Futurology

First complete ‘scientific health check’ shows most global systems beyond stable range in which modern civilisation emerged

The central problem they are trying to tackle here is that as we don't know the many possible biochemical permutations life might have elsewhere in the Universe, how can we be sure about claims about observations of gasses in exoplanet atmospheres. This was in the news this week with the discovery of dimethyl sulphide on the watery planet K2-18 b. By the end of the decades there may be hundreds of such observations.

The method they propose is one that has been used in climate change science - collating expert opinion from thousands of scientists and going with what is most strongly supported. It's not a perfect solution either, but as we're forced to operate in any environment of incomplete data ( we don't know the full range of potential alien biology) - it may have to do for now.

Self-driving AI attracts its fair share of nay-sayers. It's typical to hear people say the technology is decades away, but the facts don't back up these claims.

In fact, the opposite seems true - its widespread adoption is just around the corner. Here's some data that seems to back that up. China is selling millions of EVs to the rest of the world, and in 2023 became the world's biggest car exporter. It's sobering to think about the world when it is selling millions of self-driving cars - does each one of these equal a job loss for a human?

McKinsey seems very optimistic about the effects of AI development. The report talks about how soon 50% of work currently done by humans can be done by AI. It says that as developed world economies are aging, AI won't replace workers, it will make up for the shortfall in new young workers. That strikes me as a naive best-case scenario.

The real issue will be that AI-workers will be cheaper than humans. Most people's wage level is determined by free market prices. It's why global forces keep working class wages low in America or Europe. AI will be that, but orders of magnitude greater. It will also be doing it to professional more powerful people, which means politicians are running out of time to ignore the issue.

At first, an in-ear phone and language translator, while useful, might not seem compelling. But take things a bit further. This relies on a mini-computer and connection to the internet in the hearing aid. What if that allowed you to connect to Chat-GPT? Or future more powerful versions of it. That might be more compelling. Sci-fi has often envisioned cyborgs in the future. Maybe one day people will look back at stuff like this and think it was the first baby steps of that technology.