Futurology - What will society look like in 2040?
Preface
I am always fascinated about thinking of the future and how the world will look like at certain points of time. I believe that society is currently very close to hitting the brink of an exponential growth curve in which we will achieve the singularity. If you want to read a preface to this post of what the world will look like in 2040, then checkout my prior post about where we are currently in 2018 and where we are heading by 2030. According to Wikipedia, the technological singularity is the hypothesis that the invention of artificial super intelligence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization. Here is my prediction of what growth we will see by 2040, which is awfully close by and here are two great resources (FutureTimeline; SubReddit r/Futurology) from which I got much of my information as well as passion and creativity for futurology as a cyberpunk, Enjoy!
Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning Developments
I believe that the work that will have been done by 2015-2040 on Neural Networks, Machine Learning & Deep Learning will bring AI research to a level of achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Neuroscientists, Engineers, Programmers & other parties involved in collaboration of the development of AI technology will have collaborated models and mapped out much of how the Human Brain works and will have reverse-engineered those models into AI research and software to make Functioning self-learning AI. These developments in AGI will be the bedrock of other major innovations in all other industries for centuries and millennia to come and will mark the beginning of the singularity.
Major Disruptions in the Global Workforce
I anticipate that advances in AI, robotics and automation will heavily disrupt around 35-50%+ of the global workforce by 2040. I believe that this disruption will lead to not only high unemployment but also greater income inequality and unequal wealth distribution. It’s the beginning of 2018 and we have already witnessed a significant amount of automation & technological innovation starting and becoming further developed for decades to come:
Everyday Technologies in our Lives
- Autonomous, Electric Vehicles & Ridesharing becoming Mainstream – To start reversing Co2 emissions that are the primary cause of global warming & to provide full transportation safety (no human error) as well as be conservative through ridesharing for the most part (with the exception of those who prefer owning their own EVs or traditional Gas-run vehicles (however, gas-run vehicles which humans can drive will be in decline on the road due to heavy regulations from transportation safety & environmental protection agencies and auto manufacturers switching to the new model of EV & autonomous)
- Delivery Drones – For mail delivery (for the minority of those who haven’t opted out of such primitive mediums) and for package delivery
- Self-Check Out in Retail – Walk in, buy what you need & walk out (no need to stop, wait in line for a register and be social with those pesky cashiers) (Rising level of antisocial people in this time period as people stop connecting and don’t know how to interact with other people in reality but more in the virtual reality worlds)
- Virtual Reality Entertainment – Music, Video, Gaming & Other Social Media dominate the entertainment industries in terms of the medium. VR is the next revolution after the TV.
- Clean Energy – Mainly Solar, with some degrees of Wind, Hydroelectric, Biofuel etc. depending on geographic region (To start reversing Air pollution, Global Warming trends that are starting to heavily affect us – and are causing glacier meltdowns in arctic & polar regions which are resulting in rising sea levels and are making penguins, polar bears & other animals which thrive in the poles & arctic geographies endangered species’)
- High Speed Rail, Cloud-High Skyscrapers & Other Developments in Infrastructure for Smart Cities – Cities of 2040 will be very convenient, highly automated and will have skyscrapers that reach the clouds and raise the bar of how high the skylines can go. Travel will be done through high speed rail to go quickly from city to city and state to state. The Smart Cities will have clean energy and smart grids as a big aspect for energy storage, conservation and usage.
Robotization of Manufacturing Industries
Auto, Defense & other industry manufacturers will be using robots for production. The only humans will be the ones who perform routine maintenance or software upgrades on the robots.
