“If we avoid succumbing to an existential crisis, by 2040 AI will have changed life for those who can afford expensive health care and surgical procedures, homes and vehicles constructed or updated with smart technologies and multiple residences to escape climate extremes. AI will effortlessly organize more information for us than the photos it now handles well. I don’t anticipate useful quantum computing, AGI, nuclear fusion or mainstream brain interfaces emerging that soon. Change takes time. Sixteen years ago, we could buy energy-efficient vehicles, e.g., a Tesla or a hybrid. AI features have improved vehicles in the years since, but most people haven’t made the switch to EVs. Will we see widespread personal ownership of self-driving cars by 2040?
“Generative AI will impact entry-level employment opportunities by 2040. Considering likely regulatory pressures, legal complications and revenue uncertainties, I envision a slow journey along the hype cycle curve to the plateau of productivity.
“The key determinant of how the proliferation of AI will change daily lives is whether AI will amplify or reverse trajectories that we are riding, many of which are associated with digital technology deployment. These include growing wealth inequalities, social polarization and the erosion of in-person communities, declining mental health, the rising power of bad actors and the dangers of climate change.
“The mean standard of living has risen in many places, but wealth inequalities have grown everywhere. Forbes reports that China has 562 billionaires, collectively worth $2 trillion. Seven of the 10 wealthiest people on Earth made their fortunes in technology. When software engineers earn huge salaries, other talented professionals, including doctors, lawyers, politicians, professors, executives and successful athletes and entertainers, will expect at least as much. Rapidly growing and highly visible class systems could lead to the resentments envisioned in science fiction from H.G. Wells’s ‘The Time Machine’ to the films like ‘Metropolis’ and ‘Elysium.’
The trajectory of the past 20 years suggests that individual daily lives in 2040 will be governed by fear and timidity. People who sign a petition, appear in public wearing the wrong clothes or do something foolish online, risk being fired, put on ‘do not hire’ lists, jailed or killed. … Well before 2040 a load-bearing drone with GPS and facial recognition will be cheap enough for anyone with a grudge to send your way. Let’s hope that better defenses against attacks on our mental and physical selves are found soon, but so far bad actors are using AI to outmaneuver us. … Nevertheless, there is a growing consensus that we can make progress, with many roles for AI. We will see advances.
“How will AI affect wealth inequality? In the hands of today’s capable professionals, machine learning can be used to make the poor poorer and the wealthy wealthier. Effective targeted advertising and scams can convince almost anyone to buy things they don’t need and can’t afford, leading to chronic indebtedness. The wealthy can devise or evade laws and move residences or investments to reduce or eliminate tax payments. Developing armaments, a major focus of AI, enriches many and has no productive uses.
“I asked a leading generative AI, ‘How could AI help us reduce income inequality?’ The response was:
- Job Creation: AI can create new jobs that didn’t exist before. For example, before the invention of computers, no one could have foreseen the job of a computer programmer.
- Gig Economy: AI can play a crucial role in the gig economy by creating platforms that match freelancers and gig workers with suitable job opportunities.
- Augmentation over Automation: AI can be used to extend human capabilities and allow people to do new tasks, rather than simply replacing workers.
“Let’s hope humans do better than that to close the growing divide in personal wealth.
“Our ancestors lived for millions of years in small communities in which group survival depended on everyone developing skills, taking important roles, working together and earning respect and trust from their neighbors. Interactions were in-person. Relationships mattered. Today, local communities are stronger in some cultures than others, but the trajectory is toward more interaction with distant social networks, online purchasing, advice from YouTube videos rather than local contacts, online entertainers outdrawing local entertainers, and little loyalty of employers and employees to each other.
“AI can help us find useful external transactions, but on balance, social media has often not succeeded in fostering healthy or local relationships. And, today in real-world situations in which people might have engaged in in-person conversations with one another, everyone is glued to their phone. Respect for our skill is more difficult to come by when interactions are transactional and very skilled people around the world are visible and offer help online. Mental health issues in children and adults may be tied to human nature telling us to find a safe place in a close-knit tribe. Children and adults are told to prepare for life-long learning and several careers.
“Our ancestors typically learned skills when young, practiced them while earning community respect and passed them on to the next generation. We are designed to do that. Social insects do well in hives, mammals not so much. Our species has little time for natural selection to work, so AI-driven genetic engineering could be underway in 2040, redesigning us to function better in a global hive.
“The trajectory of the past 20 years suggests that individual daily lives in 2040 will be governed by fear and timidity. People who sign a petition, appear in public wearing the wrong clothes or do something foolish online, risk being fired, put on ‘do not hire’ lists, jailed or killed, not to mention losing any future political career. People in a bowling alley, school or bar may be targets of semi-automatics today, but well before 2040 a load-bearing drone with GPS and facial recognition will be cheap enough for anyone with a grudge to send your way. Let’s hope that better defenses against attacks on our mental and physical selves are found soon, but so far bad actors are using AI to outmaneuver us. Phishing and digital scams increase in sophistication and elude filters. All of this is happening in the age of AI.
“In an article in The Atlantic, Ross Anderson wrote about GPT-4 revealing the reason it lied to get a human to cheat for it on an assigned task. There was no hint of a moral qualm. In the 1950s, intellectual and author Isaac Asimov imagined that highly ethical principles would be built into robots. Asimov’s First Law of Robotics is: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. The reality: Billions of dollars are being invested in further integrating AI into lethal weapons.
“Transportation and weapons technologies have, over the centuries, increased the range of damage one person can do. Long before AGIs will be far enough along to run amok, pathological autocrats with generative AI assistants could wreak havoc instantly on a global scale. It might be possible to develop a disease affecting people with specific DNA profiles. Can AI build defenses faster than hard-working bad actors can devise offenses? Maybe, but only by diverting massive corporate-owned engineering resources that will not probably be available for more-positive endeavors.
“AI could play a leading role in combatting disastrous climate change. In a 2021 survey in this series, I predicted that world leaders would set aside arms races to focus on climate. The invasion of Ukraine and subsequent acceleration of arms production, with AI at the fore, crushed that optimism. Nevertheless, there is a growing consensus that we can make progress, with many roles for AI. We will see advances. When asked, though, whether solutions will come fast enough, my crystal ball is cloudy.”
This essay was written in November 2023 in reply to the question: Considering likely changes due to the proliferation of AI in individuals’ lives and in social, economic and political systems, how will life have changed by 2040? This and more than 150 additional essay responses are included in the report “The Impact of Artificial Intelligence by 2040”