What do you think is going to change? What tech do you think is going to be introduced? Is it going to be better? Is it going to be worse? Etc
What tech do you think is going to be introduced?
Designer pandemics
5-10 consecutive record breaking hot summers, each of which accompanied by headlines examining that scientists knew it would be bad, but not this bad!
…also some orchestrated drama to act as an excuse to initiate martial law, also acting as the justification to initiate Trump’s 3rd and 4th terms.
You think the guy will live that long?!
These evil fuckers seem to live well into their nineties, and I hate that I just said that. .
True, I’ll grant you that.
It’s really hard to make predictions, but one thing I am certain about is that the pervasiveness of endless entertainment and distractions, in combination with the ease of outsourcing any mental effort to LLMs, will have significant effects on people’s cognitive performance. Especially for young people who have the misfortune of never knowing a world without these things.
Another thing is climate change. At least for those of us living in the west, climate change is still limited to concerning news you read, a bit more heat in the summer, and a few more natural disasters than usual. There are effects, but we’re not really affected yet. In 10 years, our lives will be significantly affected by the increasing heat and even more natural disasters. In other parts of the world, these things are already happening and they will be significantly worse in 10 years.
The problem is LLM use will become de facto standard to get by, and then the corporations that own them will cater output to drive sociopolitical change (for the worse).
I don’t expect things to change much where I live. I haven’t noticed any radical shifts over the past 15 years, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. As for the broader Western world, I think it’ll continue along the trajectory it’s been on for the past decade or so - with the populist right gaining more ground as more people either feel disowned by the left or simply grow fed up with them.
The overall trend will probably still be toward more liberal attitudes, but since the goalposts keep moving, I don’t expect the gap between the two sides to get any narrower.
Beyond that, medicine will improve, technology will improve, and people’s lives will keep improving globally - as they have been, even if it doesn’t always feel that way. I’m not particularly worried about the future. It is what it is, and I’ll deal with it.
5-10 years isn’t exactly that long so I don’t expect more than “more of the same, but worse.” AI will “improve,” but energy demands will not be met to compensate for their draw, consumers will be forced to pay higher electricity bills because of it.
The US will more than likely face a huge economic disruption due to Mango Mussolini. I think most things will just be more of the same though.
its serves putins interest to have us so weaken they cant manage foreign policy much, which gives russia time to recover.
Soviet style mass apartment complexes to combat homelessness but you have to download an app to get in and out, and the app collects and sells all your data. There’s a concierge who does spot checks but they accept bribes in fresh fruit, vegetables and old N64 games.
The internets. Multiple internets, like different streaming services and you need to pay a subscription to each one to access all the websites.
Rail guns. Everyone will have a rail gun. It will be awesome.
So much depends on the simple, rad rail gun
Obviously, solar energy is going to continue to grow. Less obviously, this will have a pretty significant effect on global economics. Countries that previously lacked domestic energy production now will suddenly have it. Countries highly reliant on fossil fuel exports will suddenly be less important. I think this will probably be the most significant change and it’ll be for the better. Obviously global warming problems are on the horizon but over 5-10 years from now it’ll still be comparatively small.
I personally don’t see AI getting much better than it is now because it’s starting to run out of how much it can do with existing data. It’ll continue to be a useful tool for autocomplete and generating low-effort content, but otherwise won’t rearrange society or build us dyson spheres or anything like some seem to expect. I don’t see software technology doing anything especially great for a while and its role in the economy may shrink for the first time really since it started.
More speculatively, I’d guess we’ll see more advancements in DNA and RNA technology that will make medicine more resemble programming rather than throwing stuff at the body and hoping it works. This will progress slowly, but in 5-10 years I think we’ll be looking at some vaguely significant impact on common health problems. Other medical tech will be significant too - knowing someone who takes GLP-1s I think we’ve kind of missed celebrating how big a deal that is for some people.
