Slaymart is now taking us straight back to the 90s

Kmart shoppers have found a $5 item that is taking them right back to the 90s. Credit: TikTok/tupperkristy

It’s a well-known fact that Kmart is the place to be for everything from a comfy bed for your cat to affordable dupes of designer items. It’s no wonder people are constantly taking to social media to share their latest Kmart finds with fellow fans.

Now, there’s one more reason to love the budget retailer and that is because it is serving up a big old dose of nostalgia with one item in particular. An item so synonymous with the ’90s that it may as well be a time machine because it is transporting us right back to the days when the phrase “less is more” had absolutely no meaning.

Yep, butterfly clips are now on the shelves of Kmart stores around the country and shoppers could not be more excited to snap (pun intended) these bad boys up for the bargain price of $5 for a pack of ten.

RELATED:

ADVERTISEMENT

If you cast your mind back, you may recall that butterfly clips were ubiquitous in the 1990s as young girls added entire packets of them to their hair in a bid to look like celebs such as Sarah Michelle Gellar and Kirsten Dunst.

Truly iconic. Credit: Getty Images/NBC Universal

And, because all good things must (apparently) make a comeback, butterfly clips are now available for a whole new generation to enjoy with a side of slap bracelets and teenage angst.

Shoppers excited about the return of butterfly clips

News of the fad’s return was quickly spread in a Facebook group for fans of nostalgia with a shopper writing, “I was in Kmart this morning and did a double take and found butterfly clips.”

Over a hundred comments were then added to the post as the group members took a sweet trip down memory lane.

One shopper said she almost did a “double take” when she saw the butterfly clips in Kmart. Credit: Facebook

“Awwww cute I had these,” one person reminisced.

ADVERTISEMENT

“They’re OG style too. Not just ‘similar’, they’re like for like! Love it,” added another.

“This takes me back to my childhood,” another said fondly.

“I swear every inch of my hair was covered in these in primary school,” someone else recalled.

“I saw this too the other day and immediately got an image in my.mind of how I clipped up every piece of my hair with shitloads of these and thought I was cool,” yet another shopper shared.

Warnings against buying butterfly clips

For other people, the sight of the butterfly clips evoked a pinch of PTSD along with the happy memories of the 90s.

“Almost bought them…then remembered what it was like stepping on them,” someone warned.

“DON’T DO IT,” another cautioned. “Bought some for my 3 year old daughter for nostalgia, ended up with them embedded in my foot. 1000 times worse than Lego!!”

Kmart shoppers have been sharing their excitement about the clips on TikTok. Credit: Kmart/TikTok/jessdraper/tupperkristy

“To anyone tempted to buy these… they’re very cute and your little kids will love them but they’re 1000 x worse than Lego to step on,” another echoed. “Consider yourself warned.”

Fans joke about ‘target audience’

Aside from the fear of finding the clips embedded in the soles of their feet, other group members were more concerned that the window for wearing such things had sadly closed.

ADVERTISEMENT

“I literally did the same thing this morning,” one Kmart shopper wrote. “ALMOST bought them, but restrained myself. An almost 37yo doesn’t need to be wearing these hahaha.”

SHOP:

“I’m 41 and I bought them,” said another. “We’re still cool. Go buy them!”

“Pretty sure the 37 year olds are the target audience,” someone else accurately said.

On that note, BRB – gotta run to Kmart while I blast ‘Just a Girl’ by No Doubt!

Want the latest celebrity news? Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

New York Post may be compensated and/or receive an affiliate commission if you click or buy through our links. Featured pricing is subject to change.

Let me let you in on a little secret.

There are a few things in life that are more challenging for those of us who are under 5’5 — reaching higher cabinets, turning off a fire alarm, and finding a pair of jeans that hit just right at the ankle.

Shopping as a petite is no easy feat. I’m 5’3, which I would say teeters between petite and regular, yet I still find myself frequently disappointed when I try on a dress that drapes across the floor, or the sleeves of a shirt fall past my fingers, or I succumb to rolling up the cuffs of a pair of jeans that would otherwise fit me perfectly fine. Such is the dilemma of many smaller people.

Hence, I have decided to scout out the best clothing brands for petites. Most of these brands have devoted an entire section to styling smaller-framed women, offering hemmed options of their best-selling pieces and some designed just for us. I’ve tested some popular styles from Reformation, Aritzia, Ann Taylor, and Good American, as well as some smaller brands that cater to the dainty ladies, like my new favorites, For Love and Lemons and Saylor.

Post wanted picks Best Overall Petite Clothing for Women: Aritzia

Aritzia Best Petite Clothing for Mature Women: Boden

Boden Best Petite Workout Clothes : lululemon

: lululemon Best Petite Plus-size Clothing: Good American

Good American Best Petite Business Clothes : Kasper

: Kasper Best Petite Jeans: Abercrombie & Fitch

For other specific fashion needs, be sure to take a look at our guide to shopping for the best plus-size brands, maternity clothes, and jeans for women of all sizes.

Click the links below to jump right to our top picks for each category:

Best Petite Clothing Brands for Women

Best Overall Petite Clothing for Women: Aritzia

Aritzia

Pros: Specific styles built just for petite women

Many staple pieces are ideal for everyday wear

Long-lasting, durable, and eco-friendly fabrics Cons: More expensive

Fewer plus-size options

Enter my go-to destination for petite clothing over the years. Aritzia’s style has been described as “everyday luxury,” and that couldn’t be more accurate — their iconic sculpt knit tanks, relaxed work trousers, and trendy vegan leather pants never seem to go out of style. Both the Wilfred and Babaton brands at Aritzia carry limitless options for work and play, but my favorite part of the store is that many styles come in different lengths, with petites included.

Miska Salemann in an outfit from Aritzia. Miska Salemann

New York Post Review: Some of my personal favorites include the Effortless Pants (148) – If you’re looking for perfectly relaxed, tailored trousers that will become your everyday work pants. They come in multiple length options, including short, regular, and long. The same goes for their stunning, Melina Vegan Leather Pants, which are offered in 20 stunning colorways. The cropped length is ideal for women under 5’3. If you’re looking for a top to style these dressy bottoms with, I suggest one of their fitted crops, like the ultra-flattering Sculpt Knit Greek Tank ($58).

Shipping: Free standard, $10 for express, $15 for priority | Returns: Full refund within 14 days from the shipping date | Price Range: $$$

Best Petite Plus-size Clothing: Good American

Good American

Pros: A specific denim section built for petites

Inclusive sizing

Fair pricing and frequent sales Cons: More focused on denim — however, there are some other great ‘Always Fits’ options meant to flatter all body types

We all need a good pair of jeans, and Good American’s Good Petite section was made just to help you find the pair that you never want to take off. It’s clear that Khloe Kardashian’s denim-focused brand has been committed to inclusivity from day one, offering styles in every size from 00-32 Plus. I also appreciate that Good American models represent various body shapes and sizes, and the petite section is modeled by true, petite women, so you can see exactly how it fits.

Miska Salemann in a Good American bodysuit. Good American

New York Post Review: Full disclosure: Good American’s petite section is designed for the 5’4 and under squad. This is perfect for me (at 5’3) and automatically bumps the brand to the top of my personal list. But, I also love that there is a range of choices for those who like relaxed, skinny, straight, flared, and bootcut styles. I’m a huge fan of the architecture of the Good Petite Straight Jeans ($99). These pants feature a unique high-low ankle cut that creates an illusion of some added height.

Shipping: Offers Standard, Ground, and Expedited. Prices vary | Returns: Good American accepts returns and exchanges of items purchased on goodamerican.com if they are requested within 21 days of the date your order was shipped | Price Range: $$

Best Petite Clothing for Mature Women: Boden

Boden

Pros: Complete petite section for dresses, pants, coats, and tops

Lots of recycled, eco-friendly fabrics

Professional, elegant, work-ready outfits Cons: More mature styles, fewer options for younger shoppers

When graduating from a mini dress to a longer dress, things get a bit complicated for shorter ladies. Finding a maxi dress that doesn’t drag on the ground, but also sits right at the waist, is a challenge. Boden has a solution. The petite section is full of fantastic, longer silhouettes with a bit of classy European flair, Anna Linen Tiered Midi Dress ($198), and polka-dotted Sara Jersey Shirt Dress ($135). You no longer need to worry about alterations — they’ve already been done.

Miska Salemann wearing Boden. Miska Salemann

New York Post Review: For fashionable, quality, and professional clothing, we suggest you head right to Boden. The high-end brand offers an extensive petite section that’s brimming with dresses, pants, coats, and tops made custom to fit smaller frames. If you’re on the fence, you can take their simple ‘which size fits me’ test to discover whether you fall into petite or regular. Another thing I love about this brand is its styling advice; the ‘make an outfit out of it’ section shows you exactly how to tie together an entire look.

Shipping: $5 or free standard shipping when you spend over $49, $15 for expedited, and $25 for express | Returns: If you return an item in its original condition within 45 days of dispatch, Boden will give you back the amount you paid for the item | Price Range: $$

Classy Petite Styles: Ann Taylor

Ann Taylor

Pros: Large section devoted to petite styles with all sorts of pieces (jackets, pants, tops, dresses, etc)

High-quality fabrics, designed to last

Many sale items Cons: Best for mature styles and workwear— fewer casual, youthful pieces

Ann Taylor’s petite section has everything you can think of — from sophisticated pantsuits to trench coats and bold blazers. The brand’s petite section hosts some of their best-selling items, transformed into pieces tailored just for you. Designers have simply brought up the hemlines, but all other design elements remain unchanged. That means no more rolled-up cuffs and awkward tucking.

New York Post Review: I adore Ann Taylor for high-end workwear, but the fact that they have an entire section dedicated to petites is really the selling point. Boxy blazers and trousers naturally look a bit awkward on petites. Fortunately, Ann Taylor’s slightly hemmed versions seem to hit every curve just perfectly. For first-time shoppers, I recommend looking at some of their staple pieces, like this Petite Stitches Sweater Tank ($49), which comes in three colors and is ideal for layering.

Shipping: Shipping and handling options include Standard Shipping, 3-Day Business Shipping and Next Day Business Shipping | Returns: Ann Taylor will credit you for returns, accompanied by proof of purchase, received within 30-days of the purchase | Price Range: $$

Best Petite Workout Clothes: lululemon

lululemon

Pros: A wide variety of sizes and inseams are available

One of the best brands for Petites that we reviewed

Barely-there fabric feel

Many colors and prints are available Cons: More of an investment. However, clothes last a long time and there’s always the We Made Too Much drops to look forward to

lululemon has mastered the art of designing workout clothes for every size and shape, while also coming out with new styles to stay ahead of the trends. Petites have great options; leggings are offered in sizes 0 to 20, and a few different lengths to choose from for a perfect fit. And, the best part? The brand has been working to implement more sustainable practices — you can shop their ‘Reduced’ section for some gently used lululemon gear at lower prices.

Miska Salemann wearing lululemon. Miska Salemann

New York Post Review: I’ve lived in lululemon since middle school, and I still have some quintessential early 2000s lululemon staples in the back of my closet (thankfully, the high-rise Groove leggings ($118) have really made a comeback). But when it comes to their iconic, best-sellers, there is no question — that would be the Align Bra ($58) and Align leggings ($98), which come in four different lengths: 23″, 25″, 28″, and 31″. Having the option to tailor these to your height makes a world of difference when it comes to working out — you’ll notice the difference.

Shipping: Standard, Express, and Priority are available | Returns: Shoppers can make a return online or in-store within 30 days of the delivery date | Price Range: $$

Best Designer Petite Clothes: For Love and Lemons

Love and Lemons

Pros: Unique styles, with regular seasonal drops

100% women-led team

Size XXS available Cons: More expensive

No exclusive petite section, but many styles suit petites

For luxury petite style, I recommend you browse some options at For Love and Lemons. While the brand doesn’t offer a strictly petite section, I would say that smaller women have plenty of exciting options, especially from the Little White Dress section. You’ll find an array of one-of-a-kind, cut-out dresses, intricate patchwork, and asymmetrical cuts that really represent the free-thinking, women-led team behind For Love and Lemons.

New York Post Review: I’ve always found For Love and Lemon pieces fit my small frame very well — many of the dresses accentuate leg and arm length, which is something so appreciated in the petite fashion space. One of my top picks is the hip Glitter Slip Dress ($169), which combines mixed fabrics that drape carefully around the body. It’s a tighter fit, but the tie at the center back allows you to adjust the length a tad. It can be tricky to find petite clothing that still has a punchy, wow factor, but you can surely find some at For Love and Lemons.

Shipping: $10 for FedEx Ground, $25 for FedEx 2-Day, $45 for FedEx overnight. Free standard ground shipping on all U.S. orders over $250 and free express shipping on all international orders over $300 | Returns: Orders may be returned up to 21 days after your order has shipped | Price Range: $$$

Best Petite Business Clothes: Kasper

Kasper

Pros: High-quality fabrics, including tweed, knit, and crepe

Lots of matching sets and mix-and-match pieces to choose from

Wide range of colors and patterns

Devoted petite section and numerical sizing Cons: More mature styles (fewer options for casual or youthful looks)

Some pieces run large (per testing)

Get ready to go to work in style. Kasper’s devoted petite section is filled with an unmatched assortment of professional and business-casual-aligned You’ll find a range of trousers, blazers, twee skirts, and crepe jackets. These fabrics are thoughtfully selected to avoid wrinkling for a classy, polished work-ready look. Styles lean more mature and modest, but you’ll still find plenty of bright colors and creative prints.

For those of us under 5’3, finding suitable work clothing can be a struggle. The fact that Kasper has three size categories (regular, plus, and petite) is a major green flag to anybody who is looking for something that has a more ‘tailored look.’ The Harlow Pants ($79), which cut off right above the ankle, might be among the comfiest work pants I’ve tried. The viscose is loose and breathable and falls elegantly for a slight slimming effect. Blazers usually look bulky and long on me (especially in the shoulders), but the Holly Jacket ($49) hit in all the right spots, and the button closure adds a touch of style that layers beautifully over any simple shirt.

Shipping: Free standard shipping on orders $99 or more, $6.95 flat-rate standard shipping on all other orders. Expedited two-day shipping is $19.95, and expedited one-day shipping is $29.95 | Returns: Returns must be received within 30 days of the original purchase date with a $7 shipping and processing fee | Price Range: $$

Best Petite Jeans: Abercrombie & Fitch

Abercrombie & Fitch

Pros: Regular and petite sizing offered

Fits true to size

Pants come in five lengths (extra short, short, regular, long, and extra-long)

The material has a bit of stretch without looking stretchy Cons: Less standout, creative pieces (more on-trend basics)

Abercrombie & Fitch has undergone a dramatic style makeover since the early 2000s. Perhaps, you remember the store’s slim-fitting tees and preppy linen items that seemed to be made for popular kids only (per, the ex-ceo). Well, just like us, Abercrombie & Fitch — known now as A&F — has grown up. In recent years, the brand has expanded its selection to fit a variety of body shapes and sizes, and extended with more on-trend styles. It’s now among the most inclusive brands on the market, with sizes and cuts made just for petites.

Miska Salemann wearing Abercrombie jeans. Miska Salemann

There’s a sea of pieces to choose from at Abercrombie, but what stands out most is the denim collection. Two big draws: It’s not overpriced, and everything seems to fit like a glove. I’ve found that this is one of the few stores where the jeans fit true to size, which is incredibly important when ordering online. The best-selling High Rise 90s Relaxed Jean ($60) is among my favorites — offered in a whopping 38 shades and five different lengths (extra short, short, regular, long, and extra-long). It’s difficult to beat this level of customization without paying extra for tailoring. It’s also worth noting that many A&F denim pieces offer a touch of stretch without looking stretchy at all, which makes them all the more desirable.

Shipping: Standard shipping is $7. Two-day, next-day, and same-day shipping available | Returns: You have 30 days from the date we send your shipment confirmation email to return in-store or by mail | Price Range: $$

Best Petite Basics: Mother

Mother

Pros: Long-lasting durable material

Specific jean section designed for petites

Great for everyday wear — a combination of casual and going-out pieces Cons: More expensive

More focused on jeans and denim — fewer options for other pieces

Shopping for jeans can be particularly tricky for shorter women, but Mother makes it easy. The L.A. denim brand’s Petite Section is stocked with best-selling styles — all of which are meant to complement bodies under 5’4. Pieces from this collection offer higher knee placement and shorter inseams and rise, so the pants hit in all the right places. It’s worth mentioning that Mother also makes some lovely spring dresses and tops that are just as flattering for those with smaller frames.

Miska Salemann wearing Mother. Miska Salemann

New York Post Review: Mother’s petite section has a pair of jeans for everyone — whether you like a flared look, a straight cut, or a timeless pair of mom jeans. Personally, I’m a huge fan of the Lil’ Hustler Ankle Jeans ($238), which offer an ankle-length inseam and clean hem. The denim has a tad of stretch and comes in a cool, dark-blue wash that is perfect for dressing up or down. Don’t miss the jacket section too. The now sold-out Mini Chopper is one of my go-to layering essentials. For someone who appreciates a more laidback, yet clean style, I would head to Mother right away.

Shipping: Domestic orders over $50 receive free ground shipping. FedEx Ground, FedEx 2-Day, and FedEx Standard overnight are also available | Returns: You may return items within 30 days for a full refund | Price Range: $$$$

Best Petite Travel Clothes: Saylor

Saylor

Pros: Lots of bright prints, patterns, colors, and textures that flatter petites

Product photos list the model’s height for size comparison

Pre-loved section for sustainable shoppers Cons: No exclusive petite section, though many mini dresses, rompers, and shorter matching sets are offered

More expensive

Saylor’s spirited styles are not exclusively built for petites, but the brand offers an abundant range of options that really seem to suit smaller builds. I think part of that is due to the style — the shop is filled with ruffles, fringes, layers, patterns, and textures that add dimension to make even the smallest pieces of clothing more interesting. The models’ heights are also listed underneath each product image, which provides shoppers with an idea of what they are buying.

New York Post Review: As a petite, I’ve always struggled to find deep V-neck dresses that make a statement, but aren’t so low-cut that they risk a fashion mishap. The Gali Dress ($297) is one of the few options that show off the neckline without revealing too much. It’s the perfect combination of sweet, sexy, and tailored. I also suggest taking a look at Saylor’s rompers, which veer on the shorter side and would make a perfect addition to your spring break wardrobe.

Shipping: Free for Ground, $25 for US 2nd Day (Express) |Returns: To request a return visit saylornyc.happyreturns.com within 15 days of receiving your purchase | Price Range: $$$$

Best Petite Dresses: Reformation

Reformation

Pros: Dedicated petite section with a variety of tops, pants, and dresses

Reformation pays for alterations

A diverse array of dresses for every occasion, with a consistent style and color drops

Eco-friendly and reused fabrics Cons: Many pieces require dry cleaning only

More expensive

If you haven’t caught on the Reformation bandwagon, it’s about time. This celebrity-loved brand offers a wonderland of lovely dresses for every occasion. We’re talking stunning sweetheart necklines, lined bodices, back smocking — pretty much all the good stuff. There are styles for every type of shopper: something edgy, sophisticated, modern, or hipster. And, the best part of the deal — Reformation offers a full collection for petites in sizes 0p to 12p. These dresses are designed just for smaller frames, but if you’re still unhappy with the fit for any reason, Reformation will take care of the alterations.

Miska Salemann in a dress from Reformation. Miska Salemann

New York Post Review: I tested out a few favorites from the petite collection at Reformation — and to no surprise at all — they felt like they were tailored to fit me. My top pick is currently sold out, but it look a lot like the Irisa Dress ($278), which features ultra-lightweight 100% viscose fabric, back-smocking, and adjustable straps for custom bust support. The way this dress falls on a smaller frame is stunning. There’s no bunching and the relaxed skirt hits just below the knees. For another fun Spring style, I suggest the Kendi Denim Dress ($218). Yes, in most scenarios, a denim dress sounds like a nightmare for a petite. This one is a dream — it has a bit of stretch, there’s an airy back slit that shows a slice of the calf, and the flattering dark wash makes a statement with any sort of accessorizing.

Shipping: Free shipping | Returns: Returns must be dropped off and scanned by carrier or returned to a store within 30 days after the delivery date | Price Range: $$$

Best Trendy Petite Clothing: Showpo.

Showpo.

Pros: Many budget-friendly and fairly-priced options

Wide inventory

A mix of staples across every category, as well as special occasion outfits Cons: No specific petite section — however, the brand does offer inclusive sizing and details on fit for every piece of clothing

It’s no wonder that Showpo. quickly went from a small Australian start-up to a global fashion brand. The store is well ahead of the trends, even offering edits for the Taylor Swift Eras Tour, Big Boss Energy workwear, and a Bridal Shower collection. Showpo. was one of the first online retailers to offer inclusive sizing, ranging from size 0-16. While they do not offer a specific petite section, I adore the fact that the brand provides specific details on whether items fit true to size, run larger, or run small.

Miska Salemann wearing an outfit from Showpo. Miska Salemann

New York Post Review: For the petites, I recommend heading to Showpo.’s crop top collection, cropped jean section, and mini skirt edit. These sections are filled with romantic, feminine styles for every type of occasion. I’ve noticed many pieces are fully-lined, which adds some shape and structure — ideal for women on the smaller side. If I had to choose a couple piece to recommend to the petite ladies, I’d tell them to try this season’s stunning Hermie Blazer ($100), which offers a jaw-dropping flattering fit without draping too far down past the hips. Or, for an ideal transitional, Showpo. also has crafted this darling Shearling Aviator Jacket. Unlike some sweeping long coats I’ve had to constantly pull up, this one hits just below the knees — it’s lightweight, elongating, and has already racked up countless compliments.

Shipping: Free standard shipping to the US on orders over $100| Returns: You can return your items to Showpo. within 21 days of receiving your order | Price Range: $

Best Handmade Petite Clothing: Faithfull the Brand

Faithfull The Brand

Pros: Detailed information on the measurements of the models pictured in the clothing

Lots of pieces are adjustable, offering tie-backs

All Faithfull products are handmade locally in the country where the brand was founded Cons: No specific petite section

More expensive

While this brand does not have a dedicated petite section, they do offer specific details on models’ measurements to help shoppers find the right fit. Notes are made on whether each piece fits true to size, as well as recommendations for sizing up or down. I’ve also noticed that many of their pieces are designed with adjustable straps, tie-backs, and halter tops that allow a more tailored fit, which is ideal for anyone under 5’5. The Regina Midi ($135) is a great example of that.

