32 replies to this topic

[PhoenixRu]

You ignored the rest of what he said.

 

Not at all. For example, I'm fully agree with this part:

 

We've yet to see whatever it is that OpenAI's really working on.

 

Exactly, let's wait and see.

[Jacob209]

 

Well, it's not the Singularity or anything, but what GPT-3 alone has accomplished is shocking.

 

 

It's exactly what I expected GPT-3 to be: something in between artificial narrow intelligence and artificial general intelligence. It even has the architectural differences. You can get GPT-3 to do a wide variety of tasks, including things it wasn't even trained to do. You know, artificial expert intelligence, or AXI.

 

What I absolutely didn't expect was how easy it would be to jump from AXI to AGI. It's not absolute, but there is a path towards a very functional kind of zombie AGI within a year. I'm not kidding— that's how close we are, if the people at work on it recognize the same limitations. Of course, it wouldn't be just GPT-3; it'd have to be the secret project OpenAI's working on (of which GPT-3 and Jukebox are likely just small parts of). But the main takeaway ought to be that we may have a proto-AGI functional within twelve months. 

 

It's so close it doesn't even sound possible. But it's right there; you can read the paper yourself and come to the same deductions about what it's missing.

 

I wish OpenAI published a blog post about it so it's easier to grasp.  There are also a lot of complaints about the paper on Arxiv and Github that it wasn't as amazing of an advance over GPT-2 or that it's running into limits, neither of which makes sense really— the GPT-2 paper itself said that scaling it up with more parameters would lead to greater generalization, and the "running into limits" part was bandied about even with GPT-2 itself. There's clearly a lot, lot more than can be done, and considering GPT-3 doesn't even use image, audio, video, or other biofeedback data, the actual limits are likely much, much higher than anything people are comfortable with.

 

Hmmm, most of what I have been reading suggests that GPT-3 is simply a scaled up version of GPT-2 and not much more. It's intuitive that with more parameters GPT-3 outperforms GPT-2, but people much more knowledgeable than me believe this advance to be more or less linearly and not groundbreaking. It was fun to fork GPT-2 and train it a bit. Also, there is a very easy access GPT-2 transformer online.

 

Here is an example:

Input: Are Yuli Ban's predictions of the future correct?

 

Output: Can we not be a little more optimistic? Can we not hope for a future that does not revolve around our iPhones, tablets, and other fast-charging devices? Does Yuli Ban truly believe that we will never see further innovation in technology? Can we, as proponents of open-source software, ever not want to see the opportunities provided by the thought-leaders and researchers in academia, government, and industry? Can we really hope that Yuli Ban can see the picture a little clearer? Please let us know what you think of his opinion piece

 

Of course the transformer generates a lot of garbage but it is otherwise fun to use.

 

Can you show me some of those people that believe its not groundbreaking? I've seen the complete opposite so far, and based off what I've seen on the papers I can't help but disagree with this.

[Enter Ataraxia]

 

 

Well, it's not the Singularity or anything, but what GPT-3 alone has accomplished is shocking.

 

 

It's exactly what I expected GPT-3 to be: something in between artificial narrow intelligence and artificial general intelligence. It even has the architectural differences. You can get GPT-3 to do a wide variety of tasks, including things it wasn't even trained to do. You know, artificial expert intelligence, or AXI.

 

What I absolutely didn't expect was how easy it would be to jump from AXI to AGI. It's not absolute, but there is a path towards a very functional kind of zombie AGI within a year. I'm not kidding— that's how close we are, if the people at work on it recognize the same limitations. Of course, it wouldn't be just GPT-3; it'd have to be the secret project OpenAI's working on (of which GPT-3 and Jukebox are likely just small parts of). But the main takeaway ought to be that we may have a proto-AGI functional within twelve months. 

 

It's so close it doesn't even sound possible. But it's right there; you can read the paper yourself and come to the same deductions about what it's missing.

 

I wish OpenAI published a blog post about it so it's easier to grasp.  There are also a lot of complaints about the paper on Arxiv and Github that it wasn't as amazing of an advance over GPT-2 or that it's running into limits, neither of which makes sense really— the GPT-2 paper itself said that scaling it up with more parameters would lead to greater generalization, and the "running into limits" part was bandied about even with GPT-2 itself. There's clearly a lot, lot more than can be done, and considering GPT-3 doesn't even use image, audio, video, or other biofeedback data, the actual limits are likely much, much higher than anything people are comfortable with.

