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.