People Talk About Things That Sound Futuristic but Are Happening Right Now

The future is now, people!

While it might seem like crazy inventions are a long way off, we’re already living in it!

And we’re about to get some inside info.

What sounds futuristic but is happening now?

AskReddit users shared their thoughts.

1. Robots.

“It’s quite phenomenal how much certain industries have developed their robotics.

You just don’t see it in your everyday life, but places like Amazon and pretty much all mechanical-related businesses are developing robotics at an insane rate.”

2. Didn’t see it coming.

“I still feel a tiny bit blindsided by lab-grown meat suddenly being commercially viable. Would not have predicted that one.

Those drone light-shows too. What year was it where radio-controlled drones just kind of showed up, and became commonplace?

I think around 2015 was when they really “took off.””

3. It is a big deal!

“Private companies launching rockets into space like it’s no big deal. You can literally walk outside one night and think “what tf is that???”

And someone will tell you “oh that’s just the latest Space X launch.” And you go about your business.”

4. There you go.

“My 2 yr old daughter, walking around the house following and talking to a robot while it vacuums our house.”

5. Pretty insane.

“I have a device that fits into my pocket.

I can get virtually every bit of information produced by the human race if I know what buttons to push.

It’s also voice-activated, so I can just talk to it and figure out when my flight leaves or where the nearest fresh tomatoes are being sold.”

6. Seeing double.

“Scientist have already managed to clone a living thing.

And it happened around 25 years ago.”

7. Open Sesame!

“Automatic doors.

I remember seeing the first 6 Star Wars films many years ago (I’m 18 now) and playing the Lego games of it and I remember thinking to myself how cool the sliding doors were.

I understand they’ve been around for so long, but recently it just came to me that they have automatic doors just like in Star Wars.”

8. Scary.

“In China, they are using AI to identify Uyghur Muslims from the rest of the population.

It detects “classic Uyghur features” based on complexion, and facial features.

It’s the worlds first instance of “automated racial profiling.””

9. Weapons of war.

“Saw the recent news of the Israeli-Hamas conflict, including footage of Iron Dome being used.

I remember seeing the prototypes of that system in a “future weapons” documentary on TV years ago, but was never really sure if or when it entered active service

So yeah, we have rockets that shoot down other rockets now and might have for years already.”

10. Antimatter.

“The fact that humans are capturing and containing antimatter for study is amazing.

The fact that we can store it longer than a year at a time is extraordinary.”

11. That’s crazy.

“Facebook is integrating occlus rift support.

I’m not sure what’s available to the public, but in-house, they are having 3d meetings like in Star Wars. They can project and manipulate a screen in 3D like the 3d map in the first Ray movie. It doesn’t wrap around you yet, it hovers in front, but it will.

My friend works for FB in the AI dpt. The first software I tried out was a demo for medical education. I saw a life size human and I could use gestures to look at his different body systems, right in front of me, like on the Holodeck.

You turn the system on by holding up your palm like a wizard and an interactive sphere appears on your hand.”

12. Gene editing.

“CRISPR gene editing. People’s genes can literally be edited.

Basically, people get this enzyme called Cas9 (a nuclease) inserted into their DNA somehow (don’t know how, maybe an injection?) and Cas9 slices the target strand of DNA open, allowing a sequence to be taken out and replaced with something else which can then be transcripted into RNA, translated into a protein, and used in the body.

It’s mostly being used right now for gene therapy, stuff like sickle cell anemia, and agriculture but it’s crazy to think about what it could be used for in the near future. It’s kind of controversial because people don’t like the unnaturalness of it (like people’s dislike of GMOs), and I can see their point, I just think it is very intriguing and revolutionary, and I will be interested in seeing what happens with it in the future.”

Now it’s your turn to sound off.

In the comments, tell us about things you know about that sound futuristic but are happening now.

Thanks in advance!

The post People Talk About Things That Sound Futuristic but Are Happening Right Now appeared first on UberFacts.

What Small Ways Has Society Progressed in the Last 20 Years? Here’s How People Responded.

You blink and you’ll miss it.

An older gentleman told me that when I graduated from high school. I kind of shrugged off his words of wisdom but it turns out he was right…

And things are always moving forward, which is good news for all of us here on planet Earth.

In what small ways has society progressed in the last two decades?

AskReddit users shared their thoughts.

1. That’s nice.

“My grandfather has been blind for forty years.

He says people are way more friendly than they used to be, especially younger people are eager to help.”

2. Much more aware.

“I think the majority of the world knows a lot more about other cultures and countries.