 

Hmmm, most of what I have been reading suggests that GPT-3 is simply a scaled up version of GPT-2 and not much more. It's intuitive that with more parameters GPT-3 outperforms GPT-2, but people much more knowledgeable than me believe this advance to be more or less linearly and not groundbreaking. It was fun to fork GPT-2 and train it a bit. Also, there is a very easy access GPT-2 transformer online.

 

Here is an example:

Input: Are Yuli Ban's predictions of the future correct?

 

Output: Can we not be a little more optimistic? Can we not hope for a future that does not revolve around our iPhones, tablets, and other fast-charging devices? Does Yuli Ban truly believe that we will never see further innovation in technology? Can we, as proponents of open-source software, ever not want to see the opportunities provided by the thought-leaders and researchers in academia, government, and industry? Can we really hope that Yuli Ban can see the picture a little clearer? Please let us know what you think of his opinion piece

 

Of course the transformer generates a lot of garbage but it is otherwise fun to use.

 

Can you show me some of those people that believe its not groundbreaking? I've seen the complete opposite so far, and based off what I've seen on the papers I can't help but disagree with this.

 

Once I get more time I will include the rest.

 

Here is the one that immediately came to mind: article

[starspawn0]

And don't forget to read the comments at the end of that post.

[Metalane]

How much computational power is required to run GPT-3? Are we talking the worlds most powerful supercomputers type of power or less? 

[Miky617]

Well, we're past the halfway point of the year, yet to be entirely honest, it feels like these past 6 months lasted half the decade already. 

 

I didn't make any predictions on this thread at the end of last year since I figured they'd be pretty bland and vague, especially compared to the ones posted by wjfox or Yuli. I simply don't have my finger on the pulse quite like they do. 

 

In any case, so far this year has shaped up to be pretty unpredictable and I'm excited to hear how the predictions from last year have fared so far. I think it would also be worth the time to reorient and "start over", meaning that now might be a good chance to cast a few more predictions before the year ends since we can adjust for the state of the world amidst SARS-CoV-2 and other things.

 

I might as well throw a few out there; nothing too substantial or impressive. 

 

