Imagining the Future: How Artificial Intelligence and Social Impact Will Shape the Next 100 Years and Beyond
Society is on the cusp of a major paradigm shift, we are witnessing and living the transition into a new era at a pivotal time in human history.
TL;DR: We have a positive and exciting future to look forward to thanks to advances in innovation and science which will be fueled by social impact.
Table of Contents
Introduction
The history of the human race has been built on suffering, conflict, disease, and mortality where we have done untold horrific things to each other over land, ideology, resources, and even the things that make us unique such as race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and disability.
We have tortured each other, killed each other, watched each other starve and suffer housing insecurity while we were shopping for the latest iPhone, and shamed those who are suffering from trauma and inequality with over-simplified slogans such as “why don’t they just get a job” which in reality are just said to make us feel better about our own mediocre lives.
Yet we have also done some wonderful things for each other, many have devoted their lives to humanity and have done untold wonderful and kind things for their fellow human. We have even risked, and indeed lost, our lives in the pursuit of helping others. Doctors have risked their lives by travelling to warzones and disease outbreak zones to heal the sick and injured, people have risked torture and imprisonment by standing up to power and oppressive dictators to speak up for those being oppressed.
If you look at the history of the human race, you can find examples of unimaginable cruelty and you can find examples of unimaginable compassion.
Throughout history, we have also grappled with science and ideology. You only need to turn on the news to see a scientist having it out with a talk-show host, both shouting down each other and both not listening or understanding each other’s perspective.
It is often considered to be more important to ‘win’ the argument and be seen as right than it is to find common ground and inspire change. We have become more polarised than ever, people have lost trust in scientists and the era of the internet allows people to “do your own research” without having an education in critical thinking and data literacy which only further fuels this divide as many of us lack the ability to critically evaluate and comprehend data and statistics and instead only seek out data and statistics which supports our deeply held beliefs and particular brand of ideology.
Many have embraced public shaming as their instrument of change, people who propose ideas which don’t align with a particular ideology are often labeled as “dangerous” and efforts are made to cancel these people from society and to punish them for their views. This behaviour is usually conducted with the best of intentions, however mob mentality is dangerous as context and understanding are blinded by personal trauma and rage.
This is why we are witnessing and living the transition into a new era at a pivotal time in human history, because I am optimistic that science and compassion will become the norm over suffering and ideological polarisation.
The next 100 years will be viewed as the era when we finally embraced science and compassion, and we took a big step forward as a human race where we fundamentally refused to allow our fellow humans to suffer — even if that meant a fundamental reevaluation of our own beliefs and ideology.
Let’s explore what this future could look like, and consider what we can do to accelerate our journey to a humanity utopia through a hypothetical journey to the fourth industrial revolution and beyond.
A Vision for a Future Utopia
Together we can create a healthier, happier, safer, more equitable, more sustainable, and more trauma-informed world where people live long, empowered, meaningful, and enjoyable lives; and have adequate opportunities, education, health and wellbeing, standards of living, social security, and agency to live a life of their choosing which is free from trauma, premature illness, premature death, and suffering.
In order to achieve this utopia we will need to as a society agree on fundamental principals which underpin this future and enshrine those principals as basic human rights. It won’t be enough to simply have a document which outlines these human rights, society needs to radically transform to prioritise the implementation of these human rights.
This will mean radical changes in our economy and way of living, including shifting our perception of value and success from currency and status to impact and sustainability. Social impact and advances in science and innovation will fuel this transition which has been coined “the fourth industrial revolution”, let’s explore this in more detail across some of the key domains which underpin our society.
Energy & Resources
We will have solved nuclear fusion and have achieved a type 1 Kardashev scale civilisation. We will be able to produce abundant clean and cheap energy on Earth which will drive our transition away from a fossil fuel powered society to a fully electrified society.
Thanks to the availability of abundant energy, entire industries and technologies will transform. Energy intensive technologies of today which are currently economically unviable such as water desalination plants will become viable, and industries which rely heavily on fossil fuels such as steel production will become fossil-free as it transitions to electrification.
Electric vehicles (including aircraft) will become the norm, water desalination plants will become economically viable which will lead to an abundant source of clean water. We will be able to 3D print homes autonomously, and economically due to the abundance of raw materials and energy.
We will live in a world with abundant clean sources of energy, water, food, housing, transportation, and manufactured goods due to the advancement of automation, and the availability of abundant sources of energy and raw materials.
The availability of abundant clean and cheap energy will transform our society in ways we can’t yet imagine, and we will be able to finally put the climate change debate to rest as we will no longer be polluting our atmosphere with fossil fuels.
