Experts Predict the Future of Technology, AI & Humanity

WIRED

WIRED asked experts from all corners of society and academia to answer questions about the future of technology, artificial intelligence, and humanity itself.

Transcript

00:00 If space is expanding, WTF is surrounding space

00:03 for it to expand into.

00:05 It doesn't expand to end anything.

00:07 Everything is just spreading apart.

00:09 And what keeps it from spreading apart

00:11 are sources of gravity, like stars and planets.

00:14 Like where's it all going into?

00:16 What does this even mean?

00:17 Put it simply, nobody knows.

00:19 But maybe you'll be the astronomer that figures it out.

00:22 Whoa.

00:23 [upbeat music]

00:27 From Shubh Gautam 52, "Will AI replace lawyers?"

00:32 You probably don't want an AI lawyer anytime soon.

00:35 A lawyer is not just simply a machine

00:37 that knows what the law is.

00:39 A lawyer is a person with, theoretically,

00:42 years of expertise that can help you strategically

00:45 to achieve your goals.

00:47 And that's not something that AI is well-positioned

00:50 to replace anytime soon.

00:52 What I suspect is going to happen is that AI

00:55 is going to make a lot of the drudgery of practicing law

00:58 way easier, and it will allow lawyers to focus

01:01 on the really value-add stuff

01:03 and allow them to think strategically

01:05 and to better represent their clients in the future.

01:07 So I welcome our AI overlords.

01:09 - The next question comes from Hassan Babaji.

01:12 "Can light bend around corners?

01:15 "If yes or no, give one reason."

01:18 Yes, light can bend around corners.

01:20 In fact, that's why we have glass inside your glasses.

01:24 When light goes into glass, it slows down slightly.

01:28 Because it slows down, it deviates from a straight line.

01:31 And that's why we have your glasses, telescopes,

01:34 microscopes, because glass bends light.

01:37 Also, gravity can bend light, as Einstein showed us,

01:41 and we can actually see the bending of light

01:44 as it goes around a galaxy.

01:46 Then the next question is,

01:47 "Can you bend light completely around an object

01:50 "so the object becomes invisible?"

01:53 And the answer is yes.

01:54 It's well within the laws of physics

01:56 that if you could govern the atomic structure of glass,

02:00 then light would bend in a way

02:03 such that it would completely go around an object

02:07 so anything inside that object becomes invisible.

02:10 One day, we will build a metamaterial

02:12 out of nanotechnology that will bend visible light

02:16 so that anything inside that capsule will become invisible.

02:21 Harry Potter, watch out.

02:23 @Eggysalt asks, "What happens when you travel faster

02:28 "than the speed of light?"

02:29 You can't.

02:30 You can't travel faster than the speed of light.

02:32 I'm sorry, you just can't.

02:34 You see, as you get faster and faster,

02:37 as you approach the speed of light, you have more energy.

02:41 And in relativity, energy takes more work to accelerate.

02:45 So you end up requiring an infinite amount of energy

02:48 in order to travel faster than the speed of light,

02:50 and so it's just forbidden.

02:52 @NinoClutch asks, "Spider-Man is so raw.

02:55 "Maybe we should try that DNA biotech cross-gene splicing."

02:59 Well, I'm not sure we're gonna see Spider-Man anytime soon,

03:01 but there is a lot of interest from biotech companies

03:05 and academic labs to understand spider silk,

03:07 which is five times stronger than steel.

03:10 Spider silk is very biocompatible,

03:12 very good for wound healing,

03:14 especially for wounds of the eye and the brain.

03:16 And there's been many efforts to engineer spider silk

03:18 outside of spiders to make it in a recombinant way,

03:22 meaning not in spiders, but in other organisms

03:24 like bacteria or plants.

03:26 Probably the best known example

03:28 of a recombinant protein is insulin.

03:30 This has helped millions of people

03:32 across the last four decades

03:34 since the first insulin was produced in bacteria.

03:37 - Next question, what do you think?

03:39 How will our future cities look like?

03:41 A, B, or city?

03:43 Any highly advanced city is gonna need to make sure

03:46 that there is an integration of green spaces,

03:48 not only for our oxygen,

03:49 but just for our enjoyment and well-being.

03:51 The more that we get rid of our natural green spaces,

03:54 the less we are able to have that oxygen

03:56 naturally generated in our environment.

03:58 I see that they're all high vertical structures.

04:00 And that really speaks to the fact

04:01 that we're gonna need to get more and more comfortable

04:04 with building up, 'cause building out

04:06 isn't gonna always be an option.

04:08 - @pristinemartian asks, how far away

04:10 is superhuman intelligence with a brain-computer interface?

04:14 Currently, we are fairly close

04:16 to having brain-computer interfaces

04:19 really help a process called neuroplasticity in the brain.

04:23 And neuroplasticity is the brain's normal process

04:25 to learn and adapt to the outside world.

04:28 I think that's something that we're going to likely see

04:31 within the next several years.

04:33 The idea of having a Bluetooth implant in the brain

04:37 that helps you Google something on the fly,

04:40 we are talking decades upon decades

04:44 before we would see something like that occurring.

04:46 - @seochase, do you think robots

04:49 will one day take over all of our jobs?

