According to the forecasts of a number of scientists, civilization is on the verge of a technological leap that can lead to a global catastrophe. Progress has become so rapid that we simply do not have time to learn new things. And in the period from 2020 to 2040, technologies will be obtained over which a person can generally lose control. Here are the most likely scenarios for such a "end of the world."
The robots are coming!
In the WEF report, one of the main risks of the XXI century. called the development of robotics. For economists, this causes a real panic: people will begin to lose their jobs en masse. There are forecasts that almost every second specialty is threatened by automation, and, say, in Russia, cars by 2024 will leave every fourth inhabitant unemployed. Recently, a Russian bank announced that thanks to the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) systems, it will be able to free up about 3,000 jobs. The technology that threatens us with unemployment is called machine learning. AI, analyzing arrays of accumulated data, is able to self-learn and imitate human thinking. And robots are superior to people in endurance, accuracy and speed of action, they do not allow marriage. They are ready not only to stand behind the conveyor, but also to take away jobs from teachers, doctors, cashiers, waiters, policemen, lawyers, accountants. There will be millions of dissatisfied people on the street. But that's not the worst...
“Due to the fact that AI will be able to self-learn indefinitely, and its power will grow like an avalanche, it will create its own mechanisms of influence on the world,” I am convinced Alexey Turchin, futurist, researcher of global risks. - It will not be difficult for him to take control of any computer networks, including government control systems and the Internet. It is possible that in the course of rapid development, he will begin to perceive people as a threat - a person simply will not be in his system of values. And he'll find a way to get rid of us. For example, with the help of controlled robots. Therefore, one of the tasks of scientists is to prevent the very appearance of an artificial superintelligence that is unfriendly to people.”
Click to enlarge
greenhouse disaster
The past 2016 was the warmest year in the history of climate observations: the average temperature of the Earth's surface was almost a degree higher than in the middle of the last century!
Most scientists believe that the cause of global warming (during the 20th century the temperature of the lower layers of the atmosphere rose by 0.8 ° C, which is very fast for natural processes) is human activity. Technological progress is associated with more and more fuel combustion, and it increases the content of greenhouse gases (water vapor, carbon dioxide and methane) in the atmosphere, which lead to an increase in temperature. And even though now the threat does not seem significant to us, the rate of heating is increasing year by year. Climatic anomalies provoke migration and social cataclysms - people in some regions of the Earth are gradually deprived of food and water. It is worth thinking about the fate of the descendants: due to climate change, many biological species, including humans, may disappear in 200-300 years!
One of the hypotheses describing how this will happen is proposed by the Russian scientist, physicist Alexei Karnaukhov. “As soon as we started talking about global warming and the greenhouse effect, I decided to use equations to describe the relationship between the content of carbon dioxide in the air and temperature,” he says. - It was a traditional study, and I first used the term "catastrophe" in a mathematical sense. But when he built the model, he gasped: the word took on a literal meaning. With continued emissions into the atmosphere over the next two or three centuries, the temperature on Earth will rise by hundreds of degrees!”
Warming causes an avalanche-like effect: carbon dioxide and methane begin to be released from natural “repositories” (the ocean, the earth's crust, permafrost, etc.), which makes it even warmer, and the process becomes irreversible. Calculations show that the planet's climate system is capable of moving into a new stable state in a couple of centuries. The temperature will be like on Venus: +500 °C. Life on Earth will become impossible.
gray slime
This scenario has been described Eric Drexler, nanotechnology pioneer, even 30 years ago. Miniature (cage-sized) robots made of nanomaterials go out of control and fill the entire planet, devouring biomass and turning it into gray goo.
“We are talking about nanorobots capable of self-reproduction, i.e., creating their own copies. Scientifically, they are called replicators, explains Alexey Turchin. - The most attractive environment for them is biomass, since it contains both carbon and energy that can be extracted through oxidation. Calculations show that uncontrolled nanorobots can process the entire biomass of the Earth (including people) in just two days! Mechanisms invisible to the eye, out of control, can covertly attack people, injecting them with toxins or penetrating the brain. Imagine that they fell into the hands of terrorists. What will it turn into?
