What is the next "big thing"?

guyrocket@kbin.social to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 70 points –

Right now it seems like its "A.I.". Still big now are the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. Recently we had COVID 19.

What's next?

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It should be climate action. Not saying it will be - just that it should be.

There is a massive climate catastrophe before there is another even bigger climate catastrophe before considering climate action.

Unfortunately, the "climate action" will be massive scale climate based migration from folks fleeing drought or rising oceans.

Looking at the U.S. political situation, fascism seems to be getting closer every day.

In fact, if you look at a lot of other western nations, fascist ideas are springing up all over.

If feels like the world is even more crazy than it used to be, and the current period of crazy started in 2016 with Brexit, then Trumps win snd presidency, rolling into covid, then Trump got ejected, Russia intencified the war in Ukraine, the Hamas shat the bed and now Israel is going batshit insane, oh and during the two last years, two social media sites have decided to just oblitirate most of their good content generators, X is just fucking over everything that was twitter, and Reddit is slowly imploding since the apicalypse.

I just had a look on Wikipedia, and damn there has been a LOT of shit going down since the start of 2016...

The election of Trump in 2016 was the culmination of many factors from the previous 50 years, all of which lead to a very predictable outcome.

  • Reaganomics loosening regulation on corporations, lowering taxes on the wealthy, and defunding public education
  • Rush Limbaugh and Fox news fostering rural nationalism
  • the advent of the internet which allowed those people to find each other and exchange their poorly informed ideas
  • the perception that politicians were prioritizing "them" over "real Americans"
  • 9/11 and the resulting surveillance state and 24h sensationalist news cycle.

By the time Obama was in office, Republicans and Democrats lived in different realities. Republicans just wanted someone who was willing to stand on stage and spout their version of reality, and Trump is the right combination of insecure and stupid to want to do that. He was an inevitable symptom of a decades long problem.

Don't forget Europe. Here, the far right is also racially motivated. My country's (Portugal) far right party shot up in votes in the last election and has repeatedly villanized roma people. I hear the AfD is also pretty concerning.

Spain is a minority led liberal government because of all the gains the far right has made.

The 'funny' thing is that Trump never had won. He gained fewer votes than Hillary in 2016...

Similarly, Bush imo is an illegitimate president, as he didn't gain more votes than Al Gore.

Via the popular vote, yes. But in the US, the popular vote doesn't decide anything. Should it? That's a different question. The point is they won the election legitimately.

We have work to do, but peddling election denial misinformation isn't it.

You saying this has the same practical significance as pro-Trump people who think Biden "didn't really win" in 2020.

Which is to say zero.

Difference is that my saying is based on a historically vested principle, simple as: one man, one vote. Instead of: your vote doesn't count, only the oligarch's does.

They did win because of how the electoral college works. Both Trump and Bush lost the popular vote and won the election because the system is designed in a stupid way.

Pogs are due for a huge comeback (along with all things 1990s).

Maybe another yoyo comeback?

I'd actually be down for Billie Eilish leading the charge on grunge 2.0. We need angry rock music to criticize this shitty world.

I'm ready for a new yo-yo craze 1996-8 was the last great resurgence

Probably more forest fires and other climate problems this summer.

Israel and Hamas unite over a shared love of falafels. You heard it here first, folks!

If you knew what's coming next you could be a very very rich human. This is how the world works

But to humour you, my guess is new portable energy storage systems. An increase in energy density

I'll keep adding to this as I think of more.

Lemmy itself, hopefully. The Fediverse has the potential to take off because it's here and it can't really die.

3D printed construction could be huge if they can get it to actually work well. That's a big if, though.

Perovskite solar cells look like they're almost ready to commercialise.

Grid storage batteries, if a good chemistry is found, could answer a trillion-dollar question.

Whenever Apple gets the battery life on Vision Pros to a reasonable length, they'll probably take off.

AI ASICs, including those I assume such a headset would use. Some of them are actually analog, it's pretty neat.

Ocean mining looks set to be valuable, and is pretty much impossible to stop every country from doing.

LLMs taking your fast-food order, and similar.

On that note, support services to remotely unfuck LLM mistakes that 0.2% of the time they biff it.

De-novo cultivation has been pretty successful, so you might start seeing weird new crops derived from wild plants become available, and start getting used as a cheap ingredient in stuff.

Hydrogen-grown biomass is really interesting, and could take humanity another trophic level down. That's probably too far off to count as "next", though.

Xenotransplantation.