New York Post Review: Meet Faithfull The Brand — one of the most Instagrammable brands in my book — that also happens to offer a range of fashionable pieces that look stunning on petites. The founders of this sun-seeking brand collaborated with Bali’s best artisans to create handmade garments, and you can certainly see the attention to detail in all of their pieces.

Shipping: Free standard shipping on all U.S. orders over $150. DHL Express shipping for international orders to countries outside of the U.S. | Returns: Full refunds or store credit available on items not worn within 21 days of the purchase date | Price Range: $$$

Best Petite Shapewear: Skims

Skims

Pros: Different colors and styles drop regularly

Flattering, body-hugging material

Wash well in the dryer

Free shipping on orders over $75 Cons: No dedicated petite section, but the sizing goes down to XXS

Less workwear and occasion wear

As a petite herself, Kim Kardashian seems to know exactly what she’s doing with Skims. While the brand may not be built for those restocking their everyday capsule wardrobe, it still offers a range of comfy, casual, and shapely styles perfect for at-home lounging or a casual coffee run. Fans enjoy regular seasonal drops of the latest on-trend loungewear, intimates, swimwear, bodysuits, and more. All items are offered in extensive sizing from XXS to 4X, and the body-hugging fabric has a good amount of stretch to mold to your body type.

Miska Salemann wearing a Skims dress. Miska Salemann

New York Post Review: While Skims doesn’t offer a true petite section, the brand does use that second-skin type of material, which seems to smooth everything out and sit flat against the skin. Petites know all too well the frustration of frumpy, loose, and awkward fits, and Kim has saved us from that. My personal favorite — the viral Long Sleeve Skims Dress ($90) already has a bit of a “snatching effect,” without wearing any shapewear beneath it. Once you add the Skims Thong Bodysuit ($70), you’ll notice that you look longer, taller, and leaner. It’s magic. The material is lightweight but a bit thicker than you would expect, so it also feels like it’s holding you in.

Shipping: Free on all orders over $75 in the U.S. Economy delivery is expected in 4 to 7 business says, Standard delivery in 3 to 5 business days, Express in 2 to 3 business days, and Priority in 1 to 2 business days via UPS | Returns: You can make a return within 30 days of placing your order for a store credit or refund | Price Range: $$

Best Petite Occasion-wear: Ramy Brook

Ramy Brook

Pros: Numerical sizing starts at 00

Best for special-occasion dresses and cropped denim styles (including jumpsuits)

Lively colors and high-quality fabrics (sequins, silk, etc.) Cons: More unique, creative pieces and fewer everyday staples and basics

I’ve been converted. Shopping for special occasions can be tricky as a petite, which is why I had to try Ramy Brook’s line of celebration-worthy styles that are offered in numerical sizing starting at double-zero to flatter petites. The brand is stocked with an assortment of colorful mini dresses, dainty skirts, cropped denim, and even a best-selling ankle-length jumpsuit made to flatter your smaller frame.

Miska Salemann wearing a Ramy Brook dress. Miska Salemann

New York Post Review: Here is one thing I know: This is the place to go for all your special occasions. The New York City-based brand offers a sea of attention-grabbing styles that carry a confident, high-class, inspiring elegance while flattering a variety of body types with expansive sizing, adjustable straps, and spandex to allow easy movement. My favorites of the moment range from the hot pink Embroidered Marceline Cotton Poplin Mini Dress ($395) to the darling Bea Long Sleeve Cardigan Sweater ($365), and for Spring — the Theodora Wide Leg Jean ($265). I would wear these pants every day, if I’m being honest.

Shipping: Ramy Brook offers free standard shipping for all US orders and multiple premium shipping services | Returns: Ramy Brook offers a 30-day window for returns. Returns on orders placed within the US will incur a $10 restocking fee | Price Range: $$$

Petite Clothing for the Over 50s: Chico’s

Chico’s

Pros: Dedicated petite section

Very versatile — lots of workwear, but also more casual styles

Fun patterns and bright colors, in addition to neutral tones Cons: Caters more toward mature styles

With a dedicated petite section filled with cool, comfortable, and professional workwear, occasion-wear, and beyond, Chico’s is just the right spot for the under 5’4-crew to shop. The brand caters to more sophisticated styles, brimmed with blazers, blouses, cardigans, work slacks, and long dresses. Bold colors and flattering hemlines offer a fresher take on some of these classic styles.

New York Post Review: Sadly, I don’t own any Chico’s pieces myself. However, my petite mother (she claims she is 5’2 and still shrinking) has sworn by the brand for years — maybe decades. She says that the styles are timeless and age-appropriate for working women. Best of all, there is a section dedicated to petites. She has a pair of the signature Drapey Jeans ($80), and proudly exclaims that they are the only pair of “cool pants” she owns. Plus, they hit her ankles at the right spot and never drag on the floor. The jacket section is another recommendation of hers, as the brand offers a variety of styles suited for different seasons, as well as versatile transitional pieces.

Shipping: Standard delivery is available for all U.S. addresses and will arrive within 4-10 business days via USPS. Express, Next Day, and International delivery are also available | Returns: Merchandise returns and exchanges may be accepted within 60 days of the date of purchase | Price Range: $$

How we tested

To provide a comprehensive review of the top brands for petite women, I’ve assessed each brand based on a few different elements — petite sizing options, comfort and durability of material, and the brand’s range of styles.

Fit: It’s not as simple as trying on clothes to tell you whether they fit true to size. Considering this review is focused on clothing brands for petite women, I’ve made note of whether each brand has a dedicated petite section or offers specific styles in different lengths or specifically smaller sizes for women under 5’5. I also evaluated how the brands support shoppers in finding the right fit, including whether they highlight petite models wearing the clothing on the websites, if there are measurements listed, and whether customer reviews were provided for each product.

It’s not as simple as trying on clothes to tell you whether they fit true to size. Considering this review is focused on clothing brands for petite women, I’ve made note of whether each brand has a dedicated petite section or offers specific styles in different lengths or specifically smaller sizes for women under 5’5. I also evaluated how the brands support shoppers in finding the right fit, including whether they highlight petite models wearing the clothing on the websites, if there are measurements listed, and whether customer reviews were provided for each product. Style: Style is unique to its beholder, so for this review, I’ve focused on the variety of styles provided by each brand, versus the quality of the style that the brand offers. However, I also highlighted any brands that are entirely geared towards a specific style, such as ones that specialize in clothing specifically for more mature professionals or others that offer a variety of trendier looks for younger shoppers.

Style is unique to its beholder, so for this review, I’ve focused on the variety of styles provided by each brand, versus the quality of the style that the brand offers. However, I also highlighted any brands that are entirely geared towards a specific style, such as ones that specialize in clothing specifically for more mature professionals or others that offer a variety of trendier looks for younger shoppers. Material: Most clothing brands I reviewed offer a variety of fabrics, from cotton and chiffon to silk and denim. I’ve tested these brands firsthand to review the comfort of the materials used in the clothing as well as the quality, specifically how long I expect them to last without ripping seams, stretching, or snagging. Additionally, I’ve highlighted some brands that are committed to recycling materials and reducing environmental waste in the production process.

Check out the New York Post Shopping section for more content.

For over 200 years, the New York Post has been America’s go-to source for bold news, engaging stories, in-depth reporting, and now, insightful shopping guidance. We’re not just thorough reporters – we sift through mountains of information, test and compare products, and consult experts on any topics we aren’t already schooled specialists in to deliver useful, realistic product recommendations based on our extensive and hands-on analysis. Here at The Post, we’re known for being brutally honest – we clearly label partnership content, and whether we receive anything from affiliate links, so you always know where we stand. We routinely update content to reflect current research and expert advice, provide context (and wit) and ensure our links work. Please note that deals can expire, and all prices are subject to change.

How we did this This is the 12th “Future of the Internet” canvassing Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center have conducted together to get expert views about important digital issues. In this case, the questions focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 on the evolution of humans-plus-technology. This is a nonscientific canvassing based on a nonrandom sample; this broad array of opinions about where current trends may lead in the next few years represents only the points of view of the individuals who responded to the queries. Pew Research Center and Elon’s Imagining the Internet Center built a database of experts to canvass from a wide range of fields, choosing to invite people from several sectors, including professionals and policy people based in government bodies, nonprofits and foundations, technology businesses, think tanks and in networks of interested academics and technology innovators. The predictions reported here came in response to a set of questions in an online canvassing conducted between June 30 and July 27, 2020. In all, 915 technology innovators and developers, business and policy leaders, researchers and activists responded to at least one of the questions covered in this report. More on the methodology underlying this canvassing and the participants can be found in the final section.

When pandemics sweep through societies, they upend critical structures, such as health systems and medical treatments, economic life, socioeconomic class structures and race relations, fundamental institutional arrangements, communities and everyday family life. A new canvassing of experts in technology, communications and social change by Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center finds that many expect similar impacts to emerge from the COVID-19 outbreak.

Asked to consider what life will be like in 2025 in the wake of the outbreak of the global pandemic and other crises in 2020, some 915 innovators, developers, business and policy leaders, researchers and activists responded. Their broad and nearly universal view is that people’s relationship with technology will deepen as larger segments of the population come to rely more on digital connections for work, education, health care, daily commercial transactions and essential social interactions. A number describe this as a “tele-everything” world.

Notable shares of these respondents foresee significant change that will:

worsen economic inequality as those who are highly connected and the tech-savvy pull further ahead of those who have less access to digital tools and less training or aptitude for exploiting them and as technological change eliminates some jobs;

as those who are highly connected and the tech-savvy pull further ahead of those who have less access to digital tools and less training or aptitude for exploiting them and as technological change eliminates some jobs; enhance the power of big technology firms as they exploit their market advantages and mechanisms such as artificial intelligence (AI) in ways that seem likely to further erode the privacy and autonomy of their users;

as they exploit their market advantages and mechanisms such as artificial intelligence (AI) in ways that seem likely to further erode the privacy and autonomy of their users; multiply the spread of misinformation as authoritarians and polarized populations wage warring information campaigns with their foes. Many respondents said their deepest worry is over the seemingly unstoppable manipulation of public perception, emotion and action via online disinformation – lies and hate speech deliberately weaponized in order to propagate destructive biases and fears. They worry about significant damage to social stability and cohesion and the reduced likelihood of rational deliberation and evidence-based policymaking.

At the same time, a portion of these experts express hope that changes spawned by the pandemic will make things better for significant portions of the population because of changes that:

inaugurate new reforms aimed at racial justice and social equity as critiques of current economic arrangements – and capitalism itself – gain support and policymaker attention;

as critiques of current economic arrangements – and capitalism itself – gain support and policymaker attention; enhance the quality of life for many families and workers as more flexible-workplace arrangements become permanent and communities adjust to them;

as more flexible-workplace arrangements become permanent and communities adjust to them; produce technology enhancements in virtual and augmented reality and AI that allow people to live smarter, safer and more productive lives, enabled in many cases by “smart systems” in such key areas as health care, education and community living.

These six themes were commonly expressed by these experts in their responses to a question that asked them to consider the changes that were set in motion in 2020 by the COVID-19 outbreak and describe what the “new normal” might look like in 2025.

Some 47% of these respondents said life will be mostly worse for most people in 2025 than it was before the pandemic, while 39% said life will be mostly better for most people in 2025 than it was pre-pandemic. Another 14% said most people’s lives in 2025 will not be much different from the way things would have turned out if there had been no pandemic.

Among the 86% who said the pandemic will bring about some kind of change, most said they expect that the evolution of digital life will continue to feature both positives and negatives. These expert views link in interesting ways with public attitudes. A Pew Research survey in August 2020 found that 51% of U.S. adults said they expected their lives to remain changed in major ways even after the pandemic is over.

This is a nonscientific canvassing, based on a nonrandom sample. The results represent only the opinions of the individuals who responded to the queries and are not projectable to any other population.

The bulk of this report covers these experts’ written answers explaining their responses. They sounded many broad themes about the ways in which individuals and groups are adjusting in the face of the global crisis, describing the most likely opportunities and challenges emerging as humans accelerate their uses and applications of digital technologies in response. It is important to note that the responses were gathered in the summer of 2020, before the completion of the presidential election in the United States and before COVID-19 vaccines had been approved.

As these experts pondered what was happening in mid-2020 and the likely changes ahead, they used words like “inflection point,” “punctuated equilibrium,” “unthinkable scale,” “exponential process,” “massive disruption” and “unprecedented challenge.” They wrote about changes that could reconfigure fundamental realities such as people’s physical “presence” with others and people’s conceptions of trust and truth.

They wondered, too, if humans can cope effectively with such far-reaching changes, given that they are required to function with “paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technology,” in the words of biologist E.O. Wilson.

Among the scores of changes they see is the emergence of: an “Internet of Medical Things” with sensors and devices that allow for new kinds of patient health monitoring; smart millimeter wave machines to diagnose people with disease symptoms; advances in synthetic biology and computational virology that improve drug testing and targeted disease therapies; diagnostic screenings that cover a person’s diet, genes and microbiome; handheld detection devices that citizen swarms use to address environmental problems; and a new class of tele-care workers.

Additionally, these experts forecast the creation of 3-D social media systems that allow for richer human interaction (sometimes via hologram avatars); mediated digital agents (interdigital agents) gradually taking over significantly more repetitive or time-consuming tasks; a “flying Internet of Things” as drones become more prolific in surveillance, exploration and delivery tasks; ubiquitous augmented reality; an expanded gig economy built around work-from-home free agents; urban farming that reaches industrial scale; advances in trusted cryptocurrency that enable greater numbers of peer-to-peer collaborations; locally based, on-demand manufacturing; “local in spirit and local in practice” supply chains; a robust marketplace of education choices that allow students to create personalized schooling menus; “tele-justice” advances that allow courts to handle large numbers of cases remotely; “truth valuation” protocols that diminish the appeal of disinformation; and small, safer nuclear reactors for energy production.

At the more everyday level, these experts also think there will be better speech recognition, facial recognition (including sentiment discernment from facial expressions), real-time language translation, captioning and autocorrect capacity, sensory suits, robust video search, body motion sensors, 3D glasses, multimedia databases and broader network bandwidth that will enable full 3D virtual experiences and developments in AI allowing it to serve more of people’s needs.

These themes and more are outlined in the accompanying tables.

The pandemic proves that world-upending phenomena can emerge from anywhere. The turn to living and working more intensively within digital communications networks shows the value of these complex systems. The pandemic brings more focus on both the upsides and the downsides of digital life.

Tele-everything is embraced: The broad adoption of “remote” processes – telework, telemedicine, virtual schooling, e-commerce and more – is growing. In 2025, there will be more people working from home, more virtual social and entertainment interactions and fewer forays in public than has been in the case in recent years.

The broad adoption of “remote” processes – telework, telemedicine, virtual schooling, e-commerce and more – is growing. In 2025, there will be more people working from home, more virtual social and entertainment interactions and fewer forays in public than has been in the case in recent years. Humans’ yearning for convenience and safety fuels reliance on digital tools: The pandemic has rearranged incentives so that consumers will be more willing to seek out smart gadgets, apps and systems. This will speed up adoption of new education and learning platforms, rearrange work patterns and workplaces, change family life and upend living arrangements and community structures.

The pandemic has rearranged incentives so that consumers will be more willing to seek out smart gadgets, apps and systems. This will speed up adoption of new education and learning platforms, rearrange work patterns and workplaces, change family life and upend living arrangements and community structures. The best and worst of human nature are amplified: The crisis is enhancing digital interconnectedness that engenders empathy, better awareness of the ills facing humanity and positive public action. On the flip side, some individuals, cities and nation-states will become more insular and competitive as survival mode kicks in. Xenophobia, bigotry and closed communities will also increase.

The crisis is enhancing digital interconnectedness that engenders empathy, better awareness of the ills facing humanity and positive public action. On the flip side, some individuals, cities and nation-states will become more insular and competitive as survival mode kicks in. Xenophobia, bigotry and closed communities will also increase. Worries: As the global pandemic unfolds, experts fear growing social and racial inequality, worsening security and privacy and the further spread of misinformation

The advantaged enjoy more advantages; the disadvantaged fall further behind. Concerns particularly focus on the growing power of technology firms. Many suggested solutions have a double-edged quality because they threaten civil liberties. Automation could take many humans out of the work equation. And the spread of lies via social media and other digital platforms is likely to further damage all social, political and economic systems.

Inequality and injustice are magnified: The pandemic and quick pivot to the use of digitally driven systems will widen racial and other divides and expand the ranks of the unemployed, uninsured and disenfranchised. Power imbalances between the advantaged and disadvantaged are being magnified by digital systems overseen by behemoth firms as they exploit big data and algorithmic decision-making that are often biased. More people will be pushed into a precarious existence that lacks predictability, economic security and wellness.

The pandemic and quick pivot to the use of digitally driven systems will widen racial and other divides and expand the ranks of the unemployed, uninsured and disenfranchised. Power imbalances between the advantaged and disadvantaged are being magnified by digital systems overseen by behemoth firms as they exploit big data and algorithmic decision-making that are often biased. More people will be pushed into a precarious existence that lacks predictability, economic security and wellness. As risk grows, security must also; privacy falls and authoritarianism rises: The health crisis spawned by the pandemic and broader dependence people have on the internet heighten threats of criminal activity, hacks and other attacks. Optimized security solutions may further reduce individuals’ privacy and civil liberties. They are likely to expand mass surveillance, as authoritarian states will use this as an opportunity to silence dissent and abuse citizens’ civil rights.

The health crisis spawned by the pandemic and broader dependence people have on the internet heighten threats of criminal activity, hacks and other attacks. Optimized security solutions may further reduce individuals’ privacy and civil liberties. They are likely to expand mass surveillance, as authoritarian states will use this as an opportunity to silence dissent and abuse citizens’ civil rights. Threats to work will intensify from automation, artificial intelligence, robotics and globalization: In order to survive, businesses are reconfiguring systems and processes to automate as many aspects as possible. While artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics will enhance some lives, they will damage others, as more work is taken over by machines. Employers may outsource labor to the lowest bidder globally. Employees may be asked to work for far less; they may have to shift to be gig and contract workers, supplying their own equipment, and they may be surveilled at home by employers.

In order to survive, businesses are reconfiguring systems and processes to automate as many aspects as possible. While artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics will enhance some lives, they will damage others, as more work is taken over by machines. Employers may outsource labor to the lowest bidder globally. Employees may be asked to work for far less; they may have to shift to be gig and contract workers, supplying their own equipment, and they may be surveilled at home by employers. Misinformation will be rampant: Digital propaganda is unstoppable, and the rapidly expanding weaponization of cloud-based technologies divides the public, deteriorates social cohesion and threatens rational deliberation and evidence-based policymaking.

Digital propaganda is unstoppable, and the rapidly expanding weaponization of cloud-based technologies divides the public, deteriorates social cohesion and threatens rational deliberation and evidence-based policymaking. People’s mental health will be challenged: Digital life was already high-stress for some people prior to the required social isolation brought on by the pandemic. The shift to tele-everything will be extensive and that will diminish in-person contact and constrict tech users’ real-world support systems and their social connections.

Hopes: As the global pandemic unfolds, experts urge that calls for social justice be heeded and that technology design focus on human well-being

People have the chance now to reconfigure major systems such as the structure of capitalism, education, health care and workplaces. Advances in technologies such as artificial intelligence, smart cities, data analytics and virtual reality could make all systems safer, more humane and more helpfully productive. Better communication of more-accurate information can dramatically improve emergency responses in crises and alleviate suffering.

Social justice will get priority: The reawakening of public movements for social justice and economic equality may create more-responsive government and sociopolitical systems that are more attuned to diversity, equity and inclusion. This includes a focus on closing digital divides.

The reawakening of public movements for social justice and economic equality may create more-responsive government and sociopolitical systems that are more attuned to diversity, equity and inclusion. This includes a focus on closing digital divides. People’s well-being will prevail over profit: Businesses may start to value serving the greater good above the typical goals of market capitalism. This could produce policies to fund broader safety nets such as universal health care, universal basic income and broadband as a basic utility. A reckoning for tech companies and their leaders might also occur.

Businesses may start to value serving the greater good above the typical goals of market capitalism. This could produce policies to fund broader safety nets such as universal health care, universal basic income and broadband as a basic utility. A reckoning for tech companies and their leaders might also occur. The quality of life will improve: The transition to home-based work will reduce urban air pollution, overcrowding and transportation gridlock. It will enhance the overall quality of life, create a better environment for family life, allow more accommodations for those with disabilities and inspire other enhancements.

The transition to home-based work will reduce urban air pollution, overcrowding and transportation gridlock. It will enhance the overall quality of life, create a better environment for family life, allow more accommodations for those with disabilities and inspire other enhancements. AI, VR, AR, ML will yield good : Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, deep learning, machine learning and natural language processing will make virtual spaces feel much more real, in-person, authentic and effective.

: Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, deep learning, machine learning and natural language processing will make virtual spaces feel much more real, in-person, authentic and effective. Smarter systems will be created: Municipal, rural, state and independent services, especially in the health care sector, will be modernized to better handle future crises, quickly identifying and responding to emerging threats and sharing information with all citizens in more timely and helpful ways.

Source: Nonscientific canvassing of select experts conducted June 30-July 27, 2020. N=915.

“Experts Say the ‘New Normal’ in 2025 Will Be Far More Tech-Driven, Presenting More Big Challenges”

Following is a selection of some of the most comprehensive overarching responses shared by a number of the 915 thought leaders participating in this canvassing.

Privacy was always a luxury in the past – only the rich enjoyed it. Then it spread to a large fraction of the population in the West. Now it is receding again, in a way that mirrors the rise in inequality and the inevitable fall in civil liberties.MARCEL FAFCHAMPS, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND SENIOR FELLOW AT THE CENTER ON DEMOCRACY, DEVELOPMENT AND THE RULE OF LAW AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Marcel Fafchamps, professor of economics and senior fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, commented, “Here are some of the changes I anticipate. Please note that many of them were already in the background and could have occurred anyway, but I suspect less fast and less strongly.

Economic and social inequality: The economic contrast between the ‘confined,’ the ‘essentials’ and the ‘unemployed’ will perdure. The confined are those who can work from home and be productive. Because employers save money on them, they will continue to prosper. Anyone who cannot work from home will as a result earn comparatively less than without the introduction of work-from-home as a normal way of life. Many workers will be displaced or made redundant by this change, e.g., all those who support work-life (restaurants, transport including car making, maintenance of office buildings, etc.). A gig economy will arise that caters to the same needs for those working from home but, because they will work in a very competitive industry (they will compete with each other for each home-worker-customer) and they will be much harder to organize in unions, strikes, etc., they will earn less. And they will become invisible, like domestic workers or gardeners today.

