What should we expect from technology in the next 10 years?

I received many messages after writing about the space technology race last week. One of the most striking was this:

“You said ten years ago that space technologies would take off. We didn't understand the importance of that back then. So, what should we look at to see the next ten years?”

Actually, the answer is not that difficult.

The next ten years will be a period of transformation in the history of technology as significant as the invention of the computer or the spread of the internet. However, this time, it will not just be the devices we use that change, but the very relationship we have with technology itself.

Contact lenses capable of recording will take the camera out of our pockets and place it right over our eyes.

Designs that turn the entire phone into a screen and watches that can transform into tablets when needed will redefine the concept of the computer.

Electronic systems placed on the neck will use our vocal cords like a microphone. We won't need to carry a separate microphone to speak.

Personal devices without screens, powered solely by artificial intelligence, will enter our daily lives. The computer will no longer be a box we hold in our hands, but an invisible assistant that lives with us constantly.

Automobiles will also cease to be the cars we know. Laser-powered windshield cleaning systems will show that even parts that haven't changed for decades will be redesigned. Systems that allow a car whose debt has not been paid to drive itself back to the financial institution under certain conditions will show that technology will change not only engineering but also law and ethics.

In logistics, we will see flying warehouses supporting drone fleets operating in the sky.

In aviation, next-generation passenger planes powered by hydrogen and reaching several times the speed of sound will enter service.

A significant portion of these examples, which seem like science fiction today, will become the everyday technologies of the next ten years.

The truly major change, however, will take place inside computers.

Quantum processors will become a part of personal computers. Quantum processors will achieve something far greater than the revolution graphic processors created in artificial intelligence. Processing power will increase exponentially. Calculations that take hours or even days today will be completed in seconds. In many fields, from drug development to materials science, and from finance to climate modeling, problems that cannot be solved today will become routine.

Artificial intelligence will also move out of large data centers.

First, it will move to edge architectures.

Then, it will begin to run entirely locally.

In our computers…

In our phones…

In our cars…

In our homes…

In short, every device we use will have its own artificial intelligence. Systems that work without connecting to the internet, do not send our data out, recognize us, and can make decisions for us will become a natural part of daily life.

AGI for Another Spring

Researchers argue that today's large language models cannot create entirely new scientific paradigms as Einstein did. In other words, they say that expectations that the generative AI we use today will directly evolve into Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) or Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) are very difficult to realize with current architectures.

I think this is an important observation.

Because the atmosphere surrounding artificial intelligence over the last two years has been that we would encounter a superintelligence that would surpass humans in every field within a few years.

This research, however, offers us a more realistic picture.

But this does not mean the artificial intelligence revolution is slowing down.

On the contrary…

Generative AI will become the greatest production tool of the next ten years.

It will write code.

It will contribute to the development of new drugs.

It will design new materials.

It will solve engineering problems.

It will accelerate scientific research.

It will increase the productivity of millions of people to an unprecedented extent.

Moreover, it will not only produce new content.

It will also see the gaps that humans cannot see.

The Move 37 move that changed the history of Go was the first sign of this. The AI did not invent a new game. It did not change the rules. It simply saw a move in a game played for hundreds of years that humans had never thought of.

We saw the same approach recently in the critical security vulnerability Mythos discovered in the FreeBSD kernel. The AI did not develop a new operating system. It found a gap that humans had failed to notice for years.

Perhaps the greatest discoveries of the next ten years will be made exactly like this.

Not by writing new laws of physics…

But by establishing connections that humanity has not been able to see until now…

By completing the missing pieces that no one has noticed…

By revealing the relationships hidden within billions of lines of code, millions of scientific articles, and trillions of data points…

But something much more important than this will begin.

Generative AI, quantum processors, and locally operating smart systems will together increase humanity's capacity to produce, discover, and solve problems to an unprecedented level.

In short…

Life 2.0 is not coming.

But a very powerful Life 1.1 is on its way.