Items to fit into your overhead compartment |
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Another argument for why science fiction should be required reading, from Cracked: 15 Scientific Breakthroughs That Just Might Not Be Great For Humanity Have none of these people seen sci-fi thrillers?! This is the SF equivalent of that carved bone thing from a couple of days ago. After reading some of these, we might honestly head for the hills and start a new life amongst the trees. And if you also read fantasy, you'd know why that's a bad idea. 15 Hybrid human-AI co-embodied intelligence You know, this, or something like it, is quite literally the oldest theme in science fiction. Researchers have begun deploying robots guided by AI to run chemistry experiments, handle materials, data-analysis, and lab workflows. I don't expect a whole lot from Cracked these days, but that sentence doesn't say "co-embodied intelligence" to me. 14 Lethal autonomous weapons This is one of those things that was going to happen with or without SF. 12 We’re very close to mind-reading Doubt. A recent study reports that a new neurotechnology can now predict preconscious thoughts — i.e. indicating what a person is about to think before they consciously realize it. Yeah, not exactly, and even the article notes that it would need to hold up under further scientific scrutiny. 10 Brain-computer interfaces This is a more modern staple of SF, and it can, like most technology, be either good or evil. My own thought is that they'll immediately figure out how to project ads directly into our brains with it. 6 Social credit & behavioral scoring Yeah, considering how well the actual credit scoring system works, you know that will not end well, even if you haven't seen Black Mirror. 3 Predictive policing algorithms Isn't that, like, the heart of every techno-dystopia? 1 “Chemputation” Speaking of dystopias, I was pretty sure that cutesy portmanteau was of "chemical" and "amputation." Nope, turns out it's about computation. Much less dystopian. Going to leave it at that for today; for some reason, I'm having to wrestle extra-hard with the text editor. There are, of course, more items at the link. |