The generalization of work-from-home will change where people live – possibly away from city centers, but this need not be the case if people value their social life, as is likely, especially for the young – possibly into small towns instead of big metropolis. This will in turn lead to more social segmentation/parochialism/segregation in terms of residential choice and social circle. Business districts force different people together by need rather than choice. If people can choose who they live with, they will sort on similar attributes, including wealth and all its correlates.

By reducing the cost of congestion inherent to having a workforce in large office buildings, these changes will enable even larger firms, leading to an even stronger concentration of corporate power into a small number of key actors. The last wave saw the concentration of financial and service industry into a small number of world banks into a small number of geographical centers (e.g., New York, London, Shanghai, Singapore, etc.). We have already seen this with Amazon, Alibaba, Google and the like for their respective industries. We will now see this spread to other work-from-home industries: more agglomeration, but this time happening in the digital world, and not requiring geographical concentration itself.

Civil liberties were severely curtailed during COVID-19. New tools and technologies were introduced to control people better, including phone apps that identify likely social interactions between people. These tools will be used by totalitarian regimes to control their population better, on the Chinese model. Furthermore, people working from home will be much harder to organize and much easier to target individually by repression. I therefore anticipate population control to become more efficient and effective, cutting down the productivity gap between autocratic regimes and democracies. As a result, democracy will be on the defensive, its spread will be reversed in many parts of the world, and democracies themselves will infringe more on civil liberties. We are entering a post-democratic era.

Privacy was always a luxury in the past – only the rich enjoyed it. Then it spread to a large fraction of the population in the West. Now it is receding again, in a way that mirrors the rise in inequality and the inevitable fall in civil liberties. The poor never have privacy. COVID-19 has justified the loss of the last bit of privacy we had left, namely, our health data and who we meet in the park.

In a not-too-distant future the Soviet Union will be seen as ahead of its time: Its main weakness was the inability to deal with the complexity of matching production and consumer demand. Now this can be achieved via Amazon or Alibaba, and the complex dispatch or matching algorithm that they and Google and Facebook have created. With concentration of corporate power, increase in inequality and weakening of civil liberties, it will be easy to recreate a post-democratic world that fulfills the Soviet promise, without necessarily requiring public ownership in the means of production: It will no longer matter who is formally the owner of capital, as China today demonstrates.”

Amy Webb, quantitative futurist and founder of the Future Today Institute, said: “We’ve entered a new Bioinformation Age, a new period in human history characterized by the shift from privacy and personal choice to new social, government and economic structures that require our data to operate. You can expect to see a Flying Internet of Things: smart drones equipped with object- and face-recognition, audio analytics, motion detection and sense-and-avoid systems that communicate with each other in the air and back down to a command center on the ground. The Flying Internet of Things will be used for surveillance and deliveries of small payloads, such as medicines, medical supplies and other necessities. Drones will transport specimens between buildings on hospital campuses, and they will move prescriptions between drugstores and homes.

“The availability of diagnostic testing will be far more ubiquitous. Drugstores, schools and large company offices will have compact COVID-19 testing machines and technicians. A specimen will be taken, put onto a cartridge and results will be delivered within minutes. Meanwhile, at airports, offices and event spaces, smart millimeter wave machines will be used to algorithmically diagnose people with COVID-19 symptoms. The machines will include a thermal imager and a powerful suite of AI algorithms that in seconds will scan someone’s heart rate, respiration rate, blood oxygen level and body temperature. Our new normal will include decentralized, persistent biometric surveillance. Within just a few years, biometric-recognition technology will transition from suspect, to reviled, to acceptable, to essential. Eventually, a massive biometric surveillance apparatus will become the invisible infrastructure enabling our economies to function again. …

“The fate of regulation, as national governments try to reconcile the desire for public safety with a reality in which algorithms are encoded with bias, could take many years to sort out, and the result is likely a patchwork of different protocols and permissions around the world. In the Bioinformation Age, transparency, accountability and data governance are paramount, but few organizations are ready. Everyone alive today is under persistent surveillance from a host of technologies, and what most people don’t realize is that tech companies don’t need cameras to see you. From Wi-Fi signals to single strands of hair, it is possible to recognize you without submitting to face scans.

“Catastrophe can be a catalyst for positive change. In a race to find a vaccine, important areas of science – synthetic biology, computational virology – are accelerating. This will result in more-efficient drug testing, new approaches to targeted therapies and, someday, a future in which we engineer life itself.

In a race to find a vaccine, important areas of science – synthetic biology, computational virology – are accelerating. AMY WEBB, QUANTITATIVE FUTURIST AND FOUNDER OF THE FUTURE TODAY INSTITUTE

“Many organizations in the public and private sectors had not invested in digital transformation. The virus provided an immediate impetus to change. On the other side of this, organizations should have better workflows, data management, information and cybersecurity, and new efficiencies. The virus could finally be an accelerant to healthcare equity in the U.S. The virus has highlighted the lack of broadband infrastructure in the U.S. and a growing digital divide. One of the coronavirus aftershocks will be a realization that American kids need internet access to perform well in school, and many families don’t have it. We could categorize internet access the way we categorize food security and emerge from the pandemic with federal programs to provide internet and device assistance to families in need.”

David Brin, physicist, futures thinker and author of “Earth” and “Existence,” commented, “Assuming we restore the basic stability of the Western Enlightenment Experiment, and that is a big assumption, then several technological and social trends may come to fruition in the next five to 10 years.

Advances in cost-effectiveness of sustainable energy supplies will be augmented by better storage systems. This will both reduce reliance on fossil fuels and allow cities and homes to be more autonomous.

Urban farming methods may move to industrial scale, allowing similar moves toward local autonomy (perhaps requiring a full decade or more to show significant impact). Meat use will decline for several reasons, ensuring some degree of food security, as well.

Local, small-scale, on-demand manufacturing may start to show effects in 2025. If all of the above take hold, there will be surplus oceanic shipping capacity across the planet. Some of it may be applied to ameliorate (not solve) acute water shortages. Innovative uses of such vessels may range all the way to those depicted in my novel ‘Earth.’

Full-scale diagnostic evaluations of diet, genes and microbiome will result in micro-biotic therapies and treatments. AI appraisals of other diagnostics will both advance detection of problems and become distributed to handheld devices cheaply available to all, even poor clinics.

Handheld devices will start to carry detection technologies that can appraise across the spectrum, allowing NGOs and even private parties to detect and report environmental problems.

Socially, this extension of citizen vision will go beyond the current trend of assigning accountability to police and other authorities. Despotisms will be empowered, as predicted in ‘Nineteen Eighty-four.’ But democracies will also be empowered, as in ‘The Transparent Society.’

I give odds that tsunamis of revelation will crack the shields protecting many elites from disclosure of past and present torts and turpitudes. The Panama Papers and Epstein cases exhibit how fear propels the elites to combine efforts at repression. But only a few more cracks may cause the dike to collapse, revealing networks of blackmail. This is only partly technologically driven and hence is not guaranteed. If it does happen, there will be dangerous spasms by all sorts of elites, desperate to either retain status or evade consequences. But if the fever runs its course, the more transparent world will be cleaner and better run.

Some of those elites have grown aware of the power of 90 years of Hollywood propaganda for individualism, criticism, diversity, suspicion of authority and appreciation of eccentricity. Counterpropaganda pushing older, more traditional approaches to authority and conformity are already emerging, and they have the advantage of resonating with ancient human fears. Much will depend upon this meme war.

“Of course, much will also depend upon short-term resolution of current crises. If our systems remain undermined and sabotaged by incited civil strife and distrust of expertise, then all bets are off. You will get many answers to this canvassing fretting about the spread of ‘surveillance technologies that will empower Big Brother.’ These fears are well-grounded, but utterly myopic. First, ubiquitous cameras and facial recognition are only the beginning. Nothing will stop them and any such thought of ‘protecting’ citizens from being seen by elites is stunningly absurd, as the cameras get smaller, better, faster, cheaper, more mobile and vastly more numerous every month. Moore’s Law to the nth degree. Yes, despotisms will benefit from this trend. And hence, the only thing that matters is to prevent despotism altogether.

“In contrast, a free society will be able to apply the very same burgeoning technologies toward accountability. We are seeing them applied to end centuries of abuse by ‘bad-apple’ police who are thugs, while empowering the truly professional cops to do their jobs better. I do not guarantee light will be used this way, despite today’s spectacular example. It is an open question whether we citizens will have the gumption to apply ‘sousveillance’ upward at all elites. But Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. likewise were saved by crude technologies of light in their days. And history shows that assertive vision by and for the citizenry is the only method that has ever increased freedom and – yes – some degree of privacy.

Handheld devices will start to carry detection technologies that can appraise across the spectrum, allowing NGOs and even private parties to detect and report environmental problems. David Brin, Author of “EartH” and “Existence”

“I would wager that I am almost alone in saying this in this canvassing. The hand wringers are totally right about the problem and the danger presented by surveillance tech! And they are diametrically wrong in the common prescription. Trying to ban technologies and create shadows for citizens to hide within is spectacularly wrongheaded and disastrous. See my book, ‘The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?’”

Barry Chudakov, founder and principal of Sertain Research, commented, “The ‘new normal’ for the average person in 2025 will entail adapting to multiple simultaneous accelerations. … COVID-19 will be followed by other pandemics. Atmospheric climate change will accelerate. Wetlands deterioration will accelerate. The number of homeless refugees – due to soil, crop and weather devastation – will accelerate. Information speeds and content compression will accelerate. The invasiveness and accuracy of tracking, search and recognition technologies will accelerate. Our reliance on remote-distance technologies and interfaces will accelerate.

“The consequence of these accelerations is complexity: Problems and issues, programs and technologies, all are becoming more complex. The substrate of the new normal will be ineradicable complexity: Both our problems and our technologies (including how we deploy these technologies) have passed the stage of simple approaches. To quote McKinsey: ‘Telemedicine experienced a tenfold growth in subscribers in just 15 days. Similar acceleration patterns can be seen in online education, nearshoring, and remote working, to name but a few areas. All these trends were clear before the crisis and have been amplified by it.’

“This is a fundamental amplification. The way people use and think about technology will progress further on the continuum of actual to virtual. We will become even more screen-dependent. We will see less of the world IRL (in real life) and more through interfaces and screens whose distancing will shield us from deadly viruses but also isolate us. Thus, the new normal with regard to the role of digital technologies in individuals’ personal and professional lives will be to usher in, and learn to navigate, the emerging metaverse. … What worries me most about the role of technology and technology companies in individuals’ lives in 2025 is the deliberate depreciation of complexity. The diminishment of complexity invites tyranny. It is the tyranny of simple-ism and reductionism papered over by happy talk, lies and distortions designed to distract us from real issues.

“We urgently need clarity and sound thinking. Simplistic clichés and slight-of-hand responses won’t solve the complex problems we face such as accelerating climate change, soil and shoreline erosion, global immigration or morphing pandemics. We must embrace transparency – make the science required to tackle this complexity easily understandable. To be clear: Complexity is not an end in itself; it is a fact of life that must be addressed, like the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. For example, Rana el Kaliouby, CEO of Affectiva, has written and spoken often about the need to embrace the complexity of gender, race, cultural context, accessibility, socioeconomic status and other variables that often are lacking in the environments that design the computer programs and algorithms that mediate our lives. We must humanize AI and make human variability the substrate of bits and qubits.

“A second level of complexity – and the more urgent one – is our engagement with our devices. We use them; we typically are not present with them. We don’t notice how they bend our perceptions and behaviors. As complexity accelerates, curiously, our ability to embrace and engage with that complexity diminishes. This is in no small measure due to the ergonomic design of our devices that makes them both indispensable and makes us more likely to adhere in our thinking and action to their compression logic: They compress time, distance, communication, relationships. We have an active and reactive relationship with our tools. Because of this we need a meta layer of awareness that monitors how we change and adapt. Merely adopting tool logic as our own – texting while we drive, ghosting, growing alone together – is hardly a healthy response. Further, our lack of presence with our tools effectively means we are at the mercy of the surveillance capitalism and interruptive logic that pervades their inception. These technologies and the companies that create them daily gain in sophistication; this is a new acceleration.

“Much of this accelerated sophistication is outstanding and useful. But we pick up and use our devices and, as it were, live our lives eyes wide shut. We don’t look at what we’re using and how we’re using it – we practice unconscious tech engagement. Our tools are so ergonomic, so easy to use, so quick to respond that we are seduced by the slick way they reorganize our thinking, our behavior and our lives. But we have reached a tipping point with our tools: They are now more sophisticated than our ability to fully appreciate their effects; those effects are hidden in the tool logic, the actions of the tool. We must become present with our tools; we must gain in meta-awareness, retool our understanding of how we think while tech-immersed versus how we think otherwise.

We have reached a tipping point with our tools: They are now more sophisticated than our ability to fully appreciate their effects; those effects are hidden in the tool logic, the actions of the tool. Barry Chudakov, founder and principal of Sertain Research

“Why is this a concern? In prior human history, the power to manipulate reality, facts, behaviors and lives was centered in visible entities with physical representatives: the king, the pope, the organizer, the leader. Institutions from churches to schools to governments were concrete entities with no metalife. If you couldn’t talk to the king or the pope every day, you knew where they lived in a castle or the Vatican. While many institutions can fossilize and grow weedy with bureaucratic complexity, newer technologies present the ability to avoid presence. More than absence, this is the ability to hide, to obfuscate, to distort. The more virtual we become, the more I worry that we abandon the concrete for becoming gadgeteers and, as Neil Postman put it, ‘amusing ourselves to death.’ The more we disembody, the more virtual our realities become, the more we exhibit antisocial, even psychopathic behaviors. Alone together we lose empathy; we lose compassion; we lose focus. As computing goes quantum, as algorithms and AI mediate more of our interactions, our educational structures have either lagged far behind or have given up altogether trying to prepare young minds for the world they will inherit. The more device dependent we become, the more incumbent it is upon all users to fully understand the tool logic and business model of the tool they pick up and use. Surveillance is a business model; exploitation of data exhaust is a business model; tracking is a business model; observation and analysis is a business model. In whose interest is it for us to embrace that business model? In ‘Everybody Lies’ Seth Stephens-Davidowitz says, ‘Google searches are the most important dataset ever collected on the human psyche.’ In other words, the human psyche is an emerging business model.”

Brad Templeton, internet pioneer, futurist and activist, a former president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said, “It has been suggested that this is the first battle in our last war on disease – that, partly as a result of this, we will come to understand viruses at a fundamental level. And now the budget will be there (due to the obvious benefit) to create the ability to make a vaccine or counter-agent to a virus on demand – just sequence the virus and quickly be able to generate agents that will be known to be safe and effective. It’s very likely we’ll get much better at diagnostics as well. These are tremendous goods, and one would even say worth the cost of the pandemic, except we were trying to make them before and this just kickstarts them. This could prevent the death of millions, and if you can attribute it to the pandemic, you would have to go into the ‘wildly, wildly positive’ camp on the pandemic.

“We’re learning a great deal about videoconferences and meetings, holding large events online, holding parties online. We still suck at it, but we’re learning lots and getting better. The video call was something that was going to be ‘the next thing’ since the 1950s. The pandemic made that finally happen, and it’s probably here to stay. We may even develop means to do pretty significant business travel without the travel, which has benefits in cost, time and pollution. …

“We may learn to do occasional ‘dry runs’ of all the technologies necessary for hard lockdown – online shopping, delivery, virtual meeting spaces and remote learning and more. We will probably learn that the right approach is to use those technologies to generate a very hard lockdown for a short time, rather than a moderate lockdown for a very long time. Delivery robots (in which I am involved) will gain more appreciation. Public transit will mostly recover but only because it has to; long-overdue changes away from its 20th-century models will be hastened in reaction to that decline, and fear for several years of cramped, packed spaces. This will slightly hasten the eventual replacement of most public transit with robotic group and solo transportation. The world will probably get a bit cleaner. Ultraviolet disinfection will become common. This may reduce the spread of other infections like flu.”

Digital technologies always mirror and magnify the good, bad and ugly. danah boyd, founder and president of the Data & Society Research Institute and principal researcher at Microsoft

danah boyd, founder and president of the Data & Society Research Institute and principal researcher at Microsoft, wrote, “Inequality will create a huge division between those who are thriving and those who are in dire straits. There will be plenty of high-status people who will come out of the pandemic with wealth, health and their life goals intact. But a large amount of society will be dealing with all sorts of ripple effects. There will be those who got sick and never fully recovered. There will be those who lost their jobs and precarity turned to poverty fast. But there will also be mothers whose careers took a left turn after multiple years of trying to be a stay-at-home parent plus a teacher while working at home. There will be so many people who will be facing tremendous post-traumatic stress disorder as they struggle to make sense of the domestic violence they experienced during the pandemic, the loss of family and friends and the tremendous amount of uncertainty that surrounded every decision. Digital technologies always mirror and magnify the good, bad and ugly. People will continue to use technology to get support and help, but they will also struggle with how technology becomes a place of hostility and information confusion. A cohort of young people will be accustomed to engaging friends through technology, but also struggle with a range of face-to-face encounters as the fears/confusion over illness persist. If we’re lucky, schools, conferences, mental health and general health care will be forever reimagined to consider hybrid ways of approaching services. But this is more likely to be something that magnifies inequality rather than actually doing the connective work that could be possible. The biggest unknown in the United States concerns political leadership.”

Douglas Rushkoff, media theorist and author, wrote, “2025 may be a whole lot more local in spirit and local in practice. As global supply chains falter and reveal their structural inadequacies, people will come to depend more on locally produced goods. This will also mean fewer ridiculous, meaningless, valueless cubicle jobs, and more time spent actually creating value. I’m thinking simple, real tasks like growing food, building houses, teaching kids, health care and providing energy may dominate what we now think of as ‘work.’ In other words, instead of developing careers in industries, people will learn how to do things – which could prove truly fulfilling and psychologically stabilizing.

“The climate and economic challenges may be bigger, but our resilience as people could be stronger. It’s only three or four years out, so I don’t anticipate we’ll be through the disillusionment at the failure of global corporate capitalism. As for the role of digital technologies? I don’t know if they will be quite as important in their own right. They’ll likely be more embedded into other stuff, and less fetishized on their own. The only tech-related change I’m really hoping for is less of it. It’s really draining. Even typing this right now I’m using tech to write to you about the future of tech? As for tech making life better? The obvious ones: solar, regenerative energy, less-industrial agriculture (more low- or light-tech solutions to topsoil depletion, air pollution, watershed destruction). More simple stuff that solves real problems. Less social networks designed to create new problems.

“My worries? Well, there are now trillions of dollars invested in companies that depend on addiction, isolation and fear to keep growing. That’s very dangerous, since these companies will spend their war chests on deliberately causing panic, pain and fear. They know the more upset and reactive we are, the more likely we are to engage with their platforms. So, when the wealthiest industry in the world is doing everything it can to attack our basic sense of well-being, I do get concerned we may not have the resilience as people to oppose these forces. Once they really get a handle on using AI for this purpose, I’m not sure how we get ourselves out of it. Even now, we see people on social media platforms attacking those with whom they should be allied. They cancel people rather than collaborate with them. If AIs determine that turning people against each other is the easiest way for them to deliver desired metrics, then we could be in great trouble.”

Esther Dyson, internet pioneer, journalist, entrepreneur and executive founder of Wellville, responded, “Things will be both better and worse. Many people will be dead and many others more will be permanently damaged, physically or mentally or economically. And those people will mostly be the ones who were worse-off in the first place, poor, Black or another minority, disabled or ill, or otherwise challenged. Yet at the same time, the U.S. and even the world at large are much more aware of the disparities and the unfairness of this situation.

“With luck, we will start to think long-term (to the next pandemic?) and realize how much better things could be for all (including rich employers who want educated, happy, productive employees and well-off customers) if we would invest in our greatest asset – human beings. The money one spends keeping pregnant/new mothers healthy, providing child care (and paying care workers’ wages that honor their work), educating children, keeping people healthy instead of trying to fix them when it’s too late – all that money delivers a huge return on investment. It’s just that the rewards don’t go directly to those who pay; they go to society as a whole and make the world a better place for both rich and poor (but with more impact on the poor because their condition has so much more room for improvement).

“That’s the optimistic view of things. I’m doing everything in my power to make it come true. The short version is that we need to think long-term and invest in everyone’s future versus grabbing what we can for our narrowly defined selves. Ah yes, and you were asking about ‘digital tech.’ We’re going to discover that it is getting cheaper to do a lot of things, including many varieties of telemedicine, less travel and jet lag for the rich, upper-class workers, and that we can actually afford to invest in human capital cost-effectively. We need to do that and we need to train a large new cadre of tele-care workers to help deal with the residual effects of COVID-19 (including contact tracing). The human communication skills needed for contact tracing now are the same skills that will also make for better child care, mental health and other care workers.

We need to do that and we need to train a large new cadre of tele-care workers to help deal with the residual effects of COVID-19 (including contact tracing). The human communication skills needed for contact tracing now are the same skills that will also make for better child care, mental health and other care workers. Esther Dyson, internet pioneer, journalist, entrepreneur and executive founder of Wellville

“One really interesting impact will be on privacy: Any stranger could be infectious, so there will be demands for testing and immunity passports and the like – and a similar demand for secrecy from (usually poor) people terrified of losing their physical-presence-required jobs, their ability to travel, etc., etc. It’s akin to issues around concealed weapons, etc., etc. A lot will depend on how immunity/vaccines/and other medical issues play out over the next year.

“There will be a lot less traveling and a lot more appreciation for face-to-face (or mask-to-mask) connections when we do make them. Much more telehealth and a healthier population. More self-aware use of social networks and an understanding of how addictive they can be. The use of all kinds of digital monitors should help people to manage their own health and resilience better (though they can be abused/addictive like everything else). I would love for every third grader in this country to get a continuous glucose monitor along with an age-appropriate scientific curriculum so that they could see for themselves how the food they eat affects their bodies and their mood. Or more cheaply, at least a Mouse House with four mice – two sedentary and two with a running wheel, orthogonally two on a healthy diet and two eating the kind of processed, overly sweetened junk still found in many schools’ cafeterias. Maybe PETA would sue, which would just help to make the point of how badly we feed so many children. Meanwhile, the kids could just watch and see the impact of the four combinations of choices. I worry that poor and minority people still will have limited access to all the tech and tools that the rich take for granted. … Disparities in access to tech can aggravate other disparities. I also worry that people will turn to tech rather than to other people for human comfort.”

