Looking at the past from the future (photo by Liza Loop)
What stands out as most significant to you? Why? What is most likely to be gained and lost in the next 15 or so years? Here are my positive and negative scenarios…
I imagine positive and negative futures for the year 2040 without predicting whether or which are most likely to occur. Most significant, and a component in both scenarios, is an increase in humanity’s ability to produce the goods and services necessary for individual human survival accompanied by a decrease in both environmental pollution and erosion of stocks of natural capital. This boils down to the potential for what has been called “the age of abundance”. Let’s take a quick look at some positives and negatives while noting that an increase in our ability to do something does not imply that it is likely to happen.
In the positive take, by 2040 ordinary people will have far more choice in lifestyle and decreased risk of dying from disease (genetic, environmental, or contagious), exposure (to cold, heat, lack of food or water, and poisons), or civil violence (either as wide scale war, personal attack, or small group terrorism). Accidental death may be unchanged or increase because some people may choose to take more risks. Death by abortion or infanticide is likely to be less frequent as we become more skilled at preventing conception.
A survey of the living will reveal people enjoying a much broader range of lifestyles without the social stigma that was attached to many lifestyles in the 2020s. For example, voluntary ‘homelessness’ or ‘nomadism’ will be considered a valid choice at any age. Similarly, many more people are choosing ‘simplicity’ or ‘sparse’ paths in order to avoid the responsibility of caring for and storing possessions they don’t use every day even when they reside in one geographic location.
With the decline of ‘owning stuff’ as the primary indicator of social status, there is a rise in acclaim for people who contribute by caring for others or by producing and donating artistic creations. The existence of Universal Basic Income and effective Universal Education permits social service workers, artists, adventurers, and scholars to eschew wealth accumulation and focus on their avocations. At the same time, those who so choose are free to exercise the historic values of control of goods and services in excess of their ability to consume them.
Lost in this scenario is the necessity for competition which many people in the 2020s still rely on as a primary motivator. Abundance is a condition where there are enough basic resources to eliminate zero-sum games and if-you-live-I-must-die conundrums. Under abundance, competition is only one of many lifestyle choices for humans.
Another “loss” I hope for by 2040 is the high value placed on large families. Rather than proud parents enjoying being surrounded by 10 of their own children, in 2040 a ‘family’ of 12 or 20 would include great grandparents and 3rd cousins as well as parents and children. This is an example of how a relatively small change in social attitudes can have profound effects on how humans impact the planet.
A negative view of life in 2040 incorporates the trends and fears being discussed now in 2023 and 24. Little has changed in our social and economic institutions over the past two centuries. This has led to further concentration of wealth and growing dysfunction in global civil society. The power brokers of 15 years ago have co opted the increase in productive capacity enabled by machine automation and AI without instituting compensating channels for redistribution of what has been produced. Stockpiles of consumer goods are targets to be ‘liberated’. The military-industrial complex survives on the demand generated by ongoing small wars that have not yet succeeded in destroying the worldwide productive infrastructure rather than on genuine human need. Population growth has continued apace resulting in an exponential rise in the number of humans living in extreme poverty, misery, and despair. The ubiquity of video communication allows rising aspirations among the world’s poor and physical migration as they are continuously exposed to narratives of luxury they cannot attain.
Of particular interest to educators in this negative scenario is the lost opportunity to spread know-how among the less fortunate. High aspiration without the knowledge and skills to fulfill these wants decreases overall perception of well-being even under conditions of increasing availability of food, water, consumer goods, and health care. In this negative future, we have continued to train AIs and each other that the goal of educating humans is to enable them to be successful competitors in the employment market at the same time that we are decreasing the demand for human muscle and brain power. Unemployment is rampant while employers lament the lack of adequately trained workers.
This view is frighteningly likely given that AGI is still way beyond the 2040 horizon. While there is no reason to anticipate that an AGI would spontaneously develop the competitive, amoral, greedy personality exhibited by some humans, there is also no reason to assume that guideposts against such an outcome will be put in place by today’s researchers and developers.
Why do I envision these changes for 2040? It is because the environmental conditions under which humans evolved have changed while many of our socially reinforced values have lagged behind. Behaviors that were a ‘good fit’ for humans existing ‘in the wild’ no longer ensure our individual survival from birth to the time our children reach reproductive age. Like many other species, humans are able to produce many more offspring than they are able to nurture. By maintaining the belief that every child we are able to conceive is innately valuable and should have a right to life, we endanger ourselves and those with whom we share the planet. By relying on an economic theory founded on an assumption of scarcity, we inhibit our willingness to embrace abundance even in the face of the capacity to produce it. AI technology accelerates our productive capacity. However, if we continue to train both neural networks and semantic systems with rules, data, and beliefs that sustained us during eons past but ignore today’s realities, we cannot blame the AIs for the result.
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