A black swan is a complete unknown that nobody could predict; so basically it is a futurists worst nightmare. I recently learned that a grey swan is something like climate change. We don’t know exactly what will happen but we can say with some certainty that every new year will be the next hottest year of all time.
I am intrigued as applying this to technology. A few grey swans I can think of include:
•Device that can predict the weather with total and complete accuracy
•Something that can predict the emergence of a certain type of individual like the next Einstein or Ted Bundy with a modicum of certainty
•Physical search engine that can locate objects you’ve lost when you were a child
•Something that can divine a persons sexual history even though DNA currently doesn’t work that way.
What are some grey swan category tech you can think of?
Not stuff like FTL or Teleportation. Those are neither black nor grey swans. I feel that they are invisible swans. Things that have always existed in the human mind but will never come to fruition (at least not for hundreds of years)
What might a Grey swan technology look like?
Re: What might a Grey swan technology look like?
I disagree - if they're technologically possible then they should not take centuries. ASI will quickly accelerate these sorts of technologies, where merely the gathering of materials/energy and making manufacturing centers become the biggest problem. So either they will happen well under 200 years or they're impossible in our universe and will never happen. Maybe they won't happen this century if they are possible at all, but sometime next century for sure if they can happen. As for whether they are possible or impossible, I won't wager a guess. Quite a few technologies like warp drives and worm holes are allegedly dependent on our future ability to produce vast sums of "negative energy" I've heard, and that's an area I know too little to speculate on whether ASI can crack that nut.
As for the topic of grey swans, some off the top of my head...
1. ASI
2. Advanced humanoid robots
3. Advanced model BCIs
Fairly basic and well covered here, but still like climate change is not something we can quite predict with great accuracy but we know is coming.
