As human society continues to progress and develop in multiple areas, Charles Hoskinson, the founder of the proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain platform Cardano (ADA), has shared five things that, in his opinion, will define – either make or break – humanity in the 21st century.
Specifically, these five critical areas of human development “when we look back at the century from 2000 to 2100” include artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, and blockchain technology, as he explained in a video broadcast on March 29.
#1 AI
Indeed, AI is the first and biggest thing that Hoskinson argues is “no surprise to anybody (…) because this is the first time we’ve been able to extend our cognition to the point where we have synthetic cognition at a global scale that’s growing and evolving at a very fast pace.”
“The superpower of this second brain is it has access to the internet, and it’s also recursive, meaning it’s self-training, so GPT-4 trains GPT-5, and GPT-5 trains GPT-6, and every time it does this, it gets exponential capabilities. You have exponential growth technology that can create new knowledge and new insight.”
#2 Quantum computing
However, according to the Cardano founder, AI is still limited by its capabilities, which is where quantum computing steps in. As he explained, quantum computing was a new computing model that provided new and very important capabilities and could potentially even crack Bitcoin’s security.
As an example, Hoskinson used the ‘one-shot signatures’ on which he co-authored a paper. This technology, he explains, can provide “the ability to sign something only once and then guarantee it can never be signed again,” and, in his view, “you can’t do that in classical computing.”
#3 Synthetic biology
Furthermore, Hoskinson stressed synthetic biology as the area “where you start using technology to manipulate and change organisms,” such as in de-extinction and adding new capabilities, like adding cells to human tissue that can change colors or integrating computers in our brains so “we can think to text.”
“If you have synthetic biology capabilities, you potentially could use biological systems to replicate computing systems. So you can create new interfaces, or you can store information in DNA.”
#4 Nanotech
According to the Cardano founder, nanotechnology allows humans to change any physical thing into a computer, such as turning a restaurant table into “kind of like an e-ink display” which shows the menu, but also potentially allowing it to cure cancer.
In his words, “if you have synthetic biology companies with nanotechnology, then you can talk about embedding computing capabilities into biological systems and vice versa. These two together would actually cure cancer (…) because you have machines that are small enough that they can take over the biological processes and basically use your immune system to attack any cancer.”
#5 Blockchain
Last but not least is the blockchain technology that Hoskinson argues “could be used to create the rules in this new world order,” as it allows humans to “take something that you would usually enforce through a social consensus and then treat it as if it’s immutable and cannot be violated.”
“So there really isn’t a notion of a lack of compliance and punishment, where and when you can do these types of things. And that’s the superpower of blockchain technology – it lives in that space of a synthetic natural law where it can take things that we would like to have, encode them in just the right way, and then suddenly make those things immutable.”
Interconnectedness as the future
As Hoskinson concluded, these are extension or regulation technologies because they “extend or regulate us,” and they are all interconnected. As such, he believes that they can facilitate “equality by design and guarantees of rights” because the protocols can enforce them without being influenced by any organization.
Finally, he voiced his opinion that “if left undisturbed,” the Cardano ecosystem had enough resources to one day be able to facilitate and run a national identity system, a payment system, or a central bank digital currency (CBDC) with principles that protect the individual.
Watch the entire video below:
