How the world will look like in 2050?

Authored by Filip Poutintsev via HackerNoon.com:

More surveillance

Digital monitoring becomes cheaper and easier every year, so there is no reason why the governments and corporations will stop watching us unless we they are forced to do so.

We will most likely see same type of public surveillance and social scoring as they have in China, although it will be far more advanced, and unfortunately we will not be able to do anything to stop it.

First Libertarian (Anarcho-Capital) government will be born

The biggest obstacle in creating new free state is the lack of free land. All the land has been divided between governments long time ago, and they are not willing give any of it, even if it’s purchased from them.

However future technologies will allow people to create artificial islands and other lands masses in terra nullius more cheaply and thus creating place where to settle it’s citizens.

Another obstacle of creating new country is security and lack of fund to support large army. But due to robotization of military as country of 1000 people (if they have necessary funds) will be able to have high power AI controlled arsenal that will be able to withstand an army of another country.

Bitcoin will be the main currency of the world

Some economists say that Bitcoin may take over FIAT after the next global economic crisis, which is predicted to happen in 1–3 years from now. Whether this will actually happen this fast or not, it will surely happen in 10–20 years, and by the year of 2050, people will think of government issued money as something from 20th century socialist era.

Along with Bitcoin few other crypto currencies that have some concrete advantages will survive, but their total use will be less than 10% of the use of Bitcoin.

Super AI that will transcend human intelligence will be created

This is simply a matter of time, as computing power on the machines doubles every 2 years, and by the 2050 (which is 32 years from now) computers will be 30 thousand times faster and smarter than they are today. Smarter than human AI will be probably created much earlier than 2050, and by 2050 the existence of non-human super intelligence will be certain.

People will achieve biological immortality

Simply this will mean that with specific medical treatment scientists will be able to prolong healthy human lifespans until eternity. Of course it will not mean that people will stop dying completely as this treatment will probably not be available to the poorest part of world and our bodies will not become indestructible, and therefore people will still die in result of accidents and other physical trauma.

Radical birth control will be implemented

Overpopulation is a huge problem, and the only cause of it is too high birth rate. In most Western countries birth rate has already dropped below natural preservation rate (which is 2 children per 2 adults) and will continue to do so. But in developing countries it’s still too high and those countries are alone responsible for the overpopulation problem we have. In the future governments will either limit families in having only 1 child or forcefully sterilize people. Children are not the future, they are the past.

Robots will take over our jobs

In couple decades robots will be able to perform all physical tasks that we perform, starting from cutting our hair to serving us at the restaurant and cooking our food. Many jobs are already replaced by robots, so the progress is inevitable.

When the robots will replace human workforce two things will happen.

1st: Most people (especially the poorly educated) will be left out of work and without ability to support themselves. This will lead into the birth of large class of poor people, with no ability to reach even the basic standard of life and at the same time it will give birth to even richer group or people who will together own everything. In rich countries the governments may be able to provide basic income for it citizens, but the poor countries will not have the funds for that. Basically unless you are very smart and educated, your only chance of making a living will be through business. That is renting your apartment, self-driving car or assistant robot to someone else, given that you have the funds to purchase it in the first place.

2nd: The cost of most services and products will be reduced a lot. Currently the biggest portion of the cost of product or service is the cost of labor, as it’s usually the most expensive part. But in the future when machines will do all the work, goods and services will be produced much cheaper. Take for example self-driving taxi. In order to provide taxi services you will no longer have to pay the salary of the driver (which is usually half of the expenses) and therefore the companies will be able to offer rides half of the price.

Most part of physical interactions will be replaced by interaction with robots

By the 2050 we will have advanced human-like assistant, servants and sex robots. They will resemble people so much that by interacting with them we will satisfy our social needs. And interacting with robots will be much easier. They will not have their own will (as their sole purpose will be in serving us), they will not have feelings, they will not get angry, annoyed or tired. Therefore they will be perfect companions as we will no longer have to take into account their needs or wishes and compromise with them. Human-to-human interaction will be reduced to minimum as dealing with other people is extremely hard and difficult.

Most human-to-human interactions will happen in Virtual Reality

Due to growth and excellence of virtual reality more and more of our daily activities will move into virtual world. We will not only play and watch movies there, but also spend our more and more of our free time there by virtual travelling and meeting people using our avatars. Our lives will resemble the movie Surrogates a lot, with only exception that we will not have secondary physical bodies, they will be purely virtual.

The popularity of virtual reality will also grow due to the fact that in real life all sort of accidents can happen to you or you can become victim of a crime. While virtual reality will be perfectly safe, at least for your physical body.

Crossing borders and inter-country travelling will become more difficult.

Due to the fact of exploding wave of illegal immigration and terrorism, travelling from country to country will get more difficult as many of them, will heavily limit the entry of foreigners. Especially citizens of 3rd world countries will have trouble going to Western World. Some island countries may even go so far that they will limit all travel except air travel, as it easier to control. The world will not get any safer and countries will have to take radical actions to keep unwanted people away.