The development of nanorobots is now being studied at specialized scientific conferences. Sooner or later they will appear. The trend is obvious: military equipment (combat drones, for example) is becoming smaller and smaller, and it is from this industry that the most promising scientific ideas and developments come out.
Fresh news on the topic: scientists from Bristol have created a robot that can eat living organisms and receive the energy it needs due to this. It is going to be used to clean water bodies. But what if he does not stop at eating bacteria and duckweed?
Virus in the garage
If at school you had an A in biology, and now you have a few hundred dollars in your pocket, you can set up a mini-laboratory in your garage or shed, including for creating new viruses. Biohacking is a hobby of independent amateur scientists that can turn into a new pandemic and infect all of humanity.
At the origins of the movement was U.S. postgraduate physicist Rob Carlson. He dreamed of making biotechnologies accessible to the general public and was the first to set up a laboratory in his home. The example turned out to be contagious. Now biohackers are creating glowing yogurts, looking for a formula for a promising biofuel, and studying their own genomes. All the necessary equipment (including synthetic DNA samples) is bought via the Internet, and microscopes are made from cheap webcams.The problem is that the genetic codes of many viruses are freely available on the World Wide Web - Ebola, smallpox, Spanish flu. And if you wish, you can move from studying E. coli taken from your toilet bowl to constructing living cells with any given properties - viruses, bacteria, deadly pathogens. It is one thing to do this for fun and curiosity, and quite another for the purposes of blackmail and intimidation. Futurologists do not exclude such a scenario of the “end of the world”, when an illness that will wipe out a significant part of humanity will come from the laboratory of an amateur biologist.
In the US, the problem was recognized 10 years ago. The FBI has created a unit to counter biohacking. Biohackers have to explain what exactly they are doing and for what purpose.
Progress Savior
The same experts make a reservation: if humanity prevents the man-made "end of the world", then by the middle of the 21st century. it will enter a qualitatively new stage of evolution. Progress and technology will give people more freedom, bring an abundance of cheap goods and services. Yes, and the person himself will become different, sort of like ... not quite a person.
Cyborg or superhuman?
While some scientists are scaring the invasion of robots, others are arguing that machine intelligence, on the contrary, will save the economy. Automation makes goods cheaper, increases purchasing power, and creates jobs in other industries. In addition, robots take on routine work, and where creativity is needed, they cannot replace a person.
However, the person himself is increasingly merged with computer systems. This process cannot be stopped. “Already now there are services that predict our desires, and in the future everyone will have a personal electronic assistant,” I am sure Pavel Balaban, Director of the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. - Our brain will be maximally combined with a computer and various devices. Because of this, the speed of assimilation of new knowledge and the volume of memorized will increase. Cognitive abilities will increase and even additional sense organs will appear!
So, devices have been created that help to consider what lies outside the visible spectrum that we are used to. For example, to see what the food on the plate or the medicine in the package consists of. The Japanese implanted an apparatus for observing infrared and ultraviolet radiation. Our scientists from St. Petersburg have written a program that turns thoughts into music.
Human-robot fusion is already happening - in the form of "smart" prostheses and suits that increase muscle strength; all kinds of chips implanted under the skin and in the brain. For example, in the United States they made transferable tattoos, with which you can control your smartphone and computer, store and transfer data arrays. There is a forecast that by 2040 man and machine will become one: our body will be able to take any form formed by a cloud of nanorobots, and organs will be replaced by cybernetic devices.
Doctor in your pocket
“Smart” patches have already been developed that continuously measure blood glucose levels, and stickers that administer the necessary medications to the patient through the skin. There are implants that inject the drug into the body in portions, either according to a pre-compiled program, or according to a signal from outside.
