What will be the next biggest scientific advancement?

The solving of p=np

Full understanding of protein folding

A reason to live

this
conservative estimates are less than 50 years for human level AI

The conservative estimate the net gain fusion power is 20 years, we're living in a golden age user. Maybe AI could help us design better fusion power plants.

Take your pick:

wikiwand.com/en/Millennium_Prize_Problems

Mass production of high quality graphene and other thin film materials. The impact it would have would be equivalent with the invention of wheel or metallurgy.

Alpha Go spent that process to less than 30 years. We may see some early version of a human level AI sometime in the late 2020s.
LISA is still funded and ready to launch in 2019.

How does it feel that in 34 years the year will be 2050.

smoking weed

>LISA is still funded and ready to launch in 2019.

It isn't user, LISA got cancelled, LISA pathfinder is scheduled for launch in September (I think) while LISA'S replacement, eLISA, is scheduled for launch in...2034. If it actually gets that far without being defunded I'll be genuinely surprised (especially now aLIGO) has found 2 gravitational waves.

Fucking arseholes. That project would have advanced science or in this case for the politicians; advance weapons technology. That thing could have led to a future space based "radar" that can detect any sudden entries into the solar system.

>tfw James Webb telescope original launch date was 2007

Honestly hope we get some amazing images/info from it when it finally launches in '18.

Yeah it's a bastard, I'm still holding out hope that it actually launches but I doubt it's going to reach that stage, it's 18 years away and a lot can happen between then and now.

Blame the republicans for that. They taught it was a waste of money. Even though they wasted a trillion dollars blowing up sand in the middle of the desert. James Webb also has a build in life detector for planetary orbits. So it going to take Hubble/Kepler previous finding and enhance the planets/stars. I want to do know what it is going to find. That thing is twice the size of hubble.
I'm still hoping they magically find the money and get launched in 2030. But LIGO changed everything and NASA/ESA may push forward the process. We are living in the time of pure science research. We haven't seen this level of commitment to pure science since the days of the space race began in the 50s. I guess we exhausted the knowledge we have and we need to find new information. I know engineers are stuck in a lot of things.

meat printers

We can inhabit and live in underwater,or could start mining asteroids/space colonization.

Hopefully large scale commercialisation of LFTR power plants

Regenerative medicine. I may be biased because that's the field I want to get into, but meh. That or a comprehensive antiviral drug.

I guess in physics/engineering it would probably be fusion energy. Chemistry would be reliably creating stereoisomers.

This is such a meme. I'm hoping you're at least all hoping for procedural AI, and not doubling down the meme on a singularity.

An intelligence at a human level shouldn't be referred to as artificial. Why? This is the crux of the whole ridiculous notion of an AI at human level. We don't understand human intelligence, let alone fund science to explore it (racism and sexism loom on that horizon). The concept we could accidentally stumble upon a singularity that results in a logarithmic evolution of intelligent thought is mind mindbogglingly naive.

What we can expect in the next 20 to 30 years is an AI (not a true man-made intelligence, but an artificial one) that can fool people into thinking it is capable of human level thought.

It's not that a human-level AI (using your terminology for ease) is impossible. It's incredibly simple. It's simple because like with something such as flight, we have a template we can start our work from. We have our own brains. The problem is as a society no work is being done to scientifically map human brains. There's a world of difference between problem solving, and realizing you were created simply to problem solve, and transcending that. Mundane 'transcendence' of our states is one of the fundamentals of human level AI.

I'd have much more faith in an AI in general making headway towards a human level AI if we saw things like perfectly mouse-like mice, that are robots... But look at the issue. We won't even map a mouse's brain and pick it apart (for ethical reasons) on the level and to the degree that would be required to create a robot that thinks it's a mouse. If we did that, it would at least be the first baby steps towards creating man-made non-human self awareness.

This is all besides the point though. A larger question looms. Why would anyone want a human level AI? Just make a baby, and make a machine to aid the baby, not replace it.

Europa lander. Not biggest, but possibly most relevant.

People dreamed of becoming real Creators for ages (Golem myth, etc.).

Drug organ.

>Why would anyone want a human level AI?
Because humans die rather easily, waste 1/3 of their day sleeping and can't always do things reliably(especially if done for long uninterrupted periods of time).

I think we might be stuck at this level of tech forever. Too many reasons for smart people to just off themselves and not enough incentive to create something new.

People dream of exploring the solar system with FTL travel too, but in my opinion there's more of a chance that we'll discover some mathematical loophole to circumvent physical limits, than achieve AI without doing the homework first.

Don't get me wrong. I would love to see AI. I'm not afraid of being sub-par to other humans, or sub-par to machines, and I think many ills of society could be healed by confronting the human brain's inequities among people and gender. I am digressing, but I enjoy the comparison: Many people think we need religion because it keeps people from breaking the implicit trusts, established over the long span of human history, and maintains the status quo. The truth is though, that we don't need god to achieve this. If people can distance themselves enough from the ego, it quickly becomes obvious that the greatest punishment for living a mean life, is the life you lead. Self interest is all it takes to maintain the implicit trusts in society that keep us civilized.