Jamais Cascio, research fellow at the Institute for the Future, predicted, “Three big arenas of technological uncertainty we’re likely to see by 2025 emerge from social dynamics well underway now: the prevalence and availability of remote work and the technologies used to enable it; the manifestation of authority and policing, particularly in the balance of surveillance of citizens and surveillance by citizens; and the degree of trust and accountability of social media systems, in terms of both personal privacy and protections against manipulation. All three of these issues could have radically divergent outcomes in a relatively short amount of time, making it very difficult to pin down 2025.

Remote work: The speed and stability of an actual recovery from the pandemic will shape how much we continue to rely upon remote work; there’s a very good chance that a significant portion of the pandemic remote workforce will want to continue to work from home, but the longer the forced isolation lasts, the greater the likelihood that people will be desperate to return to human contact at work. Increasing improvements in automation will eliminate some of the ‘essential’ delivery jobs. It’s possible that these may be semi-automated tasks, where a remote pilot controls the drone or robot used to make deliveries (to handle the unexpected and customer interaction).

Policing and surveillance: The capacities of surveillance technologies are increasing rapidly, but their use against civilian populations and their use as a way to monitor authorities are not necessarily correlated. The degree to which institutions of authority adapt to changing social demands will shape the level to which surveillance could be imposed upon them; conversely, if authorities are able to suppress demands for change, the spread of top-down surveillance will likely accelerate.

Social media networks: Even as Facebook demographics continue to age, Millennials desiring a more stable platform for social (and family) engagement will start to look beyond transient interaction apps. Facebook could remain the default if it manages to act as a bulwark against social manipulation and tighten up its privacy-related behavior, but since that’s not a highly likely scenario, we’ll probably see the emergence of something else that fills that role for younger adults. This ‘something’ will allow for both persistent interaction and advanced privacy protection; what that would look like remains to be seen. I’d like to see more systems that allow for improved privacy, accountability and insight.

“Beyond information technology, we could see major improvements in our lives through the acceleration of the shift away from fossil fuels: more electric cars and the corresponding infrastructure, more power-self-sufficient homes and much longer-lived energy storage/batteries. I also hope that the pandemic will trigger a variety of advances in medical and biotech systems, improving the overall quality of health and life for millions (or billions).”

Jim Spohrer, director of cognitive open technologies and the AI developer ecosystem at IBM, noted, “The new normal by 2025 will likely be better. 1) Dealing with pandemics will be improved, vaccine speed of development will be improved, preparedness for next pandemic will be improved. 2) Online education, health and government services will be improved, and more people will have experience with them. 3) Businesses will continue to encourage more online meetings (less travel) and more work from home (less travel). 4) There will be more retail robots, tele-presence robots and robots at home – all with more investment, deployments and success stories. 5) There will be a resurgence in community approaches to local jobs in service of community culture and development.”

Fernando Barrio, a lecturer in business law at Queen Mary University of London expert in AI and human rights, wrote, “More than 20 years ago we all had a very optimistic and naive view of the evolution of technology in people’s lives, so it was paramount to allow the technology to develop unhindered by regulatory intervention. The result is a vast and resilient network that allows us to do even more things than we envisioned. But it also means a world where wealth is more concentrated than ever, where science takes second place to charlatans and gossipers that cause serious damage to millions, where the political arena is hijacked by a combination of media and foreign interventions making a mockery of democracy, and the list of not very nice things is quite longer than the nice moments of the Arab Spring and #MeToo movements. And it seems that, yet again, we are planting the seeds for the new normal to be very nice in the surface, while creating a society more unequal, unfair and sharply divided about too many things that need social consensus. In 2025 the new normal will imply a society more sharply divided between those who have access and those who don’t. In this context, access is multi-pronged: access to food, access to wealth, access to connectivity and technology, access to power.

And it seems that, yet again, we are planting the seeds for the new normal to be very nice in the surface, while creating a society more unequal, unfair and sharply divided about too many things that need social consensus. In 2025 the new normal will imply a society more sharply divided between those who have access and those who don’t. Fernando Barrio, a lecturer in business law at Queen Mary University of London expert in AI and human rights

“When one thinks about people’s relationship with technology, one is thinking of the group of people that have access to it – unfettered access. If we restrict the view to that group, the new normal will be an enhanced form of what we are living today, where the economy, the education, the human relations and the politics are technologically mediated. Before the COVID-19 crisis, there was already a push by certain sectors of the media-IT corporations to normalize the use of certain technologies where the possibility of individuals’ control is purely theoretical. That push was supported in part by elite universities, academia, due to funding from those corporations or because the ideological shift had already taken place within them.

“Accordingly, it was possible to see all around the globe members of those groups advocating the change from text to voice, therefore encouraging voice-managed assistants in every room of people’s homes, disregarding the immense possibilities of surveillance and absolute control over people’s lives that those technologies introduce. Not focusing on the need to have better privacy agreements regardless of the countless examples of violations of agreements that discourage the use of the information for any purpose without individuals’ control and consent.

“The COVID-19 crisis showed that the resilience of the vast global network over which different layers of protocols, software and applications run is being used to exalt the upper applications layer because it is the one that made possible the tele-everything that we are experiencing. Thus, in the new normal hyper-intrusive technology is taken for granted. Instead of embedding privacy, security and protection of individual rights in every layer that runs over the network, in the crisis the new normal is that those concepts are modified to allow technologies to intrude in people’s lives (as they already do in certain nondemocratic countries). That paradigm shift will also blur the limits between people’s personal, professional and public lives. For example, instances of cyber-sacking – in which one loses a job for comments or information posted online – will become more common, having an impact on the quality of the discussions and information put forward by individuals, and even private conversation held in private groups or within hearing of voice-managed assistants at home might be also processed at that effect.”

Christine Boese, a consultant and independent scholar, wrote, “Thanks to the horrors of COVID-19, as we sit in our homes and take stock of our personal economic situations, make hard decisions, suddenly what is absolutely essential becomes clear. It is a reset, and – despite the horrors – it was long, long overdue. …

“It is in difficult times when we see the seams and frayed edges of our thin veneer of civilization, the illusions of the fractured U.S. health care system and even the severe limits to much-touted electronic medical records innovations. In times like this, we don’t have to look so hard to separate technology hype from reality. We face failing infrastructure across the U.S. Other countries have systems that work, at all levels, while ours falters. Without this horrific stress test, we would not be able to see, let alone correct for, these fault lines. That thin veneer of civilization balances precariously on a consumption engine, and American culture is literally consuming itself, even as Rush Limbaugh suggests we need to adapt to this self-consumption ‘like the Donner Party did.’ As with most absurdities, it comes with its own irony: Like the Roman Empire, we make little ourselves and instead consume the cheaply produced, slavery-inducing trifles created elsewhere, as if it fills some kind of deep emptiness inside. The extremis of the COVID-19 situation glaringly exposes several things that had previously been invisible:

The actual power of mass media, even as channels multiply and become diffuse. One channel, Fox News, has created an entire class of people who are actively putting themselves at risk of death or lifelong health problems. As someone with relatives who have fallen prey to this external programming, I can attest that no rhetoric, no persuasion, no methods currently known to me can penetrate this closed belief set. What we are living in right now makes Leni Riefenstahl look like a mere piker.

The manipulative panoptic power of interactive social media in the hands of malevolent agents. When I began to do internet research in the 1990s, I speculated that the active and interactive power of user-directed and navigated media would lead to a more aware and awake populace, even if not fully democratized. What I did not anticipate (and I am currently studying now) is the power of dark UX patterns driven by algorithmic assumptions, whether accurate or not, and, very soon, a real Pandora’s box of AI-driven machine learning.

How dangerously hollowed out the U.S. infrastructure is, from endemic underfunding of systems and anything that requires attention to detail below the surface to business-school ‘top-line’ summaries of a management layer that flies above anything that takes more than five minutes to scan. Newspapers and universities were hollowed out first, the agents that created and fostered critical thinkers. The gutting of public education was the third leg of that stool. Remove anything that might question the status quo, that engages in detailed work (even engineering!) or requires long-term planning. Boeing itself fell prey to something that, from the outside, looks like the Agile-ification of all work, which must, despite protestations by the manifesto’s philosophy, degenerate into surface-level patch work and the delivery of marginal improvements called ‘features.’

Lastly, how deeply distorted the cultural fabric of American life has become, when, upon being forced to actually live in our homes for extended months on end rather than merely using them as places to sleep and consume things because our primary away-from-home activity was work, we discovered how much our homes lacked in all those ‘things’ we own that actually enrich our lives. As livelihoods were put perilously at risk, many of us came to realize what we were being expected to die for and discovered that that was as hollowed out as everything else, driven by a churn to consume as a red herring to keep us from noticing how thin our lives were becoming, even as we all, as a society at large, have consumed ourselves into larger and larger sizes.”

Craig Silliman, an executive vice president for a major global company, wrote, “While COVID-19 has forced us to distance physically, it has brought individuals closer together. Many of us have spent years in countless meetings and meals and on airplanes with colleagues and yet never learned as much about them as we have in the past four months. When we lost our physical proximity, we created emotional bridges that connected us in new and profound ways. It turns out that it took forced distancing to bring out our most complete and authentic humanity. I believe that once we are together again physically, we will not forget what we learned while we were apart, and that will make for richer and deeper relationships for years to come.

When we lost our physical proximity, we created emotional bridges that connected us in new and profound ways. It turns out that it took forced distancing to bring out our most complete and authentic humanity. Craig Silliman, an executive vice president for a major global company

“On the technology front, most of the technologies that we are using daily are not new. What has changed is not the capability but our behavior. I have talked to numerous colleagues who have observed that they never again will board a six-hour flight for a two-hour meeting. We previously might have thought that this was highly inefficient but didn’t feel we had ‘permission’ to suggest video conferencing because we weren’t sure how a boss/client/customer might react. Because this was a simultaneous discontinuity in work patterns globally, it will have caused us all to change our work habits, particularly involving the use of technology to be more efficient. We will be working in very (positively) different ways in 2025 as a result of COVID-19. We previously have thought about the office as a place where one must go to ‘be at work’ or to ‘do work,’ even if the office environment wasn’t the most effective location for a particular task. We will increasingly think about a spectrum of locations where work can be done, and a spectrum of technologies that are a platform for work to be done, and start by asking what the task is that we seek to accomplish and then using the appropriate location and technology to best accomplish that task. That will allow us to design office spaces to serve as platforms for what shared, collaborative spaces do best while liberating workers to find the mode and place of working that makes them most effective.”

Abigail De Kosnik, associate professor and director of the Center for New Media at the University of California, Berkeley, predicted, “Climate change, invasive corporatized technologies and increasing economic precarity will all combine to give rise to a far more paranoid society in 2025 than we had at the start of 2020. In some ways, widespread fear and anxiety will have positive results, as people will be more environmentally conscious than ever before and will engage en masse in efforts to regulate corporate resource extraction and pollution, and will show a collective willingness to adopt less environmentally harmful lifestyles (for example, I expect a huge upsurge in mass transit use and a corresponding movement to improve the quality of mass transit in cities across the U.S.). However, the paranoia will be justified – there will be fewer opportunities for college graduates who do not have family connections, and climate change will make large regions uninhabitable. This will lead to huge problems in mental health and will negatively impact at least a couple of generations of Americans in terms of their relationships, sense of self and lifetime- happiness quotient.

“I am especially worried about the fact that technology companies are overall having a hugely negative effect on the environment and on humans’ ways of thinking about and understanding the world … and they don’t seem to care much about spreading misinformation and training hundreds of millions of people all over the world to think less critically about information are my biggest concerns. The tech industry will likely continue to produce technologies that either do nothing to improve everyday life or make it significantly worse. What can happen to improve technology is better organization on the part of users and tech workers who object to their companies’ negative social impact.

“I have hope that we will see a wave of activism and unionization and the formation of alternate types of organizations (B Corps or P Corps for example) that will yield new technologies whose aim will not be profit but actual problem solving – mobilizing collective intelligence to solve the problems of environmental disaster, massive social inequity and lack of opportunity that we will face in 2025.”

Adam Clayton Powell III, senior fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, predicted, “The 2025 ‘new normal’ will be better, often much better, for the affluent and for other global elites. They have now and will continue to have access to and can afford the best technologies to serve them in their personal and professional lives. But 2020 has been such a setback for the hundreds of millions of people, most in Asia and Africa, who have just emerged from poverty and whose progress has now been reversed that it is difficult to imagine these reversals can be entirely cured by 2025. In the U.S. we had record employment – some said ‘full’ employment – as recently as February of this year. While one can hope that the sudden plunge to Depression-level unemployment can be temporary, there are so many changes – especially in any industry relying on people crowding together (transportation, entertainment) – that the shift to video communication and streaming home entertainment suggests these coping mechanisms for 2020 will not entirely recede.

“Many have said that the virus pandemic has accelerated changes in uses of digital technologies that were already underway. There does not seem to be any reason to believe we will return to 2019. For a start, why would I ever want to commute to an office again? For decades, we have said that the internet brings to our fingertips the riches of the world’s libraries. Now people around the world – people who are connected, that is – realize they have the riches of the world’s information and entertainment video and experiential technologies at their fingertips. This will not go away. Consider history: The Metropolitan Opera is streaming opera productions every day. It was during the Depression that the Met started transmitting its productions on radio. The Depression ended but the Met’s radio broadcasts didn’t.”

Susan Etlinger, an industry analyst for Altimeter Group, observed, “Technology is ultimately about power – about who frames a problem, what ‘solving’ it looks like, who benefits, who is overlooked. So, if anything would make post-pandemic life better, it would be a willingness to, as John Lewis has said, ‘get in good trouble.’ My main concern is that the large technology companies have far too much power to frame what we know and how we live, and that, ultimately, we are all assets to be leveraged for shareholder value. Technology should be a tool – not a weapon, a religion or a government. The biggest issue for technology is essentially a choice: Do we commit to building models that describe and classify people and the world without excluding, discriminating and amplifying inequality?

My main concern is that the large technology companies have far too much power to frame what we know and how we live, and that, ultimately, we are all assets to be leveraged for shareholder value. Technology should be a tool – not a weapon, a religion or a government. Susan Etlinger, an industry analyst for Altimeter Group

“In a year in which we mourn the deaths of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor and too many others and again confront our long history of systemic racism can we finally acknowledge that technology has been deeply complicit? More to the point, can we stop hiding behind the fig leaf that data and technology are a) neutral and b) always the answer? Yes, people are messy, yes this is hard. But we need to stop hiding behind excuses. This isn’t to say we should toss our phones and flee to the hills. But we do have to ask the hard questions and make the harder choices about how we solve problems, and whether, in solving one set of problems, we’re creating others that are more insidious and longer-lasting.

“Will we, in the interest of public health and safety, increasingly surveil our employees, guests, customers, neighbors? Will we address the inevitable issues of discrimination and exclusion of vulnerable and marginalized populations? Do these technology solutions actually work, and are there other, less invasive ways to keep people safe? Did we leave anyone behind? I hope we can use this moment in our history as an opportunity to reflect on the choices we’ve made and what, finally, we value. If we say Black Lives Matter, are we willing to speak up in meetings where design decisions have the potential to put Black lives at risk? Are we willing to challenge cultural norms to ensure that we have representation from the people who are most affected by the decisions we make and whose talent we have overlooked? Are we willing to sit down so someone else can speak, and amplify their voices?”

Paul Jones, professor emeritus of information science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, predicted, “Let’s look at changes that were underway and that will likely prevail by 2025:

Cashless payments: No stopping them. COVID-19-era purchasing, whether retail or curbside pickup, is making cashless the norm. In the U.S. this was already apace. In China, cashless is already a done deal. Every phone, every new card, every over-the-phone purchase is cashless and checkless. Goodbye money, coins, etc. Too late for Harriet Tubman to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, except in the area – much needed – of symbolism in the U.S.

Officeless organizations: They will proliferate. The organization of work within a physical location is, for the most part, done. At home, everyone has their own corner office with a view. Every day is Bring Your Pet to Work Day. Every day is – from the waist down anyway – Casual Friday. The toll paid to commute is fully recognized and rejected. All of this was underway but now the issues are resolved and normalized.

Distributed access to education: This is much more complex that virtual offices or virtual organizations. Despite various rhetorical stances that education is actually job training or something of the sort, countries who provide actual education always take the lead in innovation and tech. That said, we have quickly gotten much better in the U.S. at pushing the limits of our skills to both educate and train, learning what we knew in the physical classroom that, as Marshall McLuhan quipped, ‘Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either.’ A straightforward, traditional online lecture has limited educational utility. The reimagining of the classroom for digital life is still underway, but we can expect both the practice and expectations of learning to be changed radically by tech. Mentorship, whether in the classroom, laboratory, or at work, is indispensable. Tools for collaboration will be extended and embraced. Slack, Zoom, GitHub, Google Drive and cousins are already firmly in place and will be improved upon. If tech and policy align correctly, this will make our lives better.

Transportation: Post-COVID-19 we will have seen this shift accelerated, but in which direction? In the near term, public transport (trains, buses, etc.), mass transport (air, cruises, ferries, etc.) and shared ride services including taxis are stagnated. Personal transport is also underused. We are realizing we need not drive, fly or float as much as we have been doing before. We may yearn to travel but not for work. The lack of traditional benefits for ride-share drivers will have to be better addressed – by their own organizing or by government advocacy and regulation. Transportation ownership by people under 35 was already on the decline – except for skateboards. Fewer people will own cars in the U.S. – this will have accelerated by 2025. Business air travel will have also decreased and perhaps become novel.

Food: During COVID-19, people have learned to cook again and to enjoy doing so. We have turned in a few months from a nation of restaurant-goers to a nation of pickup and home cooking. Tech will continue to assist this trend which should continue through 2025. Instapot is only the first shot fired. Plant-based eating will continue to trend. Americans having gained weight during lockdown are looking in the mirror and thinking of carrots and salads. Our taste for vegetables has returned as quickly as our reluctance to eat as much meat. Thank you, Instagram, for making meal presentation, even of home cooking, into a visual art.

Tech itself: Training in tech has had the attitude that tech is at worst neutral, that people will do with tech what they will (absolving tech from any responsibility), that ‘we just create this stuff then people used it or don’t.’ This concept of socially agnostic engineering was already under challenge but computer science departments in particular are slow at letting go. Father John Culkin said, ‘We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.’ This is often incorrectly attributed to Marshal McLuhan. Techno-social scholars have been on the forefront of this concept, looking closely through qualitative and quantitative means at the tech landscape. This has led to overdue attention to diversity issues within tech and to inquiries into social limits as well as tech limits. I expect these inquiries to become much more important than, say, increasing the number of pixels rendered or megaflops produced. We used to teach people how to use tech, now we teach tech how to use people. Not just in information architecture, but in design, the tech business has learned that the lower the barriers to use, the more people will use a product and use it more often and be more engaged. We will see more engagement from sociology, psychology and other disciplines in what we now know as tech. Information science will be more significant than computer science or a disengaged data science.”

The use of AI to optimize the logistics of resource use could dramatically improve our nutrition, education, health and even our social interactions. The addition of sensor feedback into automation of all types, from traffic handling to regulatory regimes, could greatly improve the functionality of our systems. Jeanne Dietsch, New Hampshire senator and former CEO of MobileRobots Inc.

Jeanne Dietsch, New Hampshire senator and former CEO of MobileRobots Inc., said, “Disruption is always difficult. Until we task AI with the complex logistics needed to optimize the use of resources and the smart automation needed to perform low-skilled jobs, many workers will be overtaxed: teachers, bus drivers, health professionals, mental health professionals, caregivers, administrators, just to name a few. We face a vast amount of work that has been ignored over the past decades full of short-sighted decisions. We have failed to maintain our infrastructure, but more importantly, we have failed to care for the future of the next generation. To turn that work into jobs requires determination and the ability to stand up for our values, stand up against a system that rewards corporations seeking short-term profit over any other goal. Carbon fee and dividend is the first step toward shifting the structure of our economy toward a more egalitarian one, with better values. The use of AI to optimize the logistics of resource use could dramatically improve our nutrition, education, health and even our social interactions. The addition of sensor feedback into automation of all types, from traffic handling to regulatory regimes, could greatly improve the functionality of our systems. What concerns me most is technology’s ability to enable people to magnify ignorance and misinformation.”

Alexa Raad, co-founder and co-host of the TechSequences podcast and former chief operating officer at Farsight Security, commented, “The pandemic has already highlighted and exacerbated the gap between the haves and the have-nots, not only in terms of the cost of lives lost but also in terms of economic disparity. The policies of the current administration have accelerated that divide. … The pandemic also put a spotlight on broken systems and processes such as health care that require a significant effort and will to fix. …

“The pandemic highlighted the importance of internet connectivity. Many companies in the tech and service industries will realize that a work-at-home model is efficient and less costly for some or many of their workforce and that they do not need expensive commercial urban real estate. Therefore, more people will work from home, which affects everything from daily routines to the makeup of services offered to the home. However, this is a luxury for only a set of individuals who can work from home and can afford the set up (high-speed access, required space and internet-enabled equipment) to work from home. This of course sets a new and quite complex normal for managing cybersecurity threats. Large-scale industry events will be less prevalent, as will the frequency of corporate travel. All of these will have rippling affects across multiple industries like airlines, hospitality and event/exhibit management. Overall, there will be less economic security. One of the legacies of the pandemic is the realization that although many conveniences of modern life are predicated on the simple assumption that close proximity of people yields economic and social benefits, in an age of accelerating climate change and multiple pandemics (COVID-19 is likely a precursor of others yet to come) that will no longer hold true. Conveniences such as airplane travel, movies, amphitheater, subways, high-rise apartment units, shopping malls, were based on this assumption and as a result densely packed areas were sustained hotspots of infection. … Technologies to identify and manage the spread of infections will be intrusive in terms of privacy (example – contact-tracing apps) unless very thoughtful governance of data privacy is implemented. …

“The new normal will put a greater strain on our health care system. The pandemic highlighted how unprepared we as a nation are, not only in terms of our acceptance of scientific and evidence-based advice, but also in regard to having the means to efficiently and economically deal with a public health crisis. A beneficial tech-related change will be the delivery of some aspects of health care into the home. For example, people will continue to have online consultations with health professionals instead of an inconvenient in-person visit. This is already happening and will be the new normal.