• Joe Biden wins the presidency (whether he will be able to finish his term remains to be seen), raising temper tantrums and uproar among Trump's base like nothing else seen. This might lead to a handful of domestic terror acts, or they might just whine about it a bit on social media. With this, Democrats and center-oriented faux-woke individuals can retreat to the comfort of their homes and sweep under the rug all of the issues that plagued the Trump administration even while nothing substantially changes under Biden.
• By the end of the year, COVID-19 will still be happy and cozy in its grip on the world, with over 1,000,000 dead in its wake while everyone else is too exhausted of it to care any more. Still several months away from a widely-available vaccine, several treatments are circulating but they are in their infancy and many people are distrustful of it, citing conspiracy theories. On the other hand, the fallout from COVID is that many of its victims are older, generally more conservative people who failed to take proper precautions. As a result, COVID-19 has effectively strengthened the demographic "weight" of younger, more progressive people which may end up influencing future elections.
• On a related note, I predict that at least one major political leader (not necessarily a PM or president, but fairly close) will pass away due to COVID. Cue more conspiracies.
• I'm not sure if the world will permanently trend towards more decentralized work and a greater normalization of work-from-home as a result of COVID, but if I had to venture a guess, I'd say no. Whether SARS-CoV-2 is still floating around or not, people will want to go back to work the old-fashioned way and only a few businesses will make the decision to adopt a more fluid work environment, likely since it cuts costs and is more efficient, depending on the type of work being done. Drive-In theaters may make a comeback.
• Climate change continues to wreak havoc with a major storm causing extensive damage to a heavily developed area. Sea level rises are still not that significant yet, but its effect is noticed as places like the Outer Banks and island nations are experiencing greater erosion. The summer of 2020 breaks heat records globally and will hold onto those records for about a year.
• Synthetic media is still in a fad phase and is rapidly maturing, but I doubt we'll see anything big and mainstream this year. I could be wrong, but I imagine we'll see better versions of "This ___ does not exist" and a few convincing DeepFakes and that'll be about it for 2020. Next year or two might surprise us though with a full-length feature film being DeepFaked. It seems to me that many people who are not in the futurist bubble like us are still unaware of its potential and might have heard about it briefly a while ago and then forgot about it. For 2020, synthetic media will likely remain niche.
• Starspawn seems to be very enthusiastic and excited about a near-future application of BCI work so I'll leave any predictions on the state of that art to them. However I believe that if such a thing happens this year, it will also be a niche thing that makes huge waves in the community but has relatively little impact on the general populace (for now at least. I imagine the applications will disseminate rapidly and we'll see major changes in a lot of fields throughout the decade).
• Retail apocalypse will also become a restaurant and tourism apocalypse as well thanks to COVID. I imagine at least two more major retailers will declare bankruptcy or switch to almost exclusively an online presence. Many restaurants that lack the capital to survive the attrition of COVID will close their doors as well. Local economies in tourist destinations (primarily ones that cater to US-icans) will also be crunched hard as many countries enforce travel restrictions with the USA. 
• Thanks to COVID, the current Guinea Worm eradication and Polio Eradication initiatives will see set backs and those diseases will be around for at least another 5 years I predict. 
• China will make great strides toward becoming the next great superpower, with the US choking on itself in the meantime. With either Trump or Biden's election, the United States will cement it's status as a waning nation.
• With many progressives disgusted at the prospect of voting for either Trump or Biden, 2020 may see a sharp increase in support for the Green Party, making them eligible for a more noticeable presence on the political stage in future elections.
• Tesla keeps raking in money and cementing its monopoly on the EV front. Despite their work though, consumer ownership of autonomous vehicles at level 4 is still at least one more year away. Legislation and public unease will make adoption of fully self-driving cars slow.
• American infrastructure is ripe for revitalization. Hopefully we'll see a transition toward future-friendly architecture and civil engineering. Not likely this year though. Many bridges are nearing the end of their lifespan on the interstate system, so those will be rebuilt but otherwise much work remains to be done.
• GPT-3 will start to creep into the works of big tech companies. What this will look like, I'm not entirely sure. This is Yuli and Starspawn's domain more so than mine.
• GE mosquito trials will go along smoothly. Hopefully that will move forward and progress will be made toward shifting mosquito populations toward species that are less effective as pathogen vectors.
• More animal/plant/insect extinctions.
• More celebrity deaths. Most will probably not be COVID related but I imagine at least one or two will be.
• More civil unrest. More token gestures by companies and legislature without meaningful change. Some forward progress, enough to hide the problems better and appease the less motivated protesters. Many people are tired of protesting and are satisfied with the crumbs of change, especially if Trump leaves office. Many are still indignant however. I expect more riots and catalytic events in the near future as real systemic change hasn't yet happened and the cycle continues. However people will also become more aware of the power of the public.

 

That's all I can think of at the moment. 2020 is setting the stage for many big motions in this next decade and a lot of the things happening now will truly be appreciated in their effect on what comes next. I have my hopes about what will or won't happen.

[waitingforthe2030s]

Well, we're about near the end of the year. How did you guys do?

[Sephiroth6633]

As of today, we have 4 days 'til the end of 2020 and the dawn of 2021. How are your 2020 prediction? Did they come to realise? 

[Yuli Ban]

So I'm still juggling what's going to be in the 2021 Predictions thread and all, but I figured I might as well get around to doing this

 

As codified by ItalianUFO

 

Green: Fully confirmed, mostly confirmed, or essentially confirmed. It comes true just as I said it would, sometimes even down to the very words used by articles to describe what happened.

Blue: Inconclusively confirmed— very likely to be true, but it cannot be confirmed until a later date due to the data not yet being available (e.g. we won't know how much new solar capacity was constructed or how many EVs were sold this year until around April next year when the actual reports are released). Also to be used for predictions that are "75% true" in that they're not true enough to be green but not contentious enough to be yellow.

Yellow: Half confirmed, inconclusive to confirm or deny, tenuous and objectionable, or up to interpretation due to vague wording (e.g. "bionic enhancements are now available to the public" could include everything from wireless earbuds to full transhumanism; "a new treatment for cancer" could mean everything from a research study that saw lab improvements for one type of cancer all the way to a full cure for all cancers). Aspects of what I said come true, it's true to a certain extent, or implied aspects come true. That, or the trends are there and we need more time to see if I was even remotely right. Also includes "inconclusively debunked/untrue" if it's unlikely something came true but we'll only know until a later date.

