How the world will look in 2050, according to experts: We WILL have made contact with an alien race and life after death could be possible by uploading consciousness to a computer
Futurists of the 1990s predicted that we'd be living underwater or riding flying cars by this point — but now experts are warning of a much scarier future.
DailyMail.com spoke to tech gurus who predicted how the world will look in 2050 — and some fear AI will have enslaved humans or climate change will have made large swathes of the world uninhabitable.
Other predictions include making contact with aliens — but whether or not that's a bad thing remains unknown.
It's not all doom and gloom, though, with technology expected to have made the afterlife possible.
Below are eight things that will have happened by the mid-point of this century - both for good and bad:
By 2050, AI will have had a profound impact on society - possibly even taking over to become the dominant species
Right now, people are focused on AI potentially causing job losses - but the reality could be far worse.
That's according to George Stakhov, chief strategy officer for the global ad agency DDB EMEA who created an AI tool named 'The Uncreative Agency'.
Stakhov said: 'People tend to overestimate the effects of new technology in the short run and underestimate those effects in the long run. This is known as Amara's Law.
'Right now we are at the peak of AI hype and people are panicking about white-collar jobs being destroyed by GPT-4 in the next few years. That seems like an exaggeration.
But by 2050, AI will have 'profoundly' reshaped the world, Stakhov warns.
He said: 'There is a dark AI future where those who control AI will gain huge power, while 99 percent of the population will be disenfranchised. The AI lords will control the world's data and turn the rest of us into their serfs.
'The alternative is a bright AI scenario, where everyone benefits from AI through better healthcare, faster transport and less pollution.
'The machines really will do most of the work and a basic wage will become common, freeing us to enjoy more leisure time and realise ourselves as human beings. This will require a drastic change in society and in our approach to education.
The reality will likely end up somewhere between the Dark AI Future and the Bright one.'
Comments