Games By Graham Templeton Jan. 16, 2014 12:00 pm
2014 is upon us, and what a year it’s shaping up to be. We can now see that 2013 was a transition year, a time*of evolution but not revolution. Many of the threads first unspooled last year, though, will run out in 2014, leaving us in the position of predicting their effects. Here are ten specific, falsifiable predictions for 2014 — some safer than others. These are designed to look at a wide swathe of the technology sector, from consumer electronics to government surveillance.
Some of these predictions will be wrong, but come 2015 we’ll begin this list’s sequel with a score card for this go-round.*It’s going to be quite a year…
[h=3]1 – Google’s Calico will make headlines, despite not actually doing or saying anything important[/h] Google’s life extension moonshot is going to arrest news organizations for years to come, even if only in terms of its spectacular failures. At this point, something spectacular is assured, what with such a startling amount of money and talent going into the venture. Still, these are the most fundamental problems of all existence: why does life have to end? To think that anyone, even Google, could make significant progress on this problem in a year seems absurd. The company seems to still be in the acquisitions phase and may very well not have begun work on anything beyond buying start-ups.
Still, at this point Google is a daily fixture of news programs, featured for anything from NSA surveillance to a new Android update; anything Google does warrants coverage simply by virtue of the fact that Google is the one doing it. Google will release some relatively meaningless updates about the company — a new hire or start-up acquisition with too many possible implications to be useful — and we may even wring some excitement out of a job posting or two.
Nothing of substance will come out about Calico in 2014, save a piece-meal understanding assembled from any large tech purchases the company happens to make. Nevertheless, people will find reasons to get hot and bothered about it.
Additional prediction: At least one group will start an anti-Calico campaign on the basis that it is unnatural, despite not knowing anything about what it actually does.
[h=3]2 – A para/quadriplegic will take a step under their own power, but costs will remain prohibitive[/h] This is a pretty specific claim, so let’s talk it through. Amputees can already take steps — and handshakes — under their own power, with direct input coming from the brain. That’s old news. However, a paraplegic hasn’t lost a limb, but the ability to transfer messages past a certain point along the spinal chord. This means that methods like targeted muscle reinnervation won’t work, because they still rely on the healthy neural input coming down the nerves. Rather, for a paraplegic to walk we must either fix the nerves or circumvent them.
In the long term, I believe fixing the nerves will work. That, however, is more than one year out, by far. What is much more achievable in a short time frame is finding ways around the damaged spine. Scientists are becoming good at reading brain waves with electrodes, and a neurally-controlled robotic system clamped around the legs could fit the criteria for this prediction. You might argue that things like this qualify already, but this whole hip control thing seems like a pretty weak stand-in for neural control technology that is right on the brink of widespread implementation. To me, that is what is implied by “under their own power.”
On the other hand, a simple neural signal-booster could also do the trick; fields like optogenics could let us turn information collected from electrodes on the brain back into the language of neurons, below the point of spinal damage. Put one on the major nerve cluster leading to each leg, and have it receive input from electrodes reading the appropriate section of the motor cortex.
We’re too close in too many possible ways, and the headline is simply too juicy to pass up. This one will go down in 2014.
Corollary prediction: The costs of a robot exoskeleton of this kind won’t come down to remotely consumer levels under at least 2020.
[h=3]3 – The DoD will test a potentially lethal autonomous defense system[/h] The US Department of Defense is under a lot of pressure. The organization is pressured by funding cuts and a number of new international rivals who play by a whole new set of rules. While China doubles down on cyber warfare and Afghan insurgents continue to refine the guerrilla tactics of their forebears, the DoD will characteristically take its biggest gamble on technology. Over the next 25 years, the US military will become, to some significant extent, an autonomous robot army — we know, because they said so.
But that’s a 25-year plan. As far as 2014 is concerned, well, this prediction could very well already have come true, without us knowing it. It might be more accurate to predict that the first autonomous system will take to the field publicly, with some sort of publicly disclosed result. The “result” will almost certainly be a properly destroyed dummy truck, but the point will not be to show off the power of this technology but its mere existence. A high-flying drone that can search for, acquire, identify, and destroy or request to destroy a target would satisfy the requirements.
One of the main advantages of autonomy is that it lets you get involved in engagements that are otherwise prohibitive; right now, there are practical concerns stopping the US military from combing every inch of a Middle-Eastern mountain range or bustling urban center. A fleet of autonomous drones, small searcher quadcopters with orders to alert larger hunter bots? It might sound laughable, but every individual technology required for such a scenario exists in some form today.
The DoD is ultimately less interested in winning wars than it is in scaring its enemies out of starting them. Autonomy is the US military’s best guess at a silver bullet for future war — and 2014 will be remembered as the year that strategy got its first, shaky public debut.
Additional prediction: The first autonomous killbot test will provoke huge backlash from the international community, but the consternation will come to nothing.
