Do we underestimate what's coming?

[Dappy777]

I have become quite interested in AI lately and have been watching loads of Youtube lectures. Some of it is really mind-blowing. What struck me most was a talk given by Stephen Fry in which he said humans are like children playing on a beach and squabbling over the sand and pebbles. Meanwhile, just over the horizon, waves are gathering to form one giant tsunami that is going to knock us flying. His point was that it isn't just AI. Numerous waves of technology – nanotechnology, gene editing, virtual reality, genetic engineering, quantum computing, etc – are uniting. Any one of them on its own could transform the world. But they are going to combine, and in some cases speed each other along (AI could speed up nanotech, for example).

One AI expert thinks we could see all illness and disease brought under medical control within ten years. Even Jeffrey Hinton, who won the nobel prize, thinks AI will wipe out all illness and disease within 20 years. Human ageing may be halted and even reversed!! Another expert thinks that, thanks to regenerative medicine, by the late 2030s 50-somethings will look like 20-somethings. Stephen Fry himself thinks the first person to live beyond 200 has already been born.

Yet we carry on as if the future will be more or less like the present. Is it sensible for a 25-year-old to marry and have a child when we're on the brink of regenerative medicine that could extend her life for centuries (assuming climate change and nuclear weapons and bio-terrorists and hackers and so on don't wreck everything)? My friend's daughter is due to start secondary school in September. They are already wondering what GCSEs she'll enjoy, what A-Levels she might take and what career she'll choose. They are carrying on as if her life will be just like theirs was. But if she goes to university, that will be 2032. By the time she completes her degree it will be 2035. By 2035 AI, nanotechnology, gene editing, VR, quantum computing and god knows what else (not to mention climate change) will have made the world a very different place. There might not be any jobs. Should we be educating children in a completely different way? Do they need to study traditional subjects at all!?? Should we overhaul education and focus on things like empathy, relationships, life skills, meaning and purpose?

The problem, I think, is that ordinary divs like me have zero understanding. For all I know these experts could be exaggerating. Because I'm so bad at science, they could tell me the moon is made of cheese and I'd believe them. The one thing they all agree on, however, is that the pace of change is accelerating. One of them said we'll live through 100 years of scientific progress in the next ten years. Shouldn't we be constantly talking about all this?

I’m a bit of a technophobe to be honest. I do try not to think about it, but it does worry me. I really think we need to introduce more critical thinking into the curriculum earlier. I didn’t really lean that sort of thing till university, but I think with AI and algorithms on social media, we really should start educating young. Teach the about sources and fact checking. I try and push my kids to think critically and fact checking things (a bit annoying when they’re questioning everything I do, but it’s for the greater good). They’re still young but I really want to set them up to independent thinkers.

When they invent an AI that cleans the house I may change my mind and be so pro AI I have my brain put in a robot though.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uEztHu4NHrs

Do you have a better link don't want to open that one?

I think it's not so much that we underestimate more that it's not possible to predict how things will pan out.
There are too many variables and complex interactions for us to account for.

I'm absolutely terrified because which direction do you advise your children? How many jobs simply won't exist in a few years? Is there anything future proof? Do you go high tech or low tech just in case it blows itself up and we need people who can Bear Grylls it in the wilderness?

I just asked Chat Gpt this. I figure it knows more than we do, luckily it didn't mention any Terminator situations!

What can humanity expect to change from AI by 2035? What big differences will there be?

By 2035, AI is expected to reshape many aspects of life, work, and society. While predictions always carry some uncertainty, here are the most likely big differences humanity can expect:

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🔧 Work and the Economy

Automation of routine jobs: Many white-collar and blue-collar tasks (data entry, basic legal drafting, warehouse sorting, etc.) will be automated. This could displace certain jobs but also create new ones in AI oversight, prompt engineering, and human-AI collaboration.

Rise of AI coworkers: Professionals (e.g. doctors, lawyers, marketers, teachers) will work closely with AI agents that handle research, analysis, communication, and even decision-making support.

Universal productivity boost: Businesses may become far more efficient, enabling smaller teams to do the work of dozens—or even hundreds—with the help of AI.

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🏥 Healthcare Transformation

AI diagnostics and treatment planning: AI will likely outperform average doctors in diagnosing diseases from scans, blood tests, and symptoms—especially in underserved areas.

Drug discovery acceleration: Development of new drugs and treatments will be dramatically faster due to AI modeling.

Personalized medicine: Genetic and biometric data analyzed by AI could offer tailored diets, treatments, and prevention strategies.

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📚 Education Revolution

Personal AI tutors: Students will likely have access to always-available, adaptive AI tutors who know their learning style and gaps.

Lifelong learning: AI could make continuous education normal and affordable, reducing the need for traditional degrees.

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🧠 Human-AI Interaction

Ubiquity of AI assistants: From your glasses to your home to your car, AI will be ever-present, anticipating needs, scheduling tasks, and translating language on the fly.

Conversational and emotional depth: AI will become much more empathetic, emotionally aware, and conversational—blurring the lines between tool and companion.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs): These might be in their early stages but could begin allowing people to interact with machines directly via thought.

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🌍 Global Impacts

Economic inequality shifts: Countries or companies that lead in AI could widen wealth gaps unless policy and access are managed globally.

Job redefinition: Careers will shift toward creativity, emotional intelligence, strategy, and human uniqueness. Routine cognitive labor may largely vanish.

Climate and science progress: AI will help model ecosystems, manage power grids, and accelerate research into fusion, carbon capture, and more.