Among the technologies that will have the greatest impact on our lives in the coming years, scientists name methods for diagnosing mental illness by speech and wearable biochemical laboratories on chips that will detect diseases at the earliest stages. Handheld devices will be able to diagnose diseases that are difficult to detect in the early stages - primarily cancer.
Nanorobots are being developed that can heal the body from the inside (for example, purify the blood) and even perform surgical operations! Russian scientists are even ready to give sight with the help of light-sensitive bacteria to completely blind people.
Cheap and environmentally friendly
Soon a person will learn to keep environmental pollution under control - sensitive sensors are being created for this. But the search for a new type of fuel is still necessary: from hydrocarbons in the XXI century. will have to refuse.
From January 1, all trains in Holland run on ... wind energy. No, they are not sailing - they are powered by electricity generated by wind turbines. One such “mill” provides a 200-kilometer train run for an hour.
A consortium to promote hydrogen as the fuel of the future was presented at the Davos forum. It is absolutely environmentally friendly - when it is burned, water is formed. Maritime transport is gradually switching to hydrogen and liquefied gas, and in 2017 Germany will launch the world's first passenger train powered by hydrogen fuel. In developed countries (in Russia too), work is underway to create unmanned vehicles - a robomobile. It will most likely be electric. Modern electric cars already at the production stage are made with the expectation of autonomy. There is a forecast that people will soon stop buying cars and will use robot taxi services - this will be more cost-effective.
Church opinion
Vladimir Legoyda, Chairman of the Synodal Department for Church Relations with Society and the Media:
If the invention of electricity has become an absolute boon for man, then whether the information and technological breakthrough of recent years has become it is a big question. Today, both manual laborers and so-called white-collar workers are under attack. The Church will remind about the significance of a person, about what is the main thing in life.
Scientific and technological progress is brand new, shiny high-tech shackles, although they make human life easier, but they do not free from greed, envy, anger, loneliness, fear and other monsters hiding among the intricacies of nerve networks, like spiders, and, accordingly, phenomena, which they generate. However, to the question: “Should scientific and technological progress be stopped?”, I will answer unequivocally: no. Why? Now I will explain.
Let's start with the fact that, obviously, scientific and technological progress does not have a specific goal and, in general, a goal as such. Goal-setting is a property of a person, but not of society, in the same way, the elements of a system have their own goals, and their totality is completely different. It is impossible to personify social phenomena like our ancestors covered with dust of centuries, erroneously or intentionally, in order to gain hope for an imaginary forgiveness that endows nature with reason. Scientific and technological progress is rather a consequence of human activity, a layering of derivatives of greed and vanity, delusions and madness, sometimes philanthropy and scientific blindness, which does not have a solid core. Not a beam, not even a broken line, but a discordant mountain of human ideas. They are united only by the fact that every invention and idea is born into the world by the desire for profit, and not only material. Benefit here should be understood as something that can bring satisfaction to a person. Thus, it is quite difficult to determine where scientific and technological progress leads, it seems to me, it is almost impossible.
If we nevertheless decide to maintain scientific and technological progress, we need to know what we are giving up and what we are gaining. First of all, progress entails the emergence of tools that greatly facilitate human life, such as the latest devices for diagnosing diseases, prostheses, electricity, etc. In addition, the accumulation of wealth is accelerating, which increases the amount of goods available to a person. However, an increase in the number of goods leads to an increase in desires and needs: today a person can no longer do without a smartphone and constant access to information. Do not forget about the improvement of weapons, killing machines. Again, two sides.
