2050 predictions

Discuss the evolution of human culture, economics and politics in the decades and centuries ahead
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wjfox
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2050 predictions

Post by wjfox »

What do you imagine the world will be like in 2050 – economically, culturally, and geopolitically?

Please give me your (realistic) predictions.

I may use some of them to update our 2050 entry on the timeline. :)
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Ozzie guy
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Re: 2050 predictions

Post by Ozzie guy »

I know you want things for the timeline but in honesty I think we are in the end game.

"The singularity is near" is now a statement that actually rings true and I don't think we can predict past the point of human level AGI.

Progress is so fast that I someone who held on to predictions most often Yuli's as an extreme cope for years could not believe Yuli a week or two ago when he said AI would get 3 magnitudes better this year even after he said some things to me. Now just a week or two later I have been one two punched out by google releasing Proto AGI and a legitimate source saying GPT-4 is significantly better than expected and about to release in a week.

If you were to personify AI improvement an analogy might be the average person is prime Arnold Schwarzenegger and the AI is an anorexic that is about to hit the gym 3 times a week but unknown to almost everyone it has a superpower of having no maximum potential.
weatheriscool
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Re: 2050 predictions

Post by weatheriscool »

Looking at developments in the United states tells me to hold onto our asses as things could get very ugly. The GOP states are becoming fascist craphoels that is literally banning freedom and books as we speak. Our only hope is for Biden to win but I fear that within the next 10-15 years we're going to probably have some extreme violence. I wouldn't be surprised if a secession movement occurs and this country heads into civil war of some short.

I don't believe nasa will get back to mars within the next 20 years. Elon musk is too focused on advancing the very ills of our society instead of focusing on issues of science as he use. Sadly, this could lead to banishment of a lot of the good things in this country that could come medically in the next 20-30 years. I also expect a collapse of the middle class which would also limit who can and who can't enjoy the tech.


Europe and asia will probably fair much better and will probably enjoy unbelievable advancements.
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erowind
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Re: 2050 predictions

Post by erowind »

Assuming the singularity isn't happening, with or without AGI a lot of the world will start looking more like this including now developed nations. AGI alone will not stop the ecological crises, that's something we as people have to desire to do, especially if we misalign AGI's priorities and feed it bad data.



The timeframe of peak oil predictions have been somewhat off as predicting exact timeframes for these sorts of things is rather speculative. Even so, the core reasoning is true. Oil and other fossil fuels aren't just wreaking ecological havoc, their energy return on investment is genuinely decreasing rapidly. There are still going to be places of high consumption though they will become rarer and rarer overtime. In the long term an equilibrium will be reached eventually, hopefully wars don't make life even more challenging than it has to be this century.

This future is not depressing, it's only sad if one cares for consumer life. I look forward to fresh air, organic food and quiet streets where the shrill hell of an overabundance of internal combustion engines are fading into memory. If we're smart about the coming societal transition we needn't give up high technology like MRI machines or computers either. In reality if our priorities are merely aligned to ecological and human need there will still be plenty of resources available for scientific progress and true quality of life improvement. Degrowth and sustainability doesn't need to mean luddism even though these concepts are conflated much of the time.
Last edited by erowind on Sun Mar 12, 2023 10:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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ººº
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Re: 2050 predictions

Post by ººº »

erowind wrote: Sun Mar 12, 2023 9:44 am This future is not depressing, it's only sad if one cares for consumer life.
I'm more pessimistic although I believe that we will recover after a century, definitively in two.
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Bird
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Re: 2050 predictions

Post by Bird »

Already some very interesting responses here.
I'm still not sure I buy into the whole singularity thing. That said, I can't see any future where AI is not widespread and transformative in some ways.
Since this thread is about "Culture, Economics and Politics", I will focus my answer away from specific technologies.

-Many countries have at least trialled some form of UBI. Unless the pace of automation is slower than I expect, I would think there is a permanent UBI (or something like that) in some countries by 2050. Given the USA's aversion to anything vaguely socialist, they adopt this sort of thing later than most Western countries, though eventually follow suit. It is by no means a universal thing in 2050, though, and this economic "transition" is not equally felt across the world.

-One can probably expect self-driving cars to be common by now. For a cultural prediction, I think the number of people who prefer to drive cars themselves will be larger than expected, particularly among the elderly (who at this point are mostly Gen X). Anyone who grows up with it as normal won't want anything different.

-I think some kind of American secession crisis before this date is entirely possible. I can't really see how a civil war would work, though I confess I'm no expert on the subject.

-Australia has, at some point before this, held a successful referendum to become a republic (if the government don't f*ck it up like the last time.)

-The youth of this time period (Born 2025-2035 or so) will think we were crazy for a lot of different things. I think one of the biggest things they'll go "WTF" at is how much plastic was used in nearly everything. They will also criticise us for things none of us predicted that were only stupid/bad in hindsight.