Internet of Things-based devices will be more plentiful and will serve as a means to monitor everyday health and diagnose and in some cases remotely manage illnesses without the need for intrusive surgery. However, they will also pose a much greater threat in terms of privacy and cybersecurity. More and more private data will be generated, collected and used. Alexa Raad, co-founder and co-host of the TechSequences podcast and former chief operating officer at Farsight Security,

“Internet of Things-based devices will be more plentiful and will serve as a means to monitor everyday health and diagnose and in some cases remotely manage illnesses without the need for intrusive surgery. However, they will also pose a much greater threat in terms of privacy and cybersecurity. More and more private data will be generated, collected and used. Unless there are appropriate safeguards and controls as to how the data is handled, we will see an erosion of our privacy and further loss of control over our choices and decisions as a result. Internet of Things devices have the potential to greatly improve our well-being, and we will see AI-enabled IoT devices which will, for example, monitor our health, provide biological feedback, anticipate and warm of an impending health crisis, etc. But IoT devices increase the attack surface and vectors for bad actors. We will see rise of new cybersecurity threats. Imagine, for example, a nation-state targeting a public figure by hacking into his/her pacemaker. Given where we are now in terms of lacking a basic level of cyber hygiene for these devices, unless we make significant progress we will fall further and further behind the bad actors.

“A few of my concerns:

The consolidation of services and power into very few largely unregulated companies worries me a great deal. If this trend continues, we will be beholden to very few companies for the many services our lives rely on. These companies will become ‘too big to fail.’ In the financial crisis of 2008, the government bailed out financial institutions who were deemed too big to fail, even though the actions of those same institutions were directly and indirectly responsible for the crisis. Many organizations use Amazon’s AWS cloud services for their web presence and mission-critical applications. Concentrated dependency has never been a harbinger of benefits.

I also worry about the lack of proper governance for potential threats posed by AI. And by ‘threats’ I mean in regard to security (AI can also be used by our adversaries), economic impact (the loss of blue collar jobs without provisions for retraining or alternative employment will only increase the economic gap) loss of privacy, loss of agency, etc. Although the promise of the best of AI is probably likely to come to fruition beyond 2025, we need to be thinking of proper governance and risk mitigation now, and we are behind.

I worry about the societal cost of social media. Social media platforms have become the breeding ground for disinformation campaigns, conspiracy theories, extremist groups, online bullying, anti-vaxxers and bots that manipulate opinions and sow division and discord. … When journalism and legitimate news media struggle to compete, we lose one of the fundamental bulwarks of democracy – a free press. And then there is the lack of proper guardrails and defined consequences for social media companies’ use of our personal data (example – Cambridge Analytica). Lastly, social media effects tap into the brain’s reward system and the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. It is addictive, and its premise is that of addictive entertainment and not critical thinking. When critical thinking is eroded, so is trust in science – and we collectively pay the price.”

Maja Vujovic, a consultant for digital and ICT at Compass Communications, predicted, “If entire sectors – education, tourism and hospitality, food production, entertainment and more – continue to experience the deep freeze caused by COVID-19 through 2020 and beyond, the ‘new normal’ will likely not remain limited to benign disruptions, such as blended learning or continued work from home and the related office space redux. If the pandemic persists for many months or spills over into another year, the recession will go into free fall. Countries with strong social security systems and/or capital will activate a range of protective measures to prevent public disorder. Countries without such a safety net will be forced to choose between solidarity and oppression.

“If the pandemic persists longer than a year, it will affect the world’s economy like a global war; in that case, food rationing and other wartime measures will become inevitable. This will entail identification, allocation, distribution and delivery – all of it enabled by a range of digital tech. Identity control will therefore have to be enforced very strictly, to avoid fraud. Other previously inconceivable disruptions will occur, e.g., primary and secondary education will need to enter into public-private partnerships with commercial providers of automated instruction, learning and testing platforms at scale, able to instruct the majority of students, while teachers from formal schools deal with small numbers of exceptions, such as special-needs students etc.

A ‘marketplace’ will emerge, where students will be able to pick and choose courses from any university, to create unique, personalized schooling ‘menus.’ Maja Vujovic, a consultant for digital and ICT at Compass Communications

“Higher education will become a terrain where a small number of entertainment-savvy lecturers attract huge student audiences via tech-enabled remote learning, while professors unskilled in it become dispensable. A ‘marketplace’ will emerge, where students will be able to pick and choose courses from any university, to create unique, personalized schooling ‘menus.’ This will create a demand for a certification mechanism at a level above individual universities. Distinguished schools with vast traditions will thus have to reconsider and redefine their missions and their very purpose and a number of them may not prove sustainable. Overwhelmed health systems will become the reserve of emergency and infection treatments. Workplaces will become leaner and nimbler. Specialized teams will work on project-based assignments, often without the need for a large enterprise to sustain them. Taxation and labour laws will need to change, to enable individuals to participate in a more secure, more equitable digitally enabled gig economy.”

Jon Lebkowsky, CEO, founder and digital strategist at Polycot Associates, wrote, “My hopes:

Technical innovations to address and mitigate anthropogenic climate change. Not just clean energies, but also technologies to balance CO2 in the air. Regarding clean energy, innovative battery technologies for energy storage.

(related) Smarter and lighter transportation technologies, including proliferation of high-speed rail systems and smarter last mile travel, diminishing the number of individual automobiles and the use of fossil fuels.

Improved space technology and potential colonization of the moon and Mars.

Innovative methods for managing disease, including ways to combat viruses through genetic modifications and nanotech.

Development of small, safer nuclear reactors as new sources for energy.

Ongoing development of new food sources and evolution away from meat consumption as we can derive complete proteins from lab-developed sources.

And I am most worried about technology-mediated indoctrination through propaganda and ‘managed alternate truths.’ And I am also concerned about the potential for the increasing and evolving use of AI-driven surveillance technologies.”

Mary Chayko, author of “Superconnected,” said, “In the absence of a national commitment and strategy to assist marginalized populations in attaining online access, skills and literacy, social inequalities will persist and deepen in the ‘new normal.’ This will exacerbate all current societal problems: racial and gender discrimination, poverty, health crises and complications, educational and work-related inequities, privacy and surveillance. Digital technologies can be employed to help to improve these conditions, but unless their benefits can be realized by all, social justice and equality will remain elusive. Digital technology, and the means to use and understand it, must be considered a primary social good. Technologies that will assist people in living productive, healthy lives – like online learning, working and telemedicine tools – should be freely and widely available, along with necessary and relevant information and support. I am most worried that the scope of tech companies’ impact on our lives will become so deep, sophisticated and far-reaching that we will fail to see and resist it or grow weary of doing so.”

Social media enabled us to connect with people anywhere in glancing ways; video conferencing in many forms – virtual conferences, happy hours and so on – will let us connect in more direct and meaningful ways. Jeff Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center and professor of journalism innovation at City University of New York

Jeff Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center and professor of journalism innovation at City University of New York, commented, “Yes, there may be unintended positive consequences, including greater awareness of racial inequities in society; less travel and thus less environmental damage; greater ability to work at home and remotely and be closer to family. But we cannot gloss over the still-unknown health repercussions that millions of needlessly infected people will have to deal with; the severe economic impact on so many sectors of a service economy permanently affecting the employment of people in lower-paid jobs; the likely permanent economic damage to universities and colleges as institutions; the lost educational time for children during the pandemic; and mental stress on everyone. As much we may now suffer Zoom fatigue, I believe that in the long run, having become accustomed to seeing people in online calls, we will find they provide richer interaction. At work we will still be addicted to having too many damned meetings but if we can waste less time traveling or commuting to them, all the better. Social media enabled us to connect with people anywhere in glancing ways; video conferencing in many forms – virtual conferences, happy hours and so on – will let us connect in more direct and meaningful ways. I would like to think that we would see the value in gathering and sharing health data at a level that would allow us to spot and treat problems early in their spread in the future, but I fear a growing moral panic around data may prevent that.”

Jillian York, director of international freedom of expression for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote, “I expect that, when it comes to technology, our ‘new normal’ will be an even greater dependency on privately owned infrastructure and platforms, making us more beholden to Silicon Valley than before. I worry that the amount of time that we’re now spending at home has led us to this greater reliance on it, and that companies are not adapting along with us. When it comes to platforms, specifically, one of my biggest concerns is the impact they have on our speech and our well-being or dignity. On the one hand, hate speech is rampant and companies are responding piecemeal. On the other hand, at a time when many of us need platforms for our livelihoods, companies are cracking down prudishly on nudity, sexuality and the human body. The impact that this has on sex workers, burlesque performers and others whose work touches on these themes must not be ignored; by banning content around these topics without their consultation, we’ve essentially created an untouchable class of workers.

“I worry about the unaccountability of Silicon Valley and the ways in which corporate policymakers practice ‘both-sidesism’ in order to craft policies that benefit the lowest common denominator without upsetting too many others. I worry about the fact that so many people are willing to hand over the governance of their speech to unaccountable actors. I worry about the potential for technology companies to keep our own history from us – already we’ve seen images from U.S. protests taken down (often for violating rules on ‘graphic violence’ – even when it’s the Feds committing the violence – or in some cases, bans on nudity), echoing what Syrians have been pointing out for years about the erasure of videos, many of which contain documentation of war crimes, emerging from their country. I worry about the continued capture of data for no purpose other than to sell us more stuff we don’t need.”

Morgan G. Ames, associate director of the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Science, Technology & Society, responded, “While I am heartened by the #BlackLivesMatter protest movement in the United States as well as protest movements in Hong Kong and elsewhere around the world, I look to previous disasters and broader trends as a probable guide to what will be coming. And what I see are too many opportunities for the powerful to retrench and expand their power. Ubiquitous surveillance, increasingly fascist policing tactics, the expansion of hate groups that amplify the worst state ideologies, and the widening chasm between the ultra-rich and everyone else are all global structural trends that will be incredibly difficult, and incredibly disruptive, to reverse. As much as I would like to hold out hope that the disruptions caused by the novel coronavirus can be turned toward social justice, the evidence so far that this is the case is really not good.”

Vint Cerf, Internet Hall of Fame member and vice president at Google, observed, “We may see more flexibility in work-from-home provisions. Travel may be less necessary thanks to video conferencing. I have maintained significant international interactions despite time zone challenges for the past three months. I further expect:

Cloud computing and cloud commuting!

We will see an Internet of Medical Things (sensors mostly), as remote doctor house calls escalate. There is an interesting tension involved in digitally linking a lot of one’s online life: calendar, messaging, travel, geo-tracking/location – all this information can be usefully correlated to make life easier but, if exposed, also erodes (destroys?) privacy. The more we rely on online resources, the more tempting it is to interlink information to take automatic and useful actions.

Reminders and notifications, etc. For example, I am on email a lot of my time, and getting an email saying a FedEx package has arrived is actually very helpful. Of course, if there are too many ‘messaging’ applications all running at once they ‘self-pollute’ as in getting an email because you have a LinkedIn message (Aaaaargh!).

I am optimistic about the use of information technology to automate chores and to facilitate cooperative work. Shared access to Google Docs has been a remarkably enabling capability – shared spreadsheets for tracking group activity for example. Still, there is the exposure of personal information, lax security leading to serious compromises, poor user attention to security. Reliance on autonomous software leading to unexpected failures and consequences.”

Christina J. Colclough, an expert on the future of work and the politics of technology and ethics in AI, observed, “Unless our governments step into another gear, we will:

Become super-surveilled at the expense of our fundamental rights and human rights.

Work will become more and more individualised and precarious as companies first cut costs by making working from home the norm and then by hiring contract workers rather than permanent employees.

Mental health will suffer as loneliness, financial struggles and competitive forces pressure individuals.

Innovation will decline as social capital declines due to the above.

Workers who need to go to work (physically) will be segmented from the ‘others.’ I am tech optimist under the condition that it is regulated and governed.

“I would like the following to be regulated:

Improved workers’ data rights. These are either weak in current regulation, or nonexistent.

Collective data rights. All data regulations (bar some discussions currently held within Indian Parliament) are concerned with an individual’s rights. We need to think of communities, of workers, of citizens, of businesses and of the relationship between state, market and civil society and ask: How can we benefit from digital tech so it benefits people and planet

Vegetarianism Should People Become Vegetarian? Ask the Chatbot a Question Ask the Chatbot a Question

Table of Contents

Table of Contents Ask the Chatbot

Vegetarians, who account for about 5% of the U.S. adult population, do not eat meat (including poultry and seafood). The percentage of Americans who identify as vegetarian has remained steady for two decades. 11% of those who identify as liberal follow a vegetarian diet, compared to 2% of conservatives. [136]

Impact of COVID-19 on Meat Supply During the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, the closure of meat processing facilities due to the spread of the coronavirus led to concerns about a global meat shortage. Beyond Meat, a plant-based meat substitute that generated over $150 million in 2019 revenue, experienced a 41% jump in stock price due to threats of a disruption in the meat supply in Apr. 2020. [142][143] On Apr. 28, 2020, President Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. Department of Agriculture “to ensure America’s meat and poultry processors continue operations uninterrupted to the maximum extent possible.” The Executive Order stated that closing a single large beef processing plant results in a decrease of 10 million servings of beef per day.

The Future of Vegetarianism An Oct. 2023 study published in PLOS ONE found that vegetarianism may be linked to a person’s DNA. While researchers still have a lot to figure out, the study seems to show that people with certain gene variants are more easily able to stick to a vegetarian diet, while those without the pro-vegetarian variants have a difficult time entirely removing animal products from their diets. [156] The “Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025” may be found on the USDA website.

Pros and Cons at a Glance PROS CONS Pro 1: Killing animals for food is cruel and unethical. Read More. Con 1: Eating meat is natural. Read More. Pro 2: A vegetarian diet is healthful. Read More. Con 2: Eating meat, poultry, and fish is part of a healthful diet. Read More. Pro 3: A vegetarian diet is better for the environment. Read More. Con 3: Vegetarian diets are not necessarily better for the environment. Read More.

Pro Arguments (Go to Con Arguments) Pro 1: Killing animals for food is cruel and unethical. Raising animals in confinement for slaughter is cruel, and many animals in the United States are not slaughtered humanely. Animals are sentient beings that have emotions and social connections. Scientific studies show that cattle, pigs, chickens, and all warm-blooded animals can experience stress, pain, and fear. About 50% of meat produced in the United States comes from confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), where mistreated animals live in filthy, overcrowded spaces with little or no access to pasture, natural light, or clean air. In CAFOs pigs have their tails cut short; chickens have their toenails, spurs, and beaks clipped; and cows have their horns removed and tails docked with no painkillers. Pregnant pigs are kept in metal gestation crates barely bigger than the pigs themselves. Baby cows raised for veal are tied up and confined in tiny stalls their entire short lives (3-18 weeks). [32][35][41][100][147] The Humane Methods of Slaughter Act (HMSA) mandates that livestock be stunned unconscious before slaughter to minimize suffering. However, birds such as chickens and turkey are exempted from the HMS, and a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Organization (GAO) found that the USDA was not “taking consistent actions to enforce the HMSA.” [65][66][90] In 2017 (the most recent data available), the United States slaughtered a total of 170.6 million animals for food, including 124.5 million pigs, 33.7 million cows, 9.2 million chickens, and 2.4 million sheep. These animals should not have to die painfully and fearfully to satisfy an unnecessary dietary preference. Pro 2: A vegetarian diet is healthful. According to the American Dietetic Association, a vegetarian diet can meet protein requirements, provide all the essential amino-acids (the building blocks of protein), and provide all the necessary vitamins, fats, and minerals. And, a vegetarian diet can improve one’s health. [1][2] According to the USDA and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, meat is not an essential part of a healthy diet. Further, studies have linked heme iron found in red meat with an increased risk of colorectal, stomach, and esophageal cancers. Vegetarian sources of iron like leafy greens and beans contain non-heme iron. [3][4] [68][123][150] Meat also has high renal acid levels which the body must neutralize by leaching calcium from the bones, which is then passed into urine and lost. There are many sources of healthy vegetarian calcium including tofu, dark leafy greens like kale, spinach, and collard greens, as well as fortified cereals. [5][128] Vegetarian diets can reduce the risk of antibiotic resistance to bacteria, kidney stones, gallstones, death from heart disease, high blood pressure, hypertension, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. [6][7][8][9][10][40][64][102][122][132][140][148] Several studies show that vegetarian diets increase the lifespan of adherents by 3.6 to 7.28 years. [76][86] [121][130] Pro 3: A vegetarian diet is better for the environment. Overgrazing livestock hurts the environment through soil compaction, erosion, and harm to native plants and animals. Grazing has also damaged streams and riparian areas in the western United States. And, grazing has been a factor in the listing of at least 171 species of animals and plants under the Endangered Species Act because the large tracts of flat land interrupt natural habitats. Abstaining from eating meat would help restore land more naturally suited to provide habitat for native plants and animals. [29][92][93] A vegetarian diet also conserves water. Producing one pound of beef takes about 1,800 gallons of water, on pound of pork uses about 576 gallons, one pound of turkey needs about 486 gallons, and each pound of chicken requires about 468 gallons. Meanwhile, a pound of tofu only takes about 302 gallons. [151][152][153] Additionally, raising animals for food contributes to air and water pollution. Manure produces toxic hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, which pollute the air and leach poisonous nitrates into nearby waters. Runoff laden with manure is a major cause of “dead zones” in 173,000 miles of U.S. waterways, including the 7,700-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. [32][115][116] All told, a vegetarian diet leads to lower greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gases are created by enteric fermentation (aka animal farts and burps), manure decomposition, and deforestation to make room for grazing animals and growing feed. Diets including meat cause the creation of up to 54% more greenhouse gas emissions than vegetarian diets. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, a “worldwide diet change away from animal products” is necessary to stop the worst effects of global climate change. [104][134]

Other questions to the experts in this canvassing invited their views on the hopeful things that will occur in the next decade and for examples of specific applications that might emerge. What will human-technology co-evolution look like by 2030? Participants in this canvassing expect the rate of change to fall in a range anywhere from incremental to extremely impactful. Generally, they expect AI to continue to be targeted toward efficiencies in workplaces and other activities, and they say it is likely to be embedded in most human endeavors.

The greatest share of participants in this canvassing said automated systems driven by artificial intelligence are already improving many dimensions of their work, play and home lives and they expect this to continue over the next decade. While they worry over the accompanying negatives of human-AI advances, they hope for broad changes for the better as networked, intelligent systems are revolutionizing everything, from the most pressing professional work to hundreds of the little “everyday” aspects of existence.

One respondent’s answer covered many of the improvements experts expect as machines sit alongside humans as their assistants and enhancers. An associate professor at a major university in Israel wrote, “In the coming 12 years AI will enable all sorts of professions to do their work more efficiently, especially those involving ‘saving life’: individualized medicine, policing, even warfare (where attacks will focus on disabling infrastructure and less in killing enemy combatants and civilians). In other professions, AI will enable greater individualization, e.g., education based on the needs and intellectual abilities of each pupil/student. Of course, there will be some downsides: greater unemployment in certain ‘rote’ jobs (e.g., transportation drivers, food service, robots and automation, etc.).”

This section begins with experts sharing mostly positive expectations for the evolution of humans and AI. It is followed by separate sections that include their thoughts about the potential for AI-human partnerships and quality of life in 2030, as well as the future of jobs, health care and education.

AI will be integrated into most aspects of life, producing new efficiencies and enhancing human capacities

Many of the leading experts extolled the positives they expect to continue to expand as AI tools evolve to do more things for more people.

Martijn van Otterlo, author of “Gatekeeping Algorithms with Human Ethical Bias” and assistant professor of artificial intelligence at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, wrote, “Even though I see many ethical issues, potential problems and especially power imbalance/misuse issues with AI (not even starting about singularity issues and out-of-control AI), I do think AI will change most lives for the better, especially looking at the short horizon of 2030 even more-so, because even bad effects of AI can be considered predominantly ‘good’ by the majority of people. For example, the Cambridge Analytica case has shown us the huge privacy issues of modern social networks in a market economy, but, overall, people value the extraordinary services Facebook offers to improve communication opportunities, sharing capabilities and so on.”

…we need to be thoughtful about how these technologies are implemented and used, but, on the whole, I see these as constructive. Vint Cerf Vint Cerf

Vint Cerf, Internet Hall of Fame member and vice president and chief internet evangelist at Google, said, “I see AI and machine learning as augmenting human cognition a la Douglas Engelbart. There will be abuses and bugs, some harmful, so we need to be thoughtful about how these technologies are implemented and used, but, on the whole, I see these as constructive.”

Mícheál Ó Foghlú, engineering director and DevOps Code Pillar at Google’s Munich office, said, “The trend is that AI/ML models in specific domains can out-perform human experts (e.g., certain cancer diagnoses based on image-recognition in retina scans). I think it would be fairly much the consensus that this trend would continue, and many more such systems could aid human experts to be more accurate.”

Craig Mathias, principal at Farpoint Group, an advisory firm specializing in wireless networking and mobile computing, commented, “Many if not most of the large-scale technologies that we all depend upon – such as the internet itself, the power grid, and roads and highways – will simply be unable to function in the future without AI, as both solution complexity and demand continue to increase.”

Matt Mason, a roboticist and the former director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote, “AI will present new opportunities and capabilities to improve the human experience. While it is possible for a society to behave irrationally and choose to use it to their detriment, I see no reason to think that is the more likely outcome.”

Mike Osswald, vice president of experience innovation at Hanson Inc., commented, “I’m thinking of a world in which people’s devices continuously assess the world around them to keep a population safer and healthier. Thinking of those living in large urban areas, with devices forming a network of AI input through sound analysis, air quality, natural events, etc., that can provide collective notifications and insight to everyone in a certain area about the concerns of environmental factors, physical health, even helping provide no quarter for bad actors through community policing.”

Barry Hughes, senior scientist at the Center for International Futures at the University of Denver, commented, “I was one of the original test users of the ARPANET and now can hardly imagine living without the internet. Although AI will be disruptive through 2030 and beyond, meaning that there will be losers in the workplace and growing reasons for concern about privacy and AI/cyber-related crime, on the whole I expect that individuals and societies will make choices on use and restriction of use that benefit us. Examples include likely self-driving vehicles at that time, when my wife’s deteriorating vision and that of an increased elderly population will make it increasingly liberating. I would expect rapid growth in use for informal/non-traditional education as well as some more ambivalent growth in the formal-education sector. Big-data applications in health-related research should be increasingly productive, and health care delivery should benefit. Transparency with respect to its character and use, including its developers and their personal benefits, is especially important in limiting the inevitable abuse.”

