- [Narrator] If the past 30 years are anything to go by,
the year 2050 will be a world transformed.
In just three decades,
we've seen the development
and mass adoption of the internet,
huge leaps forward in racial and gender equality,
and massive geopolitical shifts,
like the fall of the Soviet Union
and the re-emergence of China.
In retrospect, it all seems so obvious,
little did we know at the time.
But will the world look as different in 2050
as 1990 does to us today?
From AI to climate change,
nanotechnology to printed meat,
what does the future hold?
Join us as we take a journey
through the most significant technological upheavals
and transformations we can expect in the coming decades.
This is the world of 2050.
Artificial Intelligence.
No good sci-fi story is complete
without a terrifying AI overlord.
Be it James Cameron's Terminators,
HAL from 2001 "Space Odyssey,"
or the emotionless David in Ridley Scott's "Prometheus."
But can we expect such startling breakthroughs by 2050?
According to some, yes.
Just not as you imagine it.
In 2050, AI may have revolutionized
every aspect of our lives.
Doctors could use complex learning algorithms
to diagnose patients with incredible accuracy.
Even better, with a level of computing power
unimaginable today,
machine brains could develop an understanding of viruses,
bacteria, even cancer cells, designing drugs atom by atom.
Such machines could execute 100 trillion instructions
per second, rivaling human intelligence.
Nor will this be the end.
In 2050, we may be in the realm of home quantum computing.
These machines work at the level of atoms,
handling and storing data of unimaginable size.
It led British Futurologist Ian Person
to hypothesize back in 2005
that we could essentially download a person's consciousness
into a machine.
With Elon Musk's Neuralink already developing
innovative ways to interface
between the brain and computers,
it may not sound so crazy after all.
Transport revolution.
Perhaps one of the biggest transformations
of our daily lives will be in transport.
The biggest personal revolution of the 20th century
was the invention of the car.
Where before, people lived and died in their small locality,
the car opened up the world
through the vast network of open roads.
We can almost certainly expect electric or hydrogen cars
to be ubiquitous in 2050,
with many governments banning fossil fuel vehicles
in the coming decades.
It's estimated that electric vehicles will reach
62 million units per year,
with a global stock of 700 million electric vehicles.
Smart grids will need to be built
to accommodate the increased electrical demand,
likely fueled by renewable technology.
But we can also expect driving to be a hobby,
not a necessity,
as self-driving cars become the norm.
In mass transit, Hyperloop technologies,
in which pods are shot through low-pressure,
friction-less tunnels
may well connect the world's major cities.
This concept, pioneered by Elon Musk,
could reduce vast travel times to mere minutes.
For example, the Indian government's proposed 214-mile route
between Chennai and Bengaluru would take just 30 minutes.
The energy upheaval.
For over a century,
we've relied on the internal combustion engine
and fossil fuels.
Even the discovery of nuclear energy
had a little overall impact.
That's about to change.
According to the World Economic Forum,
renewable energy could power the world by 2050,
despite a 50% increase in energy use.
Whether we will hit this goal is another matter.
The US Energy Information Administration
predicts renewables will go from 21% of the energy supply
in 2020 to 42% in 2050,
driven mainly by wind and solar power.
However, this may underestimate the cost-effectiveness
of future renewable technologies.
Indeed, solar power efficiency has increased by .5% a year
since 2010 without fail.
With greater efficiencies and thinner, more durable panels,
our very windows could power our homes by mid-century.
Meanwhile, fusion energy, always 30 years away,
may finally arrive in 2050.
Following significant breakthroughs
in the UK's JET laboratory
and a new bigger fusion reactor
under construction in France,
the first commercial fusion plants might come online
in the 2050s.
Indeed, the number of private fusion companies
is currently exploding exponentially,
seeing more money and research poured into the sector.
The 2nd Space Race.
In 1969, humanity landed on the Moon.
We've done little since.
Now private space companies like Blue Origin,
Virgin Galactic, Boeing, and, of course, Space X
are investing vast amounts of money and resources
into the fledgling sector.
With the price of space travel declining rapidly,
the cost of building in space will soon become viable.
By 2050, Robert Jacobson, an industry advisor,
predicted that there could be hundreds
of thousands of humans living in the skies above.
From there, colonizing the Moon is the next step.
After NASA's planned ARTEMIS mission in 2025
returns to the Moon, it's expected
that a steady stream of colonization will follow.
Elon Musk has made it his life mission
to take humans to Mars,
and indeed, the Falcon Heavy,
the world's most powerful rocket,
was built for the express purpose
of reaching the red planet.
But while these historic missions
will reinvigorate public interest in space,
it's money that will keep us coming back.
In 2020, NASA landed on an asteroid for the first time;
by 2050, it could be mining them.
A single asteroid could be worth $12 billion in resources,
including precious helium-3.
With money to be made,
private enterprises will pour ever more resources
into the 2nd space race.
This time, we'll be back for good.
Food and Biotechnology.
Meat is undergoing a quiet revolution.
Already, Beyond Burgers and other vegan meat options
are transforming our food.
