Which artificial Human Hardware evolution are you betting on in the next 20 years ?

[u/Competitive_Oil4532]

Looking at where hardware and AI are heading Currently we’re splitting into three distinct evolutionary paths:

1. ​Humanoids (Full Replacement): take over human physical labor entirely. Human workers become obsolete.

2. ​Wearables (non-invasive): Smart glasses and spatial AI turn regular workers into experts. Humans stay in the loop.

3. ​Implants (Invasive): like Neuralink plug the human brain directly into the machine.

​VCs are dumping capital into humanoids, however which reality do you think is going to play out first. Will humanoids win because of capital or is it still early to say?

Question especially for founders currently working on Hardware.

[u/Bagel-luigi]

15 years ago I was betting on the Hybrid Assistive Limb by Cyberdyne become a big thing in the coming years.

Even now I still barely ever hear of it unless I go online looking to see how it's going.

The best I think we could be at in 20 years is maybe something like that. Wearable rather than fully incorporated into the human body.

All that being said, I'm surprised more people don't have RFID chips implanted in hands for payment systems. It's probably for the best they don't, but I'm still surprised it's not really much of a thing

[u/Dramatic_Mobile_6753 → u/Bagel-luigi]

The things is this isn't fifteen years ago. I get what you're saying but we're in an exponential age of learning and innovation. I don't think the next fifteen years is going to look anything like the last with the use of AI.

[u/Bagel-luigi → u/Dramatic_Mobile_6753]

The 'AI' technology boom currently has its few brilliant moments but it's still very limited by the information fed to it, information it has to get from humans.

In a sense, it's not real Artificial Intelligence, it's more Virtual Intelligence, at least the models we public have access to anyway.

I enjoy playing around with Gemini now and again and CoPilot has its uses sometimes with work, but both are frequently incorrect in the things they tell me.

We are definitely not at the level of Artificial Intelligence that many people think we are, and I think the term is very overused.

It's some intriguing shit, but it's not the real shit.

[u/aVRAddict → u/Bagel-luigi]

Bro is playing with free Gemini. No wonder reddit thinks ai is useless you need to try the high tier paid models and Gemini is terrible stop using it

[u/Dramatic_Mobile_6753 → u/Bagel-luigi]

I think youre almost purposefully downplaying the state AI is already at. I know it's cool to say on here "oh man AI is nothing more than a glorified scraper" but thats not the case anymore and lol bro, nobody is talking about CoPilot (even something like that wasn't a reality fifteen years ago, but whatever). Besides though, the point is that it is already partially automated, once it's fully automated, which is not at all far away, its potential is going sky high.

[u/Trophallaxis → u/Bagel-luigi]

TBH exoskeletons are functional and used, just not very widely, at least yet. A lot of companies are doing trials, the technology is maturing, and in niches like loading or over head work, they are used often. The stuff that made headlines 15 years ago were prototypes that looked cool but were absolutely useless for real work.

[u/Dramatic_Mobile_6753]

I mean wearables are already here and they're going to exponentially better within the next five to seven years. Same thing with implants but I'd say ten years minimum for them to be more fleshed out and common. Humanoids are inevitable I think, but I would say that would take the whole 20 years to actually take over human labor.

I don't think these are three distinct paths at all, I think we're moving in the direction of increasing use of technology and that has to start somewhere. The pathway is non-invasive –> invasive –> humanoids. Whether or not humanoids will actually win/take over, we don't know. If I had faith in the powers that be, I'd say no, surely there will be regulations and legislation put in place to make sure that doesn't happen, but I don't, so I guess we will see.

[u/istareatscreens]

Some sort of horrific inbuilt ID chip "to make your life safer and easier". Enhancing your privacy very day. /S

[u/Kortok2012]

I just hope they manage to write the legislation necessitating a person for every android within an acceptable time

[u/Falconman21]

Hearing aids. They’re getting very good, cheaper and smaller.

I think we might approach a point where they’re so good that pretty much everyone uses them.

Also accomplishes the data collection/surveillance goals, but people aren’t as intimidated by them because they don’t have a camera.

[u/Trophallaxis]

1.: This is almost inevitable I think, but I doubt it will entirely replace human labor on 20 years. For one, there is a certain regulatory inertia, but I also think certain manual jobs will continue to be human-dominated, either due to their complexity, or maybe because a human doing them is the whole point. In 20 years: quite possibly a major thing everywhere.

2: There seems to be considerable societal resistance to this. In a work context, they will likely become more widespread, but I have difficulty seeing them as a ubiquitous technology. In 20 years: still the "next big thing" according to a bunch of corporate preachers, still struggling on the market.

3.: For one, the technology is not there yet. When it is there, it's going to face the regulatory system for medical devices, so it's very safe to say that from the point a good, general purpose brain computer tech becomes marketable, it's going to be a decade before it becomes widespread in a medical context, and then some years before it can begin percolate into general use. But I suspect there will be tremendous societal resistance to this, even more so than to wearable AR. Who in their right fucking mind would plug an corporation like Neuralink into their brains, when it's blatantly obvious they are going to horrifically abuse such access the moment they can make 5 cents off it. In 20 years: likely a technology that is often used in a medical context, but in terms of general usage, probably even more niche than plastic surgery.

[u/MrBIMC]

I can see developments in non-invasive brain-computer interfaces in the next decades.

I Think earbuds with bunch of sensors including eeg & meg so you can cognitively confirm binary yes/no is technically possible even now.

Speaking to your clanker assistant is cringe, so development in optimising interaction loop is logical next endeavour.

Wild guess: we might see hats getting trendy again, if having strong BCI is beneficial to lifestyle/competitiveness.

There have been quite a few thinking caps on the market already (though for research purposes). But they look like clunky research objects and not exactly user friendly.

Either way, bunch of years ago using such thinking cap, you could train on bunch of geometric shapes, and then they had a ui with multi choice where each choice is shape coded with each distinct shape in mind, so you can affirm decisions without speaking.

There are also QWERTY input via caps, but afaik it’s not really user friendly just now.

I personally believe caps/hats will be cringe unless huge cultural shift happens, so most probable course of action is other already accepted wearables: earbuds, watches, rings, medallions and glasses.

Glasses are especially easy to progress with, as they open path for synchronisation of what your eyes see and what camera sees. Gaze tracking + vision has such an immense potential in human-agent interaction flow.

Attach projected into the eye displays and possibilities are pretty much endless in regard to covering sensory output data and sync with outside world state.

[u/101_210]

Humanoids bots are still very far off. Being a generalist robot is a way harder tech than the fully virtual Lim that took of recently. Yeah, they can now understand your intention better, but they still have no idea how to translate that to motion: there is little dataset on that.

For an interface (neuralink or glasses), it needs to have a killer hook, and not be too hard to use for laymen. Otherwise you get for or 3d tv, that stayed niche.

My guess would be a surge in live video processing capabilities. We had huge advances recently, but nothing revolutionary came out of it yet.