Sometimes it can seem like we’re quickly approaching peak technology. We all carry tiny computers around in our pockets that give us access to all the world’s knowledge. Speak to intelligent devices in our homes when we want to know what the weather’s like outside or need to order a pizza. Some of us even have cars that can take over driving duties for us in most conditions. It may seem like the peak, but it’s not even close to technology in 2050.

Like Ray Kurzweil, who is Google’s director of engineering, Prognosticators have been peering into the future for decades with a remarkable level of accuracy. If they’re right, which they usually are, the next 30 years or so are going to blow your mind.

Here are nine things we can expect to take place before the year 2050.

# 1: Car Technology In 2050

Self-driving car technology has come a long way in just the past five years. If some brilliant people are correct, what we’ve seen from the tech so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

A recent study by microprocessor giant Intel predicts that we’ll see this technology ramp up very quickly. Becoming an 800 billion dollar industry by 2035 and exploding into a 7 trillion dollar revenue stream by 2050. Intel refers to this revenue stream as the passenger economy that considers goods. Services that will benefit from the rise of fully autonomous vehicles and more intangible benefits like saving time and energy. The package delivery and transportation industries will undergo a seismic shift.

Transportation fatalities will practically cease to exist. Intel predicts that between 2035 and 2045, over half a million lives will be saved by self-driving vehicles. A separate study conducted by IHS automotive agrees that by 2050 nearly every car on the road will be autonomous. This is one prediction that appears to be right on point.

Automaker General Motors recently announced that they’d be introducing a next-generation Chevy bolt. It will be fully autonomous and won’t even come equipped with a steering wheel and pedals as soon as next year.

# 2: Smartphones In 2050

The smartphone revolution is only a little more than a decade old. But already, it seems like the device that none of us can live without is hitting a technological wall. Their power battery life and ease of use can’t be significantly improved upon, which has many tech industries thinking about what comes next. The answer not clear. They definitely have a few ideas. And they all point to the certainty that within the next decade, the smartphone will become a thing of the past.

We know that we can see many of the signs in this forthcoming Apple in today’s phones. Apple and Samsung, by far the two largest smartphone manufacturers, have recently been focusing heavily on upgrades for their voice-based artificially intelligent Virtual Assistants. A trend we can expect to continue also augmented reality features that overlay the real world with digital objects and interfaces are becoming more mainstream.

Next-gen personal computing devices may look more like small unobtrusive Virtual Reality headsets, but your device may become a part of your brain even further into the future. Tesla founder Elon Musk recently announced a new company called neural Inc. Its sole goal is to perfect neural lace technology. This brain-computer interface will finally close the gap between our minds and our machines.

# 3: Aerospace Technology In 2050

Speaking of Elon Musk, he’s also been in the news early and often lately. As his private aerospace company, SpaceX has been ramping up activity. The company is the first entity, public or private, to launch a recycled rocket into space, and the standardization of their techniques could make rocket launches up to 30 percent cheaper, which is a good starting point. But all musk is ever really wanted is to make space travel accessible and affordable to the public.

They may very well be closing in on that mission. Their next goal is to reuse a rocket within 24 hours, putting space flight on more of a playing field with commercial aircraft regarding how often they can be reliably launched. At the same time, space tourism remains far out of reach for the general public. Some, including NASA astronaut Don Thomas, predict that this won’t be the case in as little as ten years.

# 4: Artificial Intelligence in 2050

Recent advances in artificial intelligence or A.I. are as thrilling as they are scary. Facebook’s experiments with A.I. chat BOTS resulted in two BOTS promptly creating a new language that only they could understand before the plug was pulled, and that’s only one recent example.

Some of the world’s smartest people, such as astrophysicist Stephen Hawking believe that A.I. poses a more significant threat to humanity than any other technology. It may be mind-blowing to you that you can ask Siri to cue up your favorite song and make her learn how to pronounce your friends’ names correctly. But those working on the technology have far loftier targets in mind.

Ray Kurzweil is an authority on this subject, which is why Google has tasked him with figuring out ways to improve and even revolutionize its search engine technology. He thinks that on its current course, research into artificial intelligence will produce an A.I. that will pass the Turing test, meaning that in commerce, it will be indistinguishable from a human being no later than 2029.

Of course, the threat is that once an A.I. surpasses human intelligence, it will decide that our existence is no longer necessary, which is why many, including Hawking, have called for strict controls on the technology as it matures to prevent what might be termed the Skynet scenario.

