The next 50 years

Predicting the future is difficult. But seeing which direction the future is flowing is not that hard. Especially if certain technologies have already left the laboratory, entered the economic system, and begun to accelerate one another.

About a decade ago, when I said that space mining and space tourism would be important sectors of the coming period, these were still perceived as a bit like science fiction. Today, the question is no longer whether these will happen, but when they will become economically viable. I want to do the same thing now for the next 50 years.

To me, the keyword for understanding the next 50 years will not be technology, but abundance.

Almost the entirety of human history has been built on scarcity. There wasn't enough food, energy was expensive, production depended on human labor, accessing information was difficult, and quality healthcare was limited. Even the science of economics itself was built on the problem of how to distribute limited resources among unlimited needs.

Now, some variables in this equation are beginning to change.

Artificial intelligence is lowering the cost of producing information. Robots will lower the cost of physical labor. But our solution for energy might not be to produce more energy. On the contrary, we will make everything from the devices we use to data centers, from transportation to production, so efficient that the energy we need to perform the same work will decrease dramatically. We will overcome the energy constraint not by producing more energy, but by needing much less of it.

Each of these is important. But the real change will arise from them happening simultaneously.

The other day, while discussing the question, "Will artificial intelligence take your job?", this was precisely my main objection. I find it wrong that the AI debate is constantly treated as a race between human and machine. One of the most important characteristics of human intelligence is its ability to adapt to the conditions it finds itself in. Instead of waiting for AI to adapt to us, we will adapt to the conditions of the AI era.

Moreover, the issue is not just which professions will disappear. The bigger question is what the place of work will be within the economic system.

Because when artificial intelligence, robots, and the ever-decreasing need for energy come together, the human labor required in production could decrease dramatically. In this case, even Universal Basic Income, which is discussed as a continuation of today's social state understanding, might perhaps not be the right concept.

For now, I prefer to call this humanity income.

Because here, we might not be talking about social assistance given to people because they cannot work, but about a share everyone receives from the technological productivity created by humanity. In an economy produced by robots, managed by artificial intelligence, and where energy needs are extremely low, meeting people's basic needs might not be as expensive as it is today.

This change will also reflect on our health.

In the next 50 years, one of the biggest transformations in the healthcare system could be moving from treating diseases to preventing them before they even emerge. The scope of the vaccine concept, which we associate only with certain diseases today, will expand. Developing preventive or disease-specific vaccines against many diseases we are trying to treat today, including cancer, will change our approach to health. Gene therapies, immunotherapies, and AI-supported early diagnosis systems will also be other parts of this transformation.

Developments in weight-loss drugs are already showing an earlier example of this. For a long time in human history, being overweight was a sign of wealth. Then, being thin turned into a status symbol. If weight control through medication becomes an ordinary and cheap procedure, being thin will also cease to be a status symbol.

The new indicator of wealth might be being fit.

Because you can buy the medicine, but you cannot buy the conditioning. Muscle mass, low biological age, good sleep, endurance, and physical performance require time and discipline as much as money. Fifty years from now, the indicator of luxury might be your body rather than the car in your garage.

Moreover, as healthy life expectancy increases, other institutions that we accept as extremely natural today will also begin to change. People staying healthy for longer periods might make it meaningless for education, work, and retirement periods to be separated by such sharp lines as they are today.

However, one of the most interesting changes of the next 50 years might take place in law, even more than in the economy.

Today, if the speed limit on a road is 120 kilometers, the state tells you not to exceed 120. But your car can do 200 kilometers. In other words, the law prohibits the behavior but does not prevent the behavior from occurring. You violate the law, and if the system detects it, you pay your fine.

In a world of connected and autonomous cars, there is no technical reason for this system to continue.

If the vehicle knows the speed limit of the road it is on and is constantly communicating with the infrastructure around it, it may not exceed the speed limit unless there is a proven valid justification.

Thus, a very important transformation begins in law:

From a law that says "You cannot," to an algorithm that truly prevents you from doing it.

This is not only valid for traffic. Taxes, environmental regulations, licenses, safety standards, and many areas that the state has to audit today can be implemented by software over time.

And right here, a technological issue turns into a philosophical problem.

If a person does not have the possibility to violate the law, have they obeyed the law?

If free will requires not only the freedom to choose the right behavior but also the possibility to choose the wrong behavior, algorithmic law might reopen the concept of freedom to debate while providing us with a much more orderly society.

Artificial intelligence itself will not remain in its current form either.

Today, we are largely talking to giant data centers somewhere else in the world. I think this is the transition phase of the coming period. Artificial intelligence will increasingly become localized. There will be models running on our phones, computers, cars, homes, and robots. We will live with AIs that recognize us without sending all of our personal data to a central system.

The cloud will not disappear. But a hierarchy consisting of cloud, edge, and local AI will emerge.

Following this, artificial intelligence will emerge from the screen.

It will enter the physical world with robots. When the cost of robot labor in cleaning, maintenance, logistics, agriculture, construction, and production falls below human labor, there will be no economic sense in having humans do many of the jobs we have them do today.

What is interesting is that instead of completely devaluing human labor, this could do the exact opposite in some areas.

A meal made by a robot will be cheap, a meal made by a human chef will be expensive. A visual created by artificial intelligence will be ordinary, a work created by a human will be considered special. Just as mass production did not destroy handmade products but instead turned them into luxury, automation can turn some human labor into luxury products.

One of the most visible examples of this could be entertainment. Today, giant concert venues filled by tens of thousands of people work thanks to economic scale. In the future, watching a real artist physically in front of you could turn into an extremely expensive experience with a small number of people, rather than a mass event attended by thousands. While technology multiplies music and performance in an almost unlimited way, the time spent in the same physical space as the artist himself cannot be multiplied, so it may become increasingly scarce and therefore more valuable.

The next stage of abundance on Earth will be going beyond Earth.

This is why I have cared about space mining for about ten years. In the first stage, we will discuss whether it will be economical to bring materials extracted from asteroids to Earth. However, the real big change could begin with the use of raw materials in space. Instead of transporting every kilogram from Earth to space at great costs, production in orbit with raw materials obtained from the Moon or asteroids could change the scale of the space economy.

Space tourism will follow the same path. Experiences that only very wealthy people can reach today could turn into luxury tourism first, and then into a wider market as technology develops. Orbital hotels and Moon trips could create a sector of their own in a 50-year perspective.

The transformation in energy will also be one of the fundamental parts of this abundance economy. However, we may not need to build constantly larger power plants for this. The real revolution will be being able to produce the same economic output with increasingly less energy. When processors, artificial intelligence systems, transportation vehicles, production machines, and buildings consume much less energy, energy may cease to be one of the fundamental elements limiting economic growth.

Agriculture will also get its share of this. As robotic agriculture, vertical farming, precision fermentation, and cellular production develop, the dependence of food on soil, climate, and human labor will decrease.

Therefore, I do not see the next 50 years as a history of separate technological inventions.

The real story will be the combination of these.

Artificial intelligence will make information cheaper. Robots will make labor cheaper. Efficiency will reduce the need for energy. Biotechnology will begin to prevent more and more diseases instead of treating them. The space economy will expand the field of resources we can access.

Many economic and social concepts that we built on scarcity in human history will have to be redefined in a world where abundance is gradually increasing.