Red: Completely debunked or mostly untrue. No possible way to spin it into even being kind of true. I completely missed the mark, something was canceled, or there was absolutely no mention of it. Just because a prediction is listed as red doesn't mean it's permanently debunked, vaporware, or a complete failure—especially in a year where one of history's deadliest pandemics has caused severe global disruption. I say this because some people get overly upset over seeing too much red and think "It was a terrible year" when a prediction can be deemed a failure just because "this new super-smartphone is predicted to be released in 2020" when it's actually releasing on January 1st, 2021.

Purple: Prediction itself failed, but not because it didn't come true or was delayed. In fact, the prediction I gave came too late or put something out into the future that happened this year (e.g. "the first flying saucer is planned for release in 2030" but it's actually released this year)

 

If there are certain specific aspects that are conclusively true but are marred by other specific aspects are that are conclusively untrue, then colors'll mix, e.g. "GPT-3 is a powerful and generalized autoregressive language model that is as capable as humans and thus qualifies as the first artificial general intelligence ever made."
Obviously the first part is true. The second part is very tenuous because it's only roughly as capable as humans in certain areas (it can conceivably become superhuman in these areas if fine-tuned and can become roughly capable in entirely new areas only if the network is retrained on new data), and the third part is just a flat-out lie.

 

I'll also add comments in brackets where needbe, mostly to explain or comment on contentious or failed predictions.

Main Timeline predictions

• Microsoft ends support for Windows 7
• America's power shift is destabilising the Asia-Pacific region
• Generation X is reshaping global politics [Boomers are desperately hanging onto power at all costs, and Millennials are trying to push their way in. Gen X, surprisingly, seems to be largely getting ignored globally, but they're certainly starting to reach levels of power]
• Internet use reaches 5 billion worldwide [Only 4.66 billion as of this post; it'll more than likely get to 5 billion next year]
• Texting by thinking [There are plenty of experiments and limited commercialization for the paralyzed. However, that's as far as it's come— there's no widely available cybertelepathy]
• Complex organ replacements grown from stem cells [From what I've researched, we can absolutely already do this with existing technology— the issue is just that it takes a long time to grow these complex organs, and every experiment is still very early along in it at this point. For this reason, I see it was taken off the main timeline]
• The first stem cell therapy for congestive heart failure
• A cure for malaria
• Progress with longevity extension
• Genetically engineered "super" bananas
• Tokyo hosts the Olympic Games [COVID-19 dashed these hopes]
• Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway (MTR) has been significantly expanded [Found no information on this; whatever plans were there might've been delayed due to the pandemic]
• Completion of the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link [I'm assuming Will meant that construction would start. Either way, it's false because of COVID-19.]
• The UK has expanded its offshore grid connections [There are plans to, but I've seen nothing saying they've started. If I'm wrong, please correct me]
• Smart meters in every UK home [Mandated, probably not true at the moment]
• Mercury pollution has been greatly reduced [Trend was already ongoing, but this has been greatly assisted by the COVID-19 pandemic]
• Glacier National Park and other regions are becoming ice-free [Some are, Glacier National Park hasn't, others haven't seen quite as bad of effects yet
• Britain's new aircraft carriers reach full operational capability [The ships are active, but they won't achieve full operating capability until 2023 at the earliest]
• 30,000 drones are patrolling the skies of America [True number is unknown, but COVID-19 restrictions don't seem to have made the number go up or down]
• Mars 2020 rover mission
• The first test flights of NASA's Quiet Supersonic Technology [Test flights start in 2021 or 2022]
• England's Coastal Path is open to walkers [Delayed due to COVID-19]
• Expo 2020 is held in Dubai [Canceled due to COVID-19]
• The PlayStation 5 is launched
• The final collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf [Still barely and I mean barely holding on, but the shelf has maybe five years left if that]

My Predictions
 
Disclaimer: Due to my atrocious batting average with them, I'm completely excluding any geopolitical predictions, save for those related to technology in some way.