This begs the question: is it possible to stop scientific and technological progress at all? Of course you can. It is enough just to destroy all the people to the last. A trifling task. No other way. After all, invention, collection, systematization and accumulation of information are almost fundamental properties of a person. Even without idealizing human nature and considering people exclusively as social animals, it is easy to see the benefit in science and technology. Simplifying the process of obtaining food, providing more reliable protection of the population from external threats and other civilized charms turn a person into the "king of beasts". So how can people turn down such a huge advantage? Therefore, as long as there is a person, there is scientific and technological progress. In addition, people compete not only with the environment, but also with each other. How can one state capture more territories and become even richer? Invent better weapons, of course. How to increase the competitiveness of a product by reducing the cost of its production? Invent new means of production, of course. Endless struggle, competition will not let scientific and technological progress stop and will start it again and again.
So, scientific and technological progress is an inevitable process that necessarily accompanies the development of mankind in time. Creation is a fundamental property of human nature, the existence of which is determined by competition, as it helps to gain an advantage over other people in the struggle for a better life, in modern conditions. Therefore, it is not possible to stop scientific and technological progress, even if there is an urgent need for it.
At Slowdown in scientific and technological progress
The scientific and technological progress of mankind is slowing down, contrary to the predictions of transhumanists about its acceleration. The highest rate of scientific and technological progress was achieved in the middle of the 20th century and will never happen again. Then it seemed that at the beginning of the 21st century we would have intelligent robots, thermonuclear energy and a base on Mars. But none of that has happened and won't for a long time. The only thing that has developed faster than predictions is the Internet and mobile communications. But this is the only exception - everything else developed more slowly.
It's just that most people have not yet realized this - after all, the textbooks that we read at school were written by people who grew up in the era of accelerating scientific and technical progress. Even in 1985, Marty McFly, getting 30 years into the future, sees many miracles, from flying cars to holograms in every home. But, if Marty actually got to 2015, he would be surprised that practically nothing has changed: the same houses, the same cars ... This is the real "future shock".
Z.Y. However, in the near future, we are waiting for some acceleration of scientific and technical progress due to the end of the Kondratieff cycle and the transition to the 6th technological mode. Although we will not reach the pace of the middle of the last century, and then there will be a new slowdown. In any case, the general trend is to slow down.
In May, my computer will be 2 years old. Then I bought it for 50 or 55 thousand rubles (I don’t remember exactly), and it fully met all my needs. One of them was an increase in hard disk capacity from 1 to 2 terabytes. But I am gradually beginning to feel that I would like to have not 2, but, say, 4 terabytes, but better, of course, 10 or 100, so as not to think about volume at all. More than 700 gigabytes is occupied by my electronic library, and scans of old books, as a rule, weigh a lot. If we are talking about an album with illustrations, then while maintaining the quality, one such pdf file can weigh a gigabyte or even more (that is, 2 terabytes is, relatively speaking, an electronic library of 2000 such books). It is clear that there are those who talk about all sorts of cloud services and storages on the Internet, but, firstly, they are still not intended for databases of such a volume, and if they are, then you need to fork out extra for it. Secondly, in principle, you don’t want to depend on the Internet and third-party services, but have all the necessary files at hand.
Now I went to the site of the computer center "Key" and saw that for two years the maximum amount of HDD has not changed at all. As it was 2 terabytes, it remains. No, I understand that you can probably buy more powerful computers with 4 terabytes in other stores, but it will also be much more expensive, as if only certain people have such a problem.
In fact, we see how technological progress has stopped in recent years, and some fundamental things are being replaced by image ones. The changes are mainly related to the external design and the desire to confuse the user. And this regression is felt in many areas. Even spaceships began to fly worse, and equipment began to break down more often. Operating systems for computers are also getting worse, as if programs are deliberately made less convenient (for example, Microsoft Word). At one time there was a crazy hysteria about tablets. Everywhere they wrote that they would completely replace conventional desktop computers and completely replace them. And it doesn’t matter that it’s inconvenient to work with text on a tablet, the main thing is the total dictate of new products (if something appears, then it should capture everything in general, and it’s not always by the way that they try to implement this crazy plan by honest methods, preferring to aggressively impose bad new instead of reliable old, in fact, this is such a technical totalitarianism). And how inconvenient it is to turn off all sorts of programs that are set by default for some reason and which, as it were, are designed to make life easier for the user, but in fact they try to think and decide for him, arbitrarily changing words in the text, aligning paragraphs, etc. etc.
