1. AGI could be achieved or we will get even closer. There will OpenAI releasing GPT5 and updates of Google LLM like improved Gemini.
Definition’s for AI
AGI = artificial general intelligence = a machine that performs at the level of an average (median) human.
ASI = artificial superintelligence = a machine that performs at the level of an expert human in practically any field.
I use a slightly stricter definition for AGI that includes the ability to act on the physical world via embodiment. I appreciate that there were some approaches on getting to AGI that fully bypass embodiment or robotics.
Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a machine capable of understanding the world as well as—or better than—any human, in practically every field, including the ability to interact with the world via physical embodiment.
2. Factory and electric car expert Sandy Munro says the Teslabot can perform all factory assembly line tasks. He says based upon what he saw Teslabot is more capable than is known. Sandy Munro has been given special tours of the Tesla factories. He says he thinks Teslabot will on the real Tesla production lines later in 2024.
IF this is true then Tesla will be able to mass produce tens of thousands of Teslabots in 2024 to increase production and lower costs in their factories.
Tesla will have 100 Exaflops of training supercomputers by October 2024. This should enable realtime updating of the FSD based on training data from the fleet of over 8 million Tesla cars by Q4 2024.
4. SpaceX had almost 100 launches in 2023 and will have 140-160 launches in 2024. SpaceX is making great progress mass producing satellites, rocket engines and rockets. SpaceX will launch 120 Starlink launches of about 23 Version 2 mini satellites for each launch. Those 2760 version 2 mini satellites will be equal to over 11,000 Starlink v1.5 satellites. This will triple the Starlink communication capacity from the end of 2023 by the end of 2024. Starlink will deploy direct to unmodified cellphone global satellite text communication.
SpaceX will have good launches to orbit of the SpaceX Super Heavy Starship. There will need to be four to eight Starship launches. SpaceX will have to perform refueling and other tests to fulfill NASA Artemis moon mission obligations. SpaceX will also perform a landing of the Starship and the booster on the Mechazilla launch tower. The landing of the Starship on the launch tower should not be more difficult than landing the Falcon 9 boosters on the droneships. The targeting and control challenge should be similar.
5. Quantum Error correction made big progress in 2023 and major developments are planned by 2025. Quantum computers progress should continue in2024. QuEra should get to 1,000 to 10,000 physical qubits. They will be able to get 100 error corrected qubits with 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 100,000 error rates.
6. Room Temperature Superconductivity discovery revealed by South Koreans. Computational confirmations through DFT (Density Function theory) simulations. In December, 2023, experimental confirmation by researchers from five Universities and research labs.
South China University of Technology and Central South University published a paper confirming the discovery of a near-room-temperature superconducting component in LK99-type materials through sample testing. This is significant experimental support for LK99 room temperature superconductivity.
They have found significant hysteresis and memory effect of LFMA in samples of CSLA.
There should be follow up work from the China microwave absorption work. There is results that should be coming on thin film work by Chapman University and there should be some new evidence from the original Korean researchers.
7. Aubrey de Grey and the Longevity Escape Velocity foundation will complete the first and perhaps make significant experimental progress on a second set of mouse longevity experiments. As of December, 2023, the main thing to note is the magnitude of the benefit being conferred, which is really remarkable: the all-treatments group has the same survival at 835 days that the no-treatment group had at 690 days. And the study only began at 580 days!! So at that survival level, namely 80%, we’re more than achieving the RMR goal of doubling remaining lifespan starting from treatment initiation.
All 4 Interventions in 2024 could show doubling of remaining lifespan from start of treatment.
Rapamycin
Design: Mice in treatment groups will receive 42ppm Eudragit S100 enteric-coated rapamycin in chow (Purina 5LG6), using the same encapsulation provider and formulary as ITP studies. Food will not be irradiated. They have selected oral delivery in chow over other delivery methods in order to be minimally invasive and so that the drug can be administered continuously.
A dose of 42ppm has been chosen on the basis of sex-specific dose effects [PMID 33145977], particularly the observation that male mice receive minimal or no benefit from lower doses of 14ppm [PMID 24341993], and higher doses have not shown any detrimental effects.
Half of the mice NOT receiving rapamycin will receive chow containing empty Eudragit, while the other half will have standard chow.
Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant
Design: The study design is largely (but see below) based on the protocol utilized by Guderyon et al. 2020 [PMID 32012439] and consists of mobilizing the recipient bone marrow niche followed by transplant of lineage-depleted hematopoietic stem cells (HSCT).
Bone Marrow: They have opted to use lineage-depleted bone marrow HSCs as opposed to additional selection for and expansion of long-term self-renewing HSCs. This was on the basis that 1) prior lifespan studies used whole or lineage-depleted bone marrow, which may include MSCs or other beneficial cells promoting engraftment, and 2) expansion protocols have not been extensively validated.