Cargo airships as an option somewhere in between ships and airplanes.

3D printed aerospace parts have already made a difference, but I get the sense it's not done. I don't know what that means for you or me, exactly, if anything.

I could totally see supersonic private jets happening. I really hope they won't, though.

On the note of technologies that kind of suck, postquantum cryptography will be a huge thing very soon.

The hydrogen economy, if fossil fuels continue to phase out. I've seen some neat stuff about metal refining with it, including a paper where they were able to use toxic aluminum mining waste as a raw material.

Having LLM taking orders seems superfluous when ordering kiosks already exist

The precise context I've heard about that in is drive-throughs.

It could be other things, like answering phones in a more comprehensive way than existing automatic systems. Even book keeping. Really just anything simple or repetitive that's conducted by natural language, and isn't life-or-death (so probably no ER triage).

America has a real problem if something very bad happens to Biden or Trump during the elections (or shortly after).

The world has a problem when Trump is elected again. As he's not known for keeping peace, or understanding international relations. In fact quite the opposite.

So the next big thing really is the elections.

....

Notice though how certain massive events are barely registering here.. Imagine a third of Americans threatened to lose their home.. But that's what's currently happening in China through floods, and rain season still having to start. I would call that big, 120 million people isn't nothing.. In comparison, 7 million died from corona (out of 700 million confirmed cases)

So this very much depends on your perspective and where on the planet you live.

Well, there's serious potential for the wars in Ukraine and Israel to spill over into their neighboring countries and spiral uncontrollably into WWIII.
So although far from guaranteed, it's absolutely a possibility.

We can't be far off people realizing how good robotic chef arms are and someone like Samsung making one that we start seeing in midsized kitchens, after this home adoption will be rapid and have huge benefits for diet and cost of living as well as being far more environmentally friendly than preprapared food.

It'll probably use a trained Llama model (metas ai which is good at tasking) to translate requests and input data to a cooking model likely based on the one they always use for trackmania but I forget it's name I think it's Nvidias evolutionary one - it simulates the actions to evolve a solution before actuting motors - its impressively quick now even on a small processor and used in loads of stuff. The robotics is easy just a couple of continuous rotational servos and grasping mechanisms which are super common now.

I don't know if any of the currently existing ones will get the market spot, I expect like with mp3 players It'll come down to a big name making an easy to use but feature limited version to capture the market.

If anyone has questions happy to defend my assertion.

I have questions. Is this something in use today? Who is manufacturing them? Is this something you're personally familiar with or just aware of?

I haven't seen specifically cooking, but there have been quite a few papers about mixing task-instruction LLMs with task-execution robot arms (like they use in manufacturing) to perform simple tasks given only a plain English instruction. Eg, "pick up the red ball and place it in the blue bowl". Very cool research but still very new.

Yeah go on the YouTube rabbit hole of 'cooking robot' there are some really impressive ones - overpriced and not entirely practical but really good.

All the actual sensor and control stuff is used in industrial and factory kitchens but built into linear assembly lines so putting that into a more multiuse tool is the challenge.

I'm not personally familiar, just follow automation and robotics these are something I've been interested in for a while. It's a prefect task for where automation and ai is at the moment.

How reliable are they, especially in edge cases? The word on the street has been that they're still super dumb and we're not automating blue-collar jobs like "chef" any time soon.

Factory robots are incredibly graceful now and sensor systems are great at combining information into models, I would say that they're almost certainly able to act safely - they're not going to stab anyone by mistake, but might occasionally call for help locating a carrot or odd things until those small bugs are ironed out.

I think fully multitasking robots are a way off because like self-drive there's just so much complexity caused by small differences that accounting for it is endless, but an arm on a cooker with a prep area beside it would be restrained enough that solving the individual design issues would be manageable.

I should say I'm not imagining it to be as good as the advert, the first ones will have fairly basic ingredients and dishes they support - probably a few thousand but missing various key dishes that are a bit too awkward. I'm Also imagining it'll cook better than me but not upto my mums best.

So I don't think they'll replace chef but we're about to see a slew of task focused devices, probably in construction and similar fields. The chef focusing on the more creative and skilled elements while using them to chop, stir, make sauces or icing or whatever.

Oh, an arm on a cooker and prep area isn't quite what I thought you were talking about. A human employee would still have to be around to feed it ingredients, clean it, and deliver the food, then, so that's more like an increment on top of the slicing machines and automatic ovens fast food joints already have.

