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Why the future of technology is so hard to predict

The failure of a fridge designed by Einstein offers a clue.

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This year’s debut of ChatGPT looks like it might have broken through a barrier to humanlike artificial intelligence.

More recent predictions by futurists rely too much on extending the latest, trendiest technologies into new realms, says the writer.

PHOTO: PIXABAY

Faye Flam

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They don’t make technology predictions like they used to. Just look at the amazingly prescient technological wish list famed chemist Robert Boyle jotted down in a note found after his death in 1691:

“The recovery of Youth, or at least some of the Marks of it, as new Teeth, new Hair, new hair color’d as in youth.” Check.

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