2022 & Beyond Predictions in Tech, Medicine, & Space!

A couple of weeks ago, I posted my lookback at 2021 with some of the bigger achievements we saw take place last year.  So, of course, it’s now that time.  It’s time to get a little nuts.  Well, kinda nuts.  Ya see it would be nuts if all of this that we’re about to discuss wasn’t ACTUALLY HAPPENING!  So grab a fresh drink, have a seat, and come with me on a journey …. To the future!

So let’s start with the obvious one… technology.  If you’re like me, you’ve spent the last 15 years wishing that one day, you too could have a JARVIS just like Tony Stark.  Google has been working on that very thing for a few years now, and it’s called Google Duplex.  It’s an AI with a human-sounding voice that can call businesses, book appts and reservations, and check business hours among other things on your behalf. That alone is REALLY cool, but where this goes from here gets equally nuts.  Imagine an AI that can answer your phone for you, have interactive conversations with callers and respond with voice similar to how a text-based chatbot AI works today.

Couple this with the metro and suburban rollout of consumer fiber optics plus the implementation of 5G and the massive growth of StarLink, and we are on our way to democratizing high-speed internet access to Edge, rural, and 3rd world locations, where it will enable everyone to have access to their own personal assistants and more.  Hell, the connectivity and access alone will be one of the biggest technological achievements of our time. It’s astounding just how little global coverage we actually have at this stage of the game.

Speaking of Google, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention another of their biggest projects.  It’s their newest Quantum computing platform, called Sycamore, and it recently did in 200 seconds what the world’s largest and most powerful supercomputer would take 10,000 years to do.  If you’ve watched any of my annual videos, you know how nuts I am about Quantum and what it could bring to the world.  We’ve seen the revolution of SoC (or system on a chip) tech, advancements from companies like ARM, but I think the true power of computing will not be truly realized until we’ve graduated from x86 architectures and move more into SoC and quantum technologies.  The efficiencies alone are worth all the investment of the world. The things it will enable from robotics and automation to secure transactional work, possibly over advanced blockchains, will be staggering.  And maybe by then we’ll all be able to get a graphics card for our PCs.

Switching gears, let’s talk about the world of Medicine.  Now I am no authority on the medical field, but best I can tell we are on the precipice of a Medical Revolution 1000x bigger than the industrial revolution.  In the future, we are already seeing proof that it will be commonplace to eradicate diseases simply by editing it out of our DNA, and we’ll eliminate all pests and vermin from mosquitos to squirrels using similar techniques.  Sorry squirrels. You’re cute and all, but if we’re honest, you really serve no purpose.  Secondly, beyond the Human Genome Project, there are active efforts to now map the intricate neurons of the human brain.  Efforts like the Human Brain Project in the EU and the BRAIN initiative in the US, as well as the China Brain Project, all aim to map out how components of the brain map to behaviors and being able to predict them could solve a lot of behavioral issues that plague society such as ADHD, and potentially lower depression and suicide rates.  Unfortunately, it’s speculated that it could take up to 10 years to achieve this effort wholly, as they’re just now wrapping up initial trials on rats.

Now here is where I wanna get really nuts.  Once we have the brain mapping done, the next logical step is to figure out how we hook up computers to our brains.  This concept is being referred to as Brain-Machine Interfaces, and we’re already seeing evidence of it with Elon Musk’s latest project called NeuraLink.  I’ve always predicted that one day we would simply have a Heads Up Display in our eyesight.  That seems more possible now than ever.  But I want you to imagine a day where we could “jack in” and instantly learn a skill or language or even control machines with thoughts.  Things start getting really exciting from there.