• Virtual reality receives its first "killer app" that specifically drives sales of headsets [Every respectable reporting site says Half Life: Alyx is that killer app, doubling as what's already regarded as one of the greatest video games of all time to boot]
• The second generation of VR headsets are formally teased, with the first likely receiving a Q4 2021 or unknown-quarter 2022 release date [This is a rare case of a prediction failing because the reality was better: Oculus Quest 2, the first "second-gen of modern VR" headset was released earlier this year]
• Apple unveils an augmented/mixed reality headset, though for a very high price and marketed more towards enterprise & business. The form factor is considered a massive step forward from earlier designs (such as HoloLens and Magic Leap) [Only rumors, nothing confirmed let alone unveiled]
• 5G coverage expands, particularly across China, the wealthier East Asian countries, and Europe.
• With 5G comes an explosion of Internet of Things gadgetry, plenty of which will remain overpriced and unnecessary due to the prevalence of smartphones and smart speakers [Little news on just what has been using 5G, but apparently it's had an effect]
• Smart speakers will begin to be fused with robotic apparatuses that allow them to move about or even physically manipulate certain objects, ushering a second wind for domestic robotics after the disastrous first wave of 2016-2019. Think of video game console add-ons, but now for Amazon Echo and Google Home devices. [No such thing as far as I know]
• Starlink and other global internet services will begin engaging in active operations. Satellites will be the dominant method, followed by high-altitude balloons and drones.
• Passenger drones will begin carrying their first passengers as part of "flying taxi" services, likely in Dubai and certain East Asian cities [No commercial flights yet. There have been apparently thousands of manned test flights, but the first commercial operation isn't likely to begin until 2022 at the earliest]
• Psilocybin is decriminalized or legalized in a US state
• Marijuana legalization continues to spread. Mexico likely legalizes, followed by a European and Asian country. At least 30 US states have either legal or decriminalized weed. Also, a southern US state will send to a referendum, with the answer being to legalize by 2022.  [Mexico is legalizing weed but it's not coming until next year]
• The first public commercial sale of cultured meat occurs this year.
• Metafarming (including vertical farming, urban farming, and hydroponics) will see massive gains, especially in response to a growing need for solutions to the effects of climate change [Growth was fueled by COVID-19 rather than climate change]
• Geoengineering proposals will slowly enter mainstream discourse
• CRISPR is used once more for the purpose of genetically modifying a human embryo, though not for the purpose of creating a designer baby a la Lulu & Nana. [More of a controversy over chromosomal loss than any secular breakthrough, but it apparently does go on semi-regularly. In other news, CRISPR has been used for great medical treatments in the past year!]
• Mammoth genetic material is able to be inseminated into an elephant, but no birth is undertaken [Fun fact, we have inseminated live eggs with mammoth DNA— but those were actually mice!]
• Level 3 autonomy becomes a more widespread feature of cars [Level 3 has been announced for a new car, but it's really starting from zilch to begin with]
• Public tests of Level 4 AVs increase in number, but there are no commercially available Level 4 AVs
• Number of electric cars on the road passes 10 million worldwide
• Tesla fails to achieve profitability in more than one quarter, but its stock price reaches at least $500 a share [Another case of a "positive failed prediction" as Tesla's been profitable for the entire year]
• SpaceX's first manned human space flights occur
• Solar power passes 800 GW of installation worldwide
• Sustained nuclear fusion with net energy is achieved, but plans for fusion power remain in the future [A total longshot prediction, but I would not be surprised if this is accomplished circa 2021 or 2022]
• A room-temperature superconductor is formally found, perhaps with temperatures up to 50­°F. However, it is only possible at extreme pressures, perhaps 200 gigapascals. [An almost textbook perfect call]
• Quantum supremacy is formally achieved (sans skepticism) [By "skepticism" I was referring to IBM's doubts that Google had accomplished it last year. I think few would argue it's been achieved by now]
• DeepMind's newest network demonstrates the ability to play NES games as well as Atari games, chess, go, and shogi. [Missed the NES aspect, but that's not to underplay the sheer achievement of MuZero. Maybe DeepMind'll branch out into more complicated video games next year]
• The first discussions of a need to create a new definition for AI architecture to handle the burgeoning "in between ANI and AGI" capabilities of generalized narrow intelligence will be passed around [No one's asking for a new definition and it seems we may not need it because general AI is closer than it appears, but there has been talk of us being in a "twilight zone" between narrow AI and general AI]
• Boston Dynamics reveals a new robot that is non-humanoid (perhaps spider/octopode-esque) in design [Outside of an update to Handle which was first unveiled years ago, Boston Dynamics has mainly been focusing on Spot's release right now]
• The first commercially available bipedal humanoid robot will be released for business use, most likely in China and Japan  (most likely the UBTech Walker)   [Not UBTech but Agility Robotics' Digit was released for sale this year. Even better, it's been a global release rather than a regional one]