With global demand for meat expected to rise by 88% by 2050,
lab-grown meat may be the only answer.
You can buy lab-grown meat today.
The bioreactors churn out burgers using cultured cow cells
without requiring intensive farming practices
needed for traditional animal agriculture.
Growing a burger is one thing;
replicating steak, chicken, or pork loin is quite another.
Still, as the technology gathers speed,
you're almost certainly going to see
it stocked on supermarket shelves in the next 30 years.
But lab-grown meat won't be enough alone.
If we're to feed two billion more people,
the only way is up.
Vertical farming is one potential solution,
particularly with the world's population
being increasingly urbanized.
Encased inside glass towers,
vertical farms can produce food year-round
in optimized conditions for plant growth.
And they also use 70 to 95% less water
than traditional cultivation.
Currently, the technology is focused
on a narrow range of products.
But as the industry becomes more efficient and advanced,
other foodstuffs will become increasingly cost-effective.
Climate change.
Despite the good news, there's a looming existential threat
to humanity: climate change.
According to a recent report, if nothing is done,
216 million people could be forced to migrate
in the biggest refugee crisis in history.
Other projections are even more pessimistic.
The Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peace
estimated that 1.2 billion people
could be displaced worldwide.
It's not hard to see why.
In sub-Saharan Africa, desertification will transform
many previously fertile regions into a wasteland.
Meanwhile, in India,
some cities may become too hot for habitation
alongside chronic water shortages.
Areas like the southwestern United States
would also see almost permanent high temperatures
without respite or relief.
Nor is it just people who would suffer.
Approximately 8% of vertebrates and 16% of plant species
would lose half their range.
And 13% of the Earth's surface
would shift to an entirely new biome,
as tundra becomes grasslands and grassland becomes desert.
Of course, such dire predictions can be avoided
with decisive action.
New technologies in renewable energy and meat production,
for example, can significantly curb
greenhouse gas emissions.
While CO2 extraction technologies,
currently in their infancy,
could be sucking out CO2 by the ton.
Nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology is an often-overlooked area of research.
Yet, despite its tiny stature,
it has the potential for outsized effects.
By 2050, tiny nano-level smart pills could take images,
monitor vital signs, or deliver drugs inside your body.
Even more impressive is the suggestion that nanobots,
tiny microscopic robots,
could be injected into our bodies.
These little machines can clear artery blockages,
kill cancer cells, and perform surgeries.
Research is currently taking place
to design self-assembling nanobots from DNA
and other organic materials.
If mastered, it may cure
some of the world's deadliest diseases overnight,
from cancer to heart disease.
But nanotechnology is also a revolution
in the very materials we wear.
Cloth-based nanotechnology
holds the promise of remote patient monitoring.
Such wearables could detect your heartbeat,
sweat components, blood pressure, and more,
notifying your doctor of any serious changes.
It's already something of a reality,
with US-based start-up Nanosense
producing an undergarment capable of capturing
and recording precise heart and breathing measurements.
By 2050, such technology will be ubiquitous,
as mass production lowers the costs
and opens the doors to further innovations.
Education.
During the COVID-19 pandemic,
education underwent a mini transformation.
Unable to go to the classroom,
children went online to learn.
In the next 30 years,
education will continue this decentralized trend.
In the US, home-schooling is predicted to become
ever more common,
combined with the multiple e-learning platforms
that will become available.
These digital approaches will lead to education
being more personalized.
AI and digital instructors will monitor children's progress,
while teachers check-in through VR headsets
to see how their students are doing.
In higher education, physical campuses, like schools,
may also be a thing of the past.
In 2016, The Babson Survey Research Group
reported that 28% of all US college students
attended at least one class online.
This changing perspective will also open education
to the world.
By mid-century, 90% of the global population
will have access to the internet.
This doesn't just mean more students
but also more educators.
The digital explosion will result in the proliferation
of Massive Open Online Courses,
where thousands of students participate in online education,
learning and teaching each other from across the globe.
As the divide between virtual and real
becomes ever more blurred,
these online communities will feel as close
and familiar as any current classroom.
Prosthetics.
The hardest challenge when predicting the future
is how technologies influence and alter each other.
Nowhere is this clearer than in prosthetics.
Robotic limbs, nanotechnology,
and machine learning will blend together to create smarter,
more adaptable, and more maneuverable limbs
comparable to their flesh-and-blood counterparts,
if not superior.
Disabled people will be able to control
precision movements with their minds.
And even more impressively,
users will receive sensor data informing the person
about temperature and vibration.
That's where AI comes in.
It will detect the signals from nerves,
translating them into fine movements,
much like a regular arm or a leg.
But, with better materials,
such arms and legs could be stronger than you'd expect:
able to exert significantly more force
than a conventional person.
With new materials and technologies
increasingly revolutionizing the field,
the future looks exceptionally bright
for the world's disabled.
But, what do you think?
How will the world look in 2050?
Will we be living in a techno-utopia?
Or will the new technologies and innovations
create more challenges, not less?
Let us know in the comments below!
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Thanks for watching!
We'll see you next time.