Speculation

[gippgig]

This is serious speculation about things that might happen, whether tomorrow or in centuries. For example:

Any time now: Researchers find AI can detect lies. The program AI Lie was 98% successful in determining whether research subjects were lying or telling the truth. Another program, Factor Fiction, was nearly as effective at deciding whether a person was making up a story or recounting an actual event.

In a few decades: The Grand Unification Theory opens loophole for faster-than-light travel - but don't start planning to build starships. Analysis of the theory has revealed that it would be possible for a particle following a closed path to travel faster than light as long as the average velocity of the particle never exceeds c. So, for example, if an electron is carried to a star at no more than half the speed of light, it could return instantaneously. However, this won't work for macroscopic objects since any change (i.e., a single atom undergoes radioactive decay) would create a new particle that would block the effect.

[gippgig]

This is serious SPECULATION:

Tomorrow: Amazed cybersecurity experts have discovered that players of the online video game DRONEKILL were unwittingly controlling actual Russian drones and killing real Ukrainian soldiers. "The Russians have a shortage of skilled drone pilots so they outsourced it," said one expert. Ukraine is reportedly considering retaliating by allowing gamers to knowingly operate drones.

[Bobby Baum]

In a century: Researchers using the Argus Telescope System have identified an unusual class of stars in a region of our galaxy that they believe are or contain life forms. The stars have a characteristic gas cloud of widely varying size in front of them and seem to be drawing interstellar gas into that cloud. They also are ejecting a beam of high-energy helium nuclei in the opposite direction, producing a minuscule but detectable acceleration towards regions with higher gas concentrations. In one case, a pair of these stars was observed that are moving in slightly different directions; the researchers suspect one was created when the gas cloud of the other reached a sufficient size to become a star itself. There is currently no evidence that these stars are or are not intelligent and nothing unusual has been found so far about their planets.

[gippgig]

In a decade: Researchers have discovered that a newly identified bacterium is eating PVC. The bacterium is closely related to long-known bacteria that eat polyvinyl alcohol; it contains a new plasmid that codes for a previously unknown enzyme that hydrolyzes the carbon-chlorine bond in PVC. The researchers stated that PVC isn't going to disintegrate overnight; it would be more like iron rusting. Nevertheless,  there is no way to stop the bacteria from spreading and replacing existing PVC will have a trillion-dollar impact.

[gippgig]

Any time now: AI can complete sentences. Playforward was 80% accurate in predicting the next word of an audio recording. The accuracy drops quickly for additional words but the correct ones were usually found in a rapidly growing list of the best candidates. Adding a word or two may not seem that significant, but an accident investigator pointed out that adding just a single word to a cockpit voice recording could be invaluable.

In a few years: Ultrawrestling admitted that some of its TV matches are AI-generated. One insider claimed that the result was just as good and that the AI had actually invented the finishing move used by the Cyberian Express. Fans had varying opinions, with one joking that they should book a match against Gorillaz. A computer scientist thought this was an interesting application, with the basic mechanics largely being a straightforward weighted phase space search but getting the match to "tell a story" being  challenging.

[gippgig]

Any time now: Researchers have developed "virtual eyeglasses" for VR headsets. The researchers wrote a program to compensate for known defects in vision by altering video images in real time. Unlike regular eyeglasses, which only correct the average defect in vision, the program can - since the VR headset used in the experiment can track the direction of the user's gaze - compensate for localized as well as overall defects. Test subjects, including both those who do and do not use glasses, all stated that the system improved their vision. The researchers predict that in a few decades people will use the system instead of their naked eyes much of the time and expect that an implantable "bionic eye" version will eventually be developed.

[gippgig]

Any time now: Researchers have identified two people with a combination of mutations that give them abilities straight out of comic books.

In one case, a man has a duplication of one of the opsin genes responsible for color vision. One of the copies has an additional mutation that shifts its sensitivity to the infrared, giving the man the ability to see heat in addition to the normal red, green, & blue. One researcher stated that he'd be the ultimate night watchman.

In the other case, a woman who has started sending shock waves through boxing in India was found to have, in addition to a known mutation that inactivates myostatin and causes extreme muscle development, a somatic mutation (a mutation that occurs during development and therefore only affects part of the body) in the ACVR1 gene that normally causes the devastating condition fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva that causes muscle to transform into bone. In this case only one hand is affected, leading a researcher to describe her as a superwoman with a rock at the end of her left arm. Another researcher called it a one-in-a-trillion occurrence, while a scientist not involved in the research pointed out that somatic mutations have largely been neglected.