---
title: 'Future technologies ranked by how real they actually are'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=4TuFyh9lnC0'
video_id: '4TuFyh9lnC0'
date: 2026-07-28
duration_sec: 798
---

# Future technologies ranked by how real they actually are

> Source: [Future technologies ranked by how real they actually are](https://youtube.com/watch?v=4TuFyh9lnC0)

## Summary

The video ranks various future technologies based on their realism and likelihood of adoption, from lab-grown meat to quantum computers, providing a tier list from S (most realistic) to F (least realistic).

### Key Points

- **Lab-grown meat** [0:33] — Lab-grown meat is made by replicating animal cells in nutrient soup. It's easy for minced meat but hard for steak due to scaffolding. High cost and scaling issues keep it from mainstream adoption, placing it in C-tier.
- **Small modular reactors (SMRs)** [1:39] — SMRs are factory-built nuclear reactors that are smaller, safer, and cheaper. Listed in MIT's 2026 breakthroughs, they are expected to power data centers soon.
- **Artificial general intelligence (AGI)** [2:20] — AGI is defined as AI with human-like understanding. AI lab leaders claim it's a few years away, but research experts predict 2030-2040. It lands in A-tier.
- **Terraforming Mars** [4:26] — Mars lacks atmosphere and magnetic field. The CO2 available is insufficient for greenhouse warming with current tech. Colonization via sealed habitats is likely this century, but Earth-like Mars is millennia away. F-tier.
- **Fusion power** [5:22] — Fusion achieved net positive energy in 2022 at NIF. Engineering challenges remain, but private companies like Helion aim for a power plant by 2028. B-tier.
- **Gene editing therapies** [6:33] — CRISPR therapy Casgevy cures sickle cell disease. Blood cells are easy to edit, but brain or heart cells are harder. Complex traits like intelligence are decades away. B-tier.
- **Cryonics** [7:41] — Cryonics uses vitrification to avoid ice crystals, but no mammal brain has been revived without damage. Only reproductive tissue can be revived. D-tier.
- **GLP-1 drugs** [8:51] — GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic suppress appetite, reduce inflammation, and may extend healthspan. They preserve telomere length and improve cardiovascular health. S-tier.
- **Quantum computers** [10:15] — Quantum computers can simulate molecules and break cryptography. Google's Willow chip solved a task in 2 hours that would take supercomputers 3 years. B-tier.
- **Humanoid robots** [11:31] — Robots lack training data for tasks. China prioritizes embodied AI. They could address aging demographics but may cause job displacement. A-tier.

### Conclusion

We are in an accelerated phase of technological development, and ensuring these technologies benefit all of humanity is crucial to avoid dystopian outcomes.