Abundant clean and cheap energy will power autonomous spacecraft to mine asteroids in our solar system, providing an abundant source of raw material resources which can be used as building blocks for society.
Our factories would be equipped with 3D printers and Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Machine Learning (ML) powered robots which transform those raw materials harvested from asteroid mining into products, and this entire manufacturing process will be powered by our abundant clean and cheap energy sources.
Imagine a world where when we need, or want, an new item that we can order it just like we would order an item off Amazon — except that item would be produced on-demand automatically for us for free.
Since there is no human labour involved, the cost of raw materials is negligible due to the abundant supply of raw materials in our solar system, and the cost of energy is negligible due to the abundant sources of energy available then we might live in a world where we no longer need to pay for these items since they are so economical to produce.
These advances in automation and the harnessing of energy will enable us to become a multi-planetary society, where we can live on other planets in our solar system. The same technologies and logistics infrastructure which we will set up on Earth will be able to be replicated on other planets.
As we continue to master our own climate and advance our understanding of climate science, this will enable us to terraform other planets in our solar system to make them habitable for human life. This will be critical for humanity as by all living on the same planet we are creating a single point of failure which could lead to the extinction of our race should an extinction level event occur on Earth.
Our next goal will be to transition to a type 2 Kardashev scale civilisation which will fuel our spacecraft to travel beyond our solar system at faster than light speeds. We will transition from a multi-planetary society to a multi-system society.
A trip to our nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, could become akin to a trip to another country. By mastering the harnessing of energy we will be able to explore beyond our solar system and then set our sights on becoming a multi-galactic society.
Who knows what else we will be able to invent when we take energy constraints out of the equation, innovation will accelerate and electricity will fuel our society. We might even be able to master the unification of the quantum and physical worlds to be able to create elements and then use those elements to 3D print the physical items we need in our world — much like a replicator in star trek!
We can already create new particles using a particle accelerator which is a very energy intensive process — if we took energy constraints out of the equation then would that enable us to sustainably leverage particle physics technologies to produce elements in our physical world on-demand when we need them, and then 3D print products on demand using those elements as fundamental building blocks?
Food & Water
Animals will no longer be bred for human consumption. We will stop eating animals for meat and will transition to a more plant-based diet. We will still eat some sources of meat, but this meat will be lab-grown and will be enhanced with nutrients to promote good health and longevity.
Thanks to advances in robotics and automation, we will be able to produce food in sufficient quantities to feed everyone on the planet many times over. We will no longer experience hunger, food will be available in abundant quantities for everyone on the planet for free and food accessibility will be enshrined as a fundamental human right.
By transitioning away from mass scale farming of animals, we can reduce methane emissions from cows which is a leading greenhouse gas cause of climate change. This will have positive benefits for both animals and our climate.
Water desalination plants requires significant energy resources, making them uneconomical and therefore an unviable solution today for our global water resource needs. The availability of abundant and cheap energy due to advances in nuclear fusion will solve the energy requirement needs of water desalination plants, making them both economical and viable in the future.
By purifying ocean water in water desalination plants, it will provide an abundant source of safe, clean, and fresh water for everyone on the planet.
Economy
Organisations will no longer be driven primarily by generating profit for shareholders, consumers will demand Corporate Social Responsibility from the companies which they purchase their products and services from.
This will lead to the elimination of companies driven solely by profit, and the ushering in of a new era of companies which balance profit with purpose. Companies success will not be judged solely by their financial statements, but also by their impact statements which measure their impact towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Companies will pivot from short-term reactive thinking to long-term proactive thinking and will embrace higher levels of leadership consciousness values. The exploitation of workforces within companies for the benefit of shareholders which we see today will shift towards the empowerment of workforces for the benefit of and in service of humanity.
We will create a new economic era of the Universal Basic Income which will enable everyone to access essential goods and services as a fundamental human right. Over time, currency will be phased out however the Universal Basic Income will serve as a critical transition medium.
Money will become less relevant as money is traditionally used as a bartering tool where place value on a human’s labour. If humans are no longer working in factories, if the operating costs of robots are negligible, and if we have abundant cheap sources of natural resources via space mining then what exactly would our money be paying for?
The world of abundance will mean that money no longer really makes any sense. The economy of money will transition to an economy of ideas. We will place value on knowledge and wisdom over currency and material possessions.
Jobs
Why do we have jobs today? Most would argue that it is predominately to provide for ourselves and our families. What if society provided for ourselves and our families, where all of our basic human needs were met?