Dana Klisanin, psychologist, futurist and game designer, predicted, “People will increasingly realize the importance of interacting with each other and the natural world and they will program AI to support such goals, which will in turn support the ongoing emergence of the ‘slow movement.’ For example, grocery shopping and mundane chores will be allocated to AI (smart appliances), freeing up time for preparation of meals in keeping with the slow food movement. Concern for the environment will likewise encourage the growth of the slow goods/slow fashion movement. The ability to recycle, reduce, reuse will be enhanced by the use of in-home 3D printers, giving rise to a new type of ‘craft’ that is supported by AI. AI will support the ‘cradle-to-grave’ movement by making it easier for people to trace the manufacturing process from inception to final product.”

Liz Rykert, president at Meta Strategies, a consultancy that works with technology and complex organizational change, responded, “The key for networked AI will be the ability to diffuse equitable responses to basic care and data collection. If bias remains in the programming it will be a big problem. I believe we will be able to develop systems that will learn from and reflect a much broader and more diverse population than the systems we have now.”

Michael R. Nelson, a technology policy expert for a leading network services provider who worked as a technology policy aide in the Clinton administration, commented, “Most media reports focus on how machine learning will directly affect people (medical diagnosis, self-driving cars, etc.) but we will see big improvements in infrastructure (traffic, sewage treatment, supply chain, etc.).”

Gary Arlen, president of Arlen Communications, wrote, “After the initial frenzy recedes about specific AI applications (such as autonomous vehicles, workplace robotics, transaction processing, health diagnoses and entertainment selections), specific applications will develop – probably in areas barely being considered today. As with many new technologies, the benefits will not apply equally, potentially expanding the haves-and-have-nots dichotomy. In addition, as AI delves into new fields – including creative work such as design, music/art composition – we may see new legal challenges about illegal appropriation of intellectual property (via machine learning). However, the new legal tasks from such litigation may not need a conventional lawyer – but could be handled by AI itself. Professional health care AI poses another type of dichotomy. For patients, AI could be a bonanza, identifying ailments, often in early stages (based on early symptoms), and recommending treatments. At the same time, such automated tasks could impact employment for medical professionals. And again, there are legal challenges to be determined, such as liability in the case of a wrong action by the AI. Overall, there is no such thing as ‘most people,’ but many individuals and groups – especially in professional situations – WILL live better lives thanks to AI, albeit with some severe adjustment pains.”

Tim Morgan, a respondent who provided no identifying details, said, “Algorithmic machine learning will be our intelligence amplifier, exhaustively exploring data and designs in ways humans alone cannot. The world was shocked when IBM’s Deep Blue computer beat Garry Kasparov in 1997. What emerged later was the realization that human and AI ‘centaurs’ could combine to beat anyone, human or AI. The synthesis is more than the sum of the parts.”

Marshall Kirkpatrick, product director of influencer marketing, responded, “If the network can be both decentralized and imbued with empathy, rather than characterized by violent exploitation, then we’re safe. I expect it will land in between, hopefully leaning toward the positive. For example, I expect our understanding of self and freedom will be greatly impacted by an instrumentation of a large part of memory, through personal logs and our data exhaust being recognized as valuable just like when we shed the term ‘junk DNA.’ Networked AI will bring us new insights into our own lives that might seem as far-fetched today as it would have been 30 years ago to say, ‘I’ll tell you what music your friends are discovering right now.’ AI is most likely to augment humanity for the better, but it will take longer and not be done as well as it could be. Hopefully we’ll build it in a way that will help us be comparably understanding to others.”

Daniel A. Menasce, professor of computer science at George Mason University, commented, “AI and related technologies coupled with significant advances in computer power and decreasing costs will allow specialists in a variety of disciplines to perform more efficiently and will allow non-specialists to use computer systems to augment their skills. Some examples include health delivery, smart cities and smart buildings. For these applications to become reality, easy-to-use user interfaces, or better yet transparent user interfaces will have to be developed.”

Technology progression and advancement has always been met with fear and anxiety, giving way to tremendous gains for humankind as we learn to enhance the best of the changes and adapt and alter the worst. David Wells David Wells

David Wells, chief financial officer at Netflix, responded, “Technology progression and advancement has always been met with fear and anxiety, giving way to tremendous gains for humankind as we learn to enhance the best of the changes and adapt and alter the worst. Continued networked AI will be no different but the pace of technological change has increased, which is different and requires us to more quickly adapt. This pace is different and presents challenges for some human groups and societies that we will need to acknowledge and work through to avoid marginalization and political conflict. But the gains from better education, medical care and crime reduction will be well worth the challenges.”

Rik Farrow, editor of ;login: for the USENIX association, wrote, “Humans do poorly when it comes to making decisions based on facts, rather than emotional issues. Humans get distracted easily. There are certainly things that AI can do better than humans, like driving cars, handling finances, even diagnosing illnesses. Expecting human doctors to know everything about the varieties of disease and humans is silly. Let computers do what they are good at.”

Steve Crocker, CEO and co-founder of Shinkuro Inc. and Internet Hall of Fame member, responded, “AI and human-machine interaction has been under vigorous development for the past 50 years. The advances have been enormous. The results are marbled through all of our products and systems. Graphics, speech [and] language understanding are now taken for granted. Encyclopedic knowledge is available at our fingertips. Instant communication with anyone, anywhere exists for about half the world at minimal cost. The effects on productivity, lifestyle and reduction of risks, both natural and man-made, have been extraordinary and will continue. As with any technology, there are opportunities for abuse, but the challenges for the next decade or so are not significantly different from the challenges mankind has faced in the past. Perhaps the largest existential threat has been the potential for nuclear holocaust. In comparison, the concerns about AI are significantly less.”

James Kadtke, expert on converging technologies at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the U.S. National Defense University, wrote, “Barring the deployment of a few different radically new technologies, such as general AI or commercial quantum computers, the internet and AI [between now and 2030] will proceed on an evolutionary trajectory. Expect internet access and sophistication to be considerably greater, but not radically different, and also expect that malicious actors using the internet will have greater sophistication and power. Whether we can control both these trends for positive outcomes is a public policy issue more than a technological one.”

Tim Morgan, a respondent who provided no identifying details, said, “Human/AI collaboration over the next 12 years will improve the overall quality of life by finding new approaches to persistent problems. We will use these adaptive algorithmic tools to explore whole new domains in every industry and field of study: materials science, biotech, medicine, agriculture, engineering, energy, transportation and more. … This goes beyond computability into human relationships. AIs are beginning to understand and speak the human language of emotion. The potential of affective computing ranges from productivity-increasing adaptive interfaces, to ‘pre-crime’ security monitoring of airports and other gathering places, to companion ‘pets’ which monitor their aging owners and interact with them in ways that improve their health and disposition. Will there be unseen dangers or consequences? Definitely. That is our pattern with our tools. We invent them, use them to improve our lives and then refine them when we find problems. AI is no different.”

Ashok Goel, director of the human-centered computing Ph.D. program at Georgia Tech, wrote, “Human-AI interaction will be multimodal: We will directly converse with AIs, for example. However, much of the impact of AI will come in enhancing human-human interaction across both space (we will be networked with others) and time (we will have access to all our previously acquired knowledge). This will aid, augment and amplify individual and collective human intelligence in unprecedented and powerful ways.”

David Cake, an leader with Electronic Frontiers Australia and vice-chair of the ICANN GNSO Council, wrote, “In general, machine learning and related technologies have the capacity to greatly reduce human error in many areas where it is currently very problematic and make available good, appropriately tailored advice to people to whom it is currently unavailable, in literally almost every field of human endeavour.”

Fred Baker, an independent networking technologies consultant, longtime leader in the Internet Engineering Task Force and engineering fellow with Cisco, commented, “In my opinion, developments have not been ‘out of control,’ in the sense that the creation of Terminator’s Skynet or the HAL 9000 computer might depict them. Rather, we have learned to automate processes in which neural networks have been able to follow data to its conclusion (which we call ‘big data’) unaided and uncontaminated by human intuition, and sometimes the results have surprised us. These remain, and in my opinion will remain, to be interpreted by human beings and used for our purposes.”

Bob Frankston, software innovation pioneer and technologist based in North America, wrote, “It could go either way. AI could be a bureaucratic straitjacket and tool of surveillance. I’m betting that machine learning will be like the X-ray in giving us the ability to see new wholes and gain insights.”

Perry Hewitt, a marketing, content and technology executive, wrote, “Today, voice-activated technologies are an untamed beast in our homes. Some 16% of Americans have a smart speaker, and yet they are relatively dumb devices: They misinterpret questions, offer generic answers and, to the consternation of some, are turning our kids into a**holes. I am bullish on human-machine interactions developing a better understanding of and improving our daily routines. I think in particular of the working parent, often although certainly not exclusively a woman, who carries so much information in their head. What if a human-machine collaboration could stock the house with essentials, schedule the pre-camp pediatrician appointments and prompt drivers for the alternate-side parking/street cleaning rules. The ability for narrow AI to assimilate new information (the bus is supposed to come at 7:10 but a month into the school year is known to actually come at 7:16) could keep a family connected and informed with the right data, and reduce the mental load of household management.”

John McNutt, a professor in the school of public policy and administration at the University of Delaware, responded, “Throwing out technology because there is a potential downside is not how human progress takes place. In public service, a turbulent environment has created a situation where knowledge overload can seriously degrade our ability to do the things that are essential to implement policies and serve the public good. AI can be the difference between a public service that works well and one that creates more problems than it solves.”

Randy Marchany, chief information security officer at Virginia Tech and director of Virginia Tech’s IT Security Laboratory, said, “AI-human interaction in 2030 will be in its ‘infancy’ stage. AI will need to go to ‘school’ in a manner similar to humans. They will amass large amounts of data collected by various sources but need ‘ethics’ training to make good decisions. Just as kids are taught a wide variety of info and some sort of ethics (religion, social manners, etc.), AI will need similar training. Will AI get the proper training? Who decides the training content?”

Robert Stratton, cybersecurity expert, said, “While there is widespread acknowledgement in a variety of disciplines of the potential benefits of machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies, progress has been tempered by their misapplication. Part of data science is knowing the right tool for a particular job. As more-rigorous practitioners begin to gain comfort and apply these tools to other corpora it’s reasonable to expect some significant gains in efficiency, insight or profitability in many fields. This may not be visible to consumers except through increased product choice, but it may include everything from drug discovery to driving.”

A data analyst for an organization developing marketing solutions said, “Assuming that policies are in place to prevent the abuse of AI and programs are in place to find new jobs for those who would be career-displaced, there is a lot of potential in AI integration. By 2030, most AI will be used for marketing purposes and be more annoying to people than anything else as they are bombarded with personalized ads and recommendations. The rest of AI usage will be its integration into more tedious and repetitive tasks across career fields. Implementing AI in this fashion will open up more time for humans to focus on long-term and in-depth tasks that will allow further and greater societal progression. For example, AI can be trained to identify and codify qualitative information from surveys, reviews, articles, etc., far faster and in greater quantities than even a team of humans can. By having AI perform these tasks, analysts can spend more time parsing the data for trends and information that can then be used to make more-informed decisions faster and allow for speedier turn-around times. Minor product faults can be addressed before they become widespread, scientists can generate semiannual reports on environmental changes rather than annual or biannual.”

Helena Draganik, a professor at the University of Gdańsk in Poland, responded, “AI will not change humans. It will change the relations between them because it can serve as an interpreter of communication. It will change our habits (as an intermediation technology). AI will be a great commodity. It will help in cases of health problems (diseases). It will also generate a great ‘data industry’ (big data) market and a lack of anonymity and privacy. Humanity will more and more depend on energy/electricity. These factors will create new social, cultural, security and political problems.”

There are those who think there won’t be much change by 2030.

Christine Boese, digital strategies professional, commented, “I believe it is as William Gibson postulated, ‘The future is already here, it just not very evenly distributed.’ What I know from my work in user-experience design and in exposure to many different Fortune 500 IT departments working in big data and analytics is that the promise and potential of AI and machine learning is VASTLY overstated. There has been so little investment in basic infrastructure, entire chunks of our systems won’t even be interoperable. The AI and machine learning code will be there, in a pocket here, a pocket there, but system-wide, it is unlikely to be operating reliably as part of the background radiation against which many of us play and work online.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “While various deployments of new data science and computation will help firms cut costs, reduce fraud and support decision-making that involves access to more information than an individual can manage, organisations, professions, markets and regulators (public and private) usually take many more than 12 years to adapt effectively to a constantly changing set of technologies and practices. This generally causes a decline in service quality, insecurity over jobs and investments, new monopoly businesses distorting markets and social values, etc. For example, many organisations will be under pressure to buy and implement new services, but unable to access reliable market information on how to do this, leading to bad investments, distractions from core business, and labour and customer disputes.”

Mario Morino, chairman of the Morino Institute and co-founder of Venture Philanthropy Partners, commented, “While I believe AI/ML will bring enormous benefits, it may take us several decades to navigate through the disruption and transition they will introduce on multiple levels.”

Daniel Berninger, an internet pioneer who led the first VoIP deployments at Verizon, HP and NASA, currently founder at Voice Communication Exchange Committee (VCXC), said, “The luminaries claiming artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence and promoting robot reverence imagine exponentially improving computation pushes machine self-actualization from science fiction into reality. The immense valuations awarded Google, Facebook, Amazon, Tesla, et al., rely on this machine-dominance hype to sell infinite scaling. As with all hype, pretending reality does not exist does not make reality go away. Moore’s Law does not concede the future to machines, because human domination of the planet does not owe to computation. Any road map granting machines self-determination includes ‘miracle’ as one of the steps. You cannot turn a piece of wood into a real boy. AI merely ‘models’ human activity. No amount of improvement in the development of these models turns the ‘model’ into the ‘thing.’ Robot reverence attempts plausibility by collapsing the breadth of human potential and capacities. It operates via ‘denialism’ with advocates disavowing the importance of anything they cannot model. In particular, super AI requires pretending human will and consciousness do not exist. Human beings remain the source of all intent and the judge of all outcomes. Machines provide mere facilitation and mere efficiency in the journey from intent to outcome. The dehumanizing nature of automation and the diseconomy of scale of human intelligence is already causing headaches that reveal another AI Winter arriving well before 2030.”

Paul Kainen, futurist and director of the Lab for Visual Mathematics at Georgetown University, commented, “Quantum cat here: I expect complex superposition of strong positive, negative and null as typical impact for AI. For the grandkids’ sake, we must be positive!”

The following one-liners from anonymous respondents also tie into AI in 2030:

An Internet Hall of Fame member wrote, “You’ll talk to your digital assistant in a normal voice and it will just be there – it will often anticipate your needs, so you may only need to talk to it to correct or update it.”

wrote, “You’ll talk to your digital assistant in a normal voice and it will just be there – it will often anticipate your needs, so you may only need to talk to it to correct or update it.” The director of a cognitive research group at one of the world’s top AI and large-scale computing companies predicted that by 2030, “Smartphone-equivalent devices will support true natural-language dialog with episodic memory of past interactions. Apps will become low-cost digital workers with basic commonsense reasoning.”

predicted that by 2030, “Smartphone-equivalent devices will support true natural-language dialog with episodic memory of past interactions. Apps will become low-cost digital workers with basic commonsense reasoning.” An anonymous Internet Hall of Fame member said, “The equivalent of the ‘Star Trek’ universal translator will become practical, enabling travelers to better interact with people in countries they visit, facilitate online discussions across language barriers, etc.”

said, “The equivalent of the ‘Star Trek’ universal translator will become practical, enabling travelers to better interact with people in countries they visit, facilitate online discussions across language barriers, etc.” An Internet of Things researcher commented, “We need to balance between human emotions and machine intelligence – can machines be emotional? – that’s the frontier we have to conquer.”

commented, “We need to balance between human emotions and machine intelligence – can machines be emotional? – that’s the frontier we have to conquer.” An anonymous respondent wrote, “2030 is still quite possibly before the advent of human-level AI. During this phase AI is still mostly augmenting human efforts – increasingly ubiquitous, optimizing the systems that surround us and being replaced when their optimization criteria are not quite perfect – rather than pursuing those goals programmed into them, whether we find the realization of those goals desirable or not.”

wrote, “2030 is still quite possibly before the advent of human-level AI. During this phase AI is still mostly augmenting human efforts – increasingly ubiquitous, optimizing the systems that surround us and being replaced when their optimization criteria are not quite perfect – rather than pursuing those goals programmed into them, whether we find the realization of those goals desirable or not.” A research scientist who works for Google said, “Things will be better, although many people are deeply worried about the effects of AI.”

said, “Things will be better, although many people are deeply worried about the effects of AI.” An ARPANET and internet pioneer wrote, “The kind of AI we are currently able to build as good for data analysis but far, far away from ‘human’ levels of performance; the next 20 years won’t change this, but we will have valuable tools to help analyze and control our world.”

wrote, “The kind of AI we are currently able to build as good for data analysis but far, far away from ‘human’ levels of performance; the next 20 years won’t change this, but we will have valuable tools to help analyze and control our world.” An artificial intelligence researcher working for one of the world’s most powerful technology companies wrote, “AI will enhance our vision and hearing capabilities, remove language barriers, reduce time to find information we care about and help in automating mundane activities.”

wrote, “AI will enhance our vision and hearing capabilities, remove language barriers, reduce time to find information we care about and help in automating mundane activities.” A manager with a major digital innovation company said, “Couple the information storage with the ever-increasing ability to rapidly search and analyze that data, and the benefits to augmenting human intelligence with this processed data will open up new avenues of technology and research throughout society.”

Other anonymous respondents commented:

“AI will help people to manage the increasingly complex world we are forced to navigate. It will empower individuals to not be overwhelmed.”

“AI will reduce human error in many contexts: driving, workplace, medicine and more.”

“In teaching it will enhance knowledge about student progress and how to meet individual needs; it will offer guidance options based on the unique preferences of students that can guide learning and career goals.”

“2030 is only 12 years from now, so I expect that systems like Alexa and Siri will be more helpful but still of only medium utility.”

“AI will be a useful tool; I am quite a ways away from fearing SkyNet and the rise of the machines.”

“AI will produce major benefits in the next 10 years, but ultimately the question is one of politics: Will the world somehow manage to listen to the economists, even when their findings are uncomfortable?”

“I strongly believe that an increasing use of numerical control will improve the lives of people in general.”

“AI will help us navigate choices, find safer routes and avenues for work and play, and help make our choices and work more consistent.”

“Many factors will be at work to increase or decrease human welfare, and it will be difficult to separate them.”

AI will optimize and augment people’s lives

The hopeful experts in this sample generally expect that AI will work to optimize, augment and improve human activities and experiences. They say it will save time and it will save lives via health advances and the reduction of risks and of poverty. They hope it will spur innovation and broaden opportunities, increase the value of human-to-human experiences, augment humans and increase individuals’ overall satisfaction with life.

Clay Shirky, writer and consultant on the social and economic effects of internet technologies and vice president at New York University, said, “All previous forms of labor-saving devices, from the level to the computer, have correlated with increased health and lifespan in the places that have adopted them.”

Jamais Cascio, research fellow at the Institute for the Future, wrote, “Although I do believe that in 2030 AI will have made our lives better, I suspect that popular media of the time will justifiably highlight the large-scale problems: displaced workers, embedded bias and human systems being too deferential to machine systems. But AI is more than robot soldiers, autonomous cars or digital assistants with quirky ‘personalities.’ Most of the AI we will encounter in 2030 will be in-the-walls, behind-the-scenes systems built to adapt workspaces, living spaces and the urban environment to better suit our needs. Medical AI will keep track of medication and alert us to early signs of health problems. Environmental AI will monitor air quality, heat index and other indicators relevant to our day’s tasks. Our visual and audio surroundings may be altered or filtered to improve our moods, better our focus or otherwise alter our subconscious perceptions of the world. Most of this AI will be functionally invisible to us, as long as it’s working properly. The explicit human-machine interface will be with a supervisor system that coordinates all of the sub-AI – and undoubtedly there will be a lively business in creating supervisor systems with quirky personalities.”

Mike Meyer, chief information officer at Honolulu Community College, wrote, “Social organizations will be increasingly administered by AI/ML systems to ensure equity and consistency in provisioning of services to the population. The steady removal of human emotion-driven discrimination will rebalance social organizations creating true equitable opportunity to all people for the first time in human history. People will be part of these systems as censors, in the old imperial Chinese model, providing human emotional intelligence where that is needed to smooth social management. All aspects of human existence will be affected by the integration of AI into human societies. Historically this type of base paradigmatic change is both difficult and unstoppable. The results will be primarily positive but will produce problems both in the process of change and in totally new types of problems that will result from the ways that people do adapt the new technology-based processes.”

Mark Crowley, an assistant professor, expert in machine learning and core member of the Institute for Complexity and Innovation at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, wrote, “While driving home on a long commute from work the human will be reading a book in the heads-up screen of the windshield. The car will be driving autonomously on the highway for the moment. The driver will have an idea to note down and add to a particular document; all this will be done via voice. In the middle of this a complicated traffic arrangement will be seen approaching via other networked cars. The AI will politely interrupt the driver, put away the heads-up display and warn the driver they may need to take over in the next 10 seconds or so. The conversation will be flawless and natural, like Jarvis in ‘Avengers,’ even charming. But it will be tasks-focused to the car, personal events, notes and news.”

Theodore Gordon, futurist, management consultant and co-founder of the Millennium Project, commented, “There will be ups and downs, surely, but the net is, I believe, good. The most encouraging uses of AI will be in early warning of terror activities, incipient diseases and environmental threats and in improvements in decision-making.”

Yvette Wohn, director of the Social Interaction Lab and expert on human-computer interaction at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, said, “One area in which artificial intelligence will become more sophisticated will be in its ability to enrich the quality of life so that the current age of workaholism will transition into a society where leisure, the arts, entertainment and culture are able to enhance the well-being of society in developed countries and solve issues of water production, food growth/distribution and basic health provision in developing countries.”

