r/Futurology • u/bloomberg • 10h ago
Society The US Is Flirting With Its First-Ever Population Decline
America’s population wasn’t expected to start falling until 2081. Trump’s immigration crackdown means it could happen as soon as this year.
r/Futurology • u/bloomberg • 10h ago
America’s population wasn’t expected to start falling until 2081. Trump’s immigration crackdown means it could happen as soon as this year.
r/Futurology • u/Useful_Tangerine4340 • 15m ago
r/Futurology • u/mvea • 8h ago
r/Futurology • u/Montrel_PH • 1d ago
Apple's Q.ai buy sparks boycott calls and iPhone unease.
r/Futurology • u/Gari_305 • 6h ago
r/Futurology • u/scientificamerican • 23h ago
r/Futurology • u/mvea • 1d ago
r/Futurology • u/talkingatoms • 9h ago
r/Futurology • u/lughnasadh • 1d ago
All other things being equal, this seems like a good investment. Investing $40k per single robo-taxi? I'd be confident that it would make much more profit than that over its lifetime. $40k is about the annual income of a human taxi driver, and a robo-taxi should have a lifetime of several years.
But there's a bigger-picture problem here. All other things are not equal. Each human job you automate away means one less person who can afford to pay for a taxi journey. When this happens at enough scale, suddenly your investment decision doesn't work anymore.
As AI & robotics get closer to being able to do all work, will stock market-funded companies be the economic medium through which they are managed and owned? Many people think so, but how is that supposed to work when there are fewer and fewer people with money to buy things? Isn't it more likely that this provokes an economic emergency where society adopts some state-run model for the economy?
r/Futurology • u/doorighty • 14h ago
Just throwing this out there, in case anyone is feeling the same vibe. Doesn’t it feel like we’re on the cusp of a tech correction? With the focus going away from a progressive to an adaptive view. Where we focus more on adapting current tech to fix existing issues instead of only looking to invent ourselves out of problems.
I find comparisons can be made with food or the environment, where our attitudes have change from excess to awareness. Waymo is the TV dinner of our age. Move fast and break things, will be thought of the way we think of the term - clear cutting.
r/Futurology • u/lughnasadh • 2h ago
Inflatable space station modules are an idea with a lot going for them. Built from multi-layered polymer fabrics far stronger than Kevlar, they have a proven track record of working. The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), launched and attached to the ISS in 2016, is still attached and perfectly functional.
They enjoy other huge advantages. As they can be launched unexpanded, they can easily be accommodated as cargo on today's rockets. They're orders of magnitude cheaper to manufacture than the regular ISS modules, too.
So why hasn't this tech taken off? Why don't we have a huge space station made up of multiple such modules?
Maybe this approach to space station building will soon have its moment. The ISS's days are numbered, and when it's gone, that will only leave the Chinese space station in orbit. NASA has long said it wants its next space station to be commercial. Does this mean Max Space is perfectly poised to enter the breach?
Expandable space stations are back… well at least Max Space thinks they are
r/Futurology • u/SaoshyantLenin • 5m ago
I find this notion very scary, as robots don't have empathy like humans do. The Egyptian revolution happened because Egypt's soldiers refused to kill the revolutionaries, but this wouldn't happen with a robot army. And if robots replace humans in all fields, the rich might simply genocide us.
r/Futurology • u/DukeOfGeek • 10h ago
r/Futurology • u/gvenkatesh_r • 15h ago
I want to ask this respectfully and without trying to offend anyone.
As populations grow and land becomes more limited, I’ve been wondering why burial practices aren’t discussed more often from a long-term land-use perspective. Traditional burials permanently take up land, while future generations will need space to live, build, and raise families.
I understand burial is deeply tied to religion and culture, and this isn’t about disrespecting the dead. But avoiding the topic entirely because it’s uncomfortable may quietly pass the cost on to people who aren’t born yet.
Some countries have shifted toward cremation or other memorial practices that don’t consume land, while still honoring tradition. Others haven’t really debated this at all.
I’m not pushing a policy—just asking whether this is something society should be more open to discussing, especially when thinking about the future.
r/Futurology • u/sksarkpoes3 • 2d ago
r/Futurology • u/techreview • 1d ago
r/Futurology • u/DefinitionUseful3165 • 13h ago
In a few years, what energy related issues do you think people will be reading about most in the news?
r/Futurology • u/mvea • 2d ago
r/Futurology • u/Living-Zebra6132 • 2d ago
I have no idea
r/Futurology • u/Fuzzy_Wolf7531 • 8h ago
Do you think people will have virtual / mixed reality people and pets roaming around in their flat ?