We then would be free to pursue jobs as a choice rather than as a means of survival. This will fundamentally change the dynamics of work, and our reasons for working.
Jobs will no longer exist to advance ourselves materialistically, but rather will exist to advance society as a whole. This does not mean that individualism will become irrelevant, rather if each person focuses on their individual development and growth as their primary job that will then collectively contribute to society’s development and growth as a whole.
We will be free to pursue our own pursuits and passion, whether that be art, culture, science, the acquisition of knowledge, or simply relaxing and doing nothing at all! Our collective knowledge will be used to maintain and further develop the AI / ML and robotics which powers our society, society will no longer be dependent on physical labour in order to function.
The currency of money will be replaced with the currency of knowledge, and that knowledge will be used to fuel advances in understanding and technology for the benefit of society.
Cities & Communities
We will live in a world of abundance where essential goods and services are accessible for everyone. Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, we will have accessible autonomous transport which we can use for safe and reliable transport.
Advances in autonomous transport will eliminate human error as a source of transport accidents, leading to a future of transport which is free from fatalities.
Smart cities will be connected via Internet of Things (IoT), this will enable cities to run efficiently and will enable the distribution of goods and services to everyone. Long lines for food banks and social services offices will be a thing of the past, as we will have free food distribution points throughout the city and the city will exist to serve the communities which live in it.
Nature will be a key part of future cities, we will transform our cities and communities from roads into parks. The air will be clean, the roads will be safe, and cities will focus on enabling wellness for its residents.
Our cities will run efficiently, cleanly, and autonomously, leaving culture and community wellbeing as the key considerations for city planners. We will live in a world which heals us, instead of traumatises us, with hostile architecture (which is designed to deter people experiencing homelessness) phasing out and community wellness points phasing in where people can access all of their basic needs such as food and water.
Community events such as concerts will become the norm, the abundance of resources will shift city planners focus away from issues such as crime prevention, housing security, drug addiction, and other critical issues towards art, culture, and wellbeing.
Due to advances in transport, we will no longer need to create dense urban environments and instead cities can be spread out which will enable people to live in an environment which is surrounded by nature instead of surrounded by concrete.
Thanks to the electrification of society with clean and abundant energy, climate change will no longer be a problem and we will also be able to master our climate using advances in technology such as influencing the trajectory of lightning to ensure that it does not strike and harm anyone.
Crime, Domestic Family Violence, Oppression, Persecution, Prejudice, Terrorism, & War
We will live in a world with Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect for each other.
We will have a much better understanding of trauma and mental health, and will have done the work to correct the structural imbalances in society which leads to inequality and disadvantage.
Crime and war will be a thing of the past. Due to abundant resources, we will no longer fight over scarce resources in order to survive and thrive. Our understanding of mental health will improve, and we will be able to treat criminal offending behaviour as a health issue which seeks to understand the root causes of the behaviour with a view to help the offender instead of punishing them.
We will have a good understanding of power, and will use that knowledge to prevent the abuse of power. Power stems from six power bases (coercion, reward, ideology, knowledge, expertise, and legitimacy) and is ultimately a function of dependency and scarcity.
We will reevaluate our power structures in society which has been coined the term “The Patriarchy”. Control will be replaced by agency, we will each have more agency over our own lives. Science Direct defines Patriarchy as:
Patriarchy is an analytical concept referring to a system of political, social, and economic relations and institutions structured around the gender inequality of socially defined men and women.
By creating a world of abundance where society provides for everyone as a guaranteed human right, dependency and scarcity will be replaced by agency and abundance which will eliminate sources of power and control.
We will no longer need to fight each other over ideologies and resources, as we will have both respect for each other and availability of resources in abundance. Advances in science and critical thinking will allow us to challenge ideas and beliefs without needing to resort to violence, and through empowering everyone with free high quality education we can equip people with the knowledge they need to have agency over their own beliefs.
We will no longer accept war and terrorism as an acceptable solution to a dispute, and battles will instead be waged over ideas using scientific papers as the weapon of choice. There will be a greater focuses on amicable dispute resolution, with harm elimination being a primary objective of any resolution. Through challenging existing power structures, we can empower people with the voice they seek which will eliminate their need to use violence in order to get their voice heard and their point across.
By taking away stresses such as housing, food, and economic insecurity by adopting human rights which guarantees minimum standards of living and social security for all we will have taken a big step forward in reducing relationship stress and domestic family violence. We will also eliminate sources of dependence which will empower people to leave abusive relationships and will also prevent power imbalances from occurring in the first place.