• Donald Trump will announce a robotics and AI initiative to counter China's growing AI dominance. This will likely result in a new government agency, "Department of Machine Intelligence" or something along those lines. [Happened last year, but didn't go as far as I hoped. Yet another "positive failed prediction"]
• Privacy has emerged as a primary political issue. The virtually constant use of electronic communication technologies is leaving a highly detailed trail of every person’s every move. [Especially due to efforts to contain COVID-19 and due to the shadow cyberwars between the superpowers, this was a major story this year all around]
• Artificial neural networks as used for media synthesis continue to improve exponentially: "This [X] Does Not Exist" will boom in number
• Deepfakes will be successfully used for a billion-dollar scam [Nothing so bold as far as we know, but it's not without precedent]
• Human image synthesis becomes indistinguishable from a photograph [There's no single link to prove this, but under certain conditions and parameters, it's absolutely true]
• A natural language generation (NLG) transformer will pass the Turing Test by a shocking amount (but obviously will not herald artificial general intelligence) [This may become retroactively confirmed if it's revealed GPT-3 or Turing-NLG were used for an unpublicized Turing Test, but as for 2020, debunked]
• OpenAI's GPT-2 will be expanded to at least 15 billion data parameters [I was off by a full order of magnitude. Possible contention if you want to say GPT-2 and GPT-3 are different, which isn't technically the case]
• A Grover AI-generated article will be retweeted at least 100,000 times, including despite being exposed as AI-generated [We have no way of knowing if it hasn't been revealed, but unlikely to have been Grover anyway]
• Neural style transfer will be applied to music (i.e. shifting a guitar into a synth; a drum into a piano) as part of either a popular or memetic app/website (by "memetic" I mean that it mainly attains popularity and wide discussion for a relatively short period of time, such as a few weeks, before largely falling under the radar; sort of like DeepNudes or ThisPersonDoesNotExist). [Ostensibly the case with Jukebox as it can shift the genres and artists of songs, but the intention was something a bit more like a public version of this]
• Deepfake videos & images will be retweeted and reposted on social media upwards of 2+ million times in the lead-up to the 2020 US Presidential Election [Surprisingly less of an issue than expected]
• A new method for creating deepfakes will reduce the ease in their creation to the point that it will be possible to release an app dedicated to things such as full-video face-swapping. [More a case of technology getting better]
• Artificial news anchors are used in increasing numbers in China
• NLG chatbots will begin being used online and outperform traditional chatbots by cosmic amounts
• Internet comment sections will begin being infested by bots utilizing a combination of NLG for text and image synthesis for profile images [It's very likely this is happening, but little has been confirmed and it's been repeatedly demonstrated as possible and even easy to do for individuals]
• An NLG-based "stylistic editor" will be tested online, allowing a passage of text to be rewritten/edited in the style of another writer (or just in general) [Very limited, but it's been teased by Gwern]
• A new subreddit will be created that allows for human users & traditional bots to interact with NLG bots, as an evolution of /r/SubSimulatorGPT2.
• Image manipulation/enhancement is used to upscale video game graphics, essentially allowing for a 6th gen game to have seemingly 8th gen graphical fidelity (if the textures are manually modded into the game) [ESRGAN is still the best way to do it. "8th gen" might be taking it a little far, though]
• Simulated bots allow for "virtual actors" in things like Minecraft or Steam Filmmaker. These will follow basic commands thanks to natural language processing. [Haven't heard anything new in this, but I recall something about this last year]
• Image synthesis will begin giving way to video synthesis; at least 10-second long clips will be feasible, allowing to create a mostly photorealistic gif of things that do not exist, which may be used to create This Gif Does Not Exist [Most disappointing failure to me this year due to researchers not focusing on this field. There's a lot of "video-to-video synthesis," but not much in the way of full-fledged video synthesis from scratch]
• Conversely, the ability to animate still images (that show some evidence of action) will become available online, which might also be the basis for This Gif Does Not Exist [This is possible, such as on Artbreeder]
• The first generation of non-invasive portable MRIs are released, allowing researchers to reduce the brain to easily studiable voxels [Next year at the earliest]
• An EEG BCI is used to type 100+ alphanumeric characters per minute, effectively allowing texting-by-thinking [I recall a breakthrough with EEGs for Chinese characters last year, but it doesn't seem to have become anything]
• Brain-scan & eye-tracking data fed into neural networks allows for explosively massive gains, perhaps upwards of two orders of magnitude over traditional methods providing there are enough scans. This may be used for additional power to NLG, driverless car improvements, and autosummarization, among others, but don't expect too much out of this just yet
• Conversely, machine learning-enhanced EEGs may be shown to allow for practical neurocontrollers in video games/virtual reality/augmented reality
• An update will be released on invasive BCIs, showing considerable progress since the announcement of Neuralink, but nothing yet able to translate into practical use; the first possible use-cases for medical research are predicted to be at least five to ten years away

