What will be the next major impact to society?

[Jer]

I tend to think this is less and less likely on a major scale. The major powers are far too economically intertwined for the powers that be that ultimately drive wars to benefit from any direct conflict between the major powers

I would agree with that given the current leaders in place. They are self-preserving by avoiding a major war.

Now, it would be naive to believe that couldn't change very quickly with the wrong leader in any one of Russia, China, North Korea, or the US. But even if one were to do something rash, the collective of others may be more restrained than in other warry times.

I don't think China and the US are going to all-out war over Taiwan, but who knows, all the professionals think it's inevitable.

Russia could make the horrible decision to use a tactical nuke in Ukraine, though I think Putin knows that's not a viable end-game for him. He may be a narcissistic dictator, but he's not stupid. And if he did, I'm guessing the reaction would be limited to targeted missile strikes into Russia in strategic ways to avoid further escalation.

 

[madguy30]

Probably far far away but nuclear energy/fusion would be a positive.

Negative will be the continuing mass exodus of professions like teaching.

 

[somecyguy]

Since AI is so dominant in this thread, here's what Google announced today. This is just one company and just today's announcement...

AI​

Artificial intelligence is a major focus at this year's I/O event with Google announcing several new initiatives.

• Gmail - "Help Me Write," a generative AI feature, is being added to Gmail. It will be able to write emails for Gmail users when provided with a prompt such as requesting a refund from a company.
• Bard - Bard, Google's AI chatbot, is open for anyone to use rather than limited to a small number of people. It is now using "PaLM 2," Google's next-generation language model that offers better multilingual, reasoning, and coding capabilities. In the near future, Bard will be able to provide rich visuals for queries and users will be able to add images to search prompts.
• Search Labs - Search Labs is an experimental initiative that lets users engage with new AI-based search experiences. Search Generative Experience, for example, will bring generative AI directly to the search interface. There are a limited number of test spots that users can sign up for.
• Tailwind - Project Tailwind is described as an "AI notebook" that is designed for students. It takes the information that's input and provides study guides in the form of questions and themes, plus it can organize the material in a way that facilitates studying. Tailwind is part of Search Labs.
• MusicLM - MusicLM is designed to turn text descriptions that are input into music for quick songwriting. This is also part of Search Labs and available to a limited number of users.
• Google Workspace - Duet AI for Google Workspace allows users to collaborate with AI on writing, creating images from text, turning data into insights, generating backgrounds for video calls, and more. There is a waitlist to use AI in Workspace.
• Codey - Codey offers real-time code completion and generation, and it can be customized to a customer's codebase. It supports more than 20 coding languages, and can help with everything from creating code to debugging and documentation.
• Imagen - Imagen can create images for businesses using text input.

That's not nearly as interesting as the leaked Google documents proclaiming they and OpenAI have already lost the battle to open source projects.

But the uncomfortable truth is, we aren’t positioned to win this arms race and neither is OpenAI. While we’ve been squabbling, a third faction has been quietly eating our lunch.

I’m talking, of course, about open source. Plainly put, they are lapping us. Things we consider “major open problems” are solved and in people’s hands today.

https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither

 

[Turn2]

AI is indicative of what can be achieved with near unlimited computing power. Lack of authentic intelligence scares me more.

 

[intrepid27]

Deep Fakes and lack of local news reporting. Most people are unwilling to pay for news and everything that is free is slanted. I'm amazed the people that don't access the DM Register, CR Gazette or any of the major newspapers in the state.

 

[Lineup]

Border protection

 

[dahliaclone]

I think AI plays into that.

With how many cameras are out there these days, anything that can pore through all that data at a fast enough speed could do a massive amount of tracking. And with enough pattern learning on that data, one could predict quite a bit with that just based on your daily location habits.