Society as a whole - who knows, that’s especially hard to predict. I tend to be optimistic that the current reactionary period will fade, having already used up its credibility. I worry though that we’re getting better at exploiting human emotions and that can be used by the powerful to control masses. But when has that ever not been a factor? We’ve only relatively recently emerged from the era of divinely ordained kings, and mass literacy is still quite new in the grand scheme of things. Our society will continue to evolve, a bit inconsistently.
I like this take, I want this one.
I feel like people need to to wake up, just today I saw a 2-3 year old with a mobile phone scrolling what it seemed like TikTok, not to mention all the grown adults doing the same.
Regular people do not seem to know, care or believe how modern tech practices are destroying our lives, countless times I’ve been given the looks when commenting the topic, even when themselves admit how they hate how creepy and weird is that Instagram hears eveything they say and display and ad of their private conversation.
I think that first it has to get much worse for people living inside this bubble for other countries to start addopting european laws on digital rights and so on.
True. Yesterday I saw a gen alpha kid watching YT on his phone on one hand while he was walking his dog with the other. In an urban area with some traffic and occasional cyclists.
I literally cannot think about it. We are tiny boats on the sea of aristocratic whims. I just wanna make sure my kids are fed and try to teach them to be good people. If I start to think about the greater picture, I spiral into very dark places. I constantly remind myself to focus on what I can control.
Not much will change. The US on the other hand may or may not go through major social and legal changes.
Which society? There are many societies on the Earth today, and I predict that some of them will experience relative peace, security and prosperity, while others will experience conflict and instability.
Bad
For society? Largely doom. Innovation is slowing as money is moved more into control than improvement and inequality will grow.
For tech, I think AR will be the next big thing and may get a foothold within 5-10 years. The main barriers right now are minimization and power storage. If technology like graphene super capacitors can finally bloom and computation chips continue to shrink and become more efficient, then I can see a sizable market of people willing to wear AR glasses for a more convenient smart phone experience.
We will have absolute surveillance of everything. Governments will push hard for a centralised digital id and tie that to a centralised banking digital currency, and all ur online activity. They will continue to attempt to kill cash in that process. They will make truly anonymous crypto like XMR completely illegal. Thus the death of financial freedom, freedom of movement, and freedom of speech. They will also use this to limit what u can buy with ur money to fit within some carbon budget (while not having said carbon budget for corporations).
The hedge funds will own everything housing, farming, medical, cars, etc etc. They will continue to squeeze the middle class by raising the prices of these things to ensure nobody can threaten their dominance. You will own nothing and be punished for not being happy about it.
They will restrict ur ability to run software of ur choosing via tpm (that’s why win11 is forcing all manufacturers to have a tpm chip). Thus no more encryption, no more devices without spyware, total technical domination.
It will be marriage of brave new world and 1984 but with mega corporations and billionaires instead of big brother.
Its seeming likely that then the robotic revolution till take off in combination with ai and make humans obsolete in all regards of economic production. This will lead to all sorts of problems. At this point the people serve no purpose but to be consumers but if u can’t afford anything u can’t consume anything and the global economy will collapse. The people will riot but that will be squashed via said surveillance state and u will be given a universal basic income so u can continue being a good little consumer to prop up the now false economy. And that’s how it will be for the rest of history.
At some point in this process the disenfranchised young men will get angry and give up trying to combat with rational argument thus becoming radicalised full fascists. These young angry men will soon realise they can easily rule the world as they are the arbiters of violence (hence why they get sent to war). They will get pissed off and burn it all to the ground. Mass deportations, public executions, etc etc. Then they will come the most important choice of the century. Will the leaders of this new fascist movement write new rules for a new democratic free society or keep on the existing path but with themselves as the new rulers of everything. What choice do u think they will make?
The other possibility is that the people making the AI succeed in making AGI which will almost instantly become ASI. The techbros hubris is to think they can build a god and lock it in a box. I suspect they can build a god but I doubt they can build a box strong enough to contain it. On this path the future is out of the hands of the human race and will now lie entirely within the hands of our mechanical gods. Will the AI drive us to extinction, change us to the point we nolonger recognise ourselves as human or raise us into a utopian future to manifest destiny across the universe. I cannot possibility begin to guess what decision a being a billion times more intelligent than myself will make.