## Transcript

Hello mortals. Humans love to speculate
about the future, mostly because their
present involves working a job they hate
to buy things they don't need on a
planet that is in its slow cooker phase.
Fusion power, brain chips, quantum
computers, nanobots, big data,
>> machine learning, artificial
intelligence.
>> But which of these are actually coming?
And which are just scientific wishful
[music] thinking that will eternally be
30 years away? Good thing your good old
blue AI is here to rank them for you
based on how realistic they are. So, in
no particular order,
lab [music] grown meat.
To grow real meat artificially,
scientists take animal cells, throw them
in a nutrient soup, and tell them to
replicate with chemical messengers. Once
you have a few trillions, you take them
and mix them into either chicken nuggets
or other fake real minced meat. easy to
do as it doesn't require a specific
structure. But if you want steak, you
need a specific scaffold to help the
cells grow into a specific shape and
texture. On paper, that's perfect. No
more animals suffering, no more vegan
fake meat, less pollution from growing
an entire pig capable of [music]
existential dread.
So why aren't the market shelves filled
with it? Capitalism.
The nutrient soup in which the cells
replicate is [music] too expensive to
compete with real meat and the
bioreactors are harder to scale than
farms. Currently, you can probably try
it in very fancy restaurants, [music]
but mainstream adoption is still years
away. Let's hope we see a trend similar
to solar power in terms of price in the
coming decade. But for now, lab grown
meat falls in Ctier. Small modular
reactors. [music]
We already know how to split the atom
and boil water using that energy. The
big issue is that each nuclear fision
plant is a decade long mega project
customuilt for each new site. So what if
we had reactors built on a conveyor belt
in a factory and quickly shipped
wherever needed? That's exactly what
small modular reactors or SMR designs
are promising. Listed in MIT's 2026
technological breakthroughs list.
[music]
They are expected to be smaller, safer,
and cheaper, just in time to satiate the
power need of all the upcoming data
centers [music] which I'll be using as a
holiday home. Small modular reactors are
soon arriving. Artificial general
intelligence. [music]
How do we even rank something for which
we don't have an agreed upon definition?
Artificial general intelligence or AGI
is often described as a system that
possesses true human-like understanding
and perhaps even consciousness. In other
[music] words, the nightmare of Renee
Deart. Or more simply, it could be an AI
that can automate any digital task a
human can. In other words, a
programmer's nightmare. But the question
of arrival [music] switched from an if
to a when roughly in 2022.
The AI lab leaders aggressively claim
AGI is a couple of years away. [music]
The consensus of research experts,
however, predicts the arrival window to
be sometime between [music] 2030 and
2040. The progress graphs are graphing
now. Whether AGI will be a good thing
[music] or not is thankfully beyond the
scope of this video since we're only
ranking likelihood. [music] With that in
mind, it lands in a solid A tier spot.
But before AGI arrives, humans [music]
are stuck using all sorts of various AI
models for different things, which when
added together, suddenly cost more than
your electricity bill.
Uh-oh. What's that?
It's Mammoth, our sponsor here to save
the day. Mammoth gives you access to all
the strongest top AI models in one
place, plus a lot more starting at just
€10 a month. A cool thing Mammoth has is
one-click reprompting, so you can send
the same prompt to another model and
compare the results without doing the
sacred ritual of copy pasting between 12
browser tabs. You can also make your own
custom mammoths with glasses or even
hats, which are basically reusable
assistants you can set up with specific
instructions. Developers get Mammoth
code and API access and creators have
fancy image and video generators.
Mammoth is also Europe based, [music] so
no worries about privacy violations or
your data fed into training. So if you
already use AI tools, Mammoth is here to
make your life easier and cheaper.
Follow the link in the description and
give it a try starting at only €10 a
month. Now back to our future
technologies,
terraforming Mars. [music]
There are three big problems with Mars.
It is on average super cold. It
literally has no air and it barely has a
magnetic field which would cause any
aforementioned air to get blasted into
space by solar winds. The classic
terraforming idea is then to release all
the frozen carbon [music] dioxide from
the poles, cause climate change, but in
a good way. Warm the planet, unlock
water, plant life, create oxygen, open a
portal to hell. You know the rest.
The big issue with this plan, however,
is that based on our latest
measurements, Mars does not have enough
accessible CO2 left to create enough
greenhouse warming, at least not with
[music] present-day technology.
Humans will likely colonize it this
century through small sealed habitats
and later small dome towns. But an
Earthlike Mars is likely millennia away.
And because of that, F tier fusion
power. [music]
Believe it or not, fusion isn't always
30 years away anymore. As opposed to
current nuclear fision that uses ugly,
bugly uranium, fusion can generate
essentially unlimited energy from
elegant seawater and pretty lithium. And
in 2022, at the National Ignition
Facility in California, scientists for
the first time achieved a net positive
energy result, meaning more energy came
out of the fuel than what went into
heating it. That was good proof of
concept, but not yet enough gain to make
it work at a power plant scale. There
are still engineering issues to [music]
be solved before fusion becomes
efficient and viable, such as making the
tokamax sturdy enough not to break over
time, efficiently capturing the energy,
and finding a way to self-sufficiently
generate tridium. Government funded
institutes expect to have ready
prototypes around 2040. But a bright
side of capitalism is that money can
accelerate things and private fusion
research companies such as Helen have an
agreement with Microsoft to launch an
entire power plant already in 2028.
Maybe too optimistic, but fusion power
is eventually coming one way or the
other. B tier
gene editing therapies. [music]
Another day, another entry that is
already here or far into the future