Ken Goldberg, distinguished chair in engineering, director of AUTOLAB’s and CITRIS’ “people and robots” initiative, and founding member of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, said, “As in the past 50+ years, AI will be combined with IA (intelligence augmentation) to enhance humans’ ability to work. One example might be an AI-based ‘Devil’s Advocate’ that would challenge my decisions with insightful questions (as long as I can turn it off periodically).”

Rich Ling, a professor of media technology at Nanyang Technological University, responded, “The ability to address complex issues and to better respond to and facilitate the needs of people will be the dominant result of AI.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “There will be an explosive increase in the number of autonomous cognitive agents (e.g., robots), and humans will interact more and more with them, being unaware, most of the time, if it is interactivity with a robot or with another human. This will increase the number of personal assistants and the level of service.”

As daily a user of the Google Assistant on my phone and both Google Home and Alexa, I feel like AI has already been delivering significant benefits to my daily life for a few years. Fred Davis Fred Davis

Fred Davis, mentor at Runway Incubator in San Francisco, responded, “As daily a user of the Google Assistant on my phone and both Google Home and Alexa, I feel like AI has already been delivering significant benefits to my daily life for a few years. My wife and I take having an always-on omnipresent assistant on hand for granted at this point. Google Home’s ability to tell us apart and even respond with different voices is a major step forward in making computers people-literate, rather than the other way around. There’s always a concern about privacy, but so far it hasn’t caused us any problems. Obviously, this could change and instead of a helpful friend I might look at these assistants as creepy strangers. Maintaining strict privacy and security controls is essential for these types of services.”

Andrew Tutt, an expert in law and author of “An FDA for Algorithms,” which called for “critical thought about how best to prevent, deter and compensate for the harms that they cause,” said, “AI will be absolutely pervasive and absolutely seamless in its integration with everyday life. It will simply become accepted that AI are responsible for ever-more-complex and ever-more-human tasks. By 2030, it will be accepted that when you wish to hail a taxi the taxi will have no driver – it will be an autonomously driven vehicle. Robots will be responsible for more-dynamic and complex roles in manufacturing plants and warehouses. Digital assistants will play an important and interactive role in everyday interactions ranging from buying a cup of coffee to booking a salon appointment. It will no longer be unexpected to call a restaurant to book a reservation, for example, and speak to a ‘digital’ assistant who will pencil you in. These interactions will be incremental but become increasingly common and increasingly normal. My hope is that the increasing integration of AI into everyday life will vastly increase the amount of time that people can devote to tasks they find meaningful.”

L. Schomaker, professor at the University of Groningen and scientific director of the Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Engineering (ALICE) research institute, said, “In the 1990s, you went to a PC on a desktop in a room in your house. In the 2010s you picked a phone from your pocket and switched it on. By 2030 you will be online 24/7 via miniature devices such as in-ear continuous support, advice and communications.”

Michael Wollowski, associate professor of computer science and software engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and expert in the Internet of Things, diagrammatic systems, and artificial intelligence, wrote, “Assuming that industry and government are interested in letting the consumer choose and influence the future, there will be many fantastic advances of AI. I believe that AI and the Internet of Things will bring about a situation in which technology will be our guardian angel. For example, self-driving cars will let us drive faster than we ever drove before, but they will only let us do things that they can control. Since computers have much better reaction time than people, it will be quite amazing. Similarly, AI and the Internet of Things will let us conduct out lives to the fullest while ensuring that we live healthy lives. Again, it is like having a guardian angel that lets us do things, knowing they can save us from stupidity.”

Steve King, partner at Emergent Research, said, “2030 is less than 12 years away. So … the most likely scenario is AI will have a modest impact on the lives of most humans over this time frame. Having said that, we think the use of AI systems will continue to expand, with the greatest growth coming from systems that augment and complement human capabilities and decision-making. This is not to say there won’t be negative impacts from the use of AI. Jobs will be replaced, and certain industries will be disrupted. Even scarier, there are many ways AI can be weaponized. But like most technological advancements, we think the overall impact of AI will be additive – at least over the next decade or so.”

Vassilis Galanos, a Ph.D. student and teaching assistant actively researching future human-machine symbiosis at the University of Edinburgh, commented, “2030 is not that far away, so there is no room for extremely utopian/dystopian hopes and fears. … Given that AI is already used in everyday life (social-media algorithms, suggestions, smartphones, digital assistants, health care and more), it is quite probable that humans will live in a harmonious co-existence with AI as much as they do now – to a certain extent – with computer and internet technologies.”

Charlie Firestone, communications and society program executive director and vice president at the Aspen Institute, commented, “I remain optimistic that AI will be a tool that humans will use, far more widely than today, to enhance quality of life such as medical remedies, education and the environment. For example, the AI will help us to conserve energy in homes and in transportation by identifying exact times and temperatures we need, identifying sources of energy that will be the cheapest and the most efficient. There certainly are dire scenarios, particularly in the use of AI for surveillance, a likely occurrence by 2030. I am hopeful that AI and other technologies will identify new areas of employment as it eliminates many jobs.”

Pedro U. Lima, an associate professor of computer science at Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal, said, “Overall, I see AI-based technology relieving us from repetitive and/or heavy and/or dangerous tasks, opening new challenges for our activities. I envisage autonomous mobile robots networked with a myriad of other smart devices, helping nurses and doctors at hospitals in daily activities, working as a ‘third hand’ and (physical and emotional) support to patients. I see something similar happening in factories, where networked robot systems will help workers on their tasks, relieving them from heavy duties.”

John Laird, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, responded, “There will be a continual off-loading of mundane intellectual and physical tasks on to AI and robotic systems. In addition to helping with everyday activities, it will significantly help the mentally and physically impaired and disabled. There will also be improvements in customized/individualized education and training of humans, and conversely, the customization of AI systems by everyday users. We will be transitioning from current programming practices to user customization. Automated driving will be a reality, eliminating many deaths but also having significant societal changes.”

Steven Polunsky, director of the Alabama Transportation Policy Research Center at the University of Alabama, wrote, “AI will allow public transportation systems to better serve existing customers by adjusting routes, travel times and stops to optimize service. New customers will also see advantages. Smart transportation systems will allow public transit to network with traffic signals and providers of ‘last-mile’ trips to minimize traffic disruption and inform decision making about modal (rail, bus, mobility-on-demand) planning and purchasing.”

Sanjiv Das, a professor of data science and finance at Santa Clara University, responded, “AI will enhance search to create interactive reasoning and analytical systems. Search engines today do not know ‘why’ we want some information and hence cannot reason about it. They also do not interact with us to help with analysis. An AI system that collects information based on knowing why it is needed and then asks more questions to refine its search would be clearly available well before 2030. These ‘search-thinking bots’ will also write up analyses based on parameters elicited from conversation and imbue these analyses with different political (left/right) and linguistic (aggressive/mild) slants, chosen by the human, using advances in language generation, which are already well under way. These ‘intellectual’ agents will become companions, helping us make sense of our information overload. I often collect files of material on my cloud drive that I found interesting or needed to read later, and these agents would be able to summarize and engage me in a discussion of these materials, very much like an intellectual companion. It is unclear to me if I would need just one such agent, though it seems likely that different agents with diverse personalities may be more interesting! As always, we should worry what the availability of such agents might mean for normal human social interaction, but I can also see many advantages in freeing up time for socializing with other humans as well as enriched interactions, based on knowledge and science, assisted by our new intellectual companions.”

Lawrence Roberts, designer and manager of ARPANET, the precursor to the internet and Internet Hall of Fame member, commented, “AI voice recognition, or text, with strong context understanding and response will allow vastly better access to website, program documentation, voice call answering, and all such interactions will greatly relieve user frustration with getting information. It will mostly provide service where no or little human support is being replaced as it is not available today in large part. For example, finding and/or doing a new or unused function of the program or website one is using. Visual, 3D-space-recognition AI to support better-than-human robot activity including vehicles, security surveillance, health scans and much more.”

Christopher Yoo, a professor of law, communication and computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, responded, “AI is good at carrying out tasks that follow repetitive patterns. In fact, AI is better than humans. Shifting these functions to machines will improve performance. It will also allow people to shift their efforts to high-value-added and more-rewarding directions, an increasingly critical consideration in developing world countries where population is declining. Research on human-computer interaction (HCI) also reveals that AI-driven pattern recognition will play a critical role in expanding humans’ ability to extend the benefits of computerization. HCI once held that our ability to gain the benefit from computers would be limited by the total amount of time people can spend sitting in front of a screen and inputting characters through a keyboard. The advent of AI-driven HCI will allow that to expand further and will reduce the amount of customization that people will have to program in by hand. At the same time, AI is merely a tool. All tools have their limits and can be misused. Even when humans are making the decisions instead of machines, blindly following the results of a protocol without exercising any judgment, can have disastrous results. Future applications of AI will thus likely involve both humans and machines if they are to fulfill their potential.”

Joseph Konstan, distinguished professor of computer science specializing in human-computer interaction and AI at the University of Minnesota, predicted, “Widespread deployment of AI has immense potential to help in key areas that affect a large portion of the world’s population, including agriculture, transportation (more efficiently getting food to people) and energy. Even as soon as 2030, I expect we’ll see substantial benefits for many who are today disadvantaged, including the elderly and physically handicapped (who will have greater choices for mobility and support) and those in the poorest part of the world.”

The future of work: Some predict new work will emerge or solutions will be found, while others have deep concerns about massive job losses and an unraveling society

A number of expert insights on this topic were shared earlier in this report. These additional observations add to the discussion of hopes and concerns about the future of human jobs. This segment starts with comments from those who are hopeful that the job situation and related social issues will turn out well. It is followed by statements from those who are pessimistic.

Respondents who were positive about the future of AI and work

Bob Metcalfe, Internet Hall of Fame member, co-inventor of Ethernet, founder of 3Com and now professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Texas at Austin, said, “Pessimists are often right, but they never get anything done. All technologies come with problems, sure, but … generally, they get solved. The hardest problem I see is the evolution of work. Hard to figure out. Forty percent of us used to know how to milk cows, but now less than 1% do. We all used to tell elevator operators which floor we wanted, and now we press buttons. Most of us now drive cars and trucks and trains, but that’s on the verge of being over. AIs are most likely not going to kill jobs. They will handle parts of jobs, enhancing the productivity of their humans.”

Stowe Boyd, founder and managing director at Work Futures, said, “There is a high possibility that unchecked expansion of AI could rapidly lead to widespread unemployment. My bet is that governments will step in to regulate the spread of AI, to slow the impacts of this phenomenon as a result of unrest by the mid 2020s. That regulation might include, for example, not allowing AIs to serve as managers of people in the workplace, but only to augment the work of people on a task or process level. So, we might see high degrees of automation in warehouses, but a human being would be ‘in charge’ in some sense. Likewise, fully autonomous freighters might be blocked by regulations.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “Repeatedly throughout history people have worried that new technologies would eliminate jobs. This has never happened, so I’m very skeptical it will this time. Having said that, there will be major short-term disruptions in the labor market and smart governments should begin to plan for this by considering changes to unemployment insurance, universal basic income, health insurance, etc. This is particularly the case in America, where so many benefits are tied to employment. I would say there is almost zero chance that the U.S. government will actually do this, so there will be a lot of pain and misery in the short and medium term, but I do think ultimately machines and humans will peacefully coexist. Also, I think a lot of the projections on the use of AI are ridiculous. Regardless of the existence of the technology, cross-state shipping is not going to be taken over by automated trucks any time soon because of legal and ethical issues that have not been worked out.”

Steven Miller, vice provost and professor of information systems at Singapore Management University, said, “It helps to have a sense of the history of technological change over the past few hundred years (even longer). Undoubtedly, new ways of using machines and new machine capabilities will be used to create economic activities and services that were either a) not previously possible, or b) previously too scarce and expensive, and now can be plentiful and inexpensive. This will create a lot of new activities and opportunities. At the same time, we know some existing tasks and jobs with a high proportion of those tasks will be increasingly automated. So we will simultaneously have both new opportunity creation as well as technological displacement. Even so, the long-term track record shows that human societies keep finding ways of creating more and more economically viable jobs. Cognitive automation will obviously enhance the realms of automation, but even with tremendous progress in this technology, there are and will continue to be limits. Humans have remarkable capabilities to deal with and adapt to change, so I do not see the ‘end of human work.’ The ways people and machines combine together will change – and there will be many new types of human-machine symbiosis. Those who understand this and learn to benefit from it will proposer.”

Henry E. Brady, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote, “AI can replace people in jobs that require sophisticated and accurate pattern matching – driving, diagnoses based upon medical imaging, proofreading and other areas. There is also the fact that in the past technological change has mostly led to new kinds of jobs rather than the net elimination of jobs. Furthermore, I also believe that there may be limits to what AI can do. It is very good at pattern matching, but human intelligence goes far beyond pattern matching and it is not clear that computers will be able to compete with humans beyond pattern matching. It also seems clear that even the best algorithms will require constant human attention to update, check and revise them.”

If we embrace the inevitable evolution of technology to replace redundant tasks, we can encourage today’s youth to pursue more creative and strategic pursuits. Geoff Livingston Geoff Livingston

Geoff Livingston, author and futurist, commented, “The term AI misleads people. What we should call the trend is machine learning or algorithms. ‘Weak’ AI as it is called – today’s AI – reduces repetitive tasks that most people find mundane. This in turn produces an opportunity to escape the trap of the proletariat, being forced into monotonous labor to earn a living. Instead of thinking of the ‘Terminator,’ we should view the current trend as an opportunity to seek out and embrace the tasks that we truly love, including more creative pursuits. If we embrace the inevitable evolution of technology to replace redundant tasks, we can encourage today’s youth to pursue more creative and strategic pursuits. Further, today’s workers can learn how to manage machine learning or embrace training to pursue new careers that they may enjoy more. My fear is that many will simply reject change and blame technology, as has often been done. One could argue much of today’s populist uprising we are experiencing globally finds its roots in the current displacements caused by machine learning as typified by smart manufacturing. If so, the movement forward will be troublesome, rife with dark bends and turns that we may regret as cultures and countries.”

Marek Havrda, director at NEOPAS and strategic adviser for the GoodAI project, a private research and development company based in Prague that focuses on the development of artificial general intelligence and AI applications, explained the issue from his point of view, “The development and implementation of artificial intelligence has brought about questions of the impact it will have on employment. Machines are beginning to fill jobs that have been traditionally reserved for humans, such as driving a car or prescribing medical treatment. How these trends may unfold is a crucial question. We may expect the emergence of ‘super-labour,’ a labour defined by super-high-added-value of human activity due to augmentation by AI. Apart from the ability to deploy AI, super-labour will be characterised by creativity and the ability to co-direct and supervise safe exploration of business opportunities together with perseverance in attaining defined goals. An example may be that by using various online, AI gig workers (and maybe several human gig workers), while leveraging AI to its maximum potential … at all aspects from product design to marketing and after-sales care, three people could create a new service and ensure its smooth delivery for which a medium-size company would be needed today. We can expect growing inequalities between those who have access and are able to use technology and those who do not. However, it seems more important how big a slice of the AI co-generated ‘pie’ is accessible to all citizens in absolute terms (e.g., having enough to finance public service and other public spending) which would make everyone better off than in pre-AI age, than the relative inequalities.”

Yoram Kalman, an associate professor at the Open University of Israel and member of The Center for Internet Research at the University of Haifa, wrote, “In essence, technologies that empower people also improve their lives. I see that progress in the area of human-machine collaboration empowers people by improving their ability to communicate and to learn, and thus my optimism. I do not fear that these technologies will take the place of people, since history shows that again and again people used technologies to augment their abilities and to be more fulfilled. Although in the past, too, it seemed as if these technologies would leave people unemployed and useless, human ingenuity and the human spirit always found new challenges that could best be tackled by humans.”

Thomas H. Davenport, distinguished professor of information technology and management at Babson College and fellow of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, responded, “So far, most implementations of AI have resulted in some form of augmentation, not automation. Surveys of managers suggest that relatively few have automation-based job loss as the goal of their AI initiatives. So while I am sure there will be some marginal job loss, I expect that AI will free up workers to be more creative and to do more unstructured work.”

Yvette Wohn, director of the Social Interaction Lab and expert on human-computer interaction at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, commented, “Artificial intelligence will be naturally integrated into our everyday lives. Even though people are concerned about computers replacing the jobs of humans the best-case scenario is that technology will be augmenting human capabilities and performing functions that humans do not like to do. Smart farms and connected distribution systems will hopefully eliminate urban food deserts and enable food production in areas not suited for agriculture. Artificial intelligence will also become better at connecting people and provide immediate support to people who are in crisis situations.”

A principal architect for a major global technology company responded, “AI is a prerequisite to achieving a post-scarcity world, in which people can devote their lives to intellectual pursuits and leisure rather than to labor. The first step will be to reduce the amount of labor required for production of human necessities. Reducing tedium will require changes to the social fabric and economic relationships between people as the demand for labor shrinks below the supply, but if these challenges can be met then everyone will be better off.”

Tom Hood, an expert in corporate accounting and finance, said, “By 2030, AI will stand for Augmented Intelligence and will play an ever-increasing role in working side-by-side with humans in all sectors to add its advanced and massive cognitive and learning capabilities to critical human domains like medicine, law, accounting, engineering and technology. Imagine a personal bot powered by artificial intelligence working by your side (in your laptop or smartphone) making recommendations on key topics by providing up-to-the-minute research or key pattern recognition and analysis of your organization’s data? One example is a CPA in tax given a complex global tax situation amid constantly changing tax laws in all jurisdictions who would be able to research and provide guidance on the most complex global issues in seconds. It is my hope for the future of artificial intelligence in 2030 that we will be augmenting our intelligence with these ‘machines.’”

A professor of computer science expert in systems who works at a major U.S. technological university wrote, “By 2030, we should expect advances in AI, networking and other technologies enabled by AI and networks, e.g., the growing areas of persuasive and motivational technologies, to improve the workplace in many ways beyond replacing humans with robots.”

The following one-liners from anonymous respondents express a bright future for human jobs:

“History of technology shows that the number of new roles and jobs created will likely exceed the number of roles and jobs that are destroyed.”

“AI will not be competing with humanity but augmenting it for the better.”

“We make a mistake when we look for direct impact without considering the larger picture – we worry about a worker displaced by a machine rather than focus on broader opportunities for a better-trained and healthier workforce where geography or income no longer determine access not just to information but to relevant and appropriate information paths.”

“AI can significantly improve usability and thus access to the benefits of technology. Many powerful technical tools today require detailed expertise, and AI can bring more of those to a larger swath of the population.”

Respondents who have fears about AI’s impact on work

A section earlier in this report shared a number of key experts’ concerns about the potential negative impact of AI on the socioeconomic future if steps are not taken soon to begin to adjust to a future with far fewer jobs for humans. Many additional respondents to this canvassing shared fears about this.

Wout de Natris, an internet cybercrime and security consultant based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, wrote, “Hope: Advancement in health care, education, decision-making, availability of information, higher standards in ICT-security, global cooperation on these issues, etc. Fear: Huge segments of society, especially the middle classes who carry society in most ways, e.g., through taxes, savings and purchases, will be rendered jobless through endless economic cuts by industry, followed by governments due to lower tax income. Hence all of society suffers. Can governments and industry refrain from an overkill of surveillance? Otherwise privacy values keep declining, leading to a lower quality of life.”

Jonathan Taplin, director emeritus at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab, wrote, “My fear is that the current political class is completely unprepared for the disruptions that AI and robotics applied at scale will bring to our economy. While techno-utopians point to universal basic income as a possible solution to wide-scale unemployment, there is no indication that anyone in politics has an appetite for such a solution. And because I believe that meaningful work is essential to human dignity, I’m not sure that universal basic income would be helpful in the first place.”

Alex Halavais, an associate professor of social technologies at Arizona State University, wrote, “AI is likely to rapidly displace many workers over the next 10 years, and so there will be some potentially significant negative effects at the social and economic level in the short run.”

Uta Russmann, professor in the department of communication at FHWien der WKW University of Applied Sciences for Management & Communication, said, “Many people will not be benefitting from this development, as robots will do their jobs. Blue-collar workers, people working in supermarkets stacking shelves, etc., will not be needed less, but the job market will not offer them any other possibilities. The gap between rich and poor will increase as the need for highly skilled and very well-paid people increases and the need for less skilled workers will decrease tremendously.”

Ross Stapleton-Gray, principal at Stapleton-Gray and Associates, an information technology and policy consulting firm, commented, “Human-machine interaction could be for good or for ill. It will be hugely influenced by decisions on social priorities. We may be at a tipping point in recognizing that social inequities need to be addressed, so, say, a decreased need for human labor due to AI will result in more time for leisure, education, etc., instead of increasing wealth inequity.”

Aneesh Aneesh, author of “Global Labor: Algocratic Modes of Organization” and professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, responded, “Just as automation left large groups of working people behind even as the United States got wealthier as a country, it is quite likely that AI systems will automate the service sector in a similar way. Unless the welfare state returns with a vengeance, it is difficult to see the increased aggregate wealth resulting in any meaningful gains for the bottom half of society.”

Alper Dincel of T.C. Istanbul Kultur University in Turkey, wrote, “Unqualified people won’t find jobs, as machines and programs take over easy work in the near future. Machines will also solve performance problems. There is no bright future for most people if we don’t start to try finding solutions.”

Jason Abbott, professor and director at the Center for Asian Democracy at University of Louisville, said, “AI is likely to create significant challenges to the labor force as previously skilled (semi-skilled) jobs are replaced by AI – everything from AI in trucks and distribution to airlines, logistics and even medical records and diagnoses.”

Kenneth R. Fleischmann, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Information, responded, “In corporate settings, I worry that AI will be used to replace human workers to a disproportionate extent, such that the net economic benefit of AI is positive, but that economic benefit is not distributed equally among individuals, with a smaller number of wealthy individuals worldwide prospering, and a larger number of less wealthy individuals worldwide suffering from fewer opportunities for gainful employment.”

Gerry Ellis, founder and digital usability and accessibility consultant at Feel The BenefIT, responded, “Technology has always been far more quickly developed and adopted in the richer parts of the world than in the poorer regions where new technology is generally not affordable. AI cannot be taken as a stand-alone technology but in conjunction with other converging technologies like augmented reality, robotics, virtual reality, the Internet of Things, big data analysis, etc. It is estimated that around 80% of jobs that will be done in 2030 do not exist yet. One of the reasons why unskilled and particularly repetitive jobs migrate to poor countries is because of cheap labour costs, but AI combined with robotics will begin to do many of these jobs. For all of these reasons combined, the large proportion of the earth’s population that lives in the under-developed and developing world is likely to be left behind by technological developments. Unless the needs of people with disabilities are taken into account when designing AI related technologies, the same is true for them (or I should say ‘us,’ as I am blind).”

