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headlong advances?
We're getting more vulnerable. Our increasingly interconnected world depends on
elaborate networks: electric-power grids, air traffic control, international finance,
globally-dispersed manufacturing, and so forth. Unless these networks are highly
resilient, their benefits could be outweighed by catastrophic (albeit rare) breakdowns.
Our cities would be paralysed without electricity. Air travel can spread a pandemic
worldwide within days. And social media can spread panic and rumour, and
economic contagion, literally at the speed of light.
The smartphone, the web and their ancillaries are already crucial to our networked
lives. But they would have seemed magic even 20 years ago. So, looking several
decades ahead we must keep our minds open, or at least ajar, to transformative
advances that may now seem science fiction.
There’ve been exciting advances in what’s called generalized machine learning —
Deep Mind (a small London company now bought up by Google) last year achieved a
remarkable feat -- its computer beat the world champion in the game of ‘Go’.
And Carnegie-Mellon University has developed a machine that can bluff and calculate
as well as the best human players of poker.
It’s 20 years since IBM's 'Deep Blue’ beat Kasparov, the world chess champion. But
Deep Blue was programmed in detail by expert players. In contrast, the machines
that play Go and Poker gained expertise by absorbing huge numbers of games and
playing against themselves. Their designers don’t themselves know how the
machines make seemingly insightful decisions.
But advances are patchy. Robots are still clumsier than a child in moving pieces ona
real chessboard. They can’t tie your shoelaces or cut ole people’s toenails. . But sensor
technology, speech recognition, information searches and so forth are advancing
apace.
But it’s in deep space -- Carl Sagan’s special arena-—that robots will surely be
transformative.
During this century the whole solar system will be explored by flotillas of
miniaturized probes — far more advanced than the robot that ESA’s Rosetta landed
on a comet, or NASA’s ‘New Horizons’ probe that transmitted amazing pictures
from Pluto, 10,000 times further away than the moon.
These two instruments took ten years on their journeys.
And the amazing Cassini probe of Saturn is even more of an antique — it was
launched more than20 years ago. Think how much better we could do today. And
better, too than the ‘Curiosity’ rover on Mars
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