Thanks to the internet and learning facilities and the vast possibilities of travelling, people can really get into these topics if they want to.”

3. Progress.

“Infant mortality rate in Africa is now the same as it was in Europe in the 1970s.

Absolutely amazing progress.”

4. Knowledge is power.

“Think about the public’s access to information.

Just Wikipedia is equivalent to thousands of dollars of encyclopedias and almanacs in the 1990s.

And it’s way more valuable than that because it’s constantly being updated.”

5. A good thing.

“The rapid skill increase across all forms of gaming/sports, art, leisure activities, etc.

The internet really has allowed niche-activity folks to learn the most effective practices collectively, as opposed to independent and un-structured learning.

Hobbyists can (and are) now able to quickly get really good at nearly everything, at a ridiculous rate. Poker, paintball, video editing, computer games, etc…. doesn’t matter what it is, it’s easier now to jump from “beginner” to “pretty good” in nearly anything.”

6. You can learn anything!

“The intermet has made it easier to learn almost anything.

When something in my house/car breaks or needs upgraded, I can generally diagnose it with Google and then watch how-to videos on youtube to decide if I should do it myself or just save time and contact a professional to complete the repair.”

7. Click it or ticket.

“Stressing the importance of seat belts and helmets.

Old TV shows commonly depict no helmets and seatbelts.”

8. The little things.

“I took my grandparents to my Grandpa’s sister’s funeral, on the drive back home I had to buy a Pepsi and a coffee because I was tired.

I finished the can of Pepsi, and put the can in the cup holder.

Grandpa said “you know son, 10 years ago that would have went right out the window.””

9. More opportunities.

“Giving more opportunities to people with disabilities.

And this doesn’t mean just work either, but designing more building to universal design so that people with disabilities can access more spaces unassisted.

It’s really great!”

10. You see it less and less.

“Way fewer people smoke these days.

Honestly, in my extended family it’s maybe only one of my distant cousins.”

11. No more stigma.

“Wearing glasses has all but lost the negative stereotypes surrounding it.

They often used to make kids suffer through school unable to see.”

12. Normalizing.

“We’re normalizing openly discussing miscarriages. It use to be uncouth to discuss in social settings and was more something that couples had to suffer silently to themselves.

After recently experiencing one, the outpouring of support has been amazing and such a pillar of support for us through this tough time. We were thankful to have others to mourn with us.”

13. Preservation.

“In my country several efforts have been made to save our only remaining native indigenous language from being extinct.

A decade ago less than 1,000 people could speak it, now I believe the number is closer to 10,000.”

How about you?

What progress do you think we’ve made in the last two decades?

Sound off in the comments and let us know!

The post What Small Ways Has Society Progressed in the Last 20 Years? Here’s How People Responded. appeared first on UberFacts.

A General Suggests We Should Let Drones Do More Work the Military

Perhaps you got a toy drone in a White Elephant exchange at work. Or a neighborhood kid crashed one in your backyard. Maybe you’ve used one yourself to take wedding or real estate photos. It feels like something out of Asimov or Jules Verne, but it’s 2021 and the hot topic in the military is what to do about drones.

Specifically: swarms of them.

In a recent article for Forbes, David Hambling, the author of of Swarm Troopers: How small drones will conquer the world, lays out this military conundrum for the lay-reader.

Image credit: Indian Army via Forbes

The problem is both simple and complex.

Simply: The more outnumbered humans become in battle, the harder time they will have reacting to threats. In the future, humans won’t be able to keep up.

We get tired. We can be distracted. We have consciences, most of the time.

But just how much autonomy do we want to hand over to machines? We all know about The Terminator and I, Robot, right?

Image credit: U.S. Navy via Forbes

That is exactly the question military leaders around the world are grappling with.

General John Murray, who leads the U.S. Army Futures Command, believes it’s time to turn over some, but not all, of the control.

These require meaningful human control over any lethal system, though that may be in a supervisory role rather than direct control – termed ‘human-on-the-loop’ rather than ‘human-in-the-loop’ … Pentagon leaders need to lead a discussion on how much human control of AI is needed to be safe but still effective, especially in the context of countering new threats such as drone swarms.

Such a move, to allow humans to supervise but not fully control drones, would require the government to change current rules around their use and deployment.

Image credit: U.S. Army via Military.com

But General Murray thinks this is going to be necessary because:

Faced with large numbers of incoming threats, many of which may be decoys, human gunners are likely to be overtaxed.

Unsurprisingly computers are just faster and better.

