Your 2022 predictions

[Yuli Ban]

• Nord Stream 2 is not canceled
• Russia and Ukraine come to blows, but it devolves into a higher-intensity extension of the existing War in Donbas. Ukraine fights back, but likely loses a large chunk of territory

Negative and positive, unfortunately.

[R8Z]

Very good predictions by a few members so far. I wasn't paying attention to the international diplomatic level and completely missed the war in Ukraine coming but it's clear that for quite a few of you it was already in the horizon for a long time.

[wjfox]

• Solar power reaches 1 terawatt of installed capacity worldwide

This milestone appears to have been reached. I'll be doing a blog on it.

[Yuli Ban]

• Google Pathways is formally unveiled, with the project outright considered an "artificial general intelligence"... except Pathways is not actually yet built, only a schematic for the future (similar to the Metaverse)

Right and wrong, it seems.
Google Pathways HAS been formally unveiled, but it actually HAS started being built via PaLM (Pathways Language Model) and it wasn't described as an artificial general intelligence in the press release, though there were constant mentions of it eventually generalizing across thousands/millions of tasks (which is effectively AGI) so... it's muddy. In fact slightly better than I anticipated as I didn't think we'd actually get anything out of the project at all just yet, let alone one of the largest dense language models.

[Yuli Ban]

And it looks like we got half of another prediction correct: a laser weapon destroying a drone.

[Yuli Ban]

Almost time for a midyear update. How are things coming along?

[Ozzie guy]

Almost time for a midyear update. How are things coming along?

Anything is on the cards lol

A guy I knew "name Redacted" that was a friend of a best friend just got elected as a state senator after talking about covid conspiracies and freedom on facebook for a couple years.

In this year AGI predictions were brought forward 10+ years with proto AGI expected before the end of 2023.

Russia invaded Ukraine.

In the champions league on multiple occasions the football club Real Madrid was losing a match before getting miracle goals in the final minutes and ended up becoming the champions league winner. On top of their miracle clutch wins their goalkeeper potentially had the greatest goalkeeper performance in the entire history of the sport in the final saving 9 goals with 0 goals scored for the other team (Liverpool).

A new STD that invokes fear is spreading.

[Nero]

Will you be posting an update to your prediction today then Yuli?

[urdestan]

Here's some of my 2022 predictions, with politics in it. (Some of them being really divisive)

• Booster shots are now commonplace across the world to keep people immunised from COVID-19 as life becomes 'normal' again, with restrictions being loosened and air travel resumes to most countries (except for China notably, which still practices a zero tolerance approach), so international tourism is returning. We might be seeing second booster shots being done in mid-late 2022.

• The Australian Labor Party is elected as government in the 2022 Australian federal election. (I won't be surprised if Liberals are still re-elected)

• Either a centre-right figure like Xavier Bertrand is elected as President of France for the 2022 election or Macron is re-elected. (I cannot see Le Pen winning 2022 unlike what I thought it could happen 2 years ago, given that her audience is now shifting to Eric Zemmour in the last few weeks, who is more extreme than her)

• Bolsonaro is re-elected in the 2022 Brazilian general election, but later reports show that the election has been partly rigged to his favour, causing further outrage in the country.

• Artemis 1's rocket finally gets launched into space, paving the way for the SLS to be used in the future, maybe for future missions by NASA.

• Roe v. Wade is overruled by the conservative-majority SCOTUS at some point in late 2022 at earliest after a few more red states try to ban abortion the same way Texas has. This means abortion is now a state-only affair at best and effectively means red states can ban and criminalise abortion as they please.

• The 2022 midterms will see the Republicans retake the Congress by some margin due to the Biden administration not living up to its promise. However, the more progressive bloc of the Democrats would continue to slowly replace the moderate Democrats. This in turn would lead to any hopes of Biden's plans being dashed without having it compromised to some extent by both progressives (they are still lukewarm to watering down some bills but they don't trust him at that point) and the Republicans who have very different agendas from the moderate Democratic agenda.

• The NFT and metaverse fad that is generated in 2021 dies down around this year. They still exist, but NFTs especially by that point would have been scrutinised heavily, but not limited to copyright infringement or environmental concerns (the environmental part is potentially solvable, but the former is more complicated).

• The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan will be recognised by China (and at least ten to twenty countries, all of them being non-western countries) as a legitimate government of said country by the end of 2022.

• A commercial version of DALL-E (that is better than what is available for free) is released by OpenAI, alongside 'GPT-4' (if it ever comes by). We may also see an improved version of Jukebox somewhere or an equivalent but at least 3x better.

• Space civilian tourism takes off significantly, going from approximately 20 in 2021 to at least 60 by 2022 (this also includes Virgin Galactic's flights, where it technically doesn't reach the IAU's space boundary). Don't expect prices to be dropped to an affordable price this year.

• The iPhone 14 and 14 Pro (but maybe not iPhone SE [3rd gen]) are announced to have USB-C ports instead of the Lightning port to comply with forthcoming EU regulations. Not only that, they also do the same internationally because it would be unwise for them to sell a local variant. The same goes to the iPad (10th generation). (I wish this happened)

• Chuuk votes against independence from the Federated States of Micronesia in their independence referendum held this year.

• And finally, (as we all want) Avatar 2 premieres in cinema on 16th December.

Man, what I predicted a year ago is... a lot off. What I did get right is that Roe v. Wade was overturned, Labor won the Australian election, the Republicans take the Congress in some extent (although not the one they were hoping for, which is good enough- I don't want them to take the Congress more) and Artemis 1 was launched this year.

Speaking of that, the release of Avatar 2, is still firmly correct.

I look forward to seeing my 2023 predictions going wrong at some point, if I ever write them.

[funkervogt]

The Republicans will take control of at least one house of the U.S. Congress.

In the Developed World, the COVID-19 pandemic will recede. In 2022, things will be much better than they were in 2021.

I was right.