The Rise of Biotech & Fintech Conglomerates
I believe the lines will start to become blurred with Big Pharma & Silicon Valley as well as Wall Street & Silicon Valley as we have advanced technologies disrupt medicine, pharmaceutical industries & traditional finance. I believe we can see many mergers between tech and companies of different industries. Fintech Conglomerates will replace traditional Investment Banks, Wealth Management Firms & Hedge Funds as we will have Robo-Advisors, AI, High-Frequency Trading Algorithms & AI Banking Advisors. I believe that the Fintech workforce will primarily consist of algorithms, bots & AI and that senior executives will enjoy the luxury of having substantially less payroll costs (save the costs for investing in and maintaining this technology) and be coming close to having fully automated Fintech companies. I believe a similar story will play out for Biotech executives in that they will start to automate many of their pharmacists, researchers, scientists, doctors, etc with Artificially Intelligent Robots as their primary workforce which can conduct R&D much faster and cheaper to develop lifesaving, life enhancing medicine & biometric tracking devices (Think Fitbit but 100* more intelligent and one that tracks & analyzes a lot more bio-data).
High Flying Executives & UBI Tax
The executives who control these Smart Robotics & AI capital, essentially owning Near-Fully Automated Workforces and Conglomerate Monopolies will enjoy luxuries of far more wealth and political influence. These executives will enjoy more leisure time because their AI can handle most of the workload and the executives will simply have administrative and political duties to adhere to. Governments will require these elite executives to pay a Universal Basic Income (UBI) Tax to support the unemployed populace. The elite executives will not be happy with the UBI tax because it will consist of the majority of their expenses, however, they will lobby or bribe political officials to lower the UBI tax rate. Some might succeed, some will not, but it won’t matter. These executives will enjoy hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars in revenues from their tech monopolies or conglomerates and will be able to comfortably afford the UBI tax.
A New Decentralized Economy
Unemployment won’t carry the stigma in 2040 that it may carry in today’s age, because of the sheer number of workers who will be displaced by AI and automation but it will carry the burden of lower wealth, status and quality of life for a significant percentage of the populace.
However, while we will see disruptions in the economy at large and for typical day jobs, a significant percentage of ambitious and creative people will have the ability to figure out how to supplement their UBI with alternative sources of passive income or will have made investments earlier which have led them to a lump sum or fortune of wealth to enjoy. Those who made smart investments in – for example, cryptocurrencies, security tokens, stocks, ETFs or other stakes/shares in blockchain tech, biotech, fintech, AI, robotics & IOT in the decades prior will enjoy wealth or dividends from these investments. In other words, people who invested in the technologies that would render them obsolete in the workforce, ironically make out successfully.
Tech-Savvy People willing to become freelance entrepreneurs will make investments and become content producers to gain passive income from investments in automation or content production in the decentralized economy where they will be rewarded.
** I believe we will see a clash between the decentralized economy with the centralized economy. Conglomerates and Government will not be happy with the decentralized economy cutting into their profits (with the promises of data privacy, trustless transactions and monetization that the decentralized economy with blockchain tech and cryptocurrencies provide to people) however, neither the government nor big business will be able to stop this revolution because there will be such high supply as well as demand for these technologies. It will also help balance out the income inequality caused by automation and supplement UBI to a certain extent for a decent percentage of people.
Entertainment, Entertainers & Entertainment Industry Booms
We will see actors, artists and DJs, athletes, directors, producers or any other professionals in the Entertainment Industry do very well as they can entertain a mostly unemployed populace. We will see a disruption in entertainment industries also with people now having an option of going to live performances – should they have the wealth to do so, or tuning in through their VR devices (the performance of which will be much higher, and the cost of which will be much lower at this time). Entertainment will start to be mostly tuned in through VR devices as opposed to traditional TVs or Laptops. We will see Computers which are Augmented Reality (AR) and Holographic compatible/capable so they will be able to command their computers much like how Robert Downey Jr. does as Tony Stark in the Iron Man series.
