Beyond the Apocalypse: How Technology and Society Can Create a Sustainable and Fair World

It would be easy to become despondent. As temperatures and sea levels rise, energy crises hit, cost of living increases, populism seems inevitable, and the growing spectre of an AI singularity taking all our jobs, if not our lives, there doesn’t seem to be much to look forward to.

There’s no doubt that we have some serious challenges to address, but there is a glimmer of hope if we look hard enough.

This article takes an hypothetical, optimistic view of how technology and society could create a sustainable and fair world with plentiful resources. It is a personal view, not intended to be a political statement, and it is one scenario of many.

Let’s look at the key issues in order:

·??????Population growth

·??????Climate change

·??????Resources

·??????Conflict

·??????AI and Automation

Population Growth

Ultimately, the vast majority of our global problems stem from overpopulation – whether we look at climate change, lack of resources, conflict, you name it, humans are crowded into the shrinking habitable areas of our little globe, and we’re spreading quickly, devouring every resource in our paths, like a plague of locusts. If we are to address the key problems globally, population growth must be halted and reversed.

There are a few key causes for population growth; life expectancy is one, as we live longer and birth mortality falls, both due to advances in healthcare, the population will increase. The bigger driver however is that developing countries with little social welfare have a tendency to have many more children – to increase the chance of survivability and supporting the parents in later years. The countries rarely have the education nor means for contraception either. As healthcare gradually improves the population in these countries has spiked.

The birth rate is inversely linked to wealth. Richer countries have fewer children, and vice versa.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325981170_Measuring_and_forecasting_fertility/link/5b39e67ca6fdcc8506e72b82/download

The good news here is that most developing countries will do just that – develop and become more wealthy (Nigeria is a perfect example of astronomical growth both economically and population), and as their social safety nets and healthcare improves, the birth rate will drop.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325981170_Measuring_and_forecasting_fertility/link/5b39e67ca6fdcc8506e72b82/download

Whilst forecasts are extremely difficult, most commentators believe that population will have peaked by 2100, and will decline from that point.

https://journalduncurieux.com/tag/guerre/

There is another complicating factor here. Many futurists and medical scientists believe that we may soon hit the longevity escape velocity – the point where life expectancy increases by more than one year, for every year that passes – potentially allowing humans to become effectively immortal. This is not currently incorporated into the standard forecasting models, and it would clearly have significant impacts, both positive and negative. As individuals, we could live longer and crucially, healthier lives, with many more generations living in parallel within families, but the social implications would be that we would have to work longer, perhaps indefinitely, if the economic model stayed the same. The birth rate would need to adapt sharply to avoid further overpopulation.

Climate Change

Climate Change is primarily driven by emissions. Ultimately, this is linked to population growth, but despite our steep growth up to 2023, we are now seeing fossil derived energy plateauing and being overtaken by renewables. Technology advances and ultimately, a drop in population give us a good deal of optimism that we have turned the tide – whether this will be too late to prevent an exponential climatic disaster remains to be seen.

https://www.fusionenergybase.com/article/the-number-of-fusion-energy-startups-is-growing-fast-heres-why

Nuclear energy has been the backbone of clean energy but has significant risks. The advent of Fusion energy however, without these problems, may be close. We are tantalisingly close to getting sustained energy from Fusion and investment in this technology is growing quickly.

Fusion has the potential to provide very cheap, clean energy with minimal risks. This could be commercially available by as early as 2030. It would be a gamechanger. Cheap electricity also makes electric vehicles much more economically attractive further driving down emissions and greenhouse gasses.

Resources

The earth has finite resources, population growth places a huge strain on these, the concern is that famines will result.

The evidence to date is that famines are actually decreasing, globally:

https://journalduncurieux.com/tag/guerre/

But we should not ignore the concerns as is inevitable that, with current levels of consumption growth, we will struggle.

On the one hand, we waste huge amounts of food, and it is not equally distributed, if we could solve for this, it would buy us considerable time.

Genetically developed crops will improve yields and even lab grown meat could help sustain our insatiable demand and rebalance how we use arable products more efficiently (ie to feed humans rather than cattle).

Conflict

Of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, War is perhaps the most volatile and feared, for it has potential to wipe out the human race or create huge suffering of our own creation. It is also true that here, technology has created the greatest risk – the ability to create weapons of mass destruction. The recent escalations in Ukraine certainly bring these into high relief, and tensions between the US and China over Taiwan could potentially trigger a conflict between the superpowers.

Trends, on the whole however, suggest that we are seeing fewer actual inter-state conflicts over time, with a tendency towards smaller, contained conflicts with isolated, belligerent leaders.

https://journalduncurieux.com/tag/guerre/

AI and Automation

Ai has accelerated much more quickly than most had dared to speculate in the last 12 months. The creation of AI has proliferated and is ubiquitous in its application. Schoolchildren now use AI as a matter of course.

Some in the industry expect GPT6 to be written by GPT5 – this has profound implications around self replication and the move to Artificial General Intelligence. The recent introductions of multi modality and APIs means it’s ability to access information for learning and application is now boundless. Many experts cite concerns that no-one truly understand how these LLMs really work. They appear to be gaining an understanding of the world from text in a way that is way beyond simple grammatical context. Most experts have sharply reduced their timeline for a singularity from around 50 years to around 10, but few are confident in articulating what that actually means. Around 5% think it could be the extinction of the human race. Others are more optimistic.

Forecasts here are difficult in the extreme, but here is one scenario:

AI will develop quickly, by 2060, 80% of jobs might be fully automated. Ai is harnessed to create self-perpetuating industries. During the transition governments will struggle to adapt to societal pressures with growing chasms between those in work and those made redundant, but the only solution eventually will be to increase corporation tax and provide a good basic income for all. Governments eventually adapt in the face of demographic and economic shifts, but this is a major transition and the road will be very bumpy. Humans are typically much slower to adapt than technology.

Conclusion

This article has painted a hopeful picture of the future, it is one scenario where technology and society work together to create a world that is more sustainable, fair, and abundant. I have imagined how we could tackle the major issues of our time: population growth, climate change, resources, conflict, and AI and automation. I have envisioned how we could use our collective intelligence, creativity, and compassion to transform our challenges into opportunities. I envisioned a future where human potential is unleashed and human dignity is respected.

But this future is not a given. It is not something that will happen by itself. It is something that we have to choose. It is something that we have to fight for. It is something that we have to live for.

We are at a critical juncture in history. The decisions we make today will shape the destiny of humanity and the planet for decades to come. We will have the means to create a better future, and we have the responsibility to do so. We cannot afford to be complacent, cynical, or fatalistic. We have to be visionary.

The future is not yet written. It is ours to write.

This article provides one of many possible scenarios. It is not a prediction, nor a political statement. It may not represent the views of my employer.