They'll probably call it something more impressive sounding and oversell it but it will be kinda revolutionary.

When the trend of robots cooking from raw starts taking over the prepackaged and oven ready meals we'll see real competition and innovation

Yep! Sorry, didn't mean to diminish it. That's still a good answer to "the next big thing".

  • forget its* name
  • Nvidia's* evolutionary one
  • it's* impressively quick

Energy generation evolution I suppose. We are reaching the limit of how we generate energy. Need that Dyson Sphere for real.

Are we? There's still plenty of space for solar and wind. Including large battery installations for cities. It doesn't really feel like we're hitting a limit there anytime soon.

We are not. Not yet, anyway; energy growth has been exponential historically, so it might "only" be a century.

Even if we had limitless energy, though, Earth can only radiate so much heat. I've seen it calculated as 400 years of growth max, generously. Before then we have to just stop growing, or leave Earth. All that to say fusion is probably the last energy tech we'll ever need.

We can't even make good battery for EVs....

Stationary batteries with no limit on weight or even temperature should be way easier. It just comes down to how much easier exactly. If someone finds a cheap enough chemistry that is the next big thing.

Failing that, pumped water or air energy storage is decent, if a bit more awkward to install.

While I agree that there needs to be some big growth in portable batteries like those in EVs, there are options for cities. Since they wouldn’t need to move, heavier and denser batteries become feasible. I’ve heard good things about molten salt batteries.

Right now I could buy an EV with 520km range for 36k€. It's rapidly getting better.

Now tell me how long do you need to charge that from 0 to 100%? 🤭

You do know EV sales stall because of that, right? And the concern of battery lifespan.

You do realize most people charge at home? It doesn't matter how long it takes when the car is just sitting there (you'll even save time compared to driving to the gas station).

Manufacturers also give 7+ years warranty on batteries by now, but even after 10 years a battery doesn't just break, you only lose a few percent of range (if this wasn't already calculated into the buffer, depends on the car).

You do know EV sales stall because of that, right?

In what fantasy world are you living? EVs just hit an all-times sales record last year. This is for the US, but it's similar all over the world:

You know people's biggest limitation when purchasing is EV range compared to fossil fuel right?

Last year? What year is it now?

No, it's not. Most people, even in the US, can easily use the range. You don't go to a cross country roadtrip every day.

You drive to work, go grocery shopping, drive home and that's usually it. A range of 400km+ with new EVs is easily enough. Or do you drive to the gas station every 2 days with your current car?

And even if you go on a roadtrip, after driving for 4 hours you might want to take a break anyway.

You do realize there is no data available for the future? We aren't there yet.

I think A.I and sufficiently good robotics will bring back class society to those countries that don't currectly have it. Elite will become more powerful, corporate power will surpass governments, rest of humanity will wallow in poverty, since they no longer have leverage in society. Whole world will become corporate driven banana republic.

This is what I think too. Disaster capitalism + surveillance capitalism + massive resource competition due to climate change = neofeudalism.

Bird flu just jumped a couple of species barriers as well.

Far more likely they'll erode class systems in countries that do have them by enabling everyone to have the same educational access, healthcare, etc.

I know a lot of people want everything to be bad for some reason but I think you're gong to be disappointed with how beneficial they are, just like the people who hated autolooms couldn't even imagine a world where poor people can afford nice clothes so ai haters today will be blown away by the huge social benefits of the technology as it evolves.

Why would those countries educate the general public to disagree with local power structures, when they mostly just need submissive cheap workforce.

Government educates people when they are a part of the nations money flow. When educated citizens are assets. In your basic banana republic model the people are not part of it. They are just cheap labor for low level jobs, living on scraps. Educating them is down right dangerous for the government. If needed, educated personnel are supplied by foreign actors exploiting the situation.

Poverty and lack of education are forms of control and are not fixed by injecting teachers or money.

It's still very much AI for a while. The current incarnation is still in relative infancy, and will only continue to get more capable and disruptive. We're starting to see the integration with robotics, this is only going to become more significant with time.

It's likely that the next big thing will be a consequence of AI.

The current AI boom is all based on a single paper from about 7 years ago, and has been achieved by just throwing more and more computing power at it. There has been basically no meaningful architecture improvements in that time and we are already seeing substantial fall off from throwing more power at the problem. I don't think its a given at all that we are close to the kind of disruption you are predicting.

