We all wonder how scientific developments would affect our lives. While there is not a single day without an announcement of a scientific breakthrough, rumors are rife about some researches “being clandestinely conducted worldwide to affect everyone significantly”.
Many futurists follow up on the world of science and technology closely. After their findings and observations based on factual information, they share their insights on how the future will look like. Books on future studies become bestsellers and tap the vein common to humanity: What does the future have in store for us?
This brings to mind several highly popular and international bestseller sci-fi titles like Ready Player One, Divergent, The Hunger Games, and many more. Lucrative as they are, such books are also made into blockbuster movies. Hence, the trend of futurism impacts both the publishing and the movie sectors. We are all somewhat influenced by both or either of them.
Why is 2045 a turning point for humanity? Prominent scientists and specialists speculate that by 2045, the artificial intelligence and machine learning will reach an apogee where the robots will fulfill all tasks one may imagine. While the robots ‘in the room’ will execute such duties, people are expected to relax and enjoy as never before.
The Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark is an outstanding thriller providing us with a sneak peek towards the looming breakthroughs and how the AI will play a vital and supreme role in our lives.
So, according to these projections, what potential changes will shape our lives after 2045?
1. People will work less, but they will not face any economic problems as they do nowadays. Governments will pay a basic monthly wage for every citizen. Whiling away their free time by basking in the sun at any beach, people will be served their smoothies by bespoke robots.
2. Due to fewer working hours or none, people will likely have nothing to do for days and weeks. Uh-oh, this is a big issue, indeed. Some speculate that using and addiction to drugs and computer games may spread like wildfire among couch potatoes. Ready Player One film explored this very future as to how computer games will transform human lives by 2044.
3. Get yourself ready to receive systematic medical services from ‘physician’ robots predicted to replace human MDs. Who knows, maybe it will only take us to go to a nearby mart and have our teeth checked at a small robot-crewed kiosk either for free or less than ten bucks. Pharmacies may cease selling medicines from outlets and remote-print prescription medicines on 3D printers installed at patients’ homes whenever needed. Human body parts may be printed on tissue printers in hospitals.
4. Life expectancy will increase but will differ among the rich and the ordinary. The rich are expected to live for 150 years or so, and ordinary people will live up to 100. ‘Bespoke genetic material’ will set this difference. The rich will have the chance of deciding on and ‘customizing’ their offspring to their heart’s desire.
5. Bespoke babies will lead the race among their peers in every aspect including their complexion, build, intelligence, and skills. This will inevitably form a cast system in which the ordinary will consider some of these distinctive babies as demi-gods because of their longevity, superior skills, and healthy builds. The news reports on ardent Chinese researchers tweaking children’s genomes in labs make us tremble about this prospect.
6. Babies will be developed in labs equipped with artificial wombs. Ethics for humanity may change forever!
7. The rich people will become richer, and the rest will remain the same. In the future’s world, human resources will mean almost nothing as key tasks will be fulfilled by robots. This may lead to social unrests worldwide, but will rarely affect the state of affairs in a world crewed by machines and robots.
8. Colonies in space, especially on the Moon and Mars, will be in trend. 2014-movie Interstellar not only entertains as a sci-fi flick but also provides a solid idea about this future.
9. People will compete with one another in perfection and strength. Cyborg products will be in vogue and the people’s appearance may change at some levels.
10. Bionic Medical Equipment will be widely and inexpensively available. Anyone with the right 3D printer at home or work will be able even to design such products whenever they need or wish.
11. Cryonics Institutes will mushroom and serve with future medical and technologies to extend human lives. Those who wish to get a longer lease of life will have themselves frozen at extremely-refrigerated storages before dying. The first of such institutions was opened in Arizona in 1972, and 300 people let themselves cryogenically stored at a cryonics institution in the US. Globally speaking, a considerable number of people have chosen this way.
12. Because of the highly-improved living standards and personal comforts in the future, it is projected that belief in God among people will substantially decline.
13. While people will enjoy superior comforts in life, they will not be able to practice their freedoms and rights at the same level. Outstanding technological developments will also bring extensive surveillance and restrictions upon people at the hands of authoritarian regimes worldwide. What Happened to Monday (2007) is an excellent movie showing how world governments will be able to restrict people at will and by the policy.
14. Political scientists predict that future wars will no longer be fought on the earth but in the space. George Friedman, the author of The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st century, predicted that a USA-Israel pact against a Turkey-Japan pact will spell war in the space. You may wonder where Russia and China are in this equation. The West reflects that post-Putin Russia will be an extensively divided geography with smaller and ineffective players. It is believed that China will continue as an economic power but will not be able to elevate to a global political power. China is known not to have waged war to any country in its entire history. Expecting something different from China will contradict the history of China! Yet, China keeps a strong and crowded army to protect its vast geography which witnessed multiple invaders for many centuries and fears the same might happen again.
15. Paper money will most likely be history, and cryptocurrency will become the norm. Currently, the Covid-19 scenarios worldwide showed paper money as a factor of spreading the virus faster among people. In order to counter a COVID-20, all governments will need to expedite switching from paper currencies to digital ones very soon.
Several other large or small changes may be included in this list. I tried to limit this article to the changes that are likely to influence and improve our lives. Looking from 2020, these are only projections and whims and we cannot be sure about the profundity and extent of these potential changes in our lives. One thing is inevitable: We have already stepped into a brand-new era in world history which does not bear any similarity with our past experiences. Traveling full speed ahead from 2020 to 2045, it is us people who are to decide how we wish our world to become. We better hurry and take things in proper control or else, after 2045, robots will run the show!