What Do You Think 2030 Will Be Like?

I want to take a crack at predicting the future half because I think it’ll be fun to look back on this post (hi future self, hope you’re doing well! 👋) and half because I think it’s important to periodically take some time to pause, reflect, and plot your future trajectory. And in order to plot where you’re going it’s helpful to look ahead and see what kind of terrain you’re dealing with.

The rules I’ve set for myself are to predict a little over 6 years out till the end of 2030 to land on a nice number and that looking at other predictions while researching this was fair game as long as I don’t copy them verbatim.

With that, let’s set the stage a bit with the first easy one. There will be over 8.4 billion people on the planet. That’s an incomprehensibly large number. To break it down a bit, taking the average human body weight that’s about 90 times the weight of the Great Pyramid of Giza in people!

Think of all the brains in the cities across the world at work every minute of every day commuting, eating, chatting, thinking, and working on new discoveries. Think of the 4 babies being born and 2 loved ones passing every second of every day.

Take a moment to bathe in this soundscape while reading the rest of the post to help keep that all in mind…

With that, here’s the rest of my predictions. Sorry in advance that it’s more headline style, it’s hard to tie so many different things together in a narrative structure.

Climate#

I think it’s a safe prediction that the world will blow past it’s CO2 emissions targets and exceed 1.5 °C temperature anomaly across the world. I hadn’t known this before looking at the chart but we’ve already exceeded that in the northern hemisphere. This of course will mean more powerful weather events happening more frequently. My guess is a devastating category 5 hurricane hitting South Carolina as well as China continuing to get pummeled by Typhoon after Typhoon. I unfortunately think there’s also going to be a tragic event in India where the wet bulb temperature exceeds the human limit for a sustained period of time and causes thousands of fatalities.

And last but not least in the tragic but easy predictions is the continued acceleration of wildlife extinctions caused by habitat destruction and wildlife trade.

Please consider joining a program that helps mitigate climate change like Wren (referral link with 1 month free) if this stuff scares you! We need to take as much action as soon as possible to mitigate the effects.

Geopolitical#

Tensions around the world seem to be rising with the new conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine and China bullying its neighbors. I sincerely hope for all our sakes that there’s no World War 3 that kicks off in the next 6 years (or ever, please and thank you) and I’m also not predicting that happening.

I think the Russian war on Ukraine ends in a stalemate and peace agreement with some territory lost after Ukraine’s army is depleted and the Russian economy teeters on the brink of collapse.

Contrary to the views of a billionaire with deep investments in China, I don’t see China anywhere close to being the next world superpower by 2030, but instead having an economic crisis caused by wild real estate speculation on terribly constructed buildings, aging demographic issues caused by the one child policy, and keeping up with damages caused by natural (and some not so natural) disasters.

In the meantime India grows to the world’s third largest economy by GDP as it slowly increases the education of its population, grows its manufacturing sector, and sees more of the worlds investments flow in.

Technology#

There’s so much going on these days in tech that the error bars are getting wider and wider on any predictions but here goes in any case. Time will tell how far off I end up :)

AI#

Since AI is the top of the tech zeitgeist right now (and I recently started working for an AI company) it seems fitting to start with it.

I think there will be continued investment in the AI space through the whole time period and bigger and bigger models will be trained. However I think near the 2030 mark the industry will start having its airline industry moment where training new models from scratch is so expensive that it’s rarely done anymore (just like innovative new airplane designs are rare).

Large Language Model (LLM) chat bots like ChatGPT will be tightly integrated with a number of other specialized models and be very capable of a large range of tasks on par or exceeding human level. There will be models that understand cultural context and are fine tuned weekly with current news.

Generative video is widely available but fairly expensive for anything longer than a short B roll clip. AI companies try to limit generating celebrity impersonation (or misinformation) videos but it’s still possible via prompt hacking.

As a result of the NYT lawsuit training data must be opted into and licensed which ultimately means only the massive tech companies who can change their terms of service agreements to allow training on their your data will be able to make progress training new models.