It seems our humanity gets in the way. Research shows:

Human operators kept wanting to interfere with the robots’ actions. Attempts to micromanage the machines degraded their performance.

Then there’s the brain versus microchip processing speeds.

“If you have to transmit an image of the target, let the human look at it, and wait for the human to hit the “fire” button, that is an eternity at machine speed,” said one scientist, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If we slow the AI to human speed …we’re going to lose.”

The threat that governments are most concerned about, massive drone swarms, is already very real.

Military swarms of a few hundred drones have already been demonstrated, in future we are likely to see swarms of thousands, or more. One U.S. Navy project envisages having to counter up to a million drones at once.

China is known to have a drone swarm launcher ready to go, and other nations may not be far behind.

Image credit: CETC via Forbes

Drone swarms present a clear and present danger, a new kind of weapon of mass destruction.

Analysts can use computer-generated swarming algorithms based on swarming and flocking patterns of birds and insects to anticipate attacks and design counter measures.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

And billions is being spent on new technology to combat the drones, including an anti-aircraft vehicle called IM-SHORAD, but without machines to control our defenses, it may not be enough.

At this point, we have 2 options: we can try to pass a treaty along the lines of the nuclear proliferation treaty that limits the creation and use of nuclear weapons, or we can try to fight like with like.

The European Parliament supports a full out ban.

“The decision to select a target and take lethal action using an autonomous weapon system must always be made by a human exercising meaningful control and judgement, in line with the principles of proportionality and necessity.”

The other line of thought is that these machines could actually be more ethical in the long-term, due to their lower margin of error.

So outlawing them altogether may not be the right answer.

Unlike with nuclear weapons, where a lot of people have them stored but know that using them would result in retaliation, AI is a bit of a gray area. It can be built and programmed and owned without its very nature being destructive, which makes it harder to control.

If AI-controlled weapons can defeat those operated by humans, then whoever has the AIs will win and failing to deploy them means accepting defeat.

Image credit: YouTube via Forbes

The argument over what to do has dragged on for years, but the technology is here now, without a clear answer.

At this rate, large-scale AI-powered swarm weapons may be used in action before the debate is concluded. The big question is which nations will have them first.

The whole debate reminds me of the brilliant 1985 sci-fi novel novel Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (which sadly was not done justice by the 2013 film of the same name).

The time to make a decision and prepare for these types of attacks is now. And it sounds like unless we’re going to train up a super-genius army of video-game playing children to counter other countries drone attacks, we might need to let out the leash a bit on the machines.

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The Air Force Is Putting Lasers on Their Fighter Jets

You read that right, my friends – laser death rays are a really real thing that the actual military is going to be utilizing in the near future.

I mean, I realize that most of this timeline is a horror show and The Jetsons’ promised us flying cars and our hoverboards are a horrible imitation, but I mean…death rays are pretty cool, right?

The Air Force is working on a laser weapon, known as SHiELD. It’s a pod-mounted laser that’s meant to protect fighters from incoming missiles, and will be used initially to protect older fighters with less effective stealth technology.

Image Credit: U.S. Navy

SHiELD stands for Self-Protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator. Lockheed’s plan is to mount the laser on the fuselage or wing of a fighter jet, and will eventually be used in conjunction with a second weapon – the Tactical Airborne Laser Weapon System – to shoot down air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles.

At the moment, pilots only have access to passive defenses against incoming missiles, like evasive action or managing to fly outside an incoming missile’s sensor arc, maybe launching flares or other measures meant to confuse tech.

Image Credit: U.S. Air Force

This new laser would be the first active anti-missile defense in history – and yeah, go ahead and imagine something straight out of Star Wars.

The systems will take up space on fighter jets that is typically reserved for bombs and missiles of their own, which means they won’t be added to stealthy aircraft.

Instead, SHiELD and TALWS will go on fighter jets like the F-15E, F-15C, and the new F-15EX, because they have room for more than one bomb the way it is.

Image Credit: U.S. Air Force

And get this: the laser could very conceivably be controlled by something that looks a lot like R2D2.

Even so, there are a few downsides to using lasers. Water moisture and smoke particles in the air can dilute a laser’s strength, and they can’t travel all that far without the beam weakening.

They’ll also have to be able to focus on the missile for long enough to heat it to the point of dissolving, which could prove tricky in an actual combat scenario.

Image Credit: U.S. Air Force

Even if there are problems that still need to be untangled, there’s no doubt that laser weapons are the future, and will likely go on almost all warplanes in the future.

All that’s left is to make it more practical, more affordable, and then the future is here, my friends.

And I say we could all use a win.

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