This connects to mapping the brain. If we find that African natives are fundamentally different, or if we find all races and genders the same it makes no difference. The ego is the only barrier to simply admitting you're different, perhaps even worse, and adapting.

Why all this in an AI rant? Because for any true AI to rival a human's self awareness, we must map the brain and understand it to the smallest degree. Once we can do this, I will be the first to say a proper AI; or more accurately a self-aware, non-human, man-made intelligence is less than a year away.

Thinking we can discover this secret to making human level AI, and not simply pretend or create illusions (the subtle joke in my eyes at calling them artificial), without doing our homework is the most pathetic kind of procrastination.

"Oh yes, I can write this paper without reading my source materials. I'm sure I'll just get lucky going on instinct and copying the effects and not the causes of a good paper!"

Would that be a bad thing?

Have you been living under a rock? The technological development is exploding, that it's even impossible for one person to keep track of it. Most of these development have been done by companies and their only incentive is profit, which keep them going.

Let me propose something more interesting for you. We don't need AIs. We need cellular-level machinery. What if by an injection your brain would no longer deteriorate.

Evolution is a cruel mistress, and proof of it is stored within our shoddy bodies. If we weren't meant simply to reproduce and create chaos and change in a stable system, we could live forever. It's possible you know; far more possible than most other listings (though I have a soft spot for space exploration and awareness, so those suggestions I truly hope pass the bar in the next 30 years).

Understanding cells, and the brain, could be put to better use than creating AI. I would certainly suggest we create AI. The information could be better used though. Imagine it if your body didn't degrade. Imagine if age was literally eliminated. It would occur slowly, but surely enough given time we would be a race of synthetics. A period of 30-40 years of biological life, followed by a timeless interim of our choosing to live in every way the same, but for every cell in our body to be artificial.

You miss entirely the true depth and variety of motivations available to people.

Either an advancement in computers or medicine

The ability to reproduce and modify organic sentient life by means other then current ability.

Agree or not, bad or good, resistance is futile.

Carbon fiber 3-d printers that have steel like strength. Like make real deal wrench kinda strong.

>I'm still mad about my stupid plastic crescent wrench. broke instantly.

Not having pill that is [being good] as quantum dot effect, pills are not good the same for everyone, even the diagnosys on something like grid that is actualy hitting random observations to give somebody poinsion...

stop cancer pills [i am on psychiatry they tell me i am ill because i dont want to eat pill that only think i know about is i forgot all once i eat it.]

[uterecht, altrecht]

they are gonna improve the linkups between prosthesis and the augmentee, all while lowering the cost of the procedures required

the tech already exists, once links are cheap and reliable enough it's going to be big.

the world is so, so much bigger than your country

Adcencements in psychology so I wont be eated by pharmaceutical industry robots, just because I dont want to eat their pill, when it comes to pharmacy i trust coca-cola and bayer.... we shouldnt combine robotic grid and pharmacy and doctors should help, not being paid for people being sick, because they get money for that, not for people being well... only they mine for people calling them well, so they get money out of it...

It seems you dont unterstand what "human level ai" means.
Its absolutely not about awareness or consciousness.
It is purely a metric for how intelligent a system is. And by intelligent it is meant, how good the system can solve problems.

Current ai research is on the quest to design an intelligent machine and not on the quest to create a sentient being

1. Commercial quantum computers.

2. String theory and quantum loop gravity being refined enough to be a satisfying unification of QM and GR, with falsifiable hypotheses that we test and validate.

The biggest advancements from the industrial age onward were the commercialization of electric & motor devices, QM & the nuke, and computers & internet. Those were the big game changers of recent history, and they don't seem to follow a particular pattern.

If I were to take a guess, the next great breakthrough may be in materials synthesis. Widely manufactured synthetic fuels, manmade organ replacements & enhancements, cheaply made food replacements, and better overall performance for the mechanical & computer developments that come after. Think the Henry Ford of chemistry.

>2. String theory and quantum loop gravity being refined enough to be a satisfying unification of QM and GR, with falsifiable hypotheses that we test and validate.

String theory already makes falsifiable claims. We just don't have the technology to make use of them.

LQG is a shitshow and will never go anywhere.

>fusion in 20 years max
>quoth scientists since 1950

something in the realm of biology and genetic engineering. I think in the coming decades they'll find ways to enhance the body, increase brain function, muscle growth, age etc. Once we understand cells on a higher level, we can basically play god.

>(for ethical reasons)
#rodentlivesmatter

Did you know that they still test cosmetics on pigs? I'm organizing a protest at my college to raise awareness. They have heart beats too ya know!