For better or worse, the future is never certain, and while there's plenty to get excited about
in the next few years, there's a heck of a lot to be worried about, too.
These are some of the scariest predictions that may come true in the next decade.
Today, the use of remotely piloted drones is widespread in warfare, and most of the
world's most advanced militaries have their own fleets of unmanned aerial vehicles.
But there is one bottleneck that these militaries are eager to remove: the human pilot.
This is because humans require things like food and sleep, and can generally only control
a single vehicle at a time.
But this problem can be overcome by the use of LAWs,
otherwise known as lethal autonomous weapons.
LAWs are similar to drones, but are completely piloted by AI and require no human intervention.
The most terrifying thing about them, however, is the L in their name: Lethal.
LAWs are authorized to kill without human oversight.
"It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear.
And it absolutely will not stop...ever."
On the surface, you can kinda see the argument for LAWs.
Instead of sending humans to fight costly and bloody wars, international disputes would
be solved by what are essentially fighting robot contests, with few humans hurt or killed
in the process.
Unfortunately, war isn't that simple.
For one thing, once the enemy's robot army is destroyed, the humans would inevitably
be next, and there's always going to be a strong likelihood of collateral damage.
And then you've got the situations in which an army manned by LAWs comes up against an
army that has none.
Things aren't looking so ethical then, are they?
But by far the biggest problems with LAWs come from the many what-if scenarios that
surround them.
What if they get hacked?
What if a bug in their programming causes them to attack the wrong targets?
What if a rogue nation or terrorist group gets their hands on them?
Scariest of all, what if an army of LAWs are programmed to commit genocide?
And if any of these things did occur, would anyone be able to stop them?
It doesn't seem likely.
People rely on satellites now more than ever.
Even in an era when satellite television and other obvious uses of the tech are on the
decline, there are hundreds of other ways you're using them even without you knowing it.
GPS is a major example, but even basic communications systems often rely heavily on satellites.
Without those helpful machines floating around in Earth's orbit, you'd suddenly lose a whole
lot of stuff that you depend on every day of your life.
And here's the problem: new satellites are constantly being launched, but the old ones
are slow to be decommissioned or otherwise cleaned up.
This leads to a build up of what's known as orbital debris, and this is starting to become
a big concern.
Remember the 2013 movie Gravity with Sandra Bullock?
In that film, Bullock plays a NASA astronaut who is working on the Hubble Space Telescope
when a missile strike on an old satellite causes an endless chain reaction of collisions.
But this scenario wasn't made up for the film.
It's a real thing, and it's known as Kessler Syndrome.
If this were to occur, it's possible that some debris might not burn up in the atmosphere
before reaching Earth, causing widespread death and destruction when it finally crashes
down.
Even more alarming, however, is the possibility that the chain reaction might just keep going,
making it practically impossible to launch new satellites, as anything new that is sent
into space will inevitably collide with the debris that already exists there.
Ransomware has become a big thing recently, and there's a reason why: it works.
These malicious programs are designed to take over a computer or network of computers, taking
control of a system on behalf of some villainous actor.
The takeover often comes with a threat to delete or encrypt files on the affected systems,
accompanied by a demand that the rightful user hand over money, ransom style, in order
to reverse the encryption and prevent data from being lost forever.
Imagine having years of work or sensitive files be potentially lost or stolen unless
you fork over large sums of cash to some hacker from the other side of the world.
Now imagine this happening with your smart home.
The so-called Internet of Things has made life very convenient in some ways, but it
introduces a whole new world of potential downsides, too, and the invention of smart
homes signals a very lucrative future for malware and hacking.
Say you buy a fancy new internet-connected smart oven, but it becomes compromised by
a random ransomware attack.
Depending on how that smart oven works, you could effectively no longer have control over
it, which would make cooking, and life, extremely difficult.
"I'm sorry, Dave.
I'm afraid I can't do that."
In the end, your choice may end up being between buying a new oven or paying the ransom.
And what if your smart air conditioner gets infiltrated in the middle of a heat wave?
Similarly, cars are getting smarter now, too.
If your sweet ride gets hacked by a malicious party, you're looking at the possibility of
thousands of dollars lost in a matter of seconds.
And while car manufacturers can add safeguards to their products, no system is impenetrable.
Damaged cars can often be fixed, but if you buy a car with a fatal flaw in its security,
a hacker or piece of malware could effectively "total" the whole line of vehicles by bricking
them through the power of the internet.
Throughout the last century, humanity has created machines intended to make our jobs
easier, but this innovation has come at a cost: employment.
Improvement in an industry's workflow causes more and more jobs to become unnecessary,
and it's not always possible to replace them.
Here's a weird example.
In 2005's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie's father is laid off from his job
putting caps on toothpaste tubes and is replaced by a machine.
At the end of the film, he gets a new job servicing the machine that took his job, so
it's a happy ending all around.
