GabyScientific achievements have helped people create the modern world. However, what awaits humanity in the future considering the potential of AI? It is probably impossible to make definitive claims about this, but scientists confidently predict two possible trends.
Trends in the Further Development of Humanity
Firstly, the world will become more crowded. It is estimated that the planet’s population will exceed 9 billion by 2050. To feed everyone, genetically modified crops, insect-based food, and artificial meat will be necessary. Secondly, the world will become warmer if long-term measures to combat climate change are not prioritized.
That is why we should hope for the opportunities that new technologies will provide, allowing us to feed a significantly larger portion of the planet’s population and provide sustainable energy. At the same time, we need to be cautious, as artificial intelligence can be difficult to control.
AI technologies will undoubtedly become more pervasive and intrusive in the future. Records of people’s movements, their health status, and financial transactions will be stored in the cloud and managed by a multinational quasi-monopoly.
This data can be used for benevolent purposes, such as medical research or warnings about future health risks. However, its availability to internet companies is already shifting the balance of power from governments to global conglomerates.
AI is encroaching on most professions.
It is clear that machines will occupy a significant part of the manufacturing and retail sectors. They can complement, if not replace, many white-collar professions in accounting, computer coding, medical diagnostics, and even surgery. On the other hand, some skilled jobs in the service sector, such as plumbers and gardeners, require non-standard interactions with people, and these will be the hardest to automate.
As noted by the publication Sciencefocus The digital revolution is already creating immense wealth for innovators and global companies. However, maintaining a healthy society will require the redistribution of this wealth.
To create a humane society, governments need to significantly increase the number and status of those who care for the elderly, young, and sick. Currently, there are too few caregivers. Their work is poorly paid, but it brings much more satisfaction than jobs in call centers or at Amazon warehouses, which can be taken over by artificial intelligence.
However, AI not only replaces but can also assist. It already outperforms humans in data-rich networks that change rapidly. This could enable a highly efficient planned economy that people could only dream of before. AI can also aid science in areas such as protein folding and drug development.
AI beyond Earth will save humanity.
However, beyond Earth, artificial intelligence has the most striking scale. Thanks to robots, humanity could establish interplanetary bases by 2100. However, one should not expect mass emigration from Earth. It is a dangerous delusion to think that space will allow an escape from earthly problems. Fighting climate change on Earth is trivial compared to terraforming Mars.
The first humans will be poorly adapted to the Martian environment, yet they will lead the post-human era. If instead of humans, it will be AI robots, they will not need an atmosphere or even gravity. Therefore, they will be able to exist in deep space, which humanity can only dream of.
Ultimately, machines can be as mentally different from humanity as humans are from slime. Artificial intelligence could give rise to a diaspora through which increasingly complex minds will spread across the galaxy.
However, if we shift our focus from the science fiction of the distant future to the near future, this century is special. For the first time in the 4.5-billion-year history of Earth, one species holds the future of the planet in its hands. Human intelligence could initiate billions of years of evolution after human life, potentially even more astonishing than that which led to the emergence of humans.
On the other hand, people can provoke biological, ecological, or cyber disasters that negate all this potential. Therefore, if science wants to save humanity, scientists and people in general need to think globally, rationally, and long-term, relying on science but guided by values that science alone cannot provide.