Other Notable Developments by 2040
- Deforestation of much of the Tropical Rainforests around the world
- Humans just start to truly reverse trends of two centuries of carbon emissions but it is too late and Global Warming has started to take its true toll in regards to rising Sea Levels, Meltdown of Polar Glaciers & Worsening Droughts in certain regions as well as High levels of Air Pollution in certain cities. After years of politicization and banter, American Gov’t finally declares Global Warming a threat to National Security (Lagging behind the private sector and other countries such as China – which dominate production of solar energy, clean energy as well as EVs and Solar Panels)
- Deep Sea Mining – for fuel and minerals on the OceanFloor due to advances in robotics
- Genomic Revolution in Healthcare – spurred by investments in AI and Biotech
- Cigarette Smoking Rates have largely declined and Tobacco Products are extremely hard to purchase – People who do use nicotine are mainly using Vaping Devices
- Nanotech Revolution – Nanotechnology is being used heavily in Materials Manufacturing and revolutionizing agricultural, molecular engineering, biotech & energy industries
- China and India overtake the US economy by GDP causing Geopolitical shifts
- Fusion Power becomes commercially available
- Life Expectancy Rates are increasing and People are Living Longer due to Healthcare & Biotech Advances
- Transhumanism Movement Starts to Take off – Where man starts to merge with machine via implants for advanced ways of learning, increasing IQ, combatting disease & communicating with the internet (These implants are expensive and only available to a select minority/elite)
- Missions to the Moon are being conducted by Tesla and NASA’s joint partnership for near future inhabitance and colonization
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Good content!
Thank you !! @lainelovinit
Your'e welcome :)
Sometimes I afraid about the future.
Same @anggreklestari
The reason why I didn't want to imagine the future world.
I look at it as equally unnerving as well as exciting and innovative.
This is my favorite part of what you write, it is very insightful and forward thinking my friend.
However, while we will see disruptions in the economy at large and for typical day jobs, a significant percentage of ambitious and creative people will have the ability to figure out how to supplement their UBI with alternative sources of passive income or will have made investments earlier which have led them to a lump sum or fortune of wealth to enjoy. Those who made smart investments in – for example, cryptocurrencies, security tokens, stocks, ETFs or other stakes/shares in blockchain tech, biotech, fintech, AI, robotics & IOT in the decades prior will enjoy wealth or dividends from these investments. In other words, people who invested in the technologies that would render them obsolete in the workforce, ironically make out successfully.
Love this brother!!! What awesome content! I have to come back to read through it all, love the passion you got.
Thanks @bprange :D
Great post! I find more mainstream adoption of AI and the growth of larger megacities along with an increasing interest in transhumanism to be among the most fascinating topics going into the future. It's crazy to think about how exponentially the world has changed just within my own lifetime! I can still remember being a kid learning to type for the first time on a bulky iMac G3!
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Great post, but I disagree with something.
Why would we allow the means of production of necessary things to remain in private hands? That would be an incredible waste of potential. You assume that the economy should continue to exist, that money should continue to exist. Why?
Just imagine that humanity got together and built all the production facilities, for everything from food and water to electronics and clothes, that it needed in order to satisfy the needs of every human, not just every human who could afford to pay for it. No thought to cost. It's possible simply because we have the materials and know-how to get it done. We don't need to pay each other with made up currencies just to get stuff built, because we're one human family.
Automation should free us, not impoverish us.
@proditor thank you for reading my post, being the first to comment and upvote first off, That means alot to me!
To answer your question which is great, I want to remind you of something I said, "I believe we will see a clash between the decentralized economy with the centralized economy."
I think that as long as Capitalism, Big Business and Government exist we will have some sort of centralization of money and power which will cause income and power inequality. Now what you are suggesting is great and utopian, however it might also be borderline Karl Marx socialism. Now while I think that what you are suggesting is possible and I hope it happens, realistically, I don't see that happening by 2040. I see it's conceivable that it could happen towards the end of the century or at the start of the 22nd century. By 2040, I do believe, we will see disruptions to the traditional economy we have today and we will see decentralized models clash with preexisting centralized ones.