Domestic family violence is ultimately about power and control, with trauma being a leading root cause. Through our greater societal knowledge and awareness of power, and our efforts to eliminate sources of trauma in society, domestic family violence will cease to be a problem in our world. We will of course still struggle with relationship conflict, but this will not escalate into abuse where one person has power and control over another.
Imagine what our relationships could look like if we were no longer stressed about basic survival factors such as food and housing. Today, many people stay in abusive relationships as they are dependent on their partner for food and housing security — they are dependent on their partners for their very survival (and perhaps also to provide for their children too) which creates an enormous power imbalance due to this dependency.
Too often we say “why didn’t they just leave” as a statement instead of as a question — we make the assumption that people have a choice and that society will take care of them if they do leave an abusive relationship which is unfortunately not the case.
People are often forced to choose between enduring abuse and homelessness for themselves and their children — then we have the audacity to boldly proclaim “why didn’t they just leave?” with a sense of smugness and superiority and also an ignorance that this situation could never happen to us. Our greater understanding and awareness of coercive control will lead to better detection of it and better treatment modalities to address it.
Through a greater understanding of mental health, we can treat domestic family violence and abuse as a health issue rather than a law enforcement issue. We will understand trauma bonds which creates unhealthy relationship dynamics, and will understand the chemicals which fuel this dynamic such as Oxytocin and Serotonin.
We are starting to recognise that personality disorders contribute to unhealthy relationship dynamics, through greater awareness and better treatment modalities we will be able to treat personality disorders and help people foster healthier and more equitable relationships with each other.
We will have greater understanding of Internal Family Systems theory which theorises that people learn unhealthy patterns and behaviours as a coping mechanism during early childhood when they are exposed to trauma and unhealthy family dynamics, which can lead to Domestic Family Violence.
We will place greater emphasis on educating parents on how to create safer environments for children to grow and develop the tools to self-regulate and self-soothe their own emotions. Emotional intelligence will be taught in schools, and there will be greater access to high quality mental health support.
People often control others as a means to calm their own anxieties, as by controlling others we can feel more in control ourselves. By better understanding the gut-brain axis, and how our nervous system is regulated by neurotransmitters such as Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), we can begin to understand why people behave in certain ways and then empower people with the tools to self-regulate and calm their traumatised nervous systems.
What if instead of sending someone to prison for committing an offence, we took a radical holistic trauma-informed view which seeks to explore the root causes underpinning the offending with the objective of healing the offender and eliminating the sources of trauma which is driving the offending behaviour rather than punishing them.
We might for example diagnose them with a defect in their Vagus Nerve which is driving trauma and patterns of behaviour which ultimately led to the offending, and then treated that defect instead of punishing the offender. This would involve a radical shift from punishment and deterrence towards holistic trauma-informed healing.
Through looking at patterns of behaviour, we can start to explore societal issues which is driving behaviour which would be considered abusive and offending. This is not to free offenders from accountability, but rather what accountability looks like will change from punishment to rehabilitation.
By becoming an abundant trauma-informed society which focuses on rehabilitation and treatment over incarceration and punishment, we can break generational trauma cycles and put an end to Crime, Domestic Family Violence, Oppression, Persecution, Prejudice, Terrorism, and War once and for all.
Healthcare & Human Lifespan
Premature death, disease, and suffering will be eradicated. Deaths will become so rare that a single human death will be a newsworthy event.
Advances in regenerative medicine will allow us to heal our bodies and extend our lifespans to unimaginable lengths, we will be able to grow replacement organs in labs as needed and AI / ML powered nanobots will be able to heal us.
AI / ML will drive significant advances in medial diagnostic, drug discovery, and medical treatment technologies. We will be able to detect disease early, and will have treatments available for every known disease to humankind. We are already well on track to harness the power of AI / ML towards driving advances in diagnosis and detection, drug discovery, and treatments for deadly diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease.
Thanks to AI / ML, doctors will have a decision support tool to aid them in effectively screening for and treating diseases which will lead to the elimination of premature death, diseases, and suffering.
We will be equipped with the knowledge of societal sources of harm on our bodies such as microplastics, and will be able to tailor our society to eliminate them. We will be able to prevent diseases from developing in the first place. We know that socio-economic status is a leading predictor of poor health outcomes, by providing everyone with highly nutritious food as a fundamental human right we will be able to eliminate preventable sources of disease.
Other social-economic factors such as education and housing will also be eliminated as preventable sources of poor health outcomes thanks to ensuring that everyone is provided with a high quality education and housing security as a fundamental human right.