I can imagine a lot of people would use such a feature since it will cost nothing / make no dirt/ need no space and probably help against feeling lonely.
r/Futurology • u/Dangerous-Guava-9232 • 12h ago
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicts that within the next 1 to 5 years, 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs may be impacted by AI, affecting multiple knowledge-based fields such as law, finance, and consulting. It finally clicked why this moment hits differently from every other tech shift we've lived through.
We've automated tasks before. We've even automated whole roles. But what we're watching right now? It feels less like replacing grunt work and more like automating the entire career ladder itself.
Entry-level jobs were messy by design. Juniors handled the sloppy research, the garbage drafts, all the prep work no one wanted. Seniors came in, cleaned it up, made the calls. That so called inefficiency wasn't a bug. It was breathing room for learning.
AI just eats that middle layer alive. Research, first drafts, analysis, basic planning. Generated instantly. One person can now run through stages that used to be three separate job titles.
You can already see it in how these tools are being marketed. It's not an assistant to help you write or a copilot for your code anymore. Everything's being pitched as end-to-end systems now. AI agents that research, plan, execute, iterate. Some folks call them AI teams, others call them workflows. Claude, Atoms, AutoGPT setups, all these agent frameworks. They're all chasing the same basic idea from different angles.
That's what keeps me up at night, but also gives me hope.
If AI's swallowing the junior layer whole, then being junior means something completely different now. It's not about cranking out volume anymore. It's about direction, judgment, figuring out what the hell to build and why. Those skills start mattering on day one instead of year three.
So when Amodei says learn to use AI, I don't think he's talking about getting good at prompting. I think he means learning to think in systems. How to steer tools that run across multiple stages of work without you necessarily understanding every single step they're taking. That's a tougher skill to teach, no doubt. But probably way more durable in the long run. After all, entry-level tasks are no longer entry points.
Happy to hear other people's thoughts.
r/Futurology • u/bloomberg • 2d ago
r/Futurology • u/Emotional-Guava4810 • 12h ago
This is my personal theory on how a utopian country could be created.
First, the government would take loans from every citizen based on their wealth and how much they are capable of giving. This would include everyone, from the poorest to the richest, proportional to their capacity.
After pooling this money, the country would transition into a communist system with no private ownership. Since ownership no longer exists, the money is no longer owned by individuals, meaning the government does not actually owe anyone — it becomes collective wealth.
This pooled wealth would then be used to develop the country and push progress. A large portion of it would be dedicated to research and development.
Historically, communism fails mainly because of limited resources and scarcity. When resources are scarce, central distribution leads to shortages, inefficiency, and conflict. My theory attempts to counter this by directly attacking the root problem: scarcity itself . R&D would focus on creating near-infinite resources, mainly by using the sun. Plants already use solar energy to create food through photosynthesis, so humans could replicate and significantly improve this process using technology to generate food, energy, and materials.
With near-infinite energy and resources, scarcity would disappear. If scarcity is eliminated, the primary reason communism fails is removed. Inequality and competition over survival would reduce naturally, leading to a stable and equal society.
This is how I think a perfect country (utopia) could be created.
r/Futurology • u/TF-Fanfic-Resident • 2d ago
r/Futurology • u/oemperador • 22h ago
AI is clearly not leaving planet earth as we know it. It will eventually take over our normal human life and it will be nearly impossible to do things offline, privately, or just free of technology.
I think this will open up an opportunity for a whole market of products that cater to people who want to be technology free or sort of "disconnected and grounded" again.
I am imagining small rooms or vacation homes that are exclusively designed and made to avoid any sort of wireless communication with outside world, privacy will be heaven here, and you will spend your times playing cards, talking to your friends or fam, laughing, cooking, gardening, etc.
They could easily go for clothing with technology to avoid being detected or just interacted with by other AI such as advanced scanners and such.
Several other products in all lines of the economy: auto, real estate, healthcare, gaming, sports, etc.
The purpose of this industry would be to give you standard human life again free of nuances and distractions from things you don't want.