So, I do see exuberantly wealthy elite forming and clinging on to their power and wealth. I also see a shift where they will be taxed in the form of a UBI for ppl. I also think that ppl will start finding other means of making income through the blockchain/cryptocurrencies and decentralized economies that exist by then. I believe ppl who invest in disruptive technologies (ie. Blockchain, Crypto, Security Tokens, Biotech, AI, Fintech, IOT, Robotics) or who own stakes in them little or small will do fine. The rest will have UBI. And I really do think the income inequality gap will widen. I think the transition period to the singularity and shortly thereafter will not be smooth by any means. And I see it all as a transition happening between changing philosophical, political and economic ideas of how society will run. I do think money will still be the bedrock for how humans survive and purchase things whether it be a national cryptocurrency or decentralized cryptocurrencies. I also think the stock market will exist. So I see both the stock market and the crypto markets growing & competing during this period by 2040. What you are suggesting may come true by 2100, but I think by 2040 (22 yrs from now) we will not have advanced that much as a populace and will be making painful transitions to a hopefully better world post-singularity.
Thanks for such post, I crave for anticipations. However I have a much more pessimistic vision. Therefore you sound to me very optimistic, maybe utopic :).
Especially about two things, climate change and UBI.
Climate: of course you do mention that when reaching a toll, could happen that we finally react, albeit indeed probably too late. This will have already lead to unforeseen, catastrophical and unreversible major crisis of various forms. This might even lead to impossibilities to continue important scientific researches. In a world dominated by corporations with their elites living cut off in ivory towers, I think it's very unlikely that any global action would be taken.
Ubi: I have a hard time seeing such (social) tax/law/system like the UBI to be put in place in, again, a world ruled by ultra-supra-riches who I cannot imagine suddenly starting to have more interest towards the population than today. I could only say that revolution(s) could initiate changes, but I don't believe it can happen in the shape we know, especially with a society that will be (is) constantly hypnotized by extremely advanced forms of entertainment, consumerism and legal drugs. Not questionning anything.
To prevent riots and other forms of revolts, we could see a re-apperance of public and bloody games like the Roman's circus as a valve for an angry, bored and driveless society.
Also I find fusion power and longer life expectation available of commerciable for (almost) every one, rather utopic. So long everything will be driven by profit, people's life expectancy and nature won't be a priority.
So yeah I do agree with most of the rest of your post, just with a slightly duller veil. Lots of stuff I'd like it to happen, some really not :D I dig a lot the passages about the future of cryptos because not much sci-fi stories had foreseen such revolutions (that could be the one) and it's a fresh factor to anticipations.
In addition, I'd also see more wars, more obscurantism, intelligence levels lowering, disparition of good orthograph, big parts of the planet extremelly polluted, unliveable,.. oh well, the usual dystopic, I stop there!
Well, I synthesized to the minimum, I guess we could always find other arguments!
Thanks again.
@haedre Thank you for reading and I'm glad you enjoyed and commented! :D
I appreciate some of your feedback and will make some edits to include some points you mentioned that I missed and let me counter some of your points that I may disagree with to an extent and explain why:
Climate Change: I don't think I emphasized this enough and will go back and make edits. I think that we would have caused irreparable damage to our environment, polar regions, glacier meltings, marine ecosystem devastation, air pollution so bad (people have to wear hazmat gas mask respirators), forests, etc. by this time. I also think private sector will be leading the change (not out of prerogative to do the right thing ofc, but bc there won't be any more oil and gas pumping out of the rigs since we would have consumed almost the entirety of these nonrenewable energy resources by then) because they know they have no other choice and need to create renewable energy, smart grids for the new smart cities that start getting built by this time. There will be alot of authorities from both government and private sector driven by AI intelligence and innovations to make major infrastructural investments and changes to the new clean energy economy.
