From Sci-Fi to Reality: 20 Technologies to Revolutionize the World by 2050
In 2050, the world will look dramatically different due to significant technological advancements. ?
The World’s First Artificial General Intelligence Is Close To Becoming A Reality
By 2050, major tech companies have already launched official projects to develop the world’s first artificial general intelligence. Billions of dollars are invested in these projects and large full-time staff are dedicated to this effort. These highly complex projects are expected to take anywhere from 10 to 20 years to complete.?
Scientists and engineers are figuring out how to model factors such as:
The immediate use case is to have a self-aware AI that institutions can consult with to solve problems that were previously thought impossible.?
Another use case involves transferring copies of this AI to advanced humanoid robots that can handle?variety of situations in the real world.?
A small percentage of the world opposes this and there’s constant backlash on the internet, but that was to be expected.?
This development is projected to lead to technologies that are indistinguishable from magic in the coming decades—especially when combined with the exponentially growing computational power of classical and quantum computers. However, it leaves the door open to a super intelligent AI being developed by the end of the century. And there’s no feasible limit to how intelligent this AI can become. Such an AI could be smarter than all humans that have ever lived on planet earth. Shortly afterwards, it could become trillions of times more intelligent than that.?
Human-Like Robots Are Emerging
In 2050, robots have the ability to master real world environments and an increasingly diverse range of 3D objects. Although, earlier robots were limited to fixed movements, this new generation has more dexterity and flexibility. They can adapt to new situations and solve more and more dynamic problems. And they can learn from their experiences and share knowledge with each other because of wireless internet speeds thousands of times faster than 6G and the exponentially growing amounts of data being gathered from their sensors.?
These robots can identify objects, situations, and the actions they should perform next in near real-time, which enables a more human-like response. Although a few technological and scientific hurdles still remain, this is getting close to what many people would consider artificial general intelligence.?
The most advanced robots are restricted to government, corporate, and research institutions and the households of the rich and famous. In addition to cognitive abilities, these more advanced robots have extremely lifelike appearances, facial expressions, and body language. Thanks to continuous emotional feedback from users and techniques such as motion capture and generative adversarial networks, these robots almost look and act like real people. And as more data is provided to these robots, their body language and movements become more natural with each generation.?
3D printed bones, and new materials developed for more flexible skin and muscles, eyes, and teeth help to make the humanoid robots appear as human as possible.?
Additionally, less advanced models are now relatively common in society. They’re popular among people in upper-middle-income brackets and they’re similar in cost to a second car or a similar major purchase. Their functions include household chores such as cleaning, cooking, and tidying, as well as looking after children and elderly family members.?
Brain-Computer Interfaces Have Improved By Orders Of Magnitude
In 2050, brain-computer interfaces have vastly improved over the versions from 2030 and they’re largely usable for everyday purposes. Headbands and wrist bands with non-invasive sensors have become the preferred choices for mainstream brain-computer interface use. These interfaces are usually standard accessories for virtual reality headsets including high-priced VR helmets that offer full dive VR experiences. And some brain-computer interfaces are fully implantable for medical and military purposes.?
Brain-computer interfaces now offer a bidirectional exchange of information. These advanced neural interfaces send waves to the brain, transmitting visual, audio, and other sensations to the user. The images and experiences generated by these devices are almost indistinguishable from reality, and they’re unique to each user because they depend on the structure of the brain.?
When it comes to entertainment, people can use brain-computer interfaces to control objects in video games and virtual environments with high reasonable accuracy. For example, this feature is particularly relevant in the latest Star Wars game where you play as Jedis and Siths with force abilities. And in the latest Matrix game where you can play as The One.?
Additionally, these devices allow people in VR games and experiences to communicate with each other using relatively simple thoughts. However, it will take a few more decades before this feature is refined.?
Bionic Eyes Are Perfected
In 2050, artificial retinas and other visual prostheses can match the visual quality of a real human eye.?They contain electrode arrays with hundreds of megapixels in full color along with wireless capabilities. This is a substantial step up from devices in earlier decades that provided black-and-white and highly pixelated views of the world.?
Some versions of these implants not only provide a cure to blindness for many people, but they also contain further enhancements. These enhancements include embedded cameras, WiFi, augmented reality, night vision, thermal vision, zoom capability, and so on. When someone is using these devices, it's possible to wirelessly communicate with them using text overlayed in their vision.?
