Somehow we missed Bank of America's report To the Moon (shots)! - Future Tech Primer report, which they released in September.
But we ran across it recently, and it covers 14 technologies that could "transform our lives" by 2030. Because of this, BofA also thinks these technologies are good investment areas.
Key quote from the report:
"Moonshots are radical technologies that could change our lives and accelerate the impact of global megatrends," Israel's team said. "They are not as far into the future as you might think ... Failure to identify future tech today could mean missing out on the next big revolution."
The report chart below (click to enlarge) lists the 14 moonshots.
None are surprising, and we've covered all of them in one way or another over the past few years.
But two did jump out, mainly because it's hard to agree with BofA that these technologies will change our lives by 2030. These are emotional A.I. and immortality, which BofA describes as:
Emotional Artificial Intelligence: Emotional AI (EAI), also known as “Affective Computing” and “Cognitive Computing,” is designed to capture, analyze and respond to human emotions and simulate human thoughts. EAI can potentially collect, analyze and respond to completely new varieties of data and situations and predict or simulate human thought, leading people to take action.
Immortality: Breakthroughs in healthtech, biotech and anti-aging drugs could result in radical life extension that ‘disrupts death’. Traditionally, aging has not been viewed as a disease that can be treated but this is changing. Actors in this space are increasingly looking to tackle the hallmark of aging via pathways such as ‘genomic instability, telomere attrition, mitochondrial dysfunction, and cellular senescence’ among others.
Hey, we'd like to see immortality breakthroughs by 2030, but that seems highly unlikely given our current state of understanding about aging and what could potentially be done to greatly expand human life spans. But we'd be glad to be wrong about this.
The same holds for creating AIs that truly can think and respond like a human. Not even the most optimistic AI researchers we've talked to are suggesting anything close to this is possible over the next 9 years.
We like following tech investment research because investors don't just talk about tech breakthroughs - they place serious bets on them.
