Forget the Negativity of the Press: A Remarkably Bright Future Awaits the Rising Generations

As we look forward to 2024 and back on 2023, I want to share a positive, optimistic vision of what our future could be. It is easy to get caught up in the negativity of the press. The desperate exaggerated warnings of the catastrophic self-induced fear mongers are ever present.They say we will die from global warming, nuclear winter, a new virus, or some other apocalyptic future. It is also easy to be weighed down by the real, personal disasters in Gaza, Ukraine — and a host of other places where governments are terrible, wars are endemic, and life faces genuine threats. However, behind all the attention-getting headlines, the largest scientific-technological effort in history is making progress on a wide range of fronts. That progress is going to transform our lives for the better and open up opportunities that are currently unimaginable. We have been through cycles of dramatic change before. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, steam power revolutionized manufacturing. Deep coal mines and textile mills became possible. Railroads, steamboats, and the telegraph began to shrink the world into a single communications system. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, electricity revolutionized our lives with electric lights, motion pictures, phonograph records, washing machines, and a host of breakthroughs. Thomas Edison alone held 1,093 patents as he strove to improve our lives. Henry Ford invented mass produced automobiles. The Wright Brothers discovered how to fly. Radio began connecting the world at large and ships at sea. The telephone began to connect millions. Since World War II, penicillin and other medicines revolutionized our health (as late as 1900 the average American lived to be 46). Plastics expanded our range of convenience. Jet engines shrank the globe. The computer empowered us, and the internet connected us. Dick Tracy’s watch-telephone-television became real in a variety of formats. Television educated and entertained billions of people. For most of humanity, life became better, we lived longer, and many people moved out of poverty toward middle class status. Now we are seeing a new wave of revolutionary breakthroughs unfold. Consider just a few of the great breakthroughs which are beginning to change our lives. Artificial intelligence and, with enormously greater importance, artificial general intelligence, known as AGI, are going to explode our potential for doing things in ways we can barely imagine.They will also threaten many professions and industries. Imagine the resistance to systems that can detect disease far earlier than any doctor — and bring to bear all the experience of millions of people in seconds. In the long run, AI and AGI will enormously enable people to be more creative and dynamic — and achieve more in less time.No doubt the short run transition will threaten interest groups, who will use their political and lobbying clout to slow down a disruptive future. As I wrote in my book “Breakout,” the future has publicists but the prison guards of the past have enormous numbers of lobbyists and a lot of money. They can slow down the rate of change or channel it so it strengthens rather than competes with existing systems. However, the change can’t be fully stopped. It is likely that the rise of AI and AGI will also enable us to create autonomous continuing education. The millions of Americans who have been underserved — and in many cases cheated — by the existing ineffective and self-serving unionized schools will have effective, convenient, low cost targeted learning opportunities. This will lead to better jobs and lives in ways we could not have imagined a generation ago. Parallel to AI and AGI, we are on the way to an explosive development of personalized robots. Robots have helped with industrial production for decades, but they have been relatively static and limited in their capability.Beginning with exciting developments in Japan, where the declining population has created demand for labor-saving breakthroughs, we are seeing personally helpful robots. When combined with AI and AGI, the next two or three decades of robotic development is going to have enormous implications. For example, a major challenge with Alzheimer’s patients is helping them keep a routine, physically helping them get in and out of bed and bathing, etc. Alzheimer’s caregivers face tremendous challenges and have demanding work. The development of personalized care-giving robots that are self-learning will revolutionize the process of aging, helping developmentally challenged Americans, and healing people who have been injured. All of this is underway and will improve our lives within a decade. Health in general is going to have an extraordinary explosion in breakthroughs and new capabilities. The amount we are learning about biology, brain science, and prevention and treatment of disease is going to lead to revolutionary changes. It is reasonable to expect that a child born in 2024 will live 115 years — and be as healthy at 115 as a 60-year-old person today. Ironically, virtually everything reducing our lifespans is avoidable — drug addiction, poor diets, lack of exercise, incompetent driving, etc. Finally, with Elon Musk’s extraordinary entrepreneurial vision, we are almost certainly going to be truly a space-borne species within the lifespans of those being born this year. We will be on the moon, Mars, and in the asteroid belt within the lifespan of today’s teenagers.We will have a self-sustaining colony on Mars by the end of this century. The explosive development of space will lead to a new surge of optimism, enthusiasm – and new recruits for scientific and engineering educations. There are other areas of breakthroughs coming, but I hope these will give you a sense of why I am an optimist. As President Reagan said, I believe “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Forget the Negativity of the Press: A Remarkably Bright Future Awaits the Rising Generations

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