How I think things will be in the future, based on the approximate year I think they’ll come true.

The value in this exercise is not being correct, it is learning to self-correct and think deeply about the trajectory of the world—and what factors really determine progress. Most of these will be wrong, but simply being aware of how and why will (hopefully) allow me to reason better about the future.

‍By 2030

AI

• AI will surpass human capabilities in all healthcare diagnostic tasks
• AI will be smarter than a Nobel Prize winner across biology, programming, math, engineering, writing and have access to all the interfaces available to a human working virtually, including text, audio, video, mouse and keyboard control, and internet access
• AI-powered personal assistants became capable of generating entire new movies
• AI will automate AI research, compressing decades of progress into single years
• AI will displace up to 30 percent of our workforce resulting in 400 to 800 million job losses

Geopolitics

• Ukraine will emerge victorious in its conflict with Russia or the Trump administration will reach a ‘better than status quo’ negotiated position. This might involve Ukraine ceding some amount of territory
• American democracy will endure after the most positively consequential US presidential term in history (Trump)

Climate/Energy

• Global commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions will reach a political tipping point, leading to all major countries aligning to limit global warming to between 1.5℃ and 2℃
• Big oil will have begun facing a significant decline in demand due to the rise of electric vehicles, leading to drastic price reductions and a ripple effect on the rest of the global economy

Technology

• Self-cleaning fabrics will be created, leading to always clean clothing that doesn’t require washing
• Houses without power sockets will begin to be created, instead relying on wireless power transmission
• Non-human intelligence (aliens) will be confirmed, leading to profound changes in everything from technology to spirituality
• The United States will have approved full-self driving in all 50 states

By 2035

AI

• AI-enabled biology will compress 50-100 years of progress into 5-10 years
• AI-driven healthcare interventions will reach even the poorest countries, leading to significant health improvements
• AI will begin to significantly enhance the provision of government services, the legal and judicial systems, and civic engagement
• Powerful AI will now be unconstrained by physical and practical limits, leading to what many believe is the first true AGI
  • AGI will not be created with current model (LLM) architecture
• The majority of humans will now work in jobs not yet conceived as a result of the fundamentally cognitive-labour-replacing nature of AI
• AI will simultaneously centralize and decentralize power across the world. Individual’s, businesses’s, nonprofit’s, nation’s, will have their own AI and ultimately bio and robotics capability. Each AI will aim to achieve the goals of its owner. Concurrently, AI systems will begin to make critical decisions with overt political implications: who receives a loan, a job, a place at college, parole; who gets seen by a senior physician, how public money gets spent, where military forces are assigned, etc. etc.
• AI-generated streaming content will become mainstream

Demographics

• Developed world countries like China, Japan, and Russia will begin to face a significant decline in population due to aging demographics

Climate/Energy

• Australia will fully decarbonise its electricity supply with solar, wind, and hydro-power
• The price of renewable energy and battery storage will continue to fall making wind and solar the de facto source of energy generation globally
• Energy storage systems will become widely accessible to households, enabling individual homes to power themselves independent and reduce their reliance on centralized energy grids

Economy

• An increasing % of the world’s savings is being generated in Asia (China/India), meaning more demand for financial services and investment opportunities.
  • This may also have profound implications for the USD as the global reserve currency, potentially impacting the United States’ soft power and most certainly ability to manage debt
  • We could also see a new global currency created as a result of the changing formation of global financial power
• A growing middle class across India, South East Asia, and Africa will create a second wind to globalisation, with demand for products and services growing exponentially
• Half of America's shopping malls will close as a result of changing retail dynamics, including online retail penetration and low-cost last mile delivery (including drones)
  • This will be a net positive as the stock is converted to housing, helping ease the housing affordability crises
• House prices in the UK will become so unaffordable that the majority of people are forced to take rented accommodation
• China will begin the first global experiment (as a result of automation and aging population) with Universal Basic Income funded primarily through the portion of business revenue generated through industrial, commercial, and agricultural automation
• Other developed world economies, like the US, will start to implement Universal Basic Income

Culture

• Depression will overtake heart disease to become the worlds leading global disease burden (years lived in a state of poor health and years lost due to premature death)
• Junk food/soda/meat/diary will begin to drastically decline as the world shifts to healthier and plant-based alternatives
• We will have another global pandemic, this time 5x more lethal than COVID-19
• Polyamorous relationships will begin to become more accepted
• Sexual relationships with robots will become commonplace

