Did The BBC and Sir Clive Get it Right Twenty Years Ago?

Predictions of the future are often laughable when reviewed in the years for which they are made. For example, here in 2026 we neither live on the Moon, nor have …. Did The BBC and Sir Clive Get it Right Twenty Years Ago.

But sometimes they come closer to the reality than others, and in that the BBC Archive have an interesting offering. It’s a Newsnight feature from 2006 looking at the future of artificial intelligence, and since its main interviewee is none other than Sir Clive Sinclair, it’s worth a second look. Watching the video it’s a shock to be reminded that 2006 was twenty years ago, as in so many ways it’s close enough to touch.

Back then we had laptops with Windows or Linux, we had the Web, and HDTV, as we do today. But as we sat in our Ford Focus family car it would be on a Nokia that we rang home; while technically a smartphone it was nothing like the Apple and Android devices that would take the world by storm in the following years. Sir Clive is positive about the development of AI as he saw it then, seeing it as providing knowledge based services such as education or healthcare from your computer.