I don't understand this deliberately pessimistic perspective I keep seeing around AI development that stubbornly ignores every other technological development in history. Even just considering the singular transformer architecture, we're still seeing significant and novel improvement. In just a couple years we've watched the technology go from basic predictive text to high quality image and even video generation, now to real time robotics control.

The transformer architecture is incredibly powerful and flexible. The notion that the basic technology staying the same is an indication of stagnation is as ridiculous as if you said the same of transistors half a century ago. Most of the improvement we see in the near future will be through recursive and multi-modal applications, meta-architechtural developments that don't require the core technology to change at all.

"The internet has reached the peak of its usability and will never progress much past it's current level"

This is you in 1997.

I'm not saying AI can't be disruptive. I'm saying we aren't there. The steady progress you think you are seeing is bought with increased processing power, the science isn't advancing steadily, it advances in unpredictable jumps. Because the performance gained with processing power is reaching its peak, we'll need at least another one of those unpredictable jumps for it to get to a state that will do what the comment I was responding to was claiming. It could be another 50 years before that happens, or it could be tomorrow.

Was there actually a statistical argument for that? IIRC the main argument was most people wouldn't have a use for it, in the guy's opinion.

There's stats for this. It's not certain, but "we're nearly at peak LLM" has become a reasonable guess in the last few months.

I see AI as something that will go the way of VR or cryptocurrencies or self-driving cars, it won't fully go away but people will realize that it is not suitable for nearly the number of use cases or improving as quickly as it was claimed it would and will sort of forget about it in most of the areas where it is not really improving anything.

AI is currently being used in both the wars OP mentioned.

Its primary use is always going to be in Surveillance Capitalism. The idea we can get nice things from it is mainly a consolation prize.

I mean yes I can now get AI to draw me a picture or write me an editorial. But meanwhile the IDF can get AI to choose people to kill and use the Wheres Daddy AI program to tell them when someone is at home so they can deliberately bomb him with his family.

So yeah it isn't much for consumers but it's not going away for use on us.

I think those use cases show how particularly bad AI really is considering how many wrong targets they have been bombing and how many bad recommendations consumers still get.

I think we need to hit the wall and start over with what we learned a few time over to really progress.

Hats made of poop. It’s such a winner. Get in on on the cutting edge of fashion while you can.

The most chic ones are made from your own production plus random dog poo you find locally. Plus some grass for structural strength.

You've heard of A.I. but how about B.J.s? They are the future.

B is the next letter after A, J is the next letter after I. BJ is the logical next step after AI

I think they got those already. Just search for autoblower.

In space sciences coming up are new manned Moon missions followed hopefully by some Mars missions. Also LISA is a huge interferometer that is planned to be deployed in orbit by ESA around 2035. Different size interferometers can measure different wavelengths of gravitational waves. LIGO (the interferometer observatory already in action measuring black hole collisions) has arms 4km long and can measure wavelengths in the range of 7Khz-30hz. LISA will have arms 2.5 million km long in orbit around the sun and is expected to be able to measure much much smaller waves.

Personal quantum computers, and maybe virtual reality with artificial intelligence combined.

Personal quantum computers would be truely useless. They break specific kinds of encryption, and simulate other quantum systems. Other than that, nobody's been able to devise a way to make them do much practical work.

Really, it's unfortunate they were named that, because they're only like computers if you have a solid background in computing to understand the analogy. "Quantum emulator" or "programmable quantum system" might be a better word that wouldn't make people think it's the next semiconductor node. Alas, I have no time machine to fix it.

Maybe useless to you. I’ll definitely find use for it. And cracking encryption is a huge plus. Quantum computers have been around for a long time and in use there are all sorts of software and even special OS for it just not for public use for obvious reasons.

Bro, do you even know a Kronecker product from a discrete log? You'll find a use my ass. And now you're in with a super secret group of quantum computer users. Are you sending ninjas after me next?

Addressing many common diseases such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, PCOS, depression, anxiety, and ADHD. All of these are metabolic diseases that were rare in human populations around the world just 50 years ago.

Contrary to what the US's department of agriculture says (that we should eat mostly plants via the Food Pyramid/MyPlate) starting in the late '70s, it turns out that the human species has evolved over >2 million years to hunt animals. Of the three macronutrients (carbohydrates, proteins, and fats), we should be getting most of our calories from fats via fatty meats.

The growing popularity and success of ketogenic diets (especially the carnivore diet) in reversing many metabolic diseases once thought to be incurable and attributed to age is a sign that humans have finally rediscovered our species-appropriate diet.