Resource Wars: I also think that you are right and that there will be resource wars fought over water and perhaps food during this time. I think because of human consumption and global warming-caused droughts, these basic factors will become scarce, but I also believe we will start working on very innovative solutions in 2040 to solve these problems by 2050. These innovative solutions will be the desalination of Oceanic or Salt Water into Fresh Drinking Water and the biotech-agricultural industry will start producing artificial or Genetically Modified meat, vegetables, fruit, grains, etc for the food shortage.
Economics - Now that I'm thinking more critically about the economics (I was thinking a little more abstractly when I was writing the article) of how the future will play out in terms of money, crypto and UBI - it's very hard for me to wrap my head around and I must admit I am getting a bit confused because of the complexity of it all. I am not sure if the unemployment rates I provided were a little extreme but I do imagine us eventually hitting unemployment rates like that in the near term so long as the singularity happens and humans do not merge with robots by this point (pre-transhumanism). I believe that employment will start to surge once the transhumanism movement fully takes off, but this will be towards the end of the century by 2080 or 2090 because transhumanism implants will not be available to the mass population nor will it be a perfect science by this time (there will be volunteers however, willing to experiment with themselves in this matter) because of the risks and complications involved but moreso because acceptance levels of transhumanism will not take off by this time. I can not anticipate as of now what the nature of the currency will be, but I imagine we might have a few cryptocurrencies (I do not know if they will be centralized or decentralized - this depends on how government intervention plays out). Then again if humans are mostly unemployed and if wealth inequality is so great then perhaps money will not have any meaning as most people will possess very little. This depends on how fast automation and the singularity play out and how quickly after we adapt by resorting to Transhumanism.
Economics and money is the most complex factor that I am really uncertain of what could happen. I do know one thing for sure however, and that is that we will need to rethink our economy and how the population is taken care of as well as how resources are accounted for. This is why I believe by 2080, capitalism and current models of economics will not apply.
Trans-humanism: I believe that towards the latter end of the century, trans-humanism will enable humans to start working again, because they will be millions of times smarter with their new cyborg and AI implants, and they will be on the same level as AI. I also think that "work" and the economy will be defined much differently by 2080 or 2090 then it is now, and people will all have resources to support themselves without work. In fact by this time I think that capitalists will not be in the picture because they will have been either assassinated by the rebel movements or governments who saw them as a threat. For now, humans will have more purpose, and since they are as smart, energetic and resourceful due to their transhuman properties, they will work together to preserve and proliferate humanity. In fact they will be seeking to fully colonize the moon and begin trips to Mars to begin it's terraformation. They will also begin other galactic missions and ventures into deep space. Asteroid Mining will start during this period as well as water extraction missions on Mars, Venus, Neptune as well as the moons of Saturn and Jupiter.
Geopolitics & Governance: I also believe that geopolitics will become ever more complicated and that most nations will be under one mega government branch, which might be the United Nations. There will also be alot of changes to borders and some countries may merge with others becoming bigger or divide with differing ideas in a rapidly advancing tech-driven world. There may be geopolitical wars and civil wars around power struggles in addition to resource wars.
What do you think about blockchain technology for voting in a kind of direct-democracy? If by any chance people get a bit more responsibilised, educated (and I am not just talking about learning how to make profit) and involved in the society, blockchain would allow such thing (that wouldn't in today's centralized and rather opaque system).
I think it has the power to do so and I hope it does bro. I really want a better world for humans but the stark reality is that right now society is not as progressive and forward thinking as us steemians want it to be.
But, I am really grateful I found this community. I never blogged before or shared my beliefs on all this sort of stuff. And I am finding true connection with my beliefs, with yours and other steemians who believe in decentralization and who are deeply dissatisfied with the current system and the direction we are heading in. It was all kind of pent up before, but now I have a medium to voice my concerns and find like-minded people from across the world who share the basic principles of PLUR.
I hope this platform takes off along with decentralization within this decade, cause we really need some change. And we need to inspire others to start thinking much more open-mindedly and progressively. I believe with blockchain tech, we have the means for a direct-democracy. Now it is just the attitude of the silent majority to set things in motion.