24 ms·

Technology prediction for the 2020s

17 points by raviparikh 5y ago

zhte415 5y ago
Helmets. Helmets incorporating glasses with head-up displays, Beats headphones with a personal Siri meets Samantha so your IoT fridge and shoelaces can speak with you, and ubiquitous masks, all wrapped in an ultra thin, lightweight helmet.
Maxion 5y ago
I highly doubt energy costs will trend to zero over the next decade. With the increasing threat of global warming, at least in Europe energy costs are likely to increase over the next decade as various carbon taxes are implemented as well as massive amounts are invested into renewables. Why does he think energy will become cheap / free?
- dehrmann 5y ago
  Wind power is getting really cheap. The open question is whether it comes online faster or slower than coal is taken offline.
- solresol 5y ago
  They already go negative in Australia quite regularly, almost always because of solar.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
    This argument really grins my gears. When does the retail customer ever pay a negative price?
    - ksec 5y ago
      Well I think there is a difference in Energy Production Cost, and Consumer Retail Price. There are distribution, storage, etc in between. So it may likely never be negative. But I am wondering if Solar is clearly trending towards zero. Why aren't more Solar farm being installed? I dont read any where that Solar Panel or installation are reaching max capacity. Is it simply because of storage problems?
      - Ekaros 5y ago
        If solar is tending towards zero there is some point where it will never payback. And really any subsidies should always be included in these calculations.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  There are times when cost of energy will be zero at point of production. However transfer isn't ever free. And there will be decent part of time when it is not zero due to storage, which isn't exactly cheap. Also energy will never have zero cost, unless we produce infinite amount of it from single producer. As capital+operational cost/energy generated > 0.
dmitriid 5y ago
Neither will happen. Some computational revolutions will happen (or are already happening). See photo, translation, speech recognition. We will not have cheap abundant energy. On the contrary we'll enter a phase where will have to deal with heavy fallout of many early and current wind and solar farms needing upgrades and replacement.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  "Heavy fallout" overstates standard maintenance and replacement practices.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    Which has never been standard until it became commonplace. And it only became commonplace in the past 10 years or so. Just to quote Wikipedia: == start quote == CdTe and CIGS solar cells contain cadmium, a toxic heavy metal with a tendency to accumulate in the food chain. Solder used in installation also contains lead. Leftover PV panels can contaminate soil, as it happened in 2013 when US-based Solyndra solar farm bankrupted leaving broken panels on site. IRENA 2016 study estimated the amount of PV waste at 78 millions tons by 2050... A 2021 study by Harvard Business Review indicates that by 2035 the discarded panels will outweigh new units by a factor of 2.56 and cost of recycling a single PV panel by then will reach $20-30, which would increase the LCOE of PV by a factor 4. == end quote ==
slg 5y ago
These are almost pointless predictions. "[O]n a path towards near-zero" isn't quantifiable and therefore isn't definitively falsifiable. Someone from 20 years ago would probably say today's AI costs are already "on the path to near zero." Plus the general predictions that AI and energy will be cheaper have been almost constant predictions for the better part of a century. And I'll just say I am dubious on his prediction that those would be enough to get us to a post-scarcity world. Certain people today already live a post-scarcity lifestyle and they have shown an aversion to sharing that with the rest of us. I don't know why we should expect the benefits of this increased productivity would be shared rather than hoarded.
- shoto_io 5y ago
  Yes. It reads "AI" ... "blah blah" ... "nuclear" ... "blah blah" ... "future" ... "blah blah"
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
jstx1 5y ago
It's a list of non-specific predictions and cliches - "AI revolution", "cryptocurrency driving major societal change", "we will be able to do stuff with bits and atoms we can barely imagine now" (!?). It's like he has no idea what he's talking about but for some reason insists on making predictions while not really making any actual predictions.
tootahe45 5y ago
Did we get some major AI breakthrough in the past 3 years? or are we still sinking billions into things like self driving where the problem is always 97% solved due to AI being a poor fit? On the crypto front it looks like there has been some progress, my $100 of tether now costs $150 worth of eth to send, whereas it only cost $30 to send during the last bull run.
timdaub 5y ago
Why does HN surface a link so pointless as this one. I can't use Twitter without an account + the information density on this one isn't much high. Just a guy speculating about something they can't know.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  Because of who it is (Sam Atman, formerly head of YC, currently CEO of OpenAI).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
apples_oranges 5y ago
I think he's right about most things except crypto currency. If energy costs go to near zero, will proof of work even make sense? Will it be about who owns the most CPUs then? Sounds like a contradiction ..
Animats 5y ago
Expect a big decade for longevity research, AR/VR, psychedelic medicine, cryptocurrency driving major societal change, etc etc. Now that's an unusual list. - Longevity research. At some point it should be possible to re-engineer the human genome to produce longer lived people. Retrofitting to old models, though, is less likely to work. Also, what this really means is creating new species. Look at all the trouble we have with race. Wait until we have multiple humanoid species that can't interbreed. - AR. We're probably going to get AR at an affordable price this decade. The Facebook version will be like "Hyperreality", the Google version will be Glassholes 2.0, and the Amazon version will be Marshall Brain's "Manna". But "at last, the Pokemon will be free to roam the real world!" And maybe someone will figure out how to draw black. - VR. The year of VR was 2019. We can do it, it just sucks. Except for Beat Saber. Somewhere between 5% to 15% of the population gets nauseated, which is far worse than high-end roller coasters. You can look, point, and shoot, but more than that is hard. - Psychedelic medicine. Probably not all that helpful. More of an excuse for recreational drugs, like "medical marijuana" was. - Cryptocurrency driving major societal change. Nah. It's zero-sum. It's not creating any wealth. Great for money laundering, not so useful for anything else. What are we going to get in the 2020s? - Electric vehicles everywhere. That's pretty clear. - Self-driving cars. It's been a long haul, but Google doubles the mean time between disconnects every 18 months by incremental improvement. Getting there, slowly. - Much faster and more effective vaccine development. Vaccines were kind of a backwater for years, but now they're getting attention. Influenza and HIV might be knocked out this decade. Maybe even make a dent in cancer. - China 2025. Go read the 14th Five Year Plan, 2021-2025. If you think it's unrealistic, read the 13th Five Year Plan and check off the items completed. - Energy will be less of a problem as solar, wind, and batteries are deployed. We have the technology, now it's just deployment. The next big problems are in water and metals.
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  Let me add a fun prediction: The US will have lost its tech war with China at the end of this decade. Some of the things that the western tech community fantasizes about ie. solving the energy distribution / storage problem by mining bitcoin with surplus green energy. Are both silly and distructive in the sense that it is noise that hides away the real solutions.
throwaway4good 5y ago
Short term (a year or two) the price of energy is going up.
bryanlarsen 5y ago
Even if energy prices go down 1000x it still won't be too cheap to meter. Ever since the computer age metering has become incredibly cheap and there are way too many things that can be done with cheap energy for energy to stop responding to the cost/demand curve. An extreme example is inter stellar travel.
GoodJokes 5y ago
These nerds have stopped trying hard to sound believable.

