Category: Possible Futures

Even in this time of COVID-19 and economic dislocation, of social unrest and climate threats, it pays to consider the farther future. Assuming that humanity survives our admittedly staggering short-term challenges, what might await us in the long run—a utopia of technological and cultural promise? A dystopia of ever-further crushed illusions? After decades of being …

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be a misleading term. It is often misunderstood, at least by the general public. Robots or machines with advanced programs are already in use today, and in the future we will have much more advanced robots that will be able to perform many tasks. However, these are not the focus of …

Introduction Once upon a time, as a young researcher in the nascent field of artificial intelligence (AI), I was full of excitement and optimism. Sooner or later AI was going to be the secret sauce that would transform the world; discovering the recipe was my mission in life. But back then the idea of “thinking …

Not too long ago, humans believed that the stars determined their fate. Some still do. It was a belief born of naïveté, misunderstanding the nature of those diamonds in the night sky. But it was also a sign of our hubris, to presume that those lights in the firmament could have any interest in us. …