# 5: Cancer Treatment in 2050

A cure for cancer has long been the holy grail of medicine, and it’s eluded us in large part because cancer is not just one disease. A wide range of malignancies that attack the body in entirely different ways falls into cancer. Meaning that there cannot indeed be a one-size-fits-all cure unless perhaps there can be.

Recent developments have seen an entirely new approach to treating cancer in all of its forms. And they’re promising enough that some experts are claiming that an end to cancer is insight. In 2016 researchers announced a new treatment that acts as a universal cancer vaccine, a bit of a misnomer since it is given to patients with the disease.

The treatment uses tiny amounts of the patient’s DNA to prompt the immune system to attack tumors, an unprecedented technique that has shown a great deal of promise.

Similarly, groundbreaking new treatment methods are sure to, but the statistics are encouraging even aside from that. Earlier diagnosis and more effective treatments and plummeting rates of tobacco use have resulted in a 1% decline in cancer deaths every year since 1990. A recent analysis from two universities in the U.K. has suggested that by 2050 cancer mortality and patients under 80 will dwindle to zero.

# 6: Reverse Aging in 2050

The slow march of time has been the enemy of humankind for our entire history, but many scientists believe that this doesn’t have to be the case forever. Increasingly aging is coming to be seen by the scientific community not as some inevitable mystical process but as a destructive biochemical one. And one that with the right technology can be prevented or even reversed.

Ray Kurzweil fails for his part believes that biotech upgrades will add one year of life expectancy to our current lifespans every year beginning in 2020. These encapsulate various technologies from computerized 3d printed implants to stem cell therapies to genetic engineering. Thanks to CRISPR, a technology that is already a reality, the gene-editing technique that is currently undergoing rigorous testing in China where lacks regulations compared to the U.S., allows for a wider variety of techniques to be examined.

A stunning array of universities and institutions are pursuing these technologies, making some bold predictions. Last, of the amazingly named worldwide brain Institute, Goodell thinks that humans will reach their 120th birthdays by 2050. David KEKICH, the maximum life Institute, has gone even further, saying that we will have the tools to reverse aging by 2029.

# 7: Transhumanism IN 2050

Transhumanism is a global movement that believes in the eventual and quite literal merging of man and machine. As we’ve already seen, the prospect is not at all far-fetched. Even in the technology infancy, brain implants have shown the ability to perform such miracles as restoring limited movement to the paralyzed and giving sight to the blind.

Technology like Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface, once perfected, will provide our brains literal superhuman processing capability. The prosthetics area has seen the sort of technological explosion in recent years that makes replacing your whole body with artificial parts a concept that is edging out of science fiction and into the possible realm.

Transhumanists believe that this has always been the end game of technological advancement. Our merging with the technology we create is inevitable. If we are to reap the benefits of transhuman evolution truly. We will need to find a way to replace the one organ that truly makes us thinking, the brain. And as you may have guessed, they’re working on that too.

# 8: Artificial Brain in 2050

An artificial brain that performs just like a human one will be within reach by 2050. If you believe the scientists who have made this tech’s development their life’s work. A Massachusetts company called neurologic has created an artificially intelligent platform. It is based on the human brain’s design.

Futurists such as Chris fail person and others are near-unanimous agreements that the technology will exist to digitally decode a human being’s consciousness within the next few decades. And upload it into an artificial unit no larger than our actual brains. Of course, if this is true, it means that the human race will have achieved immortality.

We’ll be able to conquer death completely. Our minds will exist in the digital realm housed in artificial bodies that can be replaced if injured or destroyed. It may seem like the furthest reaches of science fiction. But it will result from a seismic and fundamental shift in our society’s nature that curse fails, in particular, has seen coming for decades.

# 9: The Technological Singularity in 2050

Kurzweil has been making predictions of technology for over 30 years with astonishing accuracy. Fully 86 percent of his predictions have come to pass. And he has long insisted that at our rate of technological advancement.

We will experience what he calls a technological singularity. He describes this as the point at which we will multiply our effective intelligence a billionfold by merging with the intelligence we have created. If you think that sounds crazy, consider the humble smartphone obsolete though it may soon be.

We use these devices as extensions of ourselves already. There’s no need to rack your brain trying to remember a detail of some movie to win an argument. When you can quickly look it up online or stand in the rain trying to hail a cab, tell Siri to get you a new uber.

We do these things without even thinking of when they weren’t possible. And as recent technological advances keeps coming fast and furious. We will integrate them into our lives just as eagerly as we did the first iPhone. Many futurists agree that the singularity at which human beings and our technology become the same will occur by 2050.

 

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