We Are Only Four Years Away from the Future of Ghost in the Shell. AI Has Caught Up, but What Happened to Cyberbrains?

The other day, I turned on cable television and found Ghost in the Shell playing for the first time in a while.

It is, of course, a landmark of Japanese science fiction anime. I had seen it many times, but when I checked the period in which the story is set, I was surprised all over again.

The story takes place in the 2030s. From where we stand in 2026, we are only four years away from entering that era.

Wait. Are we already that close?

When the work was created, its world seemed like the distant future. Before I knew it, however, we had almost caught up with that future.

So how close has real technology actually come?

AI Alone Has Evolved at an Extraordinary Pace

In the world of Ghost in the Shell, androids indistinguishable from humans walk the streets, brains connect directly to networks, and self-driving cars travel through the city.

AI also converses with people as though it has a mind of its own.

Comparing that world with the reality of 2026 is quite interesting.

Let us start with AI. This may have evolved much as the story predicted.

Today’s LLMs can converse naturally with people, write software, and even engage in specialized discussions. If we consider only conversations through a screen, we are already remarkably close to the world of Ghost in the Shell.

Self-driving technology has advanced as well. Driverless taxis are already operating commercially in the United States and China. They are still limited to certain locations, but the world of science fiction is beginning to become reality.

Robots, however, are a different story.

China has held competitions in which humanoid robots run and demonstrate martial arts-like movements. Even so, they remain a long way from androids that are indistinguishable from humans.

And the technology lagging furthest behind is the cyberbrain.

This is the idea of connecting the brain directly to the internet so that people can communicate and search for information inside their own heads.

Research into implanting electrodes in the brain is apparently progressing, but its current focus is mainly medical, such as enabling people with paralysis to operate computers.

We are nowhere near searching the internet with our minds. Simply moving a cursor with brain signals remains a major challenge.

In the end, software alone has evolved at tremendous speed, leaving the body and brain behind.

The future imagined by Ghost in the Shell is arriving in an unexpectedly patchy form.

What About 2050?

Even if we cannot get there by the early 2030s, what about 2050?

That is 24 years from now.

I think we will have made considerable progress toward androids that look just like humans.

Today’s robots still move awkwardly, but advances in AI are rapidly improving their ability to understand their surroundings and act autonomously.

All that remains is for their mechanical bodies to catch up.

By 2050, it would not be surprising if robots working at hotel reception desks or in stores were almost indistinguishable from humans in both appearance and movement.

Cyberbrain technology, on the other hand, still seems extremely difficult.

The brain is not a computer’s USB port. Reading neural activity and then writing vast amounts of external information back into the brain would create a mountain of technical and medical problems.

Besides, how many people would actually want surgery on a healthy brain simply to connect it to the internet?

Drilling a hole in your skull just because taking out your smartphone is inconvenient hardly seems worth it.

Perhaps It Will Arrive in Time for the 2030s After All

There is, however, an interesting detail in the original Ghost in the Shell manga.

In its fictional history, the invention of a technology called the “self-evolving neurochip” caused computers to advance dramatically, and the resulting ripple effects accelerated science and technology as a whole.

In other words, every technology did not progress gradually at the same pace. A leap in computing accelerated progress in other fields.

It is interesting to compare that idea with the evolution of today’s LLMs.

AI can already write software, support research, and help solve complex problems.

What would happen if AI began to accelerate the discovery of new materials, the design of robots, and even neuroscience research?

Research that once took 10 years might be completed in only a few, and its results could then improve AI and robotics even further.

If such a cycle begins, predicting the future from today’s level of technology will itself become difficult.

Earlier, I wrote that cyberbrain technology might still be difficult to achieve even by 2050.

But when I think about it, the original Ghost in the Shell portrayed exactly this kind of world, one in which advances in computing pull other technologies forward.

Perhaps LLMs are the real-world equivalent of the neurochip imagined back then.

Seen that way, setting the story in the 2030s no longer seems quite so far-fetched.

Four years to go.

It is still difficult to imagine living with a plug in my brain that connects me to the internet. But AI may rapidly accelerate progress in other technologies.

I thought the future of Ghost in the Shell was still far away. Perhaps reality has suddenly begun to catch up.

Then again, even in 2030, I suspect I will still be searching for my smartphone charging cable.