.” – George Washington University Forecast think tank

We are seeing mobile robots working in homes to clean floors and gutters and mow lawns, and in businesses to make deliveries. I know a few people who have mail delivery robots in their offices.

# “Wearable computers … will free many people from offices and … commuting.” – PJ Wade, author, commentator, strategist and futurist

Mobile phones have become wearable computers and possess enough computing power to allow most of us to do our jobs. The ubiquitous BlackBerry has freed people from being forced to be at their desks to answer and respond to e-mail. Unfortunately, current mobile displays and input methods make doing other types of work impractical, if not impossible.

# Instead of a newspaper you’ll read “a small, lightweight computer the size of a cigar that scrolls out the news you choose (on) flexible, high-resolution color screens … linked wirelessly.” – Bob Ingle, president of Knight-Ridder Ventures, the investment arm of Knight-Ridder’s new-media operations

While flexible, lightweight displays are in development and have reached the prototype stage, they aren’t yet common, but are on their way. In the meantime, we have portable e-book readers that enable owners to wirelessly download their daily newspaper each morning.

Given another decade, I’d expect many of these to be even more common and widely accepted. Wireless Internet access continues to saturate our world, and new display technologies are evolving to provide new ways to access the incredible amount of information we consume. In the meantime, we’ll pay attention to some of the predictions for 2020, so in ten years we can come back and smirk at the ones that failed to come to fruition.

• We will view information via images projected directly on our retinas rather than being forced to look at tiny screens
• Augmented reality will constantly provide us with information on the places, objects and people we look at (see Google Goggles as a mobile phone application that takes baby steps in this direction)
• Solar energy, aided by nanotechnology, will meet most of if not all of the Earth’s power needs
• We will be able to tweak our genes to stay fit and healthy as we get older
• Electric cars will be popular, and most cars will be fitted with accident-avoidance systems; self-driving vehicles will be actively experimented with

I sometimes think about the advances in technology I’ve seen in the past 10 years, or rather, the tech I had access to about a decade ago. My my, how things have changed:

• My cell phone was a candybar Nokia with a tiny black-and-white screen that displayed about 10 lines of text
• No Facebook, no YouTube
• I had to leave the house to rent a movie (no instant streaming available)
• I downloaded music in mp3 format… Only to convert songs to WAV and burn them to CD in order to listen to them on-the-go on my portable CD player
• My 19″ television was about as deep as it was wide, and decidedly low-def
• I used 3.5″ floppy discs to transport digital information

What have been the most dramatic changes in technology that you’ve witnessed in the last ten years?