What will be the next thing that everyone goes through together?

[travelingtortoise]

I was just looking through my journals from 2020 and thinking about how I'd never experienced something like COVID where absolutely everyone was affected in some way by it.

Of course there are loads of political / social events that impact large swathes of society, but that clear, defined period of lockdowns, government updates, and everyone thinking/talking about the same topic because every single household was impacted was totally new (to me at least).

It got me wondering - is that going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience? Or might there be other events that have the same reach? And if so, what might they be?

Not asking this to be a downer, by the way – I know it's unlikely to be anything very positive, and I wouldn't wish a repeat on anyone, but there was something really quite remarkable about it.

World war against Russia
World food poverty caused by war
Cancer burns from nuclear fall out

Another summer heatwave or drought

Def going with war here if we’re talking major disaster.
Heatwave not really comparable as we get high temps just for a few days.

i also kept a diary in covid times, more for posterity than anything else. When I think about it now it seems surreal.

Whether a heatwave is comparable depends how bad it is.
I am obviously not talking about something that lasts a few days, more something that is much more severe than 1976.

Artificial intelligence is going to end humanity soon anyway, even if climate change doesn’t.
I feel sorry for those with young babies and children, if I had my time again I wouldn’t have children knowing the future they face.

Bloody hell @SmurfHaribos! 'End humanity soon' is a bit dramatic! Literally 'end' humanity? Come on now!

Even the tech people who wrote that letter saying we need to be more conscious of the risks from AI aren’t saying it WILL happen, just that it’s a real danger.

People have been saying they shouldn’t have brought babies into the world because of the inevitable destruction of humanity since the first atomic bomb, but people born in the postwar years have had a pretty good run compared to other generations.

Climate disaster - huge swathes of populations relocating for water/ food/ heat reasons.

Televised alien landing?

World food poverty caused by war

it'll be world food poverty caused by climate change if its not war first

I think the next "Big Thing" will be AI.

I follow a few developer forums, and what's coming (within the next five years) is unlike anything any of us has experienced before.

I'm not talking all doom and gloom, it's much more nuanced than that.

However, our societies and working lives are about to change beyond recognition. Whole industries will exist that we don't even have words for now. Hundreds of millions of jobs will simply evaporate as AI is so much cheaper and more efficient. There will absolutely be a version of universal income, because we won't be able to replace the jobs lost to technology. AI will change our lives in a similar way to smartphones and the Internet. We will all be making jokes about what the world was like "before AI".

The current version of Chat GPT is just a language model, it can't "think" for itself and has no understanding of context. The next version of Chat, due for release soon, is an entirely new beast, it WILL take jobs virtually overnight. The old rule of computers doubling in processing power every two years is outdated. AI can now write code, refine that programme and make it better, faster, more efficient. It can do this over and over again, way faster than human coders can comprehend. AI is now quite literally capable of evolution.

Human like AI bots will be in every home.

We will have AI pets.

There will be AI "stars", computer generated "actors" and singers, who will be as famous as the current human ones.

None of this is somewhere in "the future". By 2030 our daily lives will be unrecognisable.

15 minute cities / less travel.
Far less food due to farming reduction being reduced to 60 percent to save the planet.

15 minute cities / less travel.

less travel by private car, doesn't mean there will be less travelling, we will move to other ways of travelling as we did before the invention of the motorcar

15 minute cities will never happen. In the very near future, work and education will all be from home, there won't be any need for people to live in an urban context. The 15 minute city idea was actually a design from the 1970s, its already outdated.

And humans have been travelling since the dawn of civilisation, that's not something which is going to change.

AI will cure climate change, will find a way to decarbonise the air.

AI will change working as we know it, probably change food production and the whole world will leap in terms of knowledge, health knowledge, psychology knowledge, however the regulation will be rocky and the paranoia extreme.

AI will make expensive services cheap and universal. Possibly make humans more disconnected from reality. It will change reality.

I've always tried to toddle along through life with a "what will be will be " attitude and have never paid heed to conspiracy theories except for when I was 12 and was obsessed with them and can honestly say AI scares the shit out of me.

Terminator and Skynet anyone?!! Only slightly joking

How do you get through life being so aggressively pessimistic?

Interesting feature in The New European this week suggesting the exact opposite, if you want to challenge your doomsday thinking for a moment

Robot hoovers still don't work properly - and thats half a century after the first ones were invented.

Yes AI will change the workplace and consumer habits and everything to some extent, just like the internet did, but we're not going to have droids in the house in three months time....

I can believe many things will happen but not AI pets. Someone might build them but they won’t take off. People who have pets want genuine interaction with another living creature.

@SpringIntoChaos have you not seen Terminator?! 😂

I would go for food poverty, housing poverty and war. Hopefully I’ll be dead by then!

They already have.

What do you mean they already have?

Not all work can be carried out from home. That's just a privilege for the laptop classes.

Plans for 15 minute cities is already happening. Pretty much everywhere across the UK. Unless you live in the middle of nowhere it will be impacting on you too.

It's true people will still be able to travel. Sort of. By bike or walking, public transport if it's fit for purpose. But they'll pay heavily / be fined for going over their allocated number of days through some necessary areas in a car. You can look at Oxford for the template and then check out your own council website to see what's happening where you are.

Humans have been traveling since the dawn of civilisation I agree. Will they accept restrictions on this in the future I wonder, or will they push back...

Remember the Tamagotchi?

And that was 25 years ago. Once the next generation of AI is released, people will have AI pets.

Your comment just illustrates my point about how our lives will change. Most people have no comprehension of what has just happened in regards to AI development.