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The captain of a future ship is named Hoffman. He will take us on an extraordinary journey into the brains of geniuses destined to reshape our world, to learn about their brain-opening ideas.
In the book "5 Core Forces that Change the Future World", the five core forces that will change our future world are detailed in detail - massive connectivity, biological fusion, human expansion, deep automation, and intelligent explosion, and explain what important impact these core forces will bring to the current and future worlds.
Steven Hoffman, a well-known Venture Capitalist in Silicon Valley and CEO of Founders Space, led us on a magical journey, introducing one new scientific concept and new frontier of technology after another, from brain-computer interfaces to mixed reality, from biohacking to cryonics, from robotic arms to gene editing, from quantum computing to space elevators, showing us what important frontier questions need to be answered in the world today.
How do we adapt to a world of billions of smart devices?
What is it like to have our brains interconnected and directly exchange thoughts, memories, and emotions?
Should we modify the genetic code of life to produce new crops, treat cancer, and grow gene-edited babies?
What happens when AI reaches or exceeds the level of human intelligence?
What does it mean to merge with our machines to become cyborg?
With this barrage of questions, how do we look at the present and meet the future.
First, massive connections
This force will push humans to connect machines and brains together to interconnected intelligent digital networks, which will also fundamentally change the way we live and work, and merge the physical and virtual worlds into a new, alternative reality.
Throughout history, we have experienced several waves of massive connections, and each of these waves has permanently changed human civilization. It started with spoken language, but was followed by written language, movable type printing, telephony, television, and the Internet. We are now at the forefront of the seventh wave of massive connectivity.
The first sequencing of human genes took about $1 billion and 13 years to complete, but today we can sequence the genes in less than $1500 and hours. Before long, an advanced brain-computer interface and augmented reality system will become more inconspicuous than today's Bluetooth headsets, more powerful than any of our current devices.
Once our brains are connected and all the senses are strengthened, humans will enter a new way of being and developing, where physical experiments and virtual objects will merge into a single reality. This will change the way we interact with the world, and we will live on a higher level.
Second, deep automation
This force will push humans to automate all the underlying processes related to management, growth, and life support through algorithms, which will undoubtedly accelerate innovation, create wealth, and liberate us from all kinds of daily work.
The book introduces some of the core technologies that are driving deep automation, including the latest advances in weak artificial intelligence, robotics, the latest sensors, computer networks, the Internet and other fields. Weak AI, for example, refers to algorithms that can perform clearly defined tasks. For example, guide a robot vacuum cleaner to clean the room, translate English into Swahili in Africa, or distinguish a dog in a photo.
Smart cities, smart governments, machine police, robot doctors, etc. will be fully covered, and will become a society without jobs in the future.
If it is conceivable that fully automated labor overwork can be achieved gracefully, then it will be a bright future, when each of us will be free to pursue what interests us most, and everyone will have enough income to live a satisfactory life. Imagine that people in this society do not need to do any physical labor, and that all people have enough time to be free to pursue what they think is most valuable.
Third, intelligent explosion
This power will drive us to develop new types of superintelligents far beyond human capabilities, and it will also prompt conscious robots to appear in the world, they will manage our economy, act as our partners, and merge with our consciousness.
In the era of weak artificial intelligence, when you ask a self-driving car what the road is, it doesn't even know what you're asking. You can go on and ask Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa what's the matter, and they'll give some pre-prepared answers, but can't really understand what they're talking about?
Some experts believe that there is still a long way to go, perhaps a century or more, to make superintelligence, while others are convinced that this superintelligence is already on the corner in front of us. The earliest realization date is 2029, and the latest may be 2200 or later.
How will super-conscious bodies affect us humans?
First, let's assume that any future super-conscious agent will have a favorable view of humans. If that's not the case, then we can stop there.
Second, we need to clarify what a super-conscious body is. I can assure you that it's by no means a more advanced and intelligent version of Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa, or an artificial intelligence that can vastly exceed the capabilities of the human brain, or a quantum extreme capable of performing extremely complex calculations. It will surpass anything we've experienced so far, a complete entity formed by a combination of countless sensors, a large number of robots, a variety of nanorobots, spaceships, and billions of biological brains, and artificial intelligence that is constantly expanding, no longer controlled by humans, and connected to vast computer networks. Such an entity is a super-conscious body.
At the end of the book, he writes: "As new technologies continue to emerge, they will push us forward with a force that we cannot resist, but that does not mean that we cannot influence the direction of things." We are now at a critical turning point in history, and how we ultimately use the technology at our disposal will depend on our generation. ”
This book reveals how new scientific breakthroughs, commercial innovations will reshape our lives and turn science fiction-like scenarios into reality. At each step, this book will show you how these discoveries can move humanity forward. We live in a time when seemingly impossible things come true in the blink of an eye, and our creations not only have the power to make human beings live longer, healthier, and richer, but also have the potential to permanently change or even destroy us.
The decisions we make in the coming years will determine the fate of all humanity. Because of this, we must understand where our imagination and creativity will take us.
Mo Yang is unparalleled in the world, and gives the king a plum!