AGI, nanobots, fully autonomous self driving cars, cancer cures and aging cures, significant life extension, etc are all a long way off. Decades.

I’m not saying they’ll never happen, of course, just that we’re a long time away from them. I see way too many people thinking that these things are around the corner, and it makes me sad.

With regards to life extension especially (since i see a looooot of people think they personally will get to live forever), the odds of biotech and medicine advancing in our lifetimes to the extent that it facilitates biological immortality and indefinitely extended lifespans is slim to none at best. Go ask the actual experts if you don’t believe me.

The most we will see in our lifetimes is increased HEALTHspan, and tbh even that is iffy since we don’t even know if we will get even that.

In my opinion the first generations to experience significantly extended lifespans and age reversal probably haven’t been born yet. That’s how long i think it’s going to take.

  • LughMEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    I would tend to take the opposite point of view. Self-driving cars are here already - they are operating as taxis without human drivers in Chinese and American cities. AI is on an exponential growth path. I think its reasonable to think recursive self-improving AGI will be with us by the 2030s. Once that happens …. all bets are off for all the rest of the stuff you mentioned.

    • KindleGemOPEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      AI is on an exponential growth path.

      Prove it. I would love to be wrong, but it doesn’t seem that way

      • @primbinEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        It’s not exactly proof, but this graph seems to support that claim to an extent.

        I don’t think a recursively self improving AI (a la a singularity) is something that will be made soon, if ever, especially as we push the limits of available computing power. There’s no such thing as infinite exponential growth in reality, as there’s always an eventual limit to growth.

        I think AGI, in some form, could possibly happen relatively soon (like next three decades or so), but I’m not sure it will be of the recursively self improving variety. Especially not the sort that magically solves all of humanity’s problems.