I don't have too much more to say (because A. I like to focus on future technologies and B. Predicting the future is hard lol)
I'm just a bird who escapes his cage to post here sometimes.
Solaris
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Re: 2050 predictions

Post by Solaris »

The singularity won't arrive before 2050. After an AGI is created world leaders will attempt to block progress out of fear of what a singularity might have of consequences to humanity and society.

Most of the workforce has been automated now with the few people left being people that does not have their primary work done through a computer (health care workers, electricians etc.), and will earn a lot more than those occupations have given historically. The transition to UBI is painful and with many errors along the way. First is a situation in which UBI is not implemented as there is still enough people in the workforce. Those automated by AI will enter into either poverty in many western countries or taking on a lower waged job than before (but the supply of those are few so only a fraction makes it through), as governments fail to provide a safety net to so many people. As almost everyone gets automated, the government sees no way out and implements UBI (which will vary in size depending on the country). To make sure those not automated continue to work as previously, every automated citizen (below 50 years) is assigned to a fake job that doesn't exist, and will have to perform minimal effort to be rewarded the monthly UBI check. Capitalism is still present in almost every western state (Denmark, Norway or Sweden might be exceptions), so the Lower class will be dominated by people on UBI, which were not able to prepare economically for an automated future. This will include people who were once wealthy before automation, but didn't keep a large enough buffer due to unhealthy consumption patterns. Things like the stock market will not exist as the mechanisms surrounding it are useless in an AGI world. Instead the upper class are a group of people that are able to generate capital accumulations through mechanisms that do not exist as of today. It will be a closed entry, and the common factor of the upper class is that they had enough capital to begin with to enter this closed loop.

Two kinds of people will exist. Those who live in the real world, and those who live in the artificial world. The age of the person will be one factor, but primarily economic situation. Wealthy people will largely continue to live in the real world, while poor people will choose to live in the fake world. FIVR will exist, but the rules in the real world will be translated into the fake world. NPC's will therefore have human rights, and if violated the person can be prosecuted in the real world for actions done in the fake world. The appeal to engage in the fake world would be to live a richer life than in the real world. But since it's a capitalist society, much of UBI would be used for expenses in the fake world. The implementation is a somewhat better life than in the real world, but not the size of those in the upper class. A few people will choose to not live in any of those scenarios but instead migrate to the few countries that has not automated the work force. This will be countries outside of the West, which due to too much instability was not able to progress further, and instead choose to embrace the old rules. There will be work, but those countries will when the century ends feel like the middle age compared to those that embraced AGI and later ASI (and likely those countries will just be absorbed eventually by those that won the century).

Maybe I should just write a sci-fi novel.
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lechwall
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Re: 2050 predictions

Post by lechwall »

I think we're past the singularity at this point if so it wouldn't be fanciful to suggest topics such as global warming has been fully reversed if this is the case as solving the issue is mainly an intelligence problem. We know how to fix the problem in broad terms replace fossil fuels with renewables and remove excess greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. We even have some prototype technologies which even without AI assistance will solve the problem such as fusion and artificial trees just maybe not in timescales to prevent catastrophic damage by just relying on human intellect alone.
With AI helping us get to the end point quicker who's to say it can't help us design a commercially viable fusion reactor and effective greenhouse scrubbers in no time at all.
Astrada
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Re: 2050 predictions

Post by Astrada »

Post modern civilization destruction.
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funkervogt
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Re: 2050 predictions

Post by funkervogt »

erowind wrote: Sun Mar 12, 2023 9:44 am Assuming the singularity isn't happening, with or without AGI a lot of the world will start looking more like this including now developed nations. AGI alone will not stop the ecological crises, that's something we as people have to desire to do, especially if we misalign AGI's priorities and feed it bad data.



The timeframe of peak oil predictions have been somewhat off as predicting exact timeframes for these sorts of things is rather speculative. Even so, the core reasoning is true. Oil and other fossil fuels aren't just wreaking ecological havoc, their energy return on investment is genuinely decreasing rapidly. There are still going to be places of high consumption though they will become rarer and rarer overtime. In the long term an equilibrium will be reached eventually, hopefully wars don't make life even more challenging than it has to be this century.

This future is not depressing, it's only sad if one cares for consumer life. I look forward to fresh air, organic food and quiet streets where the shrill hell of an overabundance of internal combustion engines are fading into memory. If we're smart about the coming societal transition we needn't give up high technology like MRI machines or computers either. In reality if our priorities are merely aligned to ecological and human need there will still be plenty of resources available for scientific progress and true quality of life improvement. Degrowth and sustainability doesn't need to mean luddism even though these concepts are conflated much of the time.
By 2050, there will be cheap, battery-powered robots that can manage backyard gardens better than humans. Even if Peak Oil has happened and energy is very expensive, it will still make sense to have the robots do this type of work.
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