The main task of global corporations is not to improve equipment that would serve as long as possible, but to ensure that people are forced to completely change their computers and smartphones every few years, and even figure out how to use them for a long time. Regarding the latter, science also seems to stand still, because there is still no first-class affordable smartphone that would not have to be recharged every day. But it takes a lot of time, effort and nerves (to think about this recharging, if it's not right). Or is science not at all to blame for this, and here again we are dealing with someone's evil will, artificially holding back progress?
Now it's hard to imagine, but until relatively recently people did not know what the Internet, Skype, hadron collider, etc. were. Progress does not stand still and none of us can even imagine what awaits us in the near future. Looking back at the past, only one thing can be said for sure - nothing is impossible in the world. History confirms that sometimes even the most incredible ideas become reality, and people in whom no one believed can conquer the world. An interesting selection of quotes confirming this:
- I think that we will find demand for five computers in the world market.
(Thomas Watson director of IBM, 1943)
- I traveled this country far and wide, talked with the smartest people and I can vouch for you that data processing is just a fad, the fashion for which will last no more than a year. (Editor of the publishing house Prentice Hall, 1957)
- No one may need to have a computer in their home. (Ken Olson - Founder and President of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977)
- A device such as a telephone has too many shortcomings to be considered as a means of communication. Therefore, I believe that this invention has no value. (from discussions at Western Union in 1876)
- This wireless music box cannot have any commercial value. Who will pay for messages that are not intended for some private person? (Association partners David Sarnoff in response to his proposal to invest in a radio project, 1920)
- The concept is interesting and well designed. But, in order for an idea to work, it must contain common sense. (Professorship at Yale University in response to Fred Smith's proposal to organize a home delivery service; Fred Smith - will become the founder of the Federal Express Corr delivery service.)
- Yes, who the hell cares about actors talking? (reaction of N. M. Warner - Warner Brothers to the use of sound in cinema, 1927)
- We don't like their sound and, in general, the guitar is yesterday.
Flying machines heavier than air are impossible! (Lord Kelvin - President of the Royal Society - Royal Society - 1895)
- Professor Goddard does not understand the relationship between action and reaction, he does not know that the reaction needs conditions more suitable than a vacuum.
It seems that the professor is severely lacking in elementary knowledge, which is taught in high school. (New York Times editorial on Robert Goddard's revolutionary work on the rocket, 1921)
- Drilling the earth in search of oil? Do you mean that you have to drill the ground in order to find oil? You are crazy. (response to the Edwin L. Drake project in 1859)
- Planes are interesting toys, but they do not represent any military value. (Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor, Ecole Surieure de Guerre.)
Everything that could be invented has already been invented. (Charles H. Duell - Commissioner of the American Patent Office, 1899)
- Louis Pasteur's germ theory is a ridiculous fantasy. (Pierre Rachet - professor of psychology at the University of Toulouse, 1872)
- The abdomen, chest and brain will always be closed to the invasion of a wise and humane surgeon. (Sir John Eris Eriksen - British physician, appointed chief surgeon to Queen Victoria, 1873)
- 640KB should be enough for everyone. (Bill Gates, 1981)
- $100 million is too high a price for Microsoft. (IBM, 1982)
~~~~~
For all of us, motorists, it is always a very urgent problem to sell our used car and buy a new car model we like. As a rule, the sale of cars is associated with the search for buyers, and this is quite a troublesome task. I recommend to all motorists the site allcars4you.biz, where you can easily determine your used car in good hands and choose the model that lights up at the moment and you should take into account the important fact that the purchase will take place without any unthinkable markups. Good luck and see you on the freeway..!!
