AI teachers and cybernetics - what could the world look like in 2050?

2 hours ago

Laura CressTechnology reporter

CBS Photo Archive

The 2000 film Minority Report, set in 2054, imagined potential future technologies like controlling computers by making hand gestures

The last 25 years has seen some mind-bending technological changes.

At the start of the century, most computers connected to the internet with noisy dial-up connections, Netflix was an online DVD rental company, and the vast majority of people hadn't even heard of a smartphone.

Fast forward two and a half decades, and innovations in AI, robotics and much else besides are emerging at an incredible rate.

So we decided to ask experts what the next 25 years could bring.

Here are their predictions for the technology we'll be using by 2050 - and how it could reshape our lives.

Merging humans and machines

Science fiction set in the 2050s is full of examples of humans using technological enhancements to feel fitter, happier and more productive.

In the 2000 hit game Deus Ex - set in 2052 - the player can inject themselves with tiny robots called "nanites".

These microscopic robots manipulate matter on atomic levels, giving superhuman abilities such as enhanced speed and the ability to see in the dark.

Eidos

In the video game Deus Ex, the protagonist - who enhances his abilities with augmentations - investigates a global conspiracy involving a terrorist group and secret societies

It sounds like something from the distant future, but nanotechnology - engineering at a scale of millionths of a millimetre - is already used in lots of everyday real-life tech.

In fact, it is powering the way you are reading these very words right now - every smartphone or computer is run by a central chip made up of billions of tiny transistors - electrical components built on a nanoscale to speed up data processing.

Professor Steven Bramwell at the London Centre for Nanotechnology told the BBC by 2050 we should expect the lines between machines, electronics and biology to be "significantly blurred".

That means we could see nanotechnology implants by then - but more to "monitor your health or aid communication" rather than to appear invisible, as in Deus Ex.

Medicine could also make common use of machines at a nanometre scale to "deliver drugs to exactly where they need to go", said Professor