Search engines will still be grappling with the massive influx of AI generated content on the web but search experiences are pivoting to a hybrid chat and results experience.

There will be a break out gaming hit that utilizes a generative LLM to power NPC interactions

Self driving cars will be having their moment as Waymo is in all top 25 US cities with self driving taxis at SAE Level 4 (meaning there are still times of heavy weather where they won’t operate). Jeff wins the bet only because they’re only level 4 instead of 5. Tesla will finally claim their cars are out of beta and full self driving but in reality will still have safety issues.

In a wrap, I think there will be considerable progress and societal disruption with AI in the next 6 years but I don’t think we’ll be in an AGI world. Breaking it down specifically by test (click on the AGI link for details on each) here’s where I think we’ll end up:

• The Turing Test: Passed
• The Robot College Student Test: Passed (for some easier degrees/colleges)
• The Employment Test: Passed
• The Ikea Test: Failed (not enough dexterity/mobility/training)
• The Coffee Test: Failed (same as Ikea test)
• The Modern Turing Test: Failed (not able to fully plan and execute all the needed steps)

Software Engineering#

I predict specialized skills (where there’s less training data) will be in higher demand than generalized skills like writing a CRUD API where there’s tons of examples and tooling built around it. Medium sized software companies (smaller than FAANG which already have this, but larger than 1,000 employees) have invested in specialized AI code assistants trained on their internal code to boost productivity. On the front end there will be more tooling and templates built around getting fully functional sites created quickly but crafting a large web app that’s easily maintainable with accessibility, animations, will still require front end developers.

There will be a whole heap more code to maintain (think number of developers world wide × lines of code written each year × 6) which will still require software engineers to work on augmented by AI tools.

Social Media#

• Facebook is starting to be hollowed out with “only” 2.5 billion active users
• Twitter (calling it by it’s domain name) is now fully a digital Nazi bar
• Mastodon has still not reached mass adoption
• YouTube is still the leader in monetizing video content
• Instagram feeds are > 50% ads

More Quick Hit Tech Predictions#

• VR still will be a niche product despite getting smaller/lighter/faster
• The next bitcoin halving will occur in March 2028 and the price will be close to $400,000 USD.
• SpaceX launches Starship to Mars, it fails during landing
• Fusion Power has found a proven reactor design and is starting to build the first commercial power plants

Education#

By 2030 I think the US higher education system will start showing cracks both because they’re not necessarily teaching the skills needed in the workforce but mostly because the price of college has outpaced people’s ability to pay for it. This won’t be an issue for top tier schools which will always have plenty of demand from rich households wanting the prestige degree and connections associated with them. For the colleges not in that elite group though I think there will be tough times ahead with a decrease in admissions and an increase in closures. Many of these students will replace the college education with online certifications tailored to the specific industry skills they need.

Medicine#

One things for sure: we’re all getting older, but people are also having fewer children and there are more older people in general. I think we’ll see an increased focus on elder care as the Baby boomers are getting old (66-84) and start spending their wealth taking care of themselves.

In exciting new treatments area I’m certainly no expert but I’m guessing drug treatments personalized to an individuals genetics are starting to enter the market as well as experimental anti-aging drugs in trials.

I’m a little more bearish on AI in medicine though. To me there’s a better chance of it being useful in a research setting than clinically. I’m not seeing a lot of opportunities for it to help out the next time you go in to see a doctor. And I don’t think Radiologist will lose their jobs to AI as everyone keeps predicting but instead it will help them read imaging faster.

The developing world will continue advancing it’s access to healthcare spurred by programs to prevent malnutrition and global investments in healthcare.

In Essence#

Whew, that was a lot of predictions. It’s going to be a chore to see how many I got right when the time comes 😅

Regardless though, we’re in for a wild ride the next few years (and the ones beyond that) as humanity grapples with a number of very hard problems related to the sustainability of our civilization. Despite that I’m still optimistic about our future and ability to solve problems even if it’s not as graceful, peaceful, or efficient as possible.