These enhanced devices are standard practice among spy organizations, militaries, and high-profile citizens. However, they’re becoming inexpensive enough for the mainstream public as well. Healthy adults are now tempted to take advantage of the improvements offered by computerized vision.?
The main downsides are privacy and security concerns. Some government and corporate sources indicate that these devices could potentially expose a high number of government and corporate scandals.?
Two Space Elevators Have Been Built
In 2050, two space elevators have been built and they’re the largest engineering projects ever undertaken. China and the Obayashi Corp., a global construction firm based in Tokyo, Japan committed to building their own space elevators more than three decades ago and that vision has come to life.?
These space elevators are planet-to-space transportation systems that each have a cable anchored to the earth’s surface and extending into space. This design permits an elevator to travel along the cable directly into orbit, without the use of large rockets. They’re located near the earth’s equator and the competing forces of gravity and outward centrifugal force hold up the cables under tension. The material used to create the cables are carbon nanotubes, which are lightweight and hundreds of times stronger than steel.?
These space elevators are frequently being used by institutions to deliver cargo into space and return cargo to the earth. They’re also capable of transporting astronauts and tourists to low-orbit space stations. Each space elevator cost almost $10 billion to build. However, they made this money back in savings after transporting only a few payloads. That’s because transporting cargo with space elevators is less than 1% of the cost when using rockets.?
Augmented And Mixed Reality Is Everywhere
Entire cities have turned into augmented reality zones, which can be experienced by using augmented reality glasses, lenses, or other devices. Location-specific augmented reality overlays are created by corporations and individual creators. Urban landscapes are filled with information of all types, which can be filtered as needed using augmented reality apps.?
Price tags in stores, menus in restaurants, and schedules at public transportation stops have all become virtual.?
It’s also become common to use augmented reality to access navigation from one location to another, get reviews for nearby institutions, and view notable 3d animations and videos of past events at certain locations.?
Hyperloop Tunnels Are Enabling Faster International Travel
The hyperloop concept usually involves passenger pods traveling through pressurized tubes using electric propulsion and magnetic levitation. Cargo is also transported considerably faster than before with this method. Hyperloop pods travel at speeds between 600 and 700 miles per hour. They also reduce transit-related greenhouse gas emissions by 90%. And due to the time they save, they provide economic benefits totaling over a trillion dollars every year when compared to previous transportation methods.?
Over a dozen domestic hyperloop tunnels were finalized by the early 2030s. Now, tunnels have been built to allow high-speed transportation between multiple countries.?
This development created a boom in the tourism industry. This development is also disrupting the air and rail travel industries. However, the widespread introduction of supersonic aircraft in the early 2030s for long-distance traveling is mitigating the effects of this disruption.?
AI Can Outperform Humans In Most Occupations
In 2050, artificial intelligence can outperform humans in a majority of professions.
AI software can outmatch humans in white-collar jobs involving constructing company reports, market research, and most administrative functions. In some scenarios, they can also write screenplays, make music, write novels, and more.
AI robots can outmatch humans in jobs such as security guards, forklift drivers, chefs, and warehouse pickers.
Many companies have even replaced most of their human resources departments with AI. In these companies, artificial intelligence handles recruitment, first-round job interviews, employee orientations, performance evaluations, and deciding who to lay off. As an added touch, some corporations even use artificial intelligence to lay off employees in Metaverse environments—almost entirely removing the human element from these life-changing situations.?
Other departments within companies such as finance, legal, sales, marketing, and customer service have also changed forever.?
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The only people who are relatively safe from having their jobs taken over by AI are the following:
This is a trend that will only escalate toward the end of the century.?
Virtual Assistants Have Largely Replaced Search Engines
Well before 2050, most people on earth have access to a pervasive virtual assistant. The same virtual assistant can be available as an augmented reality hologram, virtual reality character, and household robot. And the same virtual assistant can be available as a voice in a smart home, inside a vehicle, from a smartwatch, and from a smartphone.?
By this point, language models similar to GPT-3 are exponentially more advanced and virtual assistants are built on these language model platforms.?
These virtual assistants are trained on text data from the majority of websites and publications ever created in human history. So they can answer almost any question we ask them. And their answers are personalized based on our goals, interests, and career paths.?
