Technology prediction for the 2020s:
The costs of intelligence and energy are going to be on a path towards near-zero.
We certainly won’t get all the way there this decade, but by 2030, it will become clear that the AI revolution and renewable+nuclear energy are going to get us there.
(This won’t be true for every kind of intelligence–AI will likely be really great at many things and surprisingly bad at others–but enough to change a lot of things.)
For some time now, intelligence and energy have been the fundamental limiters towards most things we want. A future where these are not the limiting reagents will be radically different, and can be amazingly better.
The constraints we’ve all grown used to will no longer apply—we will be able to do stuff with bits and atoms we can barely imagine now.
These two changes will be the foundational changes that most change everything else, but of course lots of other things will happen too. EG, expect a big decade for longevity research, AR/VR, psychedelic medicine, cryptocurrency driving major societal change, etc etc.
