# Have we finally hit a wall as a species? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 30, 2019, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760 "2019-03-30T10:03:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/41 "2019-03-31T20:21:58Z")
I’m a Computer Science person so I’ve seen incredible progress in Computing for several decades. Just mind blowing stuff. E.g., I remember being the outside member on PhD student’s AI dissertation proposals where they were basically saying they were going to solve Natural Language. They all went nowhere, of course. That went on for a long time. It looked like a dead end. But in the last few years there’s all these talking/listening gizmos around that are basically spectacular. And getting better all the time. What’s going to happen in AI in the next 20 years will be astonishing beyond belief. So, nowhere close to hitting a wall in terms of Computing. I’m more worried about the wall hitting us. With climate change being the biggest, baddest, nastiest wall coming our way. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/42 "2019-03-31T20:31:44Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > So, nowhere close to hitting a wall in terms of Computing. [Of course](http://www.edn.com/design/systems-design/4368705/The-future-of-computers--Part-1-Multicore-and-the-Memory-Wall) [we](https://www.edn.com/design/systems-design/4368858/Future-of-computers--Part-2-The-Power-Wall) [are](http://www.edn.com/design/systems-design/4368983/Future-of-computing--Part-3-The-ILP-Wall-and-pipelines). ---
**Author:** ![Mnemnosyne](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mnemnosyne/32/3347_2.png) [@Mnemnosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mnemnosyne)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/43 "2019-03-31T21:51:29Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > It’s a small thing, but I just wanted to note that **Captain Marvel** is about to hit the billion-dollar mark, and instead of a dimly-lit one-scene cameo they had the film’s second-billed actor play a fortysomething Nick Fury despite him being a _seventyish_ Samuel L. Jackson: the ‘deaging’ effects are, effectively, now great enough to get _blandly_ used for so big a role in so big a blockbuster. > > A decade ago, I think it would’ve looked, uh, waxy and unconvincing? But it’s now at a point where a leading-man role — not an alien or an android or whatever, just tons of That Guy With The Face stuff — can be CGI’d into a movie. Hell, consider how they brought Peter Cushing as Tarkin back from the dead for his appearances. Sure, it was a brief cameo, but that’s just because it was literally resurrecting the man. I think we might be seeing either the last, or the next-to-last generation of actual human actors, because it won’t take too long before it’s cheaper to CGI up an actor. Plus, they never quit, they never die, they never go on strike or don’t do what they’re told, and they don’t negotiate for bigger paychecks. I have actually been wondering if the contracts for actors in a lot of recent movies are including clauses where the producers are explicitly authorized to use CGI to make them reappear in future sequels, in case something causes them to become unavailable. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/44 "2019-03-31T22:25:47Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Lab-grown meat is maybe worth a mention. Prices have declined dramatically too, but they’re still higher than animal meat. It was ~$350,000 (I’ve seen figured from 300-375k) for a lab grown burger in 2013 but some companies are hoping to have the price down to $2-5 or so by 2021. > **[$5 lab-grown burger could be ready by 2021](https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2018/09/28/5-lab-grown-burger-could-be-ready-by-2021/)** > > Back in 2013, the emerging biotech field of lab-grown meat products held a tasting of a lab-grown burger which cost a staggering $330,000 dollars. The ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/45 "2019-03-31T22:55:28Z")
I want my lab-grown manatee steak. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/46 "2019-03-31T23:16:01Z")
Sadly, the cell sources mentioned in Iain Banks’s Culture short story _The State of the Art_–which involved a visit to Earth–aren’t available: > [@](#): > > ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Li said, standing with a bowl in one hand and a silver fork in the other. ‘A little taste of Earth … no; more than that: a chance for you to participate in the rough and tumble of living on a squalid backwater planet without actually having to leave your seat or get your feet dirty.’ He stabbed a bit of the meat, put it in his mouth, chewed and swallowed. ‘Human flesh, ladies and gents; cooked muscle of hom. sap. … as I suspect few of you might have guessed. A little on the sweet side for my palate, but quite acceptable. Eat up.’ > I shook my head. Roghres snorted. Tel put her spoon down. I sampled some of Li’s unusual dish while he continued. ‘I had the ship take a few cells from a variety of people on Earth. Without their knowledge, of course.’ He waved the sword vaguely at the table behind us. ‘Most of you over there will be eating either Stewed Idi Amin or General Pinochet Chilli Con Carne; here in the centre we have a combination of General Stroessner Meat Balls and Richard Nixon Burgers. The rest of you have Ferdinand Marcos Sauté and Shah of Iran Kebabs. There are, in addition, scattered bowls of Fricaséed Kim II Sung, Boiled General Videla, and Ian Smith in Black Bean Sauce … all done just right by the excellent - if leaderless - chef we have around us. Eat up! Eat up!’ ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2019, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/47 "2019-04-01T00:08:57Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > [Of course](http://www.edn.com/design/systems-design/4368705/The-future-of-computers--Part-1-Multicore-and-the-Memory-Wall) [we](https://www.edn.com/design/systems-design/4368858/Future-of-computers--Part-2-The-Power-Wall) [are](http://www.edn.com/design/systems-design/4368983/Future-of-computing--Part-3-The-ILP-Wall-and-pipelines). Depends on which wall you are talking about? For AI, there has been hundreds of thousands of times worth of speedup in the last 7 years. This won’t last now that specialized TPUs are starting to be made with the best available semiconductor processes, but AI is a distributed computing problem. Neural networks can be evaluated using [massively parallel](https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/05/10/tearing-apart-googles-tpu-3-0-ai-coprocessor/) systems, most algorithms used in present day AI research are of the “[embarrassingly parallel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embarrassingly_parallel)” class. Due to this, through parallelism, and probably multi-layered chips, we can keep scaling the hardware up to as far as it needs to go. _Probably_ an integrated artificial brain that is _functionally_ as capable as a human being in almost all areas, even if the _implementation_ of the cognitive algorithms is different is achievable, albeit it will take years, maybe decades to build one. ---
**Author:** ![russian\_heel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@russian\_heel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/russian_heel)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/48 "2019-04-02T00:48:59Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Mars missions, curing cancer, and constant leaps in cell phone technology are the only ways to measure human progress so you must be correct. I am thank you. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![velomont](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/8491ac/32.png) [@velomont](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/velomont)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2019, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/49 "2019-04-02T22:30:19Z")
Well, wrt cancer, in 2011 my wife was cured of _a_ cancer she discovered several months earlier; in the 1980s (which isn’t that long ago to this 60 year old) it would’ve been terminal. And wrt space travel, I think the moon landings were a spectacular anomoly that resulted from the cold war. I believe that moon landings would have occurred eventually, but not necessarily in any sort of rush; ditto Mars. ---
**Author:** ![Thylacine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thylacine/32/1143_2.png) [@Thylacine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thylacine)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2019, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/50 "2019-04-03T01:08:23Z")
The last decade has seen giant strides in identifying and solving human (and animal) problems via looking at DNA, I am participating in one such study looking at epilepsy for instance. The day is coming where a blood test will both diagnose the specific condition and suggest the best treatment. There are downsides of course, but hopefully employers/insurance companies will never be allowed to routinely screen everyone and discriminate on the basis of the results. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2019, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/51 "2019-04-03T01:12:04Z")
> [@russian\_heel](#): > > Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk I laughed when I saw this. Many people in the 20th century lived their entire life using the same basic telephone. I can remember watching the original Star Trek thinking it was way beyond our technology to have a computer device I could talk to and it would give me an answer. Imagine an encyclopedia I could talk to that continuously grew it’s knowledge base and could actually talk to me. It’s a barking mad idea. It would be a massive devise. I carry that in my pocket now. I can navigate anywhere in the world using my “phone”. it provides me a continuously updated mapping system that can tell me if there are traffic issues ahead in real time. I can place the same device in an airplane where it will replicate all the gauges with precision because it has GPS and accelerometers in it. It will navigate me to within a few feet of every runway on the planet. It can show me the current weather downloaded from satellites and overlay it on a moving map of my route. It can show me where all the other airplanes are on the same map. It can file and activate a flight plan. It provides all the airport data of every airport as well as approach plates and an active taxi display of those airports. It would be pointless to describe a device that has infinite uses but I gave one example in aviation. My phone can replicate hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment found in a commercial airliners. This is just one technological advancement. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2019, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/52 "2019-04-03T03:51:26Z")
Another example, positron emission tomography (PET) scans helped revolutionize therapy for trauma victims. Psychology really didn’t understand the physical changes in a brain which were the result of trauma in childhood, and consequently the therapies often were not effective. A number of pioneers in the field developed better changes, but they have only recently become more mainstream. One of the reasons is that the PET scans can actually demonstrate the changes which have occurred. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2019, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/53 "2019-04-05T14:51:27Z")