Once we master the human body biologically, we will then turn our attention to the human consciousness on a quantum mechanical level. While we will be able to work wonders on healing our bodies, we will never be able to fully eradicate risk — especially if we start to explore beyond our star system.
In order to prevent society from plateauing due to risk aversion, we will devote resources to finding a way to recover from catastrophic incidents such as a spacecraft which blows up lightyears away from civilisation. How can we heal someone in such a predicament, this is where we might turn to quantum mechanics where time and distance do not exist.
With advances in quantum computers and artificial intelligence, perhaps we will be able to store our consciousness as a backup for incase our physical bodies are lost beyond repair.
We are already making great scientific advances in growing organs in a lab, what if we were able to grow a new human body in a lab and then transfer our consciousness into that body — whether our consciousness be hosted on a quantum computer using an artificial intelligence neural network or we develop the technology to transfer our consciousness from the quantum world back into our physical world.
Or perhaps we won’t even need to store our consciousness on a computer as it already exists in the quantum world. We instead need to find a way to retrieve our consciousness from the quantum world and bring it back into our reality.
Religious figures throughout history have described consciousness as our soul, and have described this process as reincarnation. What if we could develop our knowledge of science to unify the gap between the quantum and physical worlds where we can control this process of reincarnation.
Advances in string theory are making progress towards a “theory of everything” which would unify the quantum world of subatomic particles and structures with the physical cosmological world which we live in today.
We already have science to describe our physical world through the laws of physics and Albert Einstein’s infamous theory of general relativity. We are making exciting progress towards understanding the quantum world through advances in particle physics such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator which recently discovered the Higgs boson (aka the god particle).
What would happen if we were able to develop our scientific knowledge to the point where we understood how the quantum world intersected with the physical world? Would this allow us to travel between these worlds at will, essentially achieving immortality?
Some scientists have theorised that we live inside of a holographic projection of the quantum world, does this mean that we can simply project another human body (or indeed a body of something else such as an animal) containing our consciousness into our physical world on demand and at will?
The future of medicine is exciting, we could no longer live in fear of our own mortality and perhaps where we no longer need to be confined to the physical body which we were born with.
Meaning of Life
The pursuit of wealth and material possessions will transition to the pursuit of knowledge and purpose.
The future will be marked by abundancy, we will possess everything we need to live long, healthy lives. Instead of focusing on resource acquisition, we will focus on knowledge and meaning acquisition. We will turn our attention towards the stars and embark on a journey to really understand the nature of reality and the fabric of our universe.
I do not know what the meaning of life is, but I suspect that over the next 100 years we will devote significant resources to seek answers to this question and we will discover things about our universe which we can’t even begin to comprehend today.
As we delve into the world of quantum mechanics and start to realise that fundamental concepts which are so important to us today, such as space and time, are merely a manifestation of our collective consciousness then we will really start to question what is reality and do we actually belong to a higher plane of existence in the quantum world.
When we throw fundamental concepts which govern our reality, such as space and time, out the window then everything about our understanding of reality will fundamentally change.
Perhaps we will embark on journeys to parallel universes, using black holes and white holes as portals between universes. Steven Hawking theorised that information is lost when it enters a black hole, with some scientists theorising that this opens the possibility to using black holes and white holes as a means to quantum teleport between universes.
We may develop our psychic powers to be able to astral project as a means of instantaneous travel across both space and time using remote viewing. This will enable us to explore any point in space across the past, present, and future, by projecting our consciousness from the quantum world into space-time coordinates of our choosing in the physical world.
Do we live in a multi-universe, what is our universe expanding into, what is the nature of our reality, are there multiple realities which we can explore, where does consciousness come from, why are we even here — these are the questions we will seek answers to over the next 100 years and we will redirect societal resources away from war and materialism towards this pursuit.
We might even partner up with alien civilisations to share knowledge and together seek answers to these questions which will no doubt lead to even more questions and perhaps we will discover that the pursuit of this meaning and understanding to better ourselves and our society for each other is the meaning of life itself.
How to Get Involved in Building This New Utopia
If you like the idea of building a better world for yourself, your family, and for society, then get involved in some of the many amazing groups who are already laying the foundation for this future world by challenging organisations globally to embrace Social Impact, Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainable Development, and Partnership with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as a priority.
Some of the many great Australian pioneering grassroots groups include:
- Australian Philanthropic Services
- B Lab Australia & New Zealand
- Igniting Change
- National Homeless Collective
- Pledge 1%
- Start Giving
Alternatively, start your own organisation and join the growing movement towards building a sustainable future with a better, safer, and more equitable world for all.