Yup. The book basically goes into how their tech can scrub the entire internet for everything you've ever done, people you've talked to online, everything you've ever bought...and builds a sort of prediction of your behavior...where are you most likely to try hiding? Also goes into all access CCTV which is basically anywhere now and how the tech can track a person's gait/how they walk etc.

It's a really good book actually...but a bit too real lol

 

[Gitross]

Hear me out.... Bears on a plane high on cocaine.

Sullenberger better watch his speed!

 

[isucy86]

I tend to think this is less and less likely on a major scale. The major powers are far too economically intertwined for the powers that be that ultimately drive wars to benefit from any direct conflict between the major powers

I was in that camp until I read Ken Follett's book Never. A skirmish in Africa that involved allies of the US and China, coinciding with an attempted military coup in North Korea and use of nuclear weapons, eventually escalates into nuclear war between US and China.

Global alliances that start out for economic purposes evolve to military alliances. What starts out in the developing world, expands to larger countries and eventually drags in super powers. One could argue that Russia, China and US are currently moving toward greater economic isolation/independence.

 

[ruxCYtable]

WW3

 

[Dandy]

Electric, self-driven cars are the norm and combustion, manually-driven cars are obsolete.

 

[mywayorcyway]

Probably far far away but nuclear energy/fusion would be a positive.

Plain ol' fission has been sitting there for three generations and people are still terrified of it. Maybe we should just rename it and try again.

 

[Sigmapolis]

I tend to think this is less and less likely on a major scale. The major powers are far too economically intertwined for the powers that be that ultimately drive wars to benefit from any direct conflict between the major powers

Could have said the same thing in 1913.

The mid-1800s to 1914 was the greatest era of globalization in world history.

Looked how that worked out.

 

[Jer]

Could have said the same thing in 1913.

The mid-1800s to 1914 was the greatest era of globalization in world history.

Looked how that worked out.

That's true, but globalization back then was much different than it is today. Markets weren't anywhere nearly as tied together as they are today and dependent on the stability of the whole.

 

[mynameisjonas]

Whatever the toxic poisonous media decides it is.

 

[qwerty]

More Bears doing Cocaine.

If you are a 10 yr old girl, no problem. C Bear kills every single person it meets except the 10 yr old girl which it drags miles across the forest and stashes in it's cave lair with it's cubs. Makes sense to me.

 

[qwerty]

Frankly AI scares the **** out of me. I love tech and I've played with ChatGPT and found it very usable for certain tasks. The speed at which it's improving is taking everyone by surprise. As an older worker, I'm not going to be able to pivot professionally as quickly as younger people. A ton of entry level jobs will go first, but a lot of white collar jobs are next.

I am 22 months out from retirement so it just has to take longer than that and I can call it a career. I almost feel bad for the rest of you. Almost.

 

[Sigmapolis]

That's true, but globalization back then was much different than it is today. Markets weren't anywhere nearly as tied together as they are today and dependent on the stability of the whole.

I will elaborate... we have much the same forces pushing against globalization now as then.

A combination of populist objections to disruptions to traditional ways of life, much of it insane and conspiratorial but some of it housing legitimate grievances, and world leaders more concerned with some romantic notion of "national glory" and/or their own cult of personality rather than stepping back and realizing there's nothing wrong with mutual prosperity and no need to force confrontations or military conflict.

Kaiser Wilhelm wanting "German's place in the sun" was one of the main reasons the Great War happened. You might even say he wanted to "make Germany great again," though his era to model for "again" would have been something like Frederick the Great or heck all the way back to Arminius.

Lotta world leaders out there you could summarize as "make _____ great again."

 

[Jer]

Whatever the toxic poisonous media decides it is.

The only thing that comes close to how bad social media has hurt society is how the media has stopped reporting facts (aka indisputable nuggets of information) and has become wholly commentary based. There is no longer a shared set of facts that get reported and then slanted by the end-user, it's simply slanted commentary reported in a definitive manner.

 

[isutrevman]

Sex Robots.

Independent media.