Next page: VR headsets, the NSA, and 3D printing…
More...
2014 is upon us, and what a year it’s shaping up to be. We can now see that 2013 was a transition year, a time*of evolution but not revolution. Many of the threads first unspooled last year, though, will run out in 2014, leaving us in the position of predicting their effects. Here are ten specific, falsifiable predictions for 2014 — some safer than others. These are designed to look at a wide swathe of the technology sector, from consumer electronics to government surveillance.
Some of these predictions will be wrong, but come 2015 we’ll begin this list’s sequel with a score card for this go-round.*It’s going to be quite a year…
[h=3]1 – Google’s Calico will make headlines, despite not actually doing or saying anything important[/h] Google’s life extension moonshot is going to arrest news organizations for years to come, even if only in terms of its spectacular failures. At this point, something spectacular is assured, what with such a startling amount of money and talent going into the venture. Still, these are the most fundamental problems of all existence: why does life have to end? To think that anyone, even Google, could make significant progress on this problem in a year seems absurd. The company seems to still be in the acquisitions phase and may very well not have begun work on anything beyond buying start-ups.
Still, at this point Google is a daily fixture of news programs, featured for anything from NSA surveillance to a new Android update; anything Google does warrants coverage simply by virtue of the fact that Google is the one doing it. Google will release some relatively meaningless updates about the company — a new hire or start-up acquisition with too many possible implications to be useful — and we may even wring some excitement out of a job posting or two.
Nothing of substance will come out about Calico in 2014, save a piece-meal understanding assembled from any large tech purchases the company happens to make. Nevertheless, people will find reasons to get hot and bothered about it.
Additional prediction: At least one group will start an anti-Calico campaign on the basis that it is unnatural, despite not knowing anything about what it actually does.
[h=3]2 – A para/quadriplegic will take a step under their own power, but costs will remain prohibitive[/h] This is a pretty specific claim, so let’s talk it through. Amputees can already take steps — and handshakes — under their own power, with direct input coming from the brain. That’s old news. However, a paraplegic hasn’t lost a limb, but the ability to transfer messages past a certain point along the spinal chord. This means that methods like targeted muscle reinnervation won’t work, because they still rely on the healthy neural input coming down the nerves. Rather, for a paraplegic to walk we must either fix the nerves or circumvent them.
In the long term, I believe fixing the nerves will work. That, however, is more than one year out, by far. What is much more achievable in a short time frame is finding ways around the damaged spine. Scientists are becoming good at reading brain waves with electrodes, and a neurally-controlled robotic system clamped around the legs could fit the criteria for this prediction. You might argue that things like this qualify already, but this whole hip control thing seems like a pretty weak stand-in for neural control technology that is right on the brink of widespread implementation. To me, that is what is implied by “under their own power.”
On the other hand, a simple neural signal-booster could also do the trick; fields like optogenics could let us turn information collected from electrodes on the brain back into the language of neurons, below the point of spinal damage. Put one on the major nerve cluster leading to each leg, and have it receive input from electrodes reading the appropriate section of the motor cortex.
We’re too close in too many possible ways, and the headline is simply too juicy to pass up. This one will go down in 2014.
Corollary prediction: The costs of a robot exoskeleton of this kind won’t come down to remotely consumer levels under at least 2020.
[h=3]3 – The DoD will test a potentially lethal autonomous defense system[/h] The US Department of Defense is under a lot of pressure. The organization is pressured by funding cuts and a number of new international rivals who play by a whole new set of rules. While China doubles down on cyber warfare and Afghan insurgents continue to refine the guerrilla tactics of their forebears, the DoD will characteristically take its biggest gamble on technology. Over the next 25 years, the US military will become, to some significant extent, an autonomous robot army — we know, because they said so.
But that’s a 25-year plan. As far as 2014 is concerned, well, this prediction could very well already have come true, without us knowing it. It might be more accurate to predict that the first autonomous system will take to the field publicly, with some sort of publicly disclosed result. The “result” will almost certainly be a properly destroyed dummy truck, but the point will not be to show off the power of this technology but its mere existence. A high-flying drone that can search for, acquire, identify, and destroy or request to destroy a target would satisfy the requirements.
One of the main advantages of autonomy is that it lets you get involved in engagements that are otherwise prohibitive; right now, there are practical concerns stopping the US military from combing every inch of a Middle-Eastern mountain range or bustling urban center. A fleet of autonomous drones, small searcher quadcopters with orders to alert larger hunter bots? It might sound laughable, but every individual technology required for such a scenario exists in some form today.
The DoD is ultimately less interested in winning wars than it is in scaring its enemies out of starting them. Autonomy is the US military’s best guess at a silver bullet for future war — and 2014 will be remembered as the year that strategy got its first, shaky public debut.
Additional prediction: The first autonomous killbot test will provoke huge backlash from the international community, but the consternation will come to nothing.
Next page: VR headsets, the NSA, and 3D printing…
More...
