6) Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Film(s): Terminator, 2001, A.I.
Why we're sick of waiting:
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| HAL 9000: Hello Dave.... Source 2001: A Space League/IMDB |
Ever since the world was given the name HAL 9000, we've been obsessed with a computer that has the power to control itself without human instructions. Even though Hollywood generally focuses on the negatives (an emotionless killing machine is hardly a technology we'd look forward to), there are plenty of good reasons to usher in our AI overlords.
For instance, computational problems that take scientists years to figure out may be solved in a matter of seconds by an artificial intelligence. Climate change predictions? No problem. Swine flu vaccine? Easy. A swift cancer and HIV vaccine; now we're talking.
How close has science come to making this dream a reality?
True AI Machines must be able to plan, learn, manipulate and perceive a way to act upon their environment to be a understood as a true AI machine.
The study of Cybernetics goes some of the way towards building a cognitive thinking machine, but so far, the level of processing power and programming required to give a machine the power to think on its own has stumped most scientists.
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| Is the humble chess computer a primitive form of AI? Source: Chess computers archive |
Bonus Trivia: In 1956, a conference at Dartmouth College would usher in the modern study of Artificial Intelligence, through funding and assistance from the US Department of Defence who were naturally keen to create better fighting machines. The Dartmouth proposal was created here and predicted that:
""Every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it."
In the mid 60s, it was assumed that the A.I would be figured out within a generation, but those predictions came and went with the 80s.
The Turing test is probably the best gauge for AI superiority, although as yet, no computer has ever fooled the human scientists into thinking they were anything but a clever machine in disguise. There's probably a few awesomely amazing creations being hidden from us in the Military.
We'll just have to settle for: IBM's chess computer, Deep Blue.
Although, that may let deflate the expectations of a few AI enthusiasts.
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| IBM's Deep Blue vs. Garry Kasparov. Source: IBM |
Deep Blue is often considered the closest thing we have to true A.I technology. In 1997, Deep Blue drew world headlines when it beat chess champion Garry Kasparov, even though programmers were allowed to reprogramme the machine in between games to learn Kasparov's strategy and tactics. To be honest, a chess champ is hardly the supreme mechanical being that we imagined it to be in the movies.
We predict it will be available in the year....
2050. Even now, the very mention of the word 'Skynet' brings uncontrollable shuddering to geeks everywhere. However, if robots did learn to think by themselves, we'd have more to worry about than Austrian muscle impersonators.
5) Lasers: Death Ray
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| Is this what a death ray would look like? Source: Wikicommons |
Film (s): Star Wars, Star Trek
Why we're sick of waiting:
Why use bullets or bombs when you can vaporise your enemy with one directed pulse of energy? Any country with a death ray could make the need for carrying nukes unnecessary. Yes, it should be used a peaceful deterrent and that's why we're still waiting for it.
However, if some guy dressed in a black cape and a breathing problem gets a hold of the thing, we're all pretty much doomed.
How close has science come to making this dream a reality?
Archimedes is usually considered to be the first guy in history to
propose the idea of a death ray. His idea of an 'burning mirror' to set
fire to Roman naval fleets as they invaded Syracuse was A-grade ancient genius.
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| Death Ray or Russian snow maker? Source: Wikicommons/Flickr |
But, it was the all-round modern genius in Nikola Tesla that we should give credit to for supposedly developing the first real death ray, as we would imagine it being fired from a device like the Death Star in Star Wars. It was called the 'Teleforce' and according to Tesla, it manifested energy in the air via tremendous electrical force.
It was also believed that Tesla tried to sell his 'weapon' to the US government and European countries before his death in 1937. As Tesla saw his device as a deterrent to end all wars, we can't help but imagine what might of happened had Tesla lived to see the start of the second world war and found a willing governemnt to purchase the device.
Bonus Trivia: The Regan-era Star Wars imitative was actually a kind of death ray in disguise. It was designed to shoot missiles down, but ultimate failed when it could only shoot bits of the missiles metal casing away. A 4 tonne
nuclear missile is a tough target to hit and the laser required would have to be very powerful indeed.
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| The Death Star from Star Wars is the ultimate laser weapon |
We'll just have to settle for: Pulse weapons.
Current laser devices currently being researched by the US military include Pulsed Energy Projectile (PEP) weapons and the Pulsed Implosive Kill Laser (PIKL). These have been designed to be used on enemy targets in the battlefield with the potential for lethal and non-lethal use.
We predict it will be available in the year....
2013. This kind of technology is just around the corner. Will the next big war play out with lasers instead of bullets?
4) Genetics: Extinct species cloning
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| Dinosaurs can make great pets too! Source: Jurrassic Park still |
Film: Jurassic Park
Why we're sick of waiting:
Who doesn't want their own pet Brontosaurus? If the Flintstones taught us anything, it's that dinosaurs have plenty of useful purposes, including the ability to provide a great shower head and an excellent children's slide.
And apart from the obvious cultural benefits of a theme park full of extinct species, imagine the thrill of returning the Woolly Mammoth back to the plains of North America? Or the fun of watching a Sabretooth tiger perform circus tricks through hoops at some Russian circus. Okay, maybe not the last one.
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| A mosquito found in amber |
How close has science come to making this dream a reality?
Although you may have watched Jurassic Park back in 1994 and thought that all you need is the right chunk of prehistoric amber to clone a dinosaur, you'd better think again. It's definitely not that easy, otherwise some crazy guy living on a James Bond style island in the Caribbean would have already made it happen.
Instead, we're left with two of the more recent examples of extinct species genetic advances: the mammoth and the Australian thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger).
But, the race to clone the mammoth from extinct specimens found in ancient permafrost is probably the best known example. Scientists in Japan and others from Penn State in the US, are leading the way towards being the first to make this impossibly difficult task
happen.
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| This baby mammoth was found only recently, perfectly encased in ancient permafrost. Source: AP |
However, trying to mix ancient DNA Genome sequences with its modern relative the Indian Elephant, has not been an easy task for either team.
As yet, the team has failed to produce workable DNA from the mammoths they've found, although 20,000 mammoth genes can take a lot of time and a lot of money to decode. It's believed that there are around 4 billion DNA codes in the mammoth, similar to that of the modern day elephant.
Bonus Trivia: Bessie the cow was the first animal to give birth to an endangered species ox clone, Noah the Gaur. Though Noah died two days later, it was seen as a rare feat for scientists in this field of genetics.
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| The Tasmanian Tiger may soon make a comeback. Source: Wikicommons |
We'll just have to settle for: A cloned Tasmania Tiger. Not quite the Raptor we had mind.
Australian scientists have been working on sequencing DNA from various Tasmanian tiger specimens found in museums across the world for the last 7 years now. It's been reported in the journal of Genome Research that the project is coming along very well and it's assumed that this might actually be the first animal to be cloned from an extinct species within the next decade or so.
We predict it will be available in the year....
2016. In about another seven years, we predict that one of the teams working on this
technology will be the first to clone an extinct animal.
Continued: Movie technologies 3 - 1 on next page