Technology

• Smart toilets equipped with health monitoring technology will become commonplace, leading to significant advances in personal health awareness and societal dynamics
• Recreational marijuana will become legal in all 50 US States and half of all foreign countries
• Forest fires will be reduces to less than 5% of current levels using infrared drone monitoring
• At least 5 moon bases will be established as scientific outposts
• Cybersecurity threats will escalate significantly, with advanced autonomous malware
• Residential Realtors will go the way of travel agents and video stores
• The number of service robots worldwide will reach 1 billion
• Ectogenesis – the growth of mammalian embryos in artificial environments — will become mainstream and help the world arrest the drastic decline in birthrates
• Chocolate will becoming an increasingly rare luxury with pricing soaring as a result of drought, soil depletion, and diminishing harvests in Africa (responsible for two-thirds of the world’s cocoa production)
• Stem cell pharmacies will be a fairly common experience in the developed world
• Education will be the killer app for VR. VR and machine learning will open new doors to enhancing the learning experience by introducing immersive environments that enable reusable and cognitively easy ways of digesting content.
  • ML tools allow for more efficient utilization of VR—and augmented reality—for both teaching and learning, by providing insights into difficult topics, and by observing and analyzing the learning process for each individual (e.g. recommender systems for learning).
  • Competition among educational institutions increases as a global market for delivering more sophisticated training resources grows.
  • University campuses start to become a fashion of the past and educational certification (diplomas, etc.) is starting to be replaced by gamified VR/AR tests that bigger organizations will develop internally or with specialised vendors, under stringent confidentiality agreements.
• Synthetic biology will begin to revolutionise food production and healthcare
• Augmented reality and mixed reality will become as common as smartphones
• Over 50% of traditional colleges will have collapsed, and micro colleges will emerge, requiring less than six months of training and apprenticeship to switch professions
• Over 10% of all global transactions will be conducted via cryptocurrencies
• Space tourism will become a reality with regular flights to space hotels
• Over 20% of all new construction will be 3D printed building
• Next-generation search engines are expected to integrate the physical world into their functionalities
• Human cognitive capacities will begin to be augmented through nonbiological technology (BCI)
• Digital simulations will have entirely replaced traditional clinical trials for drug development
• Decentralized 3D printing will revolutionise manufacturing and reduce global emissions
• Quantum computing will become mainstream, with far-reaching implications including the ability to explore frontiers in mathematics and particle physics and widespread security concerns

By 2040

Geopolitics

• The European Union will diverge into a core and periphery as a result of the one-size fits all currency not suiting the economic prosperity of all nations

Economy

• India will become the world’s third largest economy (alongside its status as the largest populous) leading to it becoming a true 3rd superpower

Culture

• Virtual travel is expected to become a mainstream alternative to physical tourism
• Individuals will become far more comfortable providing data provided it is used for positive means (like healthcare) and not just being shown advertisements or being the product
• The institution of marriage will decline to 30% of the married population
• Industralised animal agriculture will be largely replaced by plant-based and cultured meat alternatives

Technology

• Autonomous vehicles will make up 100% of new global car production
• Reliable prevention and treatment of nearly all naturally occurring infectious diseases
• Cancer death rates will decline significantly, leading to the potential elimination of most cancer
• Genetic disease prevention and cure through advanced embryo screening and gene editing technologies will become mainstream
• Genetic prevention of mental illness through embryo screening will become possible
• 3D printed drugs will become reality
• Manufacturing jobs will be virtually extinct
• Holographic telepresence will be possible
• Epigenetic rejuvenation therapies will be accessible, allowing humans to begin reversing the aging process
• EV market share will approach 100% in all major countries
• Dynamic clothing will be introduced: almost any of its characteristics - color, pattern, lighting, transparent tissue (and in advanced models even cut and length) - can be changed.
• Transcontinental flights will be completed in three hours
• Service industries will become predominantly automated by 2040
• Biometric payments will be introduced, creating the safest and most widely used payment method by 2040
• Electric-powered aircraft will increase air travel affordability and accessibility
• The metaverse will reach a market size of $5 trillion
• Cloud Crafts - towers capable of generating rain and snow clouds - will become technologically feasible
• Smart furniture—that adapts to the shape and size of your body—will become mainstream
• Deep Ocean mining operations will be a fully mature industry
• Traditional police forces will be largely automated, resulting in staffing levels dropping to less than 50% of current numbers
• Over 90% of restaurants will adopt 3D food printers
• Hyper-individualised medicines, manufactured on demand will replace traditional pharmaceuticals
• High-quality, low-cost food production through vertical agriculture and lab-grown meat will be mainstream
• Medical nanorobots will begin to be introduced, allowing cellular-level maintenance and repair throughout our bodies
• Average human lifespans will be 100 years

By 2045

Geopolitics/politics

• The United States will remain the dominant global power
• Democracies will improve significantly in management and policy effectiveness by adopting evidence-based governance practices

Economy

• Spending patterns will shift significantly from goods to services as the global middle class becomes wealthier

Demographics

• White people will be a minority in the United States

Culture

• Material abundance will reduce violence and crime, leading to a more peaceful world

Technology

• Human lifespans will begin to double to 150 years
• Fusion power (the safe kind of Nuclear) will become commercially available
• Orbital solar power will become commercially available
• Robots will automate ~95% of labor tasks: this includes fully automated waste collection in streets and parks, robotic cleaners in offices and hotels, robot security patrols, robots for grocery and other deliveries
• 3D bioprinting of human organics will transition from clinical trials to wider use

By 2050

Economy

• Africa will become a core economic pillar of the global economy

Demographics

• The global middle-class will reach two-thirds of the worlds population

Culture

• Self-employment will reach 25% of the workforce
• 45-55 year old parents will become mainstream (remember: 100 years ago, the age of 35 100 years ago for having babies extremely uncommon)

Technology

• Real-time fact-checking technology will revolutionise information accuracy and transparency
• Universities in their current form are projected to cease to exist
• Electricity consumers located in the same apartment or belonging to the same owner can exchange the energy accumulated in their batteries through direct communication with each other
• Artificial retinas and other visual prostheses can match the visual quality of a real human eye

By 2060

Technology

• Genetically engineered ‘designer’ babies will become mainstream for the wealthy
• Smart clothing will be a trillion-dollar industry
• Handheld MRI scanners and other expensive medical devices will be available, making universal access to healthcare ever-greater
• Mars will have a permanent human presence

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