British Telecom futurologist says AI entities will win Nobel prizes by 2020

British Telecom futurologist Ian Pearson predicts that people will probably make conscious machines smarter than humans sometime between 2015 and 2020. According to BT 2005 Technology Timeline (Pearson was one of its authors), in some ten to twenty years such AI entities will be given vote, gain PhD or win Nobel Prizes.

Here are some other BT predictions for years to come:

2006-2010: Synthetic voices pop band gets in top 20
2006-2010: AI chatbots indistinguishable from people by 95 % of population
2006-2010: First artificial electronic life
2008-2012: Mood-sensitive home décor
2011-2015: AI Entity passes A Level
2011-2015: 25 % of TV celebrities synthetic
2013-2017: AI technology imitating thinking processes of the brain
2013-2017: AI teachers get better results than most human teachers
2016-2020: Electronic pets outnumber organic pets
2016-2020: Electronic life form given basic rights
2016-2020: AI Member of parliament
2020s: AI Entity gains PhD
2020s: AI Entity awarded Nobel Prize
2020s: AI entities given vote
2030s: Robots physically and mentally superior to humans
2050s: Humanoid robots beat England football team (naah, this ain’t never gonna happen!)