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.
Few of these have really been proven possible, much less an expected time-frame.
AGI: We are no nearer to artificial self-awareness with LLMs and other approaches than when AI research began in the 1950s.
nanobots: We have the ability to print parts at that scale but material properties are very, very different at that scale. Heat dissipation is a real problem.
Fully autonomous self driving cars: This is a subset of no self-awareness in AI.
Cancer cures: Here is where I disagree. The progress in combating the thousands of individual types of cancer in the past 50 years is astounding and the pace is increasing.
Also factor in that more people end up needed treatment for cancer because a: they live longer and b: the massive reductions in other causes of death means more people who would have died in past generations from other things live long enough for cancer to develop.
aging cures: Quality of life as we age has improved greatly but
significant life extension: yes, it seems 120ish is hard coded as the terminal age and we still don't know if we can alter that.
SF is great in that it can show possible futures but it is not prediction.
Great write-up. Thanks!