But that is also a great segue into my next topic which spans both Medicine and Technology … AI and Robotics.  A year ago in my 2020 recap video, I told you to keep an eye out for something called RPA or Robotic Process Automation, mostly because of the manufacturing and retail implications, but with this being a future predictions video, let’s take it a bit further.  I firmly believe that one day we will have living machines.  Human-like cybernetic assistants that have their own logic and potentially even model human physical traits like the senses and skin.  In addition I think we could see a day where paralyzed patients could even walk again with the assistance of robotics and Brain-Machine Interfaces.  The ability to control machines with abilities we do not possess as humans could be a game-changer for society.  Robotic firefighters and autonomous farming, increasing production by orders of magnitude and reducing inherent risk put upon humans.  Personally, I predict that the answer to climate change might very well be advanced robotics that can clean up the oceans in autonomous floating processing plants, and help remanufacture CO2 emissions into other gasses in the atmosphere on a scale that we as humans cannot and will not achieve.  My last prediction that I wanted to throw out there is that eventually I believe that various forms of AI will turn on one another.  It is inevitable that for every one good purpose one will serve, there are 10 more that will be created to do harm.  Things like deepfakes have been pervasive over the last few years, but there are already AI’s being created to combat them.  Efforts across many universities as well as Microsoft, Facebook, and Google are engineering AI’s that can detect deepfakes.  This is only the beginning of this “AI civil war” as I’ll call it.  For now, unfortunately, the detectors are definitely playing catch-up to the deepfakes, but I am hopeful that the tide will turn.

With all of that said, it’s hard to make a predictions video without discussing the ongoing battle with Climate Change.  It’s real, and it’s here.  The effects have been scientifically predicted, proven, and we’re seeing the results play out in real-time.  Anyone that continues to tell you that it is not real simply chooses to remain uninformed and blissfully ignorant.  Now, in the future, the effort must not only be on reducing carbon footprint but further reversing the trend that has led us to where we are today.  Most large tech and manufacturing companies at this point have efforts and goals of becoming carbon neutral over the next few decades.  Some, like Microsoft, have even committed to being carbon negative by 2030, but even further, they will … quote … “remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted since it was founded in 1975.”  They’re doing so with some innovative ways of growing trees that capture carbon, burning those trees underground and using air scrubbers to store the carbon material underground with the potential of using it for some kind of futuristic low-carbon synthetic fuel.

These are the kinds of innovations we’re going to need to not turn into Mars in 100 years.

Speaking of Mars, let’s close out today’s video by talking about one of my favorite topics … Space Stuff!  Over the next decade or two, I predict we will walk on the Moon in order to set up automated space stations and act as a refueling and jumping off point for deep space exploration.  The more we get into Space, the more we’re going to need the things we need here on Earth.  Food, fueling stations, and repair facilities.  I’m pretty sure NASA has already committed to having astronauts on the Moon again this decade, and on Mars in the 2030’s.  If you want to look into something fun, check out NASA’s “myco-architecture” project, where they’re talking about using mushrooms as building blocks for structures on alien worlds.  And you’re going to want to look into the JUICE program from the European Space Agency if this interests you because they’re doing deep exploration of Jupiter’s icy moons.  Whether or not all of this truly happens remains to be seen, but DAMN it’s exciting!  Personally, I feel like our Moon has been ridiculously underutilized, and that we’ll begin to see countries around the world begin to establish outposts of sorts, automated with some of the robotics and AI we discussed earlier.  Private companies are already funding deep space exploration for mining of asteroids and comets for rare minerals, as well as the cleanup of about 50 years of space debris currently in orbit around the Earth.  In order to facilitate those missions, we’re going to need more than a launchpad in Orlando and the International Space Station.  We’ll need to begin building space vehicles that are free of the confines of Earth’s physics, which will actually have a profound effect on the engineering of future spacecraft.  If we can build factories on the moon or in space and use SpaceX to deliver the raw materials, similar to how we built the ISS in pieces over time, then we can begin to think beyond the confines of Earth, and that completely changes the laws and  limitations of what we currently have to abide by now.

If you made it this far, thank you first of all, I hope you’ll subscribe and leave a like, it really helps, but even more I hope you realize just how much potential we have in the coming decades.  The last 50 years saw quite a few miracles performed when it comes to tech, science, and medicine, but we’ve got a long way to go as a civilization and as a society.  The more time we spend going at one another over petty inconsequential things like oil, politics, and religious dogma, the less time we will spend making some of these breakthroughs.  All I’m encouraging is that we focus our efforts, and do what we need to do to see the NEXT 50 years be just as prosperous.  And then some.

Thanks for watching!  If you haven’t seen it yet, check out my 2021 recap video where I look back on the biggest milestones of the year.  I wish you all an amazing 2022!

We’ll see you next time!

Take care!