[cbozeman]

Fusion is well on the way, you just don't hear about it as much because the whole point of fusion isn't to make money, it's to permanently end the energy "crisis", which will end energy demand, which will have nearly unfathomable ripple effects on the global economy.

String theory is waste of time and has been for awhile now. The best and brightest couldn't make it map onto reality in any way, and now the next generation of best and brightest are working either on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley.

The robots are also coming sooner than we think. They won't be like Rosey from the Jetsons, but they'll get there.

AGI may or may not happen soon, it's too early to tell. True AGI is probably 100 years away or more. Lt. Cmdr. Data isn't coming any time soon. A half-ass approximation that "appears" mostly human in it's reasoning and interaction is probably 3-10 years off.

[digging]

> AGI may or may not happen soon, it's too early to tell. True AGI is probably 100 years away or more. Lt. Cmdr. Data isn't coming any time soon. A half-ass approximation that "appears" mostly human in it's reasoning and interaction is probably 3-10 years off.

The goal of AGI is not to emulate a human. AGI will be an alien intelligence and will almost immediately surpass human intelligence. Looking for an android is like asking how good a salsa verde a pizza restaurant can make.

[cbozeman]

> The goal of AGI is not to emulate a human.

I am not sure if that's accurate based on the researchers I read and listen to.

> AGI will be an alien intelligence

Possibly. Remains to be seen.

> and will almost immediately surpass human intelligence.

There's no proof that will be the case, we just assume that because of the advancement of technology in the past 50 years. It may well be an accurate assumption, then again it may not be. This is very much a case of, "We won't know until it happens."

[insane_dreamer]

> Fusion is well on the way

I hope it succeeds, but after decades of research there is still no demonstrable breakthrough in fusion (that outputs more energy than required as input)

[mlrtime]

We don't hear about it [Fusion] because it doesn't work for energy production.

I don't believe there is a grand conspiracy to keep it down because of money.

[cbozeman]

I wouldn't call it a "grand conspiracy" so much as a "plain case of human greed".

Intel does everything in it's power to stymie AMD in the late 80s, all of the 90s, and the early 2000s - that's an established fact on record. It wasn't a "grand conspiracy", it was just the dominant power exerting it's force.