 

 

Previous year predictions that came true...

 

2017:

• China launches an unmanned sample return mission to the Moon

 

 

2019:

 

• There is a steep economic downturn in major industrialized countries. GDP growth falls to stagnation-levels in otherwise strong economies and enters prolonged decline in weaker ones [COVID-19, the oil price war, and industrial recession all coalesced into a brutal economic year, easily the worst since the Great Depression]
• Oil prices fall back to 2016 lows [For a glorious few hours on April 20th, WTI trading dropped to negative levels, levels literally never seen for oil in history]

 

Donald Trump becomes the 3rd U.S. President to get impeached by the House of Representatives, although he is likely not to be convicted by the Senate. He will finish his first term only to lose to a Democrat challenger during his bid for re-election. The Mueller investigations will not indict Trump until after he finishes his Presidency but some of his children and close associates will not be as lucky.

 

 

100% accurate, Raklian.

[Erowind]

 

• Deepfake videos & images will be retweeted and reposted on social media upwards of 2+ million times in the lead-up to the 2020 US Presidential Election [Surprisingly less of an issue than expected]

I maintain that though this year wasn't the mass proliferation it will at least begin sometime this decade and become widespread for propaganda and disinformation warfare over the coming decades. The sheer mass of current disinformation warfare is so grand that it would be astonishing if this doesn't happen at some point. Qboomers and Flatearthers are the prelude to the main act of microcultures of different relative realities forming en masse spurred by the wired exerting itself on physical space.

 

Even if this doesn't effect elections in a major way sometime soon we should expect to see more people believing things that are completely disconnected from reality. I wouldn't be surprised to see a mass subcultural occult revival where people genuinely believe magick exists and is effecting our world based on doctored footage and fake information online. Not the sort of minor occult organizations we see today, more on the scale of hundreds of thousands of people for a given sect acting mostly independently scattered around the world. Where dozens or even hundreds of these sects develop independently from one another in a similar timeframe.  Especially in rural low income areas where people have no way to go see the supposed evidence that "exists" for themselves and are dependent on the internet for information. People who distrust institutions may even come to magickal explanations for the effects of climate crisis in their regions. Or any other explanation that isn't climate change itself for that matter.

 

It doesn't have to be magick either. That's just one possible example. It could be aliens or any combination of things really. One group of people might believe we're under active invasion during a particularly bad firestorm caused by climate change while another group thinks some lovecraftian beast is storming through the woods obscured by the smoke. Dear god what a meeting that would be.

 

Saw this in the city the other day, not Satanists. I'm getting Aleister Crowley vibes. Got me thinking about the topic.

 

 

Anywho, thanks again for the predictions and keeping these going every year Yuli. You da man.

[TranscendingGod]

Ah, the much anticipated rainbow splat that highlights our miserable failures and our triumphant successes courtesy of our resident writer in chief, a Mr. Yuli Ban the gynoid loving, nuclear war obsessed, and devout futurist. Thank you for your service you obstreperous, fantastical aberration of a human. 

[Yuli Ban]

[Miky617]

 

 

 

 

• Joe Biden wins the presidency (whether he will be able to finish his term remains to be seen), raising temper tantrums and uproar among Trump's base like nothing else seen. This might lead to a handful of domestic terror acts

 

Well. Does being a week out from the year still count?