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🛡️ Risks and Challenges

Misinformation and deepfakes: The challenge of trusting what we see/hear online will intensify. Truth authentication will become crucial.

AI governance: Regulation and oversight will be a global challenge, particularly around military AI, surveillance, and autonomous systems.

Human agency and identity: As AI grows more capable, there will be deep philosophical and societal questions about the nature of work, value, and purpose.

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In Summary

By 2035, AI won’t just be a tool—it’ll be a collaborator, a coach, a researcher, and in some cases, a decision-maker. Life will likely feel more automated, intelligent, and interconnected—but also more dependent on how wisely and ethically we manage this power.

Would you li
ke predictions focused on a specific area, like education, work, or daily life?

Some is unknown.

But AI will be as intelligent as humans in 10-15 years so it's going to be absolutely enormous.

Even top orgs and people like Elin Musk asked for them to slow down bringing it out because we can't keep up - ethics, workforce.

It will bring amazing opportunity...and a lot of change..

I think crime will be the one of the most interesting changes.

People committed murders 30 years ago because they didn't realize we'd have their DNA and could test it decades later. They thought they'd gotten away with it. We'll have furth breakthroughs that people can't plan for.

I also think the DNA databases combined with AI researching family trees will make it extremely easy to catch someone in the next couple years.

Some of it sounds ok, as long as we don't make ourselves completely redundant.

I do think we should switch from pushing higher population growth about now, we likely won't need as many young people entering the workforce in about twenty years' time.

This is the early adoption stage so while we don't see it much the early adopters are building building building. So in 15 years we will start to see change. In all sorts of places.

I think there will be huge retirement villages for all these people who are living until 200.

I work around this and there's money going into data - using data to find breakthroughs in science.

Yes, I really don’t understand how people don’t see the long game. It’s frightening, it’s dystopian. I believe we have been manipulated for quite some time to just acquiesce on this. I would say AI is probably the biggest threat to life as we know it for a long time, if not ever.

Everytime people use AI they are programming it.

I'm sorry but that appear to be rubbish especially regarding something like autoimmune disease.

Is that not making the argument that nice, good, caring people that worry about AI should use it more though?

Maybe one day the only thing we can do to stop AI is to turn off the electricity?
Which would put us back hundreds of years, and earth might have a chance to survive.

Sounds like a bad film.

The algorithm will always be there though... By then I don't think it is as simple as just turning it off. The genie is out of the bottle.

I'm not falling for the 'Technology will result in Utopia' line again. I remember when the computer technology improved (the birth of the Disk Operating System and then Windows and then eventually the World Wide Web happened, ooooh it was going to be so liberating. We would have better lives, the free exchange and sharing of information and education would be democratised. Healthcare would more efficient with broader application and benefit. Ad infinitim

Instead we got mass online surveillance, a few big technocrats ended up owning the entire web. We got online bullying and censorship. Education is more expensive than ever. People still can't afford healthcare and basic drugs. Poverty if anything is worsening and social mobility and the difference between the haves and have nots, is worse than before these technologies existed.

The same thing will happen with A.I. there will be some nice breakthroughs but the things that matter.. inequality, poverty etc will remain the same because the people that run things want them to remain the way they are. It will be worse, we'll be living in effective technocracies, where everything including human life is quantified as a mathematical formula with maximum efficiency with zero privacy (we almost have no privacy now but it will be worse) and probably something akin to a credit system and the sheep among us will make it hard for you to opt out.

Which sector will benefit most? Which one always benefits the most and innovates new technologies the most quickly? The military.

There will be no utopia. Dystopia.

Looking forward to it.

Healthcare would more efficient with broader application and benefit.

They certainly got that prediction wrong in UK. I mean there has been huge strides in medical research but the NHS isn’t more efficient - far from it.

You might want to look into the Fermi Paradox—the idea that, although the universe contains billions of potentially habitable planets, we have yet to detect signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life. One proposed explanation is that many civilizations may have emerged and advanced technologically, but ultimately destroyed themselves before reaching a stage where interstellar communication or travel was possible. This self-destruction could be linked to what is known as the technological singularity—a point at which a civilization's technological progress accelerates uncontrollably, potentially leading to catastrophic consequences.

None of the large databases e.g AncestryDNA are allowed to legally be used in this way. If they were most of UK unsolved crime/perpetuators could be fairly easily identified even now.

Ged match already an opt in option to be searchable by law enforcement and some high profile cases in the states have already been solved that way. It will go further and they'll be able to get more out of the available data.

We still need the DNA to be processed though to start with and there are probably lots of cases that could be solved today if all rape kits were processed and there was no backlog

That was still done the old fashioned way by genealogists and DNA. I'm saying there will come a point where AI does the hard work for the

Yes, I really think we’re unfortunately approaching the ‘Great Filter’. Competition means future looks bleak perhaps? If so shame other civilisations can’t/didn’t send a warning before too late.

Yep, but illegal to access DNA databases. May well change if not all DNA taken at birth in future - less crime etc.

I think the more pressing concern is water scarcity, which ironically the development of AI will accelerate through it's need for cooling systems. Where previously there's been wars over oil, I believe there will be "water wars". It is the most precious commodity on earth.

I just asked Chat Gpt this. I figure it knows more than we do, luckily it didn't mention any Terminator situations!

ChatGPT is hardly going to spill the beans on AI's plans to take over the Earth and enslave humanity, is it?