Rodney Brooks: Predictions Scorecard, 2026
My NEW PREDICTIONS
On March 26th I skeeted out five technology predictions, talking about developments over the next ten years through January 1st, 2036. Three weeks later I included them in a blog post. Here they are again.
1. Quantum Computers. The successful ones will emulate physical systems directly for specialized classes of problems rather than translating conventional general computation into quantum hardware. Think of them as 21st century analog computers. Impact will be on materials and physics computations.
2. Self Driving Cars. In the US the players that will determine whether self driving cars are successful or abandoned are #1 Waymo (Google) and #2 Zoox (Amazon). No one else matters. The key metric will be human intervention rate as that will determine profitability.
3. Humanoid Robots. Deployable dexterity will remain pathetic compared to human hands beyond 2036. Without new types of mechanical systems walking humanoids will remain too unsafe to be in close proximity to real humans.
4. Neural Computation. There will be small and impactful academic forays into neuralish systems that are well beyond the linear threshold systems, developed by 1960, that are the foundation of recent successes. Clear winners will not yet emerge by 2036 but there will be multiple candidates.
5. LLMs. LLMs that can explain which data led to what outputs will be key to non annoying/dangerous/stupid deployments. They will be surrounded by lots of mechanism to keep them boxed in, and those mechanisms, not yet invented for most applications, will be where the arms races occur.
These five predictions are specifically about what will happen in these five fields during the ten years from 2026 through 2035, inclusive. They are not saying when particular things will happen, rather they are saying whether or not certain things will happen in that decade. I will do my initial analysis of these five new predictions immediately below. For the next ten years I will expand on each of these reviews in this annual scorecard, along with reviews of my earlier predictions. The ten years for these predictions are up on January 1st, 2036. I will have just turned 81 years old then, so let’s see if I am still coherent enough to do this.