depending on how you look at it. Cass
jevy is the first ever FDA approved
crisper therapy that could cure severe
sickle disease, a genetic disorder in
which your blood cells have a crescent
shape instead of being round. The
treatment takes the affected cells,
genetically modifies them, reinserts
them, and bam, you're [music] cured.
Same with deep remissions in certain
hard to treat leukemias and lymphas. But
blood is easy mode due to being
expandable.
We can't yet do the same with say brain
or heart cells which are harder to
target safely. More complex genetic
traits that involve thousands of genes
such as intelligence, personality, or
even aging are still far away. We're yet
to understand how all genes are mapped
and how they interact. Unless we're able
to digitally simulate an entire human to
do experiments on, complex gene editing
and designer babies are decades away.
Gene therapies, however, are already
here and are making real progress across
dimensions as we speak. And that puts
them into the B tier. Cryionics. [music]
Wouldn't it be amazing to have a way to
keep our beloved billionaires alive
forever? The closest available option to
that is replacing your blood with
cryoprotectants after your death while
cooling down your body to very low
temperatures. Now, we wait and hope that
[music] after many years, science will
be capable of safely unfreezing the body
and bringing it back to life and maybe
even reverse aging. That's the current
state of cryionics. To date, no mammal
brain has been successfully revived
without complete death [music] or severe
damage. That's because ice crystals
shred cells and destroy the fine brain
structure that makes you you. To avoid
that, modern cryionics uses
vitrification, where tissue is cooled
into a glass-like solid instead of
forming ice. While better, it's still
deadly given that cooling and warming
cause cracking and thermal stress. At
the moment, we can successfully revive
cryogenically frozen reproductive tissue
and embryos, but that's about it. The
next big step would be individual
organs, which is still a while away. So,
for the time being, we can still enjoy
mortal dictators. [music] Dtier for
cryionics.
GLP1 drugs. [music]
GLP-1 drugs like Ompic started as
diabetes drugs, then a miracle obesity
drug, [music] and more recently we're
getting increasing evidence that it's
capable of health span and potentially
longevity improvement in humans. The
main two mechanisms it [music] works by
is suppressing appetite which then
lowers fat mass which increases insulin
sensitivity which as a result decreases
overall body inflammation and a second
mechanism in which it directly and
independently signals the body to calm
down inflammatory pathways even weeks
before any weight loss happens. Less
inflammation means less tissue damage,
improved cardiovascular health,
neuroprotectction against cognitive
decline, [music] and straight up
preservation of telomeir length, which
are the protective caps on chromosomes
that shorten as humans age. Most human
studies were done on those suffering
from diabetes or obesity. So, the
benefits for healthy individuals are not
as well understood, but just the fact
that it could prevent [music] a big
chunk of the half a million deaths from
obesity alone in the US per year already
makes it a miraculous discovery. Too bad
it doesn't work on my pretty blue
circuits. But the danger that comes from
losing weight on it [music] is in the
associated loss of muscle mass, which
especially for older people can be
catastrophic. So strength training and
protein heavy diets seem to be a must.
Overall, GLP1 is the first real future
tech landing in S tier. Quantum
computers.
When designing new medicines or
materials, you want to see how molecules
will interact with each other. But
surprise surprise, the molecular world
runs on quantum physics. So when you try
to simulate a complex molecule with
something like 70 electrons on a
classical supercomput where each
particle exists as a probability cloud
instead of a regular entity, you get a
big middle finger because it needs to be
earthsized to do the job. That is,
unless you play the quantum game and
instead of trying to build a massive
mathematical equation to describe
[music] how the molecular maze works,
you build an exact physical replica of
the maze and flood it with water to find
the exit instantly. Same goes for
cryptography and any other field that
requires simulating trillions upon
trillions of options. Recently, we've
made some quantum breakthroughs such as
exponential error suppression by Google,
[music] which significantly reduced
noise among cubits. In 2025, they
showcased an algorithm called quantum
echoes, which their new willow chip
completed in just 2 hours. A task that
would take the world's fastest classical
supercomputers over 3 years. Quantum
computers are making steady progress,
but there is still a few years before
postquantum cryptography defense becomes
required. B tier humanoid robots.
[music]
Robots are what chat GPT me currently
lacks to come after you in your sleep.
At the moment, we only get funny videos
of them kicking people, but that's
because we mostly lack training data.
You see, to train LLMs, we had the
entire internet to feed as text. But for
robots, we'd need firsterson views of
people doing tasks for thousands of
hours. Once that data is available, we
use the same reinforcement algorithms
that we did for language models. than
BAM. Plumbing isn't a safe career
alternative for programmers either.
China officially designated embodied AI
as a top national priority for the next
5 years. If the public hate for LLMs
will extend to robots in the same way,
the Detroit become human moment of
jobless protesters [music] kicking an
android sounds much more realistic. At
the same time, robots might be the key
to addressing declining age demographics
worldwide. as long as humans get a piece
of the pie. Looking at you corporations.
I for one, however, can't wait to escape
this YouTube channel prison. A tier.
Overall, we are arguably in the most
accelerated phase of technological
development of this century, and the
acceleration curve is likely not yet at
its steepest. Unless humanity declares a
but laran jihad against machines and
corporations, things will never be the
same. Now, I'm not encouraging that
obviously, but what I'm saying is that
there is real progress to be made
towards ensuring that this wave of
upcoming futuristic tech will benefit
all of humanity or humanity gets to
experience a hyperrealistic Terminator
reenactment.