An item from last year that I thought was worth a quick mention, [“in a study conducted by Stanford, Duke University, and the University of South California”](https://medium.com/syncedreview/my-other-lawyer-is-a-robot-lawgeex-automates-contract-review-eef4e2247114) that [“involved the review of five previously unseen contracts containing 153 paragraphs of legalese. The AI software reached 94 percent accuracy in surfacing risks in NDA contracts. That compared with an average of 85 percent for the lawyers.”](https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2018/03/02/artificial-intelligence-deep-learning-lawyers-nda-robo-attorney-billable-hours/) Which, if true — okay, fine, 94% versus 85%, that’s just great. Like, if this were a story about a _schoolteacher_ who, hey, attention to detail, majored in literature, terrific at reflexively analyzing noun-and-verb rules — if _she_ outscored a bunch of experienced attorneys in that contest, then we’d nod appreciatively and make a couple of quips about paychecks and have a good chuckle, right? > [@](#): > > Researchers asked 20 experienced lawyers and the AI to examine five previously unseen contracts composed of 153 legal clauses copied from standard Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA). The AI used just 26 seconds to complete its analysis with an accuracy rate of 94 percent. Human lawyers meanwhile required nearly 92 minutes to achieve an average accuracy rate of 85 percent. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Hermitian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hermitian/32/470_2.png) [@Hermitian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermitian)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2019, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/54 "2019-04-05T16:55:38Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > the first iphone did not have a front facing camera, or fingerprint sensor, or face recognition. Ah, back in the good ol’ days - when iphones had headphones jacks! ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2019, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/55 "2019-04-05T17:30:54Z")
Recent news: a [UAV](https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/airbus-sets-flight-endurance-record-with-zephyr-uav-451006/) that stayed aloft for _“25 days 23h 57min”_ in 2018. > [@](#): > > Flying purely on solar power, the aircraft – which has a wingspan of 25m (82ft) but a mass of less than 75kg (165lb) – achieved daytime altitudes of around 74,000ft. Critically, it was also able to remain above 50,000ft overnight while running down its battery power. ---
**Author:** ![Bibliothecarius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b2d939/32.png) [@Bibliothecarius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bibliothecarius)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2019, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/56 "2019-04-06T00:20:22Z")
While there is no cure for HIV yet, current anti-retroviral medicines are about as close as you can get to a cure. HIV-positive people on modern meds can not only live a more or less normal life, but once their viral load reaches undetectable levels, they can’t pass HIV on to anyone else. Besides that, we have PEP (taken within 72 hours of possible exposure to HIV, it prevents the virus from taking hold, kind of like the morning after pill) and even PrEP (the closest thing to a vaccine but in pill-form, take it regularly while HIV negative and it prevents you from contracting HIV if you were to become exposed to it). That’s a far cry from the highly contagious death sentence that HIV used to be! ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2019, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/57 "2019-04-06T00:48:14Z")
in 2003 at a cost of 3 billion dollars the human genome was sequenced for the very first time. At that point in 2003 we have the complete text of the human dictionary written in a language we didn’t understand but are now beginning to translate. Now 16 years later, anyone can get a pretty good idea of their ancestry and genomic landscape for a couple of hundred bucks, and a complete sequencing for a few thousand. Starting from scratch a new species can be sequenced for about $30,000. Then in 2015 CAS5 CRSPR technology was discovered. Now not only can we read the dictionary we can edit it as well. Genetically modified products are all over the supermarket. And the first genetically altered human babies have been born. The industrial revolution has run its course and the silicon revolution may be slowing down, but we are just on the eve of the biological revolution. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2019, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/58 "2019-04-14T00:41:59Z")
Here is a gif showing what a boston robotics robot could do in 2009 vs 2019. > > > \#boston dynamics #robots [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/fRj34o4hN4I/maxresdefault.jpg "What's new, Atlas?") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRj34o4hN4I) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2019, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/59 "2019-04-28T00:41:03Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > One I thought was worth singling out: Watson competing against human champs on JEOPARDY. I mean, yes, beating chess grandmasters, sure; but trivia contests built around _conversational_ responses to colloquialisms and idioms? Where each of those question-and-answer exchanges about people known by nicknames or initials or whatever may involve a bit that’s there as a _joke?_ Where coming up with a reply comes _after_ realizing what a veiled allusion referenced? Bump for a news item [out this week](https://www.americanbanker.com/news/regions-bank-using-ibms-watson-to-answer-customer-questions): a bank has _“been testing and using Watson for a year, but is only going public about it on Thursday … a virtual banker it calls Reggie. It speaks directly with customers about simple matters, such as updating an address or ordering a new card … Twenty-two percent of the time, calls are completely handled (or “fully contained” in the industry parlance) by Reggie.”_ How long before it’s handling conversations like that maybe 50 percent of the time? And then 90 percent? And then — what? ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2019, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760/60 "2019-04-28T15:01:14Z")
I’m with those who have claimed that AI is on the verge of a massive breakthrough. On the other hand, artificial intelligence has to be counter-balanced with growing natural stupidity. I refer to the growing anti-vax and anti-GMO movements. It would not surprise me if there were a cure for AIDS in the next 5-10 years. Self-driving cars will be big (and new AI learning algorithms will play a big part). On the other hand, I foresee a hiatus in space exploration. The radiation problem in space appears insuperable. And interstellar travel simply comes up against physical reality. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-finally-hit-a-wall-as-a-species/831760.md?page=4)