A leading futurist who accurately predicted the rise of the iPhone has now set the date for humanity's most phenomenal breakthrough yet, the ability to cheat death. Ray Kurzweil, a former Google engineering director, has long been known for his bold predictions about the future of technology and humanity. His forecasts often focus on the convergence of biotech, AI, and nanotechnology to radically extend human capabilities. Now, Kurzweil claims humanity is just four years away from its most transformative leap yet, achieving'longevity escape velocity' by 2029. While some experts remain skeptical, Kurzweil's influence in Silicon Valley ensures his predictions continue to shape the broader conversation around life extension and the future of human health.

Humanity is on the verge of being replaced by a race of superhuman hybrids with powers only dreamt about in movies. Herbert Sim, a millionaire tech investor and futurist in London, has begun pouring his wealth into the study of transhumanism - the enhancement of humans through science and technology. At that point, Sim claims that the human race will essentially be obsolete as these real life'X-Men' make it impossible for regular people to match their abilities. The brainwaves are projected onto a computer which then reads and turns them into actions. Sim said it's one of the first steps in'upgrading' humanity, allowing this new race of mutants to live longer and defeat diseases.

Next year may be the year of the robot lover. While many increasingly fear automation in the workplace, some futurists predict the machines will come for our love lives in 2025. This new year marks the date futurist Dr Ian Pearson anticipated humanity'will start to see some forms of robot sex appearing in high-income, very wealthy households.' And the physics and math PhD, who has boasted of having an 85 percent accuracy rate for his forecasts, argues women might overtake men in the adoption of sex robots by 2025 -- in part, because they already have a technological head start. 'Vibrators have been around for over a century,' Dr Pearson noted, 'but now the vibrant sex toy industry doesn't just make standalone devices, but teledildonic devices that bring all the fun and functionality of computing and networks to sex too.' First conceived in 1975, 'teledildonics' has become the technical term of art for mechanical sex toys that operate remotely, whether via the internet or otherwise.

Forget smartwatches - in just five years time the next generation of Brit teenagers could be head-to-toe in AI-powered wearable tech, according to a new report. Scientist and leading futurist, Andrew Grill, claims that connected clothing will mean trainers will have the ability to'talk' to each other and collate style from other feet on the street. He believes that trainers could have a 5G-enabled chip built inside them, which will communicate to other people walking past. They'll hold data on your individual style, your preferences, budget and lifestyle, and collect insights on what new'looks' similar shoppers are trying out. Mr Grill told MailOnline: 'Because standalone 5G can connect more devices, it means that not only will it connect more people with phones, it can connect more things.

From being buried above ground in a'mushroom suit' to downloading loves ones onto a computer, the funeral is about to change forever. Technologies such as artificial intelligence and even genetic engineering are going to change funerals and rituals around death forever, experts have told DailyMail.com. Even wakes are poised to change - with virtual reality versions around the corner, and memorials could take the form of glowing fungi spliced with the deceased's DNA. Other technologies hint that death might not be the end, with people hoping to'return' after their funeral. In future, at funerals relatives may be able to talk to their deceased relatives, thanks to AI technology, said Luke Budka, AI strategist at Definition.

Anticipation is a fundamental human cognitive ability that involves thinking about and living towards the future. While language markers reflect anticipatory thinking, research on anticipation from the perspective of natural language processing is limited. This study aims to investigate the futures projected by futurists on Twitter and explore the impact of language cues on anticipatory thinking among social media users. We address the research questions of what futures Twitter's futurists anticipate and share, and how these anticipated futures can be modeled from social data. To investigate this, we review related works on anticipation, discuss the influence of language markers and prestigious individuals on anticipatory thinking, and present a taxonomy system categorizing futures into "present futures" and "future present". This research presents a compiled dataset of over 1 million publicly shared tweets by future influencers and develops a scalable NLP pipeline using SOTA models. The study identifies 15 topics from the LDA approach and 100 distinct topics from the BERTopic approach within the futurists' tweets. These findings contribute to the research on topic modelling and provide insights into the futures anticipated by Twitter's futurists. The research demonstrates the futurists' language cues signals futures-in-the-making that enhance social media users to anticipate their own scenarios and respond to them in present. The fully open-sourced dataset, interactive analysis, and reproducible source code are available for further exploration.

Brits have flocked to Somerset in their thousands this weekend to enjoy Glastonbury Festival in the sun. Elton John and Lana Del Rey among numerous famous faces to perform, with fans eagerly camping out across the humongous field. But amidst a so-called'artificial intelligence (AI) revolution', will Glastonbury always stay the same? Chart-topping artists like Megan Thee Stallion and Lil Nas X are already using the power of virtual reality (VR) to put on a show, with fans watching with just a headset. And ABBA have raked in millions after selling out lifelike'hologram' performances of their younger selves.

Lauren Goode: Alright, I'm gonna ask the question that everyone's wondering about: What is a futurist? Gideon Lichfield: Well, I mean, I think some people imagine it's just, you know, a guy who sits around making predictions about the future, and there are probably some people who do just that. But Noah calls himself an applied futurist by which he means that he studies trends--technological, economic, demographic, political, you name it. And then he works within institutions like the government to help them take those trends into account in their decision-making and their policies. So how should they think about the impact of AI, for instance?

Would you like to live forever? Well, some experts say you might. Last week, a former Google engineer said he believes that humans will achieve immortality within the next eight years. Ray Kurzweil - who has an 86 per cent success rate with his predictions - thinks that advances in technology will quickly lead to age-reversing'nanobots'. While it sounds far-fetched, scientists have been looking for years into ways we can regenerate our cells, or upload our minds to a computer.

CNET will stop publishing articles written entirely by robots after receiving a copious amount of negative attention over the practice during the last few weeks. The affirmation was made on a conference call with editorial employees and executives at CNET's parent company, marketing firm Red Ventures, on Friday, about two weeks after the website Futurist exposed several AI-written articles on financial topics that contained severe, glaring errors. On Friday, CNET's editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo said the publication's use of robots wasn't done "in secret," but was instead done "quietly," and affirmed CNET disclosed their use of artificial intelligence to readers on the affected articles. But that disclosure wasn't initially visible to readers unless they clicked on an article's byline. In most cases, the byline read "CNET Money Staff," and there was no visible affirmation that the story being read was written by a robot.