17 points by raviparikh 5y ago

Helmets. Helmets incorporating glasses with head-up displays, Beats headphones with a personal Siri meets Samantha so your IoT fridge and shoelaces can speak with you, and ubiquitous masks, all wrapped in an ultra thin, lightweight helmet.

Maxion 5y ago

I highly doubt energy costs will trend to zero over the next decade. With the increasing threat of global warming, at least in Europe energy costs are likely to increase over the next decade as various carbon taxes are implemented as well as massive amounts are invested into renewables. Why does he think energy will become cheap / free?

dehrmann 5y ago
Wind power is getting really cheap. The open question is whether it comes online faster or slower than coal is taken offline.
solresol 5y ago
They already go negative in Australia quite regularly, almost always because of solar.
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
  This argument really grins my gears. When does the retail customer ever pay a negative price?
  - ksec 5y ago
    Well I think there is a difference in Energy Production Cost, and Consumer Retail Price. There are distribution, storage, etc in between. So it may likely never be negative. But I am wondering if Solar is clearly trending towards zero. Why aren't more Solar farm being installed? I dont read any where that Solar Panel or installation are reaching max capacity. Is it simply because of storage problems?
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      If solar is tending towards zero there is some point where it will never payback. And really any subsidies should always be included in these calculations.
Ekaros 5y ago
There are times when cost of energy will be zero at point of production. However transfer isn't ever free. And there will be decent part of time when it is not zero due to storage, which isn't exactly cheap. Also energy will never have zero cost, unless we produce infinite amount of it from single producer. As capital+operational cost/energy generated > 0.

dmitriid 5y ago

Neither will happen. Some computational revolutions will happen (or are already happening). See photo, translation, speech recognition. We will not have cheap abundant energy. On the contrary we'll enter a phase where will have to deal with heavy fallout of many early and current wind and solar farms needing upgrades and replacement.

dehrmann 5y ago
"Heavy fallout" overstates standard maintenance and replacement practices.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  Which has never been standard until it became commonplace. And it only became commonplace in the past 10 years or so. Just to quote Wikipedia: == start quote == CdTe and CIGS solar cells contain cadmium, a toxic heavy metal with a tendency to accumulate in the food chain. Solder used in installation also contains lead. Leftover PV panels can contaminate soil, as it happened in 2013 when US-based Solyndra solar farm bankrupted leaving broken panels on site. IRENA 2016 study estimated the amount of PV waste at 78 millions tons by 2050... A 2021 study by Harvard Business Review indicates that by 2035 the discarded panels will outweigh new units by a factor of 2.56 and cost of recycling a single PV panel by then will reach $20-30, which would increase the LCOE of PV by a factor 4. == end quote ==

slg 5y ago

These are almost pointless predictions. "[O]n a path towards near-zero" isn't quantifiable and therefore isn't definitively falsifiable. Someone from 20 years ago would probably say today's AI costs are already "on the path to near zero." Plus the general predictions that AI and energy will be cheaper have been almost constant predictions for the better part of a century. And I'll just say I am dubious on his prediction that those would be enough to get us to a post-scarcity world. Certain people today already live a post-scarcity lifestyle and they have shown an aversion to sharing that with the rest of us. I don't know why we should expect the benefits of this increased productivity would be shared rather than hoarded.

shoto_io 5y ago
Yes. It reads "AI" ... "blah blah" ... "nuclear" ... "blah blah" ... "future" ... "blah blah"
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

jstx1 5y ago

It's a list of non-specific predictions and cliches - "AI revolution", "cryptocurrency driving major societal change", "we will be able to do stuff with bits and atoms we can barely imagine now" (!?). It's like he has no idea what he's talking about but for some reason insists on making predictions while not really making any actual predictions.

tootahe45 5y ago

Did we get some major AI breakthrough in the past 3 years? or are we still sinking billions into things like self driving where the problem is always 97% solved due to AI being a poor fit? On the crypto front it looks like there has been some progress, my $100 of tether now costs $150 worth of eth to send, whereas it only cost $30 to send during the last bull run.

timdaub 5y ago

Why does HN surface a link so pointless as this one. I can't use Twitter without an account + the information density on this one isn't much high. Just a guy speculating about something they can't know.

disgruntledphd2 5y ago
Because of who it is (Sam Atman, formerly head of YC, currently CEO of OpenAI).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

apples_oranges 5y ago

I think he's right about most things except crypto currency. If energy costs go to near zero, will proof of work even make sense? Will it be about who owns the most CPUs then? Sounds like a contradiction ..

Animats 5y ago

Expect a big decade for longevity research, AR/VR, psychedelic medicine, cryptocurrency driving major societal change, etc etc. Now that's an unusual list. - Longevity research. At some point it should be possible to re-engineer the human genome to produce longer lived people. Retrofitting to old models, though, is less likely to work. Also, what this really means is creating new species. Look at all the trouble we have with race. Wait until we have multiple humanoid species that can't interbreed. - AR. We're probably going to get AR at an affordable price this decade. The Facebook version will be like "Hyperreality", the Google version will be Glassholes 2.0, and the Amazon version will be Marshall Brain's "Manna". But "at last, the Pokemon will be free to roam the real world!" And maybe someone will figure out how to draw black. - VR. The year of VR was 2019. We can do it, it just sucks. Except for Beat Saber. Somewhere between 5% to 15% of the population gets nauseated, which is far worse than high-end roller coasters. You can look, point, and shoot, but more than that is hard. - Psychedelic medicine. Probably not all that helpful. More of an excuse for recreational drugs, like "medical marijuana" was. - Cryptocurrency driving major societal change. Nah. It's zero-sum. It's not creating any wealth. Great for money laundering, not so useful for anything else. What are we going to get in the 2020s? - Electric vehicles everywhere. That's pretty clear. - Self-driving cars. It's been a long haul, but Google doubles the mean time between disconnects every 18 months by incremental improvement. Getting there, slowly. - Much faster and more effective vaccine development. Vaccines were kind of a backwater for years, but now they're getting attention. Influenza and HIV might be knocked out this decade. Maybe even make a dent in cancer. - China 2025. Go read the 14th Five Year Plan, 2021-2025. If you think it's unrealistic, read the 13th Five Year Plan and check off the items completed. - Energy will be less of a problem as solar, wind, and batteries are deployed. We have the technology, now it's just deployment. The next big problems are in water and metals.

throwaway4good 5y ago
Let me add a fun prediction: The US will have lost its tech war with China at the end of this decade. Some of the things that the western tech community fantasizes about ie. solving the energy distribution / storage problem by mining bitcoin with surplus green energy. Are both silly and distructive in the sense that it is noise that hides away the real solutions.

throwaway4good 5y ago

Short term (a year or two) the price of energy is going up.

bryanlarsen 5y ago

Even if energy prices go down 1000x it still won't be too cheap to meter. Ever since the computer age metering has become incredibly cheap and there are way too many things that can be done with cheap energy for energy to stop responding to the cost/demand curve. An extreme example is inter stellar travel.

GoodJokes 5y ago

These nerds have stopped trying hard to sound believable.