Would you believe how fast our technology has improved over the past few decades? Just think about it. In 2000 we still had flip cell phones, and though we had internet, we could pretty much only get on it via a computer. Now our tiny little watches are computers. We can watch movies, have video calls, and surf the web from our little, tiny watches. How cool is that?
It reminds me of some pretty cool movies I loved when growing up. One of which was Dick Tracy (which I believe started out as a comic book.) I remember a really cool scene where Dick Tracy used his wristwatch to video call someone. Way cool!!!! Not so much sci-fi anymore.
Some of the best sci-fi T. V. shows have literally come to reality. Let’s take the original Star Trek, for instance, (heck, even all the others). The enterprise crew walked around with basically cell phones…well…a bit more complicated than that because their communicators worked in subspace allowing the communication to be faster than light (which radio waves and such are only as fast as light…at least to my knowledge). Basically, they had wireless communication devices.
Think about the digital pads that they had in the original show. They were big and bulky, but they were basically iPads and the such. Little portable computers.
But…enough of Star Trek. Let’s talk about something way cooler than that…only because it is actually happening in real life. Have you ever heard of the movie I-Robot with Will Smith? If not, here’s the quick premise of the movie (book). In the future, artificial intelligence has become a big part of society. One robot basically grows outside of its own programming and becomes self-aware. It is way more complicated than that, but that would be the short, short version.
Anywhoo…. you may ask how this movie has to do with that first line of the above paragraph. Well, I’ll tell you. It is rather fascinating. The future is already here! Did you know that there are several endeavors to create artificial intelligence like we see in sci-fi movies? In fact, there are already models used today that seem more like sci-fi than reality.
Joanna Penn has a few podcasts that talk about A.I. and its progress. You should check her out if you find this stuff even slightly fascinating. She goes to A.I. conferences regularly, and she talks about them in her vlogs and podcasts. She even has a voice synth A.I. that literally speaks with her voice. Now currently you can kinda tell it is A.I. but soon, I’ll bet we won’t be able to tell the difference.
The last podcast I listened to, she talked about how the government is actually looking into copyright laws regarding A.I. creations. You see, there has already been an A.I. that created a full-length fiction book and one that has painted an original work of art. So, now the question arises who does that book/piece of art belong to? The company who developed the A.I. or the authors/creatives that the A.I. learned from, and compiled its own work of fiction based on the tropes and models given it. Do the authors get any credit?
This is pretty cool. A.I. is coming!!!!!! How will that look in our lifetime? We probably won’t have robots working the market cash registers, but maybe we will. We already have artists and writers that are not human, so I’ll bet we will see more of that.
Not only is there new tech and A.I. in real life that wasn’t even truly believed would be a reality fifty years ago, but we have new space technologies that are taking us even closer to the awesomeness of sci-fi space living!!!! Sadly…I don’t know much about this part. But I can’t wait until that becomes science non-fiction too!!!
I hope you enjoyed this post, and go check out Joanna Penn’s stuff on Artificial intelligence.
C. J.