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

1. 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)
2. Delivery Drones – For mail delivery (for the minority of those who haven’t opted out of such primitive mediums) and for package delivery
3. 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)
4. 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.
5. 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’)
6. 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

1. Deforestation of much of the Tropical Rainforests around the world
2. 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)
3. Deep Sea Mining – for fuel and minerals on the OceanFloor due to advances in robotics
4. Genomic Revolution in Healthcare – spurred by investments in AI and Biotech
5. Cigarette Smoking Rates have largely declined and Tobacco Products are extremely hard to purchase – People who do use nicotine are mainly using Vaping Devices
6. Nanotech Revolution – Nanotechnology is being used heavily in Materials Manufacturing and revolutionizing agricultural, molecular engineering, biotech & energy industries
7. China and India overtake the US economy by GDP causing Geopolitical shifts
8. Fusion Power becomes commercially available
9. Life Expectancy Rates are increasing and People are Living Longer due to Healthcare & Biotech Advances
10. 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)
11. Missions to the Moon are being conducted by Tesla and NASA’s joint partnership for near future inhabitance and colonization