Karen Oates, director of workforce development and financial stability for La Casa de Esperanza, commented, “Ongoing increases in the use of AI will not benefit the working poor and low-to-middle-income people. Having worked with these populations for 10 years I’ve already observed many of these people losing employment when robots and self-operating forklifts are implemented. Although there are opportunities to program and maintain these machines, realistically people who have the requisite knowledge and education will fill those roles. The majority of employers will be unwilling to invest the resources to train employees unless there is an economic incentive from the government to do so. Many lower-wage workers won’t have the confidence to return to school to develop new knowledge/skills when they were unsuccessful in the past. As the use of AI increases, low-wage workers will lose the small niche they hold in our economy.”

Peggy Lahammer, director of health/life sciences at Robins Kaplan LLP and legal market analyst, commented, “Jobs will continue to change and as many disappear new ones will be created. These changes will have an impact on society as many people are left without the necessary skills.”

A European computer science professor expert in machine learning commented, “The social sorting systems introduced by AI will most likely define and further entrench the existing world order of the haves and the have-nots, making social mobility more difficult and precarious given the unpredictability of AI-driven judgements of fit. The interesting problem to solve will be the fact that initial designs of AI will come with built-in imaginaries of what ‘good’ or ‘correct’ constitutes. The level of flexibility designed in to allow for changes in normative perceptions and judgements will be key to ensuring that AI driven-systems support rather than obstruct productive social change.”

Stephen McDowell, a professor of communication at Florida State University and expert in new media and internet governance, commented, “Much of our daily lives is made up of routines and habits that we repeat, and AI could assist in these practices. However, just because some things we do are repetitive does not mean they are insignificant. We draw a lot of meaning from things we do on a daily, weekly or annual basis, whether by ourselves or with others. Cultural practices such as cooking, shopping, cleaning, coordinating and telling stories are crucial parts of building our families and larger communities. Similarly, at work, some of the routines are predictable, but are also how we gain a sense of mastery and expertise in a specific domain. In both these examples, we will have to think about how we define knowledge, expertise, collaboration, and growth and development.”

David Sarokin, author of “Missed Information: Better Information for Building a Wealthier, More Sustainable Future,” commented, “My biggest concern is that our educational system will not keep up with the demands of our modern times. It is doing a poor job of providing the foundations to our students. As more and more jobs are usurped by AI-endowed machines – everything from assembling cars to flipping burgers – those entering the workplace will need a level of technical sophistication that few graduates possess these days.”

Justin Amyx, a technician with Comcast, said, “My worry is automation. Automation occurs usually with mundane tasks that fill low-paying, blue-collar-and-under jobs. Those jobs will disappear – lawn maintenance, truck drivers and fast food, to name a few. Those un-skilled or low-skilled workers will be jobless. Unless we have training programs to take care of worker displacement there will be issues.”

The future of health care: Great expectations for many lives saved, extended and improved, mixed with worries about data abuses and a divide between ‘the haves and have-nots’

Many of these experts have high hopes for continued incremental advances across all aspects of health care and life extension. They predict a rise in access to various tools, including digital agents that can perform rudimentary exams with no need to visit a clinic, a reduction in medical errors and better, faster recognition of risks and solutions. They also worry over the potential for a widening health care divide between those who can afford cutting-edge tools and treatments and those less privileged. They also express concerns about the potential for data abuses such as the denial of insurance or coverage or benefits for select people or procedures.

Leonard Kleinrock, Internet Hall of Fame member and co-director of the first host-to-host online connection and professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles, predicted, “As AI and machine learning improve, we will see highly customized interactions between humans and their health care needs. This mass customization will enable each human to have her medical history, DNA profile, drug allergies, genetic makeup, etc., always available to any caregiver/medical professional that they engage with, and this will be readily accessible to the individual as well. Their care will be tailored to their specific needs and the very latest advances will be able to be provided rapidly after the advances are established. The rapid provision of the best medical treatment will provide great benefits. In hospital settings, such customized information will dramatically reduce the occurrence of medical injuries and deaths due to medical errors. My hope and expectation is that intelligent agents will be able to assess the likely risks and the benefits that ensue from proposed treatments and procedures, far better than is done now by human evaluators, such humans, even experts, typically being poor decision makers in the face of uncertainty. But to bring this about, there will need to be carefully conducted tests and experimentation to assess the quality of the outcomes of AI-based decision making in this field. However, as with any ‘optimized’ system, one must continually be aware of the fragility of optimized systems when they are applied beyond the confines of their range of applicability.”

Kenneth Grady, futurist, founding author of the Algorithmic Society blog and adjunct and advisor at the Michigan State University College of Law, responded, “In the next dozen years, AI will still be moving through a phase where it will augment what humans can do. It will help us sift through, organize and even evaluate the mountains of data we create each day. For example, doctors today still work with siloed data. Each patient’s vital signs, medicines, dosage rates, test results and side effects remain trapped in isolated systems. Doctors must evaluate this data without the benefit of knowing how it compares to the thousands of other patients around the country (or world) with similar problems. They struggle to turn the data into effective treatments by reading research articles and mentally comparing them to each patient’s data. As it evolves, AI will improve the process. Instead of episodic studies, doctors will have near-real-time access to information showing the effects of treatment regimes. Benefits and risks of drug interactions will be identified faster. Novel treatments will become evident more quickly. Doctors will still manage the last mile, interpreting the analysis generated through AI. This human in the loop approach will remain critical during this phase. As powerful as AI will become, it still will not match humans on understanding how to integrate treatment with values. When will a family sacrifice effectiveness of treatment to prolong quality of life? When two life-threatening illnesses compete, which will the patient want treated first? This will be an important learning phase, as humans understand the limits of AI.”

Charles Zheng, a researcher into machine learning and AI with the National Institute of Mental Health, commented, “In the year 2030, I expect AI will be more powerful than they currently are, but not yet at human level for most tasks. A patient checking into a hospital will be directed to the correct desk by a robot. The receptionist will be aided by software that listens to their conversation with the patient and automatically populates the information fields without needing the receptionist to type the information. Another program cross-references the database in the cloud to check for errors. The patient’s medical images would first be automatically labeled by a computer program before being sent to a radiologist.”

A professor of computer science expert in systems who works at a major U.S. technological university wrote, “By 2030 … physiological monitoring devices (e.g., lower heartbeats and decreasing blood sugar levels) could indicate lower levels of physical alertness. Smart apps could detect those decaying physical conditions (at an individual level) and suggest improvements to the user (e.g., taking a coffee break with a snack). Granted, there may be large-scale problems caused by AI and robots, e.g., massive unemployment, but the recent trends seem to indicate small improvements such as health monitor apps outlined above, would be more easily developed and deployed successfully.”

Kenneth Cukier, author and senior editor at The Economist, commented, “AI will be making more decisions in life, and some people will be uneasy with that. But these are decisions that are more effectively done by machines, such as assessing insurance risk, the propensity to repay a loan or to survive a disease. A good example is health care: Algorithms, not doctors, will be diagnosing many diseases, even if human doctors are still ‘in the loop.’ The benefit is that healthcare can reach down to populations that are today underserved: the poor and rural worldwide.”

Gabor Melli, senior director of engineering for AI and machine learning for Sony PlayStation, responded, “My hope is that by 2030 most of humanity will have ready access to health care and education through digital agents.”

Kate Eddens, research scientist at the Indiana University Network Science Institute, responded, “There is an opportunity for AI to enhance human ability to gain critical information in decision-making, particularly in the world of health care. There are so many moving parts and components to understanding health care needs and deciding how to proceed in treatment and prevention. With AI, we can program algorithms to help refine those decision-making processes, but only when we train the AI tools on human thinking, a tremendous amount of real data and actual circumstances and experiences. There are some contexts in which human bias and emotion can be detrimental to decision-making. For example, breast cancer is over-diagnosed and over-treated. While mammography guidelines have changed to try to reflect this reality, strong human emotion powered by anecdotal experience leaves some practitioners unwilling to change their recommendations based on evidence and advocacy groups reluctant to change their stance based on public outcry. Perhaps there is an opportunity for AI to calculate a more specific risk for each individual person, allowing for a tailored experience amid the broader guidelines. If screening guidelines change to ‘recommended based on individual risk,’ it lessens the burden on both the care provider and the individual. People still have to make their own decisions, but they may be able to do so with more information and a greater understanding of their own risk and reward. This is such a low-tech and simple example of AI, but one in which AI can – importantly – supplement human decision-making without replacing it.”

Angelique Hedberg, senior corporate strategy analyst at RTI International, said, “The greatest advancements and achievements will be in health – physical, mental and environmental. The improvements will have positive trickle-down impacts on education, work, gender equality and reduced inequality. AI will redefine our understanding of health care, optimizing existing processes while simultaneously redefining how we answer questions about what it means to be healthy, bringing care earlier in the cycle due to advances in diagnostics and assessment, i.e. in the future preventative care identifies and initiates treatment for illness before symptoms present. The advances will not be constrained to humans; they will include animals and the built environment. This will happen across the disease spectrum. Advanced ‘omics’ will empower better decisions. There will be a push and a pull by the market and individuals. This is a global story, with fragmented and discontinuous moves being played out over the next decade as we witness wildly different experiments in health across the globe. This future is full of hope for individuals and communities. My greatest hope is for disabled individuals and those currently living with disabilities. I’m excited for communities and interpersonal connections as the work in this future will allow for and increase the value of the human-to-human experiences. Progress is often only seen in retrospect; I hope the speed of exponential change allows everyone to enjoy the benefits of these collaborations.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “In health care, I hope AI will improve the diagnostics and reduce the number of errors. Doctors cannot recall all the possibilities; they have problems correlating all the symptoms and recognizing the patterns. I hope that in the future patients will be interviewed by computers, which will correlate the described symptoms with results of tests. I hope that with the further development of AI and cognitive computing there will be fewer errors in reports of medical imaging and diagnosis.”

Eduardo Vendrell, a computer science professor at the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain, responded, “In the field of health, many solutions will appear that will allow us to anticipate current problems and discover other risk situations more efficiently. The use of personal gadgets and other domestic devices will allow interacting directly with professionals and institutions in any situation of danger or deterioration of our health.”

…I foresee an increased development of mobile (remote) 24/7 health care services and personalized medicine thanks to AI and human-machine collaboration applied to the field. Monica Murero Monica Murero

Monica Murero, director of the E-Life International Institute and associate professor in sociology of new technology at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy, commented, “In health care, I foresee positive outcomes in terms of reducing human mistakes, that are currently still creating several failures. Also, I foresee an increased development of mobile (remote) 24/7 health care services and personalized medicine thanks to AI and human-machine collaboration applied to the field.”

Uta Russmann, professor in the department of communication at FHWien der WKW University of Applied Sciences for Management & Communication, said, “Life expectancy is increasing (globally) and human-machine/AI collaboration will help older people to manage their life on their own by taking care of them, helping them in the household (taking down the garbage, cleaning up, etc.) as well as keeping them company – just like cats and dogs do, but it will be a much more ‘advanced’ interaction.”

Lindsey Andersen, an activist at the intersection of human rights and technology for Freedom House and Internews, now doing graduate research at Princeton University, commented, “AI will augment human intelligence. In health care, for example, it will help doctors more accurately diagnose and treat disease and continually monitor high-risk patients through internet-connected medical devices. It will bring health care to places with a shortage of doctors, allowing health care workers to diagnose and treat disease anywhere in the world and to prevent disease outbreaks before they start.”

An anonymous respondent said, “The most important place where AI will make a difference is in health care of the elderly. Personal assistants are already capable of many important tasks to help make sure older adults stay in their home. But adding to that emotion detection, more in-depth health monitoring and AI-based diagnostics will surely enhance the power of these tools.”

Denis Parra, assistant professor of computer science in the school of engineering at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile Chile, commented, “I live in a developing country. Whilst there are potential negative aspects of AI (loss of jobs), for people with disabilities AI technology could improve their lives. I imagine people entering a government office or health facility where people with eye- or ear-related disabilities could effortlessly interact to state their necessities and resolve their information needs.”

Timothy Leffel, research scientist, National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, said, “Formulaic transactions and interactions are particularly ripe for automation. This can be good in cases where human error can cause problems, e.g., for well-understood diagnostic medical testing.”

Jean-Daniel Fekete, researcher in human-computer interaction at INRIA in France, said, “Humans and machines will integrate more, improving health through monitoring and easing via machine control. Personal data will then become even more revealing and intrusive and should be kept under personal control.”

Joe Whittaker, a former professor of sciences and associate director of the NASA GESTAR program, now associate provost at Jackson State University, responded, “My hope is that AI/human-machine interface will become commonplace especially in the academic research and health care arena. I envision significant advances in brain-machine interface to facilitate mitigation of physical and mental challenges. Similar uses in robotics should also be used to assist the elderly.”

James Gannon, global head of eCompliance for emerging technology, cloud and cybersecurity at Novartis, responded, “AI will increase the speed and availability to develop drugs and therapies for orphan indications. AI will assist in general lifestyle and health care management for the average person.”

Jay Sanders, president and CEO of the Global Telemedicine Group, responded, “AI will bring collective expertise to the decision point, and in health care, bringing collective expertise to the bedside will save many lives now lost by individual medical errors.”

Geoff Arnold, CTO for the Verizon Smart Communities organization, said, “One of the most important trends over the next 12 years is the aging population and the high costs of providing them with care and mobility. AI will provide better data-driven diagnoses of medical and cognitive issues and it will facilitate affordable AV-based paratransit for the less mobile. It will support, not replace, human care-givers.”

John Lazzaro, retired professor of electrical engineering and computer science, University of California, Berkeley, commented, “When I visit my primary care physician today, she spends a fair amount time typing into an EMS application as she’s talking to me. In this sense, the computer has already arrived in the clinic. An AI system that frees her from this clerical task – that can listen and watch and distill the doctor-patient interaction into actionable data – would be an improvement. A more-advanced AI system would be able to form a ‘second opinion’ based on this data as the appointment unfolds, discreetly advising the doctor via a wearable. The end goal is a reduction in the number of ‘false starts’ in-patient diagnosis. If you’ve read Lisa Sander’s columns in the New York Times, where she traces the arc of difficult diagnoses, you understand the real clinical problem that this system addresses.”

Steve Farnsworth, chief marketing officer at Demand Marketing, commented, “Machine learning and AI offer tools to turn that into actionable data. One project using machine learning and big data already was able to predict SIDS correctly 94% of the time. Imagine AI looking at diagnostics, tests and successful treatments of millions of medical cases. We would instantly have a deluge of new cures and know the most effective treatment options using only the data, medicines and therapies we have now. The jump in quality health care alone for humans is staggering. This is only one application for AI.”

Daniel Siewiorek, a professor with the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, predicted, “AI will enable systems to perform labor-intensive activities where there are labor shortages. For example, consider recovery from an injury. There is a shortage of physical therapists to monitor and correct exercises. AI would enable a virtual coach to monitor, correct and encourage a patient. Virtual coaches could take on the persona of a human companion or a pet, allowing the aging population to live independently.”

Joly MacFie, president of the Internet Society, New York chapter, commented, “AI will have many benefits for people with disabilities and health issues. Much of the aging baby boomer generation will be in this category.”

The overall hopes for the future of health care are tempered by concerns that there will continue to be inequities in access to the best care and worries that private health data may be used to limit people’s options.

Craig Burdett, a respondent who provided no identifying details, wrote, “While most AI will probably be a positive benefit, the possible darker side of AI could lead to a loss of agency for some. For example, in a health care setting an increasing use of AI could allow wealthier patients access to significantly-more-advanced diagnosis agents. When coupled with a supportive care team, these patients could receive better treatment and a greater range of treatment options. Conversely, less-affluent patients may be relegated to automated diagnoses and treatment plants with little opportunity for interaction to explore alternative treatments. AI could, effectively, manage long-term health care costs by offering lesser treatment (and sub-optimal recovery rates) to individuals perceived to have a lower status. Consider two patients with diabetes. One patient, upon diagnosis, modifies their eating and exercise patterns (borne out by embedded diagnostic tools) and would benefit from more advanced treatment. The second patient fails to modify their behaviour resulting in substantial ongoing treatment that could be avoided by simple lifestyle choices. An AI could subjectively evaluate that the patient has little interest in their own health and withhold more expensive treatment options leading to a shorter lifespan and an overall cost saving.”

Sumandra Majee, an architect at F5 Networks Inc., said, “AI, deep learning, etc., will become more a part of daily life in advanced countries. This will potentially widen the gap between technology-savvy people and economically well-to-do folks and the folks with limited access to technology. However, I am hopeful that in the field of healthcare, especially when it comes to diagnosis, AI will significantly augment the field, allowing doctors to do a far better job. Many of the routines aspects of checkups can be done via technology. There is no reason an expert human has to be involved in basic A/B testing to reach a conclusion. Machines can be implemented for those tasks and human doctors should only do the critical parts. I do see AI playing a negative role in education, where students may not often actually do the hard work of learning through experience. It might actually make the overall population dumber.”

Timothy Graham, a postdoctoral research fellow in sociology and computer science at Australian National University, commented, “In health care, we see current systems already under heavy criticism (e.g., the My Health Record system in Australia, or the NHS Digital program), because they are nudging citizens into using the system through an ‘opt-out’ mechanism and there are concerns that those who do not opt out may be profiled, targeted and/or denied access to services based on their own data.”

Valarie Bell, a computational social scientist at the University of North Texas, commented, “Let’s say medical diagnosis is taken over by machines, computers and robotics – how will stressful prognoses be communicated? Will a hologram or a computer deliver ‘the bad news’ instead of a physician? Given the health care industry’s inherent profit motives it would be easy for them to justify how much cheaper it would be to simply have devices diagnose, prescribe treatment and do patient care, without concern for the importance of human touch and interactions. Thus, we may devolve into a health care system where the rich actually get a human doctor while everyone else, or at least the poor and uninsured, get the robot.”

The following one-liners from anonymous respondents also tie into the future of health care:

“People could use a virtual doctor for information and first-level response; so much time could be saved!”

“The merging of data science and AI could benefit strategic planning of the future research and development efforts that should be undertaken by humanity.”

“I see economic efficiencies and advances in preventive medicine and treatment of disease, however, I do think there will be plenty of adverse consequences.”

“Data can reduce errors – for instance, in clearly taking into account the side effects of a medicine or use of multiple medications.”

“Human-machine/AI collaboration will reduce barriers to proper medical treatment through better recordkeeping and preventative measures.”

“AI can take over many of the administrative tasks current doctors must do, allowing them more time with patients.”

The future of education: High hopes for advances in adaptive and individualized learning, but some doubt that there will be any significant progress and worry over digital divide

Over the past few decades, experts and amateurs alike have predicted the internet would have large-scale impacts on education. Many of these hopes have not lived up to the hype. Some respondents to this canvassing said the advent of AI could foster those changes. They expect to see more options for affordable adaptive and individualized learning solutions, including digital agents or “AI assistants” that work to enhance student-teacher interactions and effectiveness.

Barry Chudakov, founder and principal of Sertain Research and author of “Metalifestream,” commented, “In the learning environment, AI has the potential to finally demolish the retain-to-know learning (and regurgitate) model. Knowing is no longer retaining – machine intelligence does that; it is making significant connections. Connect and assimilate becomes the new learning model.”

Lou Gross, professor of mathematical ecology and expert in grid computing, spatial optimization and modeling of ecological systems at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, said, “I see AI as assisting in individualized instruction and training in ways that are currently unavailable or too expensive. There are hosts of school systems around the world that have some technology but are using it in very constrained ways. AI use will provide better adaptive learning and help achieve a teacher’s goal of personalizing education based on each student’s progress.”

Guy Levi, chief innovation officer for the Center for Educational Technology, based in Israel, wrote, “In the field of education AI will promote personalization, which almost by definition promotes motivation. The ability to move learning forward all the time by a personal AI assistant, which opens the learning to new paths, is a game changer. The AI assistants will also communicate with one another and will orchestrate teamwork and collaboration. The AI assistants will also be able to manage diverse methods of learning, such as productive failure, teach-back and other innovating pedagogies.”

Micah Altman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and head scientist in the program on information science at MIT Libraries, wrote, “These technologies will help to adapt learning (and other environments) to the needs of each individual by translating language, aiding memory and providing us feedback on our own emotional and cognitive state and on the environment. We all need adaptation; each of us, practically every day, is at times tired, distracted, fuzzy-headed or nervous, which limits how we learn, how we understand and how we interact with others. AI has the potential to assist us to engage with the world better – even when conditions are not ideal – and to better understand ourselves.”

Shigeki Goto, Asia-Pacific internet pioneer, Internet Hall of Fame member and a professor of computer science at Waseda University, commented, “AI is already applied to personalized medicine for an individual patient. Similarly, it will be applied to learning or education to realize ‘personalized learning’ or tailored education. We need to collect data which covers both of successful learning and failure experiences, because machine learning requires positive and negative data.”

Andreas Kirsch, fellow at Newspeak House, formerly with Google and DeepMind in Zurich and London, wrote, “Higher education outside of normal academia will benefit further from AI progress and empower more people with access to knowledge and information. For example, question-and-answer systems will improve. Tech similar to Google Translate and WaveNet will lower the barrier of knowledge acquisition for non-English speakers. At the same time, child labor will be reduced because robots will be able to perform the tasks far cheaper and faster, forcing governments in Asia to find real solutions.”

Kristin Jenkins, executive director of BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium, said, “One of the benefits of this technology is the potential to have really effective, responsive education resources. We know that students benefit from immediate feedback and the opportunity to practice applying new information repeatedly to enhance mastery. AI systems are perfect for analyzing students’ progress, providing more practice where needed and moving on to new material when students are ready. This allows time with instructors to focus on more-complex learning, including 21st-century skills.”

Mike Meyer, chief information officer at Honolulu Community College, commented, “Adult education availability and relevance will undergo a major transformation. Community colleges will become more directly community centers for both occupational training and greatly expanded optional liberal arts, art, crafts and hobbies. Classes will, by 2030, be predominantly augmented-reality-based, with a full mix of physical and virtual students in classes presented in virtual classrooms by national and international universities and organizations. The driving need will be expansion of knowledge for personal interest and enjoyment as universal basic income or equity will replace the automated tasks that had pr