Vision 2040

The world, 20 years from today

I came across an interesting framework for generating great ideas a while back.

It involves imagining a future 20 years from today, and working back from that vision to create companies that align with that vision. Social media is big in 2024, the seed for which was sown in the early 2000s.

What are the seeds being sown today? What do we expect the world to look like 20 years from now? This is an important question to ask for anyone interested in the world of technology, or someone interested in investing in these trends early.

This post will be a writeup of my vision of the year 2040.

AI replaces everyone

AI has already reached proficiency equal (if not better) to humans in multiple fields. ChatGPT and midjourney have already led to several companies firing employees.

You can only imagine how advanced AI would be in 2040 (I am certain that AGI would be achieved much earlier). The necessary hardware to couple with AI would also have been perfected, and most jobs would be done by sentient robots.

We would see robot surgeons, lawyers, engineers, low skilled labour workers - basically everything will be done by a robot. We already have some of these robots in niche areas.

Even the “management” work can be done by a robot, as most “employees” would be robots too. Maybe there would be no need for a manager as a robot is always productive and follows the instructions given no matter what (the instructions themselves will be produced by the super intelligent AI).

Energy costs nothing

We would have figured out fusion and super cheap energy. Even if not, solar and fission would make energy essentially free and in abundance. A lot of scientific and technical progress is being bottlenecked by the lack of energy at scale at an affordable cost, that problem would be solved.

This might be a bigger deal than AI but rarely anyone is talking about it. Cheap energy can solve world hunger quite literally.

Everyone is free

UBI (Universal Basic Income) is almost a given, AI and automation will have created massive wealth which is partly redistributed to the society (one of the original goals of OpenAI foundation was some form of this redistribution). There are no “jobs” anymore.

If you think about it, there are few jobs today that cannot be done by a super intelligent AI coupled with capable hardware. We thought that the artist was irreplaceable, but they have been replaced as early as 2023 by midjourney and stable diffusion.

Everyone will be free from work and has a basic income supply. This can lead to a net positive outcome as people will be free from menial jobs (think McDonald’s cashiers, which are already being replaced in some outlets by robots).

It will also lead to a lack of meaning in life. A great number of people derive a significant amount of fulfilment from their work, and not having to work can have a negative impact. I am still hopeful that people will find meaning in other non economic activities like art, science, social connection which will be a net positive.

Social media doesn’t exist

I think we will soon go through a social media renaissance. People are just fed up of twitter and influencers, they want a private life more than ever. I think that the current times of posting everything publicly will be seen as foolish in 2040.

Social media would be more like a private chatroom with your friends (something like Google+, which I believe was ahead of its time like many Google products).

Another reason for this would be the amount of misinformation and deepfake content the AI of 2040 would enable. We have already seen how realistic deepfake can be, as of 2023. Think what happens 20 years hence. There are AI influencers with thousands of followers, most of who are not even aware that the person they love so much does not exist.

I believe that we will transition from “trust the internet” to “do not trust anything you see” by default. I can already see this happening, people don’t trust internet videos anymore.

VR is the new mobile

I strongly believe that VR will be the next computing platform. People are finding more meaning in virtual worlds every passing year (video games, movies, TV shows), and VR just takes it to the next level by enabling you to be *inside* the world.

A well developed VR world would be indistinguishable from reality. You would be able to have immersive travel, underwater, space experiences at a fraction of the cost (I am doubtful if money as an idea would exist then, or at least the goal of building wealth, as everything essential would be cheap or free).

I don’t think VR technology as of 2023 has what it takes to reach the immersiveness required for making people switch, but by 2024 it would definitely be there.

Banking is crypto only

The current banking system would seem laughable in hindsight. All transactions would be on the blockchain, and all current banking companies will adapt to that.

No one would trust central banks anymore. It would be like democracy, everything else will seem primitive in hindsight.

Social structures change

I believe that school and colleges might cease to exist in 2040. Why would anyone go to school or college to learn? What is the purpose of institutionalised learning anyway in a world where most jobs don’t exist anymore?

We are already seeing declining college applications in many countries, with many students skeptical of the utility of a degree. Learning will likely shift to an online and self paced model, just like how most college students study just before exams. Learning would be more for fulfilment than for a job or exam (both of which would be obsolete).

Real world connect would be more valued than ever, partly due to free time and partly due to the subconscious loneliness a highly automated world would yield.

We might see a world government form, at least in a soft form. The country and company that controls the AGI and robots would have a lot of power and say in the matters of the world. This would this play out in interesting ways in terms of world peace and international politics - it’s an important discussion to be had at some point.

Moon & Mars Colony

We are very close to a Mars mission, and in two decades we would for sure have a Moon and Mars base. Space tourism is already an industry, by then it would be the equivalent of taking a summer European trip.

I still think that more companies can emerge and be late winners in this sector, SpaceX is the only popular company here but there are around a dozen or so doing some amazing work towards this mission (including Indian companies).

Doomsday scenario?

These predictions might sound very doomsday-like, but I don’t believe it will be like that. We are thinking in paradigms of today, judging a world that is yet to come.

If you told people in 2005 that 2023 would feature people spending 6+ hours on their phones daily, they would feel pretty depressed too - but do we see mobile computing as a net negative today?

20 years is a long time, and you must remember that 20 years back mobile phones didn’t even exist, social media was yet to be born, the internet was still inexistent in most of the world. All of these technologies are ubiquitous today.

AI, robotics, crypto, nuclear energy and VR are the key drivers of progress in the coming decades, and all of these technologies are much more developed than mobile and internet were in 2000.

Humans are amazing at adaptation - even old people who never had a television or radio growing up now use TikTok and Instagram. I think we will adapt to the future in a positive way, embracing technology and the pros/cons that come along with it.