04:51 The real benefit of robots is taking over the three Ds,

04:55 the dull, dirty, and dangerous jobs

04:57 that we probably don't want human beings to be doing anyway.

05:00 People are working on underwater robots

05:03 that can detect underwater landmines.

05:05 Some people have worked on robots

05:07 that can go into nuclear facilities after an accident

05:11 and shut off different valves.

05:13 But I do hope that robots are able

05:16 to make people better at their jobs

05:18 and free people up to do things

05:19 that they're actually good at

05:21 and that they actually want to do.

05:22 - @nick asks, will computer programming jobs

05:25 be taken over by AI within the next five to 10 years?

05:28 This is such a frequently asked question nowadays,

05:30 and I don't think the answer will be yes.

05:32 And I think we've seen evidence of this already

05:34 in that early on when people were creating websites,

05:37 they were literally writing out code

05:38 in a language called HTML by hand.

05:40 But then of course software came along,

05:42 tools like Dreamweaver that you could download

05:44 on your own computer that would generate

05:45 some of that same code for you.

05:46 More recently though, now you can just sign up

05:48 for websites like Squarespace and Wix and others

05:51 whereby click, click, click,

05:52 and the website is generated for you.

05:54 So I dare say certainly in some domains

05:56 that AI is really just an evolution of that trend,

05:58 and it hasn't put humans out of business

06:00 as much as it has made you and I much more productive.

06:04 AI, I think, and the ability soon

06:05 to be able to program with natural language

06:08 is just gonna enhance what you and I

06:10 can already do logically but much more mechanically.

06:12 And I think too it's worth considering

06:14 that there's just so many bugs or mistakes

06:16 in software in the world,

06:17 and there's so many features that humans wish existed

06:20 in products present and future

06:21 that our to-do list, so to speak,

06:23 is way longer than we'll ever have time

06:25 to finish in our lifetimes.

06:27 And so I think the prospect of having

06:29 an artificial intelligence boost our productivity

06:32 and work alongside us, so to speak,

06:34 as we try to solve problems,

06:35 is just gonna mean that you and I and the world together

06:38 can solve so many more problems

06:39 and move forward together at an even faster rate.

06:42 - @SmokeAway asks, "What is the best case scenario for AI?"

06:46 Well, the reason I work on AI

06:47 is because I think it could revolutionize science

06:49 and technology, especially biological science.

06:52 Biology is really complicated.

06:54 You have something like 20,000 genes,

06:56 and they make something like 100,000

06:58 or a million different proteins.

06:59 AI could help us make much better solutions for medicine.

07:02 We have things like Alzheimer's.

07:03 We've been working for 50 years.

07:04 We don't have a good answer.

07:06 AI could probably help us, if we had a better AI,

07:09 help us figure out how the brain works.

07:10 That would be awesome.

07:11 AI could help us with climate change

07:13 by helping us build better materials.

07:15 Another case, I think, is eldercare robots.

07:17 So we're getting to a point

07:19 where we have a lot more elderly people than young people.

07:22 If we could have robots that are smart enough

07:23 and trustworthy enough that they could really take care

07:25 of the elderly people, I think that would be a big win.

07:28 Last case is tutors.

07:29 Of course, people are using ChatGPT as a tutor,

07:31 but you could imagine really fantastic

07:34 individualized tutoring once the systems understand

07:36 the people who are learning better

07:38 can help figure out where are they having a problem.

07:41 @start_soul asks, "How will the human species evolve?"

07:45 The future of our species is a big question

07:49 and open to question, but we know a lot

07:51 about human evolution from looking at the past.

07:54 And the story of human evolution is really, in many ways,

07:58 the story of brain size.

08:00 And each time we've seen some increase

08:03 in the capacity of our brains,

08:05 biologists and anthropologists

08:07 have associated that with some change in human behavior

08:11 that allowed us to gain more calories.

08:14 Because brain tissue is what physiologists call

08:18 metabolically expensive.

08:20 It takes a lot of fuel to run a brain.

08:23 As many as 20% of our daily calories go to fuel something

08:27 that's only 2% of our body weight.

08:30 So if you want a bigger brain,

08:31 you're going to have to have more calories to run it.

08:34 And we've seen that through time

08:36 as our species has adopted new characteristics,

08:40 new traits, new habits that have given us more to eat.

08:44 Those things include tool use and social behaviors

08:48 and cooking the food.

08:49 So now we are at a period of time

08:52 where food for many people is plentiful.

08:54 Calories are plentiful.

08:55 One question for future biologists then will be,

08:58 how did that change the human brain?

09:01 @enterobang_2, will humanity ever leave the solar system?

09:06 Probably not, but some future species maybe,

09:10 you know, humanity may evolve and change

09:12 where we couldn't breed with ourselves.

09:14 That species may leave the solar system.

09:16 Not sure where they would go or what they do.

09:19 We might send an instrument,

09:21 a spacecraft to another star system.

09:23 I could imagine that easily.

09:24 We'd use a solar sail

09:26 and we'd give it a push with a laser.

09:28 Be cool.

09:29 [buzzing]

09:31 Except it'd be in space, there wouldn't be any sound.

09:33 It would just be.

09:34 [upbeat music]

09:39 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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