2026: predictions for the next decade

Summary: I share and update my predictions for the 2016-2026 decade.

Originally posted on March 2016 and last updated on March 2022.

This weekend, I did a trip to Yosemite with two good friends, Esteban and Ryan. As happens most times with powerful natural experiences, it sparked really interesting discussions.

This time, the topic was how we thought technology would transform human reality in the next 10 years. We discussed this at length, and created a list of predictions on what we expected to happen. I decided to publish my personal version of that list, which I’ll revisit every year to track how we’re doing.

Progress: 7 of 29 predictions happened as of Dec 2021

24.13%

Without further ado, here goes the list of things I believe will happen before 31 December 2025:

Space

⬜ At least 1 asteroid mining mission has economic profit.
⬜ Mars base in the making, most probably no humans there yet.
⬜ International moon station in the making.

Artificial Intelligence

✅ A.I. beats humans at StarCraft. [done thanks to DeepMind]
⬜ A.I. beats humans at NASCAR race.
⬜ A.I. beats humans at flying drone race.
⬜ A.I. beats humans at golf.
⬜ A.I. beats humans at tennis.
✅ People have ongoing relationships with chat bots for entertainment. [done thanks to ChatGPT]
⬜ Some A.I. is a profitable autonomous economic agent. (e.g. there’s a web service, API or site that is running for 1 year without any human aid and is making a profit.)
✅ Some A.I. generated music “band” has more than 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify or equivalent platform. [done thanks to 𝔊𝔯𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔰]
✅ Some A.I. generated painting or visual artwork sells for more than $100k at 2016 value. [done thanks to Chromie Squiggle #9 by Snowfro and probably many other procedurally generated NFTs]

Robotics and automation

⬜ More than a billion people own a personal autonomous mobile robot for home tasks.
⬜ Two-legged robot can navigate any terrain as good as a human or better.
⬜ Ground transportation and daily commute dominated by self-driving vehicles.
✅ At least 1 million 3d printers are produced in a year before 2025 [done - 2.1 million units of 3D printers were shipped in 2020].

Bio

⬜ At least one of Aubrey de Grey’s 7 causes of death is “cured” (i.e. we know how to prevent it).
⬜ We can perform some genetic engineering on our children before birth for less than $1000 at today’s value.
⬜ It is possible to use a computer as efficiently as with mouse and keyboard with just a brain interface for the input. Note this prediction doesn’t mention price or mass availability of the technology.
⬜ Artificial meat indistinguishable from real meat and is cheaper to produce.

Energy

⬜ More electric cars are sold in a year than combustion cars.

Virtual Reality

⬜ More than a billion humans own VR equipment. [There ~171M VR users worldwide in 2021 according to techjury.net]
✅ Some people spend 20+ hours per week in VR. [done]
✅ VR company in top 10 most valuable companies. [done thanks to Meta]

Economy

⬜ US dollar collapses (e.g. loses 50% of its value with respect to most other assets).
⬜ San Francisco real estate prices go down because remote work becomes ubiquitous. source 1
⬜ 20%+ unemployment rate in the US (but that’s OK). [On March 2020 unemployment rate rose to 14.7 percent in April, due to the Coronavirus pandemic source 1 ]
⬜ Average hours per week of work needed by a human to survive drops significantly (at least one order of magnitude)

Miscellaneous

⬜ Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter will have less monthly active users in 2025 than in 2020 (~2.6 billion, ~1 billion, ~330 million, respectively). [this prediction was added in 2020]

That’s it! I think many points are pretty bold, so I’d be happy if >50% of these turn out to be true. In any case, that would be an amazing world to live in. If you find better ways to formulate the predictions, or have others you think I should consider adding, I’d love to hear it.