Forget the pandemic. This is what 2030 may look like.
??Henry Bee
Quant Researcher | Founder of AlphaSkew Fund | 20 Years In Fintech & AI-Driven Trading Systems
We're all tired and worn out by the pandemic. I know I am.
But 2020 is finally coming to an end.
And 2030 is just around the corner.
Being someone who works in the epicenter of technology, I thought I'd take the chance to offer my personal view of what the year 2030 will look like.
This opinion is mine, unedited, and is not the opinion of my team. I'd love to hear what you think.
By the year 2030, fossil fuel will be virtually wiped out
Autonomous vehicles have removed the need for drivers. Human labour which is the most expensive part of a ride is freed up.
Cost per mile for a ride plummets.
Taking a taxi becomes cheaper than taking the bus.
Self driving taxis become the defining mode of transportation for most people, ushering in the rise of Transportation as a Service (TaaS).
As a result, most people no longer own a car.
Energy demand plummets.
Parking spaces are freed up.
The drastic increase in usable land in major cities causes land values to drop.
A boom in residential/commercial mixed use construction begins.
The freed up land, zero emission vehicles, and solar-powered housing pave the way for cities that are more dense, vibrant and ecofriendly beyond 2030.
Two decades of research from new energy companies discover that the combination of solar-wind-batteries is so energy dense and cheap that it becomes humanity's primary energy source, replacing nearly all fossil fuels.
Almost all cars are electric.
Demand for fossil fuel plummets.
Demand for alternative energy sources like solar/wind surges because they're much cheaper than fossil fuels.
Efficiency gains in cloud computing and agriculture (see below) lead to even less demand for energy.
More than a third of industrial agriculture and farming is replaced by urban farming and lab grown, plant based meat.
By the year 2030, on-premise software is completely replaced by the cloud. Rich data turns software companies into banks
Over 90% of software is now hosted on the cloud. An increase from 15% in 2020.
Semiconductors and processors are exponentially more energy efficient.
Hardware engineers realize that Moore's law isn't dead. All they needed was to optimize for performance per watt instead of number of transistors.
They host virtual parties to celebrate.
These "super chips" lower energy use everywhere initially, but the rise of emerging economies offset this effect.
Cloud computing's rapid upgrade cycles benefit immediately from these energy efficient chips.
Software replaces the need for a bank to facilitate credit and provide store of value.
The majority of financing and transactional activities are carried out by new-age payment companies like Stripe instead of traditional banks.
More than a third of borrowing and lending is done without a bank, and directly between consumers and companies.
The grand challenge of conversational AI is solved.
AI is so good at holding up a conversation it becomes the leading alternative to display advertising for companies to reach their audiences.
"Conversational selling" becomes the second biggest marketing channel in how companies connect with their customers.
Baby boomers retire very very well, surprising themselves, their kids, and their pension funds
Researchers discover that most chronic diseases are just a byproduct of aging. Scientists finally agree that by treating aging itself, many diseases can be prevented or treated.
Epigenetic aging clocks are used to accurately predict biological age and is the new benchmark for drug research -- the clocks are used to test and validate new treatments before they go through expensive clinical trials.
As a result, very few treatments fail once they enter clinical trials.
The higher hit rate saves biotech companies hundreds of billions a year.
The number of research papers tagged "genetic editing" (via CRISPR) outnumbers drug research for the first time in most medical journals -- fast becoming most scientists' preferred method of research.
But due to dangerous off-target effects and high cost, gene editing remains dormant in the research pipeline, but is widely considered the hero for the next S-Curve.
Doctors become a major bottleneck in distributing game-changing treatments because they refuse to put themselves out of a job. But the early adopters of new anti-aging treatments live much longer and healthier lives.
Population growth initially accelerates due to the higher life expectancy. But the decline in birth rate in most emerging economies offsets this effect.
The massive wealth created from efficiency gains in new industries provide a timely boost to most underfunded pensions. The large surpluses surprise most people.
Back to the roaring 20's
From my vantage point, we are likely to return to the roaring 20's in the next ten years.
Except this time, the millennials are in charge.
Do you agree or disagree? Drop me a comment.
About the author
Henry Bee is the CEO at CoPilot AI, a SaaS company based in Vancouver, Canada. The company’s mission is to fundamentally change the way people connect with businesses. CoPilot AI is a BC Technology Impact Award finalist, and is named by Canadian Business as the winner of the Best Pivot award and one of Canada’s Fastest-Growing Companies.
Director of Special Projects at Realauction.com, LLC
4 年Exciting! I do hope we find a solution for the misaligned taxi drivers, doctors, and farmers. Tech is supposed to make life easier but I can see how it can be misconstrued as "replacing us." Great post!
UX | UI Designer
4 年By the year 2030, fossil fuel will be virtually wiped out -I'd say they'll level out at best if we're being optimistic here Autonomous vehicles have removed the need for drivers -You mean those things that still can't drive properly? in ideal conditions, they can work but it becomes so much more difficult with weather conditions and factors that humans just have more knowledge and experience in, they might be better for the enterprise or private market but not the general consumer market. Human labour which is the most expensive part of a ride is freed up. -Which will just add to be another problem, suddenly you'll have a lot of jobs (decent-paying at that) gone and you can't just expect that thousands of people are going to do what? code? design? reskilling and training is time-intensive and equally expensive. Taking a taxi becomes cheaper than taking the bus. -Why? because it's driverless? why wouldn't mass transit be driverless than as well? it'd be even more effective and makes even more sense since the routes really never change, the bus will always still go from stop A to B. Self-driving taxis become the defining mode of transportation for most people, ushering in the rise of Transportation as a Service (TaaS). -Nothing changes from the current model? it'll just be a few companies that own the services and you order them via app/online and that's it As a result, most people no longer own a car. -You underestimate how much people love their cars, a lot of younger people might opt to not have a car but I can't see a lot of the population in like 10~ years giving up their car because it's supposedly self-driving now and you can order on demand, if this was true you'd have a lot more people ditching based on companies like EVO, Car2Go and others yet those barely made a dent. Energy demand plummets. -Clearly, you mean going up? how do you think it wouldn't? even if everything is electric the demand for all that will spike a lot more than current needs...the cars, buses, homes, businesses... Parking spaces are freed up. -I can see this being reduced, but it'll be replaced by a place to house all those driverless cars and other things, you still need the vehicles to be close enough to people that they want to use them, if you have to wait 15-20mins for your "car" to show up it won't work. A boom in residential/commercial mixed-use construction begins. -Already see this, and so far it's not really good or better...the concept art points to lively neighbours and people out and about but from my own experience of seeing this (at least in Vancouver, BC) nothing could be further from the truth. I would say we'll see less office space needed, COVID has shown that most people don't need to really be in an office anymore which should free up some space for other things. Demand for?alternative energy sources like solar/wind surges because they're much cheaper than fossil fuels. -Solar panels are still really bad for the environment though, maybe once we can construct a more "green" and eco way of recycling them. What happens for places in the world where neither solar nor wind is much of an option? or do we convert entire areas of countries to capturing as much as possible? cheaper might be true but the question is still are they better long term given current toxic waste..."The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in 2016?estimated there were about 250,000 metric tonnes of solar panel waste in the world at the end of that year.?IRENA projected?that this amount could reach 78?million?metric tonnes by 2050." I won't point out every topic you had here but honestly, you made it sound a little too rosy and ideal vs the actual reality, I think a lot of good will happen but let's not pretend that in the next 10 years suddenly the world is 5x better than where we are right now.