Telomerase Expression
Design: The present study attempts to mimic, as closely as possible, the recent work conducted by Church, Parrish et al. [PMID 35537048]. For this, they will utilize a CMV-mTERT gene expression vector, administered monthly to mice from the age of 18 months. As in the above, they will utilize intranasal delivery, which the authors demonstrated to be equally beneficial versus IV administration and which allows us to limit unnecessarily invasive procedures.
Senescent Cell Ablation
Rationale: Senescent cells (SnC) are shown to accumulate with age in nearly all tissues, and multiple studies have now shown improvement in healthspan parameters upon SnC removal. Although few of these studies emphasize lifespan effects, we hypothesize that SnC removal is important for mouse longevity due to the role played in immune decline and in cancer – the two leading causes of death in C57Bl/6J mice. They believe an effective senolytic may not only reduce cancer incidence by removal of cells which are cancer-capable (via senescence escape), but also by improving local immune surveillance against abnormal cells, by reducing the SASP’s cloaking effect and relieving systemic immune fatigue from SASP-driven chronic inflammation. In this way, it is also possible that SnC removal can reduce the age-related increase in susceptibility to pathogens.
Future Interventions
Interventions for large antiaging mouse study #2.
* Deuterated Fatty (Arachidonic) Acids
* Mouse Serum Albumin
* Mesenchymal Stem Cells
* Partial Cellular Reprogramming
They are considering testing apheresis or plasma dilution, which have each now demonstrated rejuvenating effects in multiple tissues in both mice and humans, probably by diluting inflammatory molecules and damaged proteins in the circulation. Another alternative may be direct infusion of recombinant albumin, which has shown promising preliminary lifespan results in a preclinical model.
Next-generation senolytic technologies and tailored approaches such as transcription-based biosensors under genetic control, tissue-specific senolytic prodrugs, and PROTAC-senolytics in subsequent intervention trials.
Laboratory mice also often succumb to common infections due to weakening of the immune system. T-cell rejuvenation is an aspect not specifically addressed in the present study, and may serve to support robust immune responses to pathogens thus preventing premature death from infection. Cellular reprogramming is one method being investigated to accomplish rejuvenation of the immune system.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
IMO Teslabot somewhere in 2025, 2026 for more serious production. I think Elon won’t have problems selling them to the masses, concerning the crappy toys people buy. That robot could actually be useful. Could it cook me a meal and take care of dishes, serving?
Few Starship launches and at least 1-2 successful without blowing up.
Some advances toward AI, but still away from it. My criteria for true AI, not just machine learning is strict.
Generally, in the diffusion of innovation (sigmoid) curve the innovators (2.5%) and early adopters (13.5%) are important, but it is when the early majority (34%) deliberately makes purchases that the product becomes inevitable. I’ll guess (localized) AI moving into early adoption in commercial and military industries is a disruptive breakthrough in 2024.
Had Tesla moved into the $20K car a year ago, that would have been a breakthrough story this year of 2023 (but unboxed mfg was not a thing until this year). Robotaxis will be big in the 143+ counties where half of the USA population lives, but the other half of the population in the 2,999 counties may prefer personal ownership of cars rather than Robotaxi mini-busses to get to work, shop, go to kids’ games, and so forth.
Public awareness of Generative AI was a breakthrough. We are also in the early adopter phase of a distributive power grid in the USA – not a technical breakthrough, but good for us lower and middle-class folks, just like precision fermentation may eventually be. Thank you, Brian, for your positive updates!
How might these 2024 breakthroughs affect second and third-world people?
Robot taxi , the chimaera that we talk about it “this is coming” every years, sorry I don’t believe in it for 2024.
I’m with you. But I do believe there is a high probability for 2Q of 2025.
The claim that Optimus can do every factory job should probably become more credible when it has done one single factory task. A second milestone will be doing such a task without the motivation of an industry which is trying to make them a marketable source of labour. In other words, when someone pays Tesla for an Optimus to do something for them.
Agreed. Elon makes things happen, but guessing when one of his new machines is ready for the mass market is a crap shoot.
Starship, Boring Machine, FSD, Model 2, and Megapack by the end of 2025. Some will hit full production before then, especially Model 2 and Megapack.
Optimus and Semi-truck by end of 2026.
It takes a while to get all the tweaking done and the manufacturing lines perfected.
8. People will still fight over LK-99. Bouts of academic fisticuffs will break out via dueling papers.
9. New Glenn will launch and explode and I will continue to make fun of them.
10. Nuclear power will continue to offer safe, clean energy and will continue to be ignored because it is the wrong kind of safe and clean energy.
Nuclear needs breakthroughs.
Small Modular Reactors are great, but will take longer before a production line will be pumping them out. Old school nuclear is waaaaaay to expensive, and takes waaaaaay to long to be built, far too much red tape.
As for BO, I actually think they will have a successful launch in 2024…..a long overdue achievement.
Weird how Korea can build multiple APR 1400 reactors in Qatar but nuclear is “way to expensive”.
Ah yes, too much red tape. Which is kind of goes along with my saying “it is the wrong kind of clean energy”.