Except that there were several other employees who did the same work, and only a fraction
of employees are needed to service the machine.
This is a very basic example of unemployment stemming from automation, of course, but it's
starting to become a serious and significant problem as tech improves across the world.
As more and more jobs are replaced by AI and machines, more people will find themselves
out of work.
Of course, that doesn't bode well for capitalist societies, which are built on the concept
of employment.
Some possible fixes for this have been proposed, such as guaranteed minimum incomes, and yet,
no clear solution has emerged.
Nowadays, mass surveillance has become a daily part of life, with cameras constantly following
you in public and digital breadcrumbs revealing what you enjoy and consume every day.
Few people would say that's great, but things are likely to get even scarier in the near
future, and AI is going to be a real game-changer in the world of surveillance.
Not only will technology be able to track you every step of your life, but there will
be AI systems collating it all, without any human oversight whatsoever.
What this means is that certain groups will have the data and processing power to effectively
watch a person 24 hours a day, and all without the need for a human to examine the data themselves.
As such, the future of privacy protection will likely be less about preventing surveillance
and more about users consenting to how their data is used.
As an example, police in Chicago recently announced a partnership with Ring, manufacturer
of video doorbells, whereby authorities can request access to videos from citizens' devices.
Now, this data is being collected regardless of what anyone wants, but the owner still
has to agree to it actually being used by police.
Whether this model is the future of privacy is anyone's guess at this point, and if it
is, it's hard to know whether average people will accept it or not.
What does seem certain, however, is that full, round-the-clock surveillance for everyone
is a very likely possibility in the near future.
"If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever."
While humans have wiped out a great many communicable illnesses over the last century thanks to
vaccines and better health practices, it is possible that some of those past diseases
might come back to haunt us.
With the introduction of genetic editing tools like CRISPR, humanity is moving into an era
where it can customize medicine to an individual person, matching their treatment directly
to their individual genes.
However, scientists are beginning to worry about exactly the opposite: genetically modified
viruses that are designed to be more lethal than they already are.
Samples of many eradicated deadly viruses still exist, and with the right tools and
knowledge, it is becoming more and more likely that a malicious actor could modify those
samples and bring them back into circulation.
In fact, the genetic code for many viruses is actually readily available online.
Reverse engineering these to create a new superbug would take some time and effort,
but it could be done.
What's more, it's even possible to create brand new viruses from scratch using these tools.
With enough skill, there might be something akin to a superflu being crafted in a government-sponsored
lab within the next few years.
These viruses could even be tailored to only attack certain targets, like people with red
hair or males, making them highly effective as a genocidal weapon.
Antibiotics have been a cornerstone of successful healthcare for as long as they've existed.
But in recent years, doctors have begun discovering antibiotic-resistant illnesses.
At first, there were only a few, but now, more and more diseases are developing immunities
towards antibiotics.
So far, the response has been to encourage people to take their full course of antibiotics
instead of stopping when they feel better.
But this is only slowing things down.
There will eventually come a time when antibiotics are no longer effective.
So what will a post-antibiotic world look like?
Well, it's not entirely clear just yet, but it would mean more than simply not being able
to get medicine for basic illnesses and infections.
For example, humans could lose the ability to perform surgery, as doctors would be unable
to fight off infections that occur after surgical procedures.
Luckily, there are other potential antibiotic medicines out there, ones that can kill infectious
bacteria or viruses without damaging human tissue, but even if they were discovered tomorrow,
it would take years of testing and development before they could be widely used.
Even if new antibiotics are discovered, this would likely only be a stopgap solution.
Chances are, bacteria and viruses would develop similar antibiotic resistant traits to those, too.
One promising possibility is genetically individualized medicine.
But this is a very costly path to take, both in money and time, so it's going to be several
years before this method of treatment can become a viable alternative to antibiotics.
Society has only had a global internet for a few decades, but it has already changed
almost every aspect of day-to-day life.
So that's why the idea that it may soon disappear is so frightening.
Dubbed by experts as "The Splinternet" or the "Internet Cold War", this particular issue
derives from the fact that humanity is beginning to reach the digital breaking point, where
a collective, global internet could become a problem for countries who can't get along
with each other offline.
Essentially, The Splinternet will be made up of multiple concurrent internets that are
separated based on regions or ideologies or borders.
These parallel internets will be difficult or even impossible to go between, cutting
humankind off from one another and allowing for insular, more tightly-controlled networks.
This is obviously appealing to authoritarian states, but even countries that simply have
different laws for dealing with things on the internet might begin to seek out alternative
regional networks.
Russia is already in the process of launching their own internet, while North Korea is believed
to have had one for several years, and China has a de facto isolated internet thanks to
the so-called Great Firewall, which blocks access to anything the Chinese government
deems to be a problem.
It's not outside the realm of possibility that more and more countries will follow suit,
too, and before long, the open internet as you know it might just cease to exist.
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