They constantly predict what we might want to do next and make suggestions throughout each day instead of us having to type phrases into search engines. Whenever we do search for information, they always make additional suggestions that are vaguely related to our queries to help us get helpful perspectives we never considered.?
We can also customize the personalities, appearances, voices, and special abilities of these virtual assistants.?
In the coming decades, artificial general intelligence will take this technology to another level.?
The Average Person Has Access To Quantum Computing Technology
For the past 10 – 15 years, tech companies have offered quantum computing technology with their cloud services at a moderate to high cost. Personal computers and servers also contain a hybrid of classical and quantum computing technology or one of those technologies. Quantum technology is usually considerably more expensive.?
Companies and individuals use quantum technology to:
Some organizations are using the most advanced quantum computers in the world to closely simulate the processes of the human brain. This is making the transferring of memories from humans to machines a real possibility. These simulations are helping artificial general intelligence become a reality as well?
One major downside to all of this is that some individuals have begun using quantum-enabled AI to create fake videos that are completely indistinguishable from reality. They’re nearly impossible to detect without expensive generative adversarial networks trained on high levels of computational power.?
AI-Enabled Warfare Is Now Possible
For the past couple of decades, it’s been possible to fight an entire war using only fully autonomous robots and vehicles. But, capabilities have reached a new level.?
A swarm of ten thousand drones can be deployed with a cost as little as $10 million.?
An AI-controlled hypersonic missile can travel to the other side of the globe in two hours and out-maneuver conventional defensive systems.?
Fully autonomous robots with near-perfect aim have replaced a high percentage of human soldiers in the major militaries around the world. No human with conventional weapons would stand a chance against these machines, which also have the ability to heal themselves using nanotechnology. For the most delicate missions, these robots can also be controlled by soldiers wearing virtual reality headsets in nearby locations.?
Most of today’s jet fighters are fully autonomous as well. A combination of powerful AI, swarming behavior, hypersonic speed, and near-perfect target recognition systems enables near-instantaneous effects throughout combat areas.?
Network-centric warfare and collision avoidance systems enable squadrons of autonomous aircraft to synchronize, attack from multiple directions, and regroup in seconds.?
Due to their inhuman reaction times and improved weaponry, no human pilot would stand a chance against this type of enemy.?
Even routine ground maintenance is done mostly by robots.
Light-Based Computer Chips Are Mainstream
In 2050, the majority of computer processors, storage devices, memory chips, graphics cards, and motherboards use a combination of both light and electricity to optimize performance for certain scenarios. The main advantage of light-based computer chips is that they are faster and more efficient for certain AI calculations. That’s because information can be encoded more efficiently in different wavelengths of light, and because controlling light requires less power than controlling the flow of electrons with transistors.?
Technologies that process data using light include:
Light-based computer chips also provide the following advantages:
Additionally, these chips are able to permanently store memory and data, which was difficult to accomplish three decades ago.
The Cost Of Energy Is Incredibly Cheap
By the early 2040s, much of the developed world and some developing countries are primarily powered by solar and wind. The cost of solar energy dropped 82% from 2010 to 2020, while the cost of wind energy dropped 46 percent. The costs of these energy sources are now one-quarter of the cost from the early 2020s.?
One major reason for the lower energy costs is the growing usage of surplus energy generated by solar panels and wind turbines that would have otherwise been wasted. This surplus energy is stored and re-routed to be used for non-time-sensitive applications such as charging batteries of parked cars, removing salt from saltwater, waste recycling, and metal refining. Not only did the costs of energy drop, the costs for anything that relies on that energy dropped as well—that includes the cost of water, materials, manufacturing, and computation.?
Continent-wide super grids are also starting to emerge. These super grids allow nations to share surplus clean energy from abundant sources and distribute it to the regions most in need. By cooperating in this way, it’s possible to greatly reduce waste and optimize power supplies on a continent-wide scale, at all times of the year.?
Additionally, lithium-ion battery storage costs dropped 87% from 2010 to 2020 and it continued to drop afterward due to the massive production of batteries for electric vehicles.?
Another positive to all of this is that using clean energy sources eliminates more than 50 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, which is by far the largest culprit of climate change.??
Most Digital Transactions Use Blockchain Technology
A blockchain is a shared database that allows multiple parties to access data and verify that data in real-time. Since the late-2030s, most digital transactions of all types have been on a blockchain. Blockchain technology has become a bedrock to society almost as much as electricity, the internet, and artificial intelligence.
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