We are fascinated by clairvoyance. However, there is another tribe of futurists who see into the future, based on the status the world is in today. And there are two types of futurists — those who draw a rosy picture of the future and those who raise an alarm.

Ray Kurzweil is a futurist who predicted in 2005 that smarter machines by 2045 will lead us to an infection point which he calls singularity. As it is Kurzweil has tracked AI since 1960s. Kurzweil has preponed the arrival of singularity — from 2045 to 2029. He attributes this to algorithmic innovations and big data.

Apart from other mundane things, he expects the medical science to extend human life by several decades.

Futurists draw their power of looking ahead from their insights into looking back. To several futurists, life will be brighter ahead than ever before. And the advent of singularity will make life exponentially better.

However, all this ignores the several other trends on the horizon.

There are issues of climate change, economic inequality, polarization, misinformation. There is rise of big tech feudalism. We can ignore these issues at the cost of deterioration of life.

Kurzweil talks of nanobots in medicine which will convey drugs, genes and other payloads in the body. He visualizes a brain that will interact with the web automatically. Are we ready to ingest such nanobots? Can we conceive of computer chips inside our bodies?

There is a limit to understanding of futurists.