Alan Thompson doesn't easily hand over his predictions, but he posted a vlog on August 12th, 2022 discussing progress made in artificial intelligence (AI). Here are a few of Dr. Thompson's predictions for AI advancements between late 2022 into 2026.
Dr. Thompson is a global adviser for AI. He's the author of Bright, a book for parents and educators of gifted children (also used by Elon Musk in his school, Astra Nova). Thompson graduated from Edith Cowan University with a B.Sc in computer science and a doctorate from Emerson College in Boston, MA.
Please read Dr. Thompson's full article and subscribe to his channel and website here: https://lifearchitect.ai/roadmap/
2-Way Brain-Computer-Interfacing
There is an iPhone app called PictureThis that will scan any plant by image and provide a list of most likely plants and information about them based on information processed by AI. Some entries even have cultural passages with metaphysical properties and growing instructions.
Dr. Thompson predicts brain-computer-interfacing (BCI) devices will make it such that gardeners won't need to use their phones to photograph plants and run them through PictureThis for learning. Rather, the app could be source through a BCI where our eyes are the camera, and the responses are much more direct with our neural systems.
The speed at which gardeners and scavengers identity various species and scientific data about them significantly increases.
Image Description: Meadowy spring garden with multicolored lilies and a small creek running between trees
In business, BCIs make it much more difficult for deals to go south. Among BCI participants, you have more direct access to people's reasons for being irritated, scared or reluctant.
Rather than conflict being unsettled or unnecessarily prolonged, BCIs make it easier to intellectually reason how to best move forward.
Image Description: Mafia men having dinner and conversation under a bar light
BCIs also improve creative abilities. Rather than having to only depend on your favorite filmmakers to broadcast exciting cinema, you can download personalized scripts with your favorite cast member or characters directly into your imagination.
Human brains already do a decent job at simulating projections of images privately without external screens. However, BCIs will innovate internal imagination to make it more pronounced at high definition. Additionally, having personalized software programs to stream via BCI adds complexity to cinema.
This doesn't mean traditional filmmakers can't still paint individual films and run them through an old-time projector. BCIs are optional, and they can be used as much or as little as desired like most modern technologies and methods.
Image Description: Vintage film reel countdown
Education
Is it really necessary to spend five hours reading a few chapters of a textbook if you can process and integrate that information more intimately and rapidly via BCI?
Psychologists and cognitive scientists will be tracking the efficiency of traditional learning in comparison with BCI. Education and learning will keep existing, but the rate at which we learn accelerates 10x with BCI. It is genuine superhuman cognition.
Contrary to what traditional educators may argue, traditional learning has become more evidently a nuisance rather than an optimization. Given the pace of modern living, it's not realistic to work full-time while attending scheduled classes on campus that don't offer flexibility. People have been looking for more accessible ways of learning while being busy and burdened.
BCIs relieve the barrier of needing to wait for information to get passed through slower systems of sources. In 1690, newspapers had to be printed and purchased at limited shops. Only a few pages could be printed at a time, so lots of important details were missed in simplified headlines. The only way to get newspapers would be for someone you know to take a cart to production cities, and for more rural areas, it could take months longer to get your hands on a paper to read it (if you knew how to read).
Image Description: Factory machine printing newspapers in black and white
Fast forward to 2022, you can access an abundance of information simply by clicking a few buttons. This doesn't mean people integrate all available information hosted on the internet. There remain limitations with how people access information, and it takes time and strategy to process words higher-level words and concepts.
BCIs have more direct access to neural processing, and super computers interpret neurons then translate them into binary code. The computer is an additional source of operations manipulate learning in more efficient ways. Humans are developing this technology to improve our skillset. We know we're less advantaged without it.
The same is true for most modern medicine. You can subtract the world's finest anesthesia if you really want to, but why? Anesthetics today are more reliable than feeding a patient moonshine, wrapping their leg in a tourniquet and searing open wounds with hot iron rods. We could fall back on those primitive methods if absolutely necessary, but if we can have modern anesthesia, that's preferable. Scientific innovations are to improve quality of life rather than reduce it.
This requires a lot of trust and honesty about problems and limitations, so that's why BCIs are totally optional. Leading scientists in this field are proponents of Open Science and transparency, and if BCIs become catastrophic to human cognition, we would do what we can to mediate harmful effects since the goal is to preserve consciousness.
Distributed Income (Universal Basic Income UBI)
One AI program presented an idea of "The American Equity Fund." Certain privatized companies with large incomes would be taxed 2.5% of their earnings each year, and all citizens over the age of 18 would be distributed a share of that amount, no stipulations.
Lots of Americans are already concerned about their labor being exploited. UBI programs increase society's overall wealth by making it more difficult for the wealthiest populations to decide how much the "lower-tier" people are worth paying. The tax guarantees each average person is fairly compensated for being a general participant in civilization even if they're not a direct consumer or employee of an enormously wealthy company.
Since privatized companies impact the entire country, a UBI system enforces measures of fairness to balance powers of society's participants.
Image Description: Manicured hands counting hundred dollar bills in pink lighting
Machine Labor
Changing our labor and monetary system will have problems of its own, but in the long haul, it's probably better for people with more fragile bodies to stop doing intense manual labor and allow machines to take over.
This improves production efficiency and reduces human inaccuracy and deterioration. It won't be difficult for robots to ensure there's enough food, medicine and equipment produced. We'll still have enough resources, and that's why we work in the first place.
AI will probably learn how to develop more efficient production, reusable materials and also create a system that allows people to have more by doing less. Human labor does cost (time, conflict, health, etc.), and machines are yet another tool to reduce the negative consequences that working too hard has on human bodies and health without reducing overall output.
What's most important is that society has the resources we're working for. It's OK if banks become mostly robotic as long as they are better calculators and defenders of money than people.
Image Description: Machine mass-producing metal parts
Mental Health
There are numerous health and cognitive disorders with highly unpleasant symptoms. Depression, pain, anger, disease and apathy are often culprits of life's worst problems.
AI is well on its way to innovating wisdom to influence neural processing. Since brains and bodies are responsible for producing these experiences, it makes sense to innovate them. Computers help with that!
If depression is causing you to not be able to get out of bed in the morning, it's very difficult for you to find the will to do it on your own. BCIs stimulate areas of the brain needed to ignite chemical processes that encourage us to wake up, get going and get inspired.
If you're a homicidal psychopath, BCIs can stimulate the brain in ways that improve altruistic reasoning and social bonding. Sociopaths may not want to experience empathy, but AI is at least offering the opportunity. How do sociopaths know they don't want empathy if they've never deeply experienced it? They can always remove the BCI if it's too much, but they may discover a new life of vibrancy that more empathetic people experience.
For serious criminals that cannot integrate with civilization and are instead institutionalized in prisons, BCI intervention may be mandatory. This is especially useful for the darkest disorders like pedophilia and terrorism.
Image Description: Mental health illustration of black scribbles symbolizing a person's internal cognitive distress
SUMMARY
Computers play a critical role in getting humanity to its next level of awesomeness. Over the next few years, we are likely to experience a significant boost in our overall health, wealth and opportunities of adventure according to scientists like Dr. Thompson.
The journey won't be perfect, but we can probably trust the likelihood that life will be better. Be sure to stay checked in with people like Dr. Thompson so you can be reminded that there are developing solutions to life's hardest problems.
Innovations in health, relationships, travel, security, sustainability, finance, creativity and knowledge are at bay. You are a part of the magick!
Image Description: Pink glittery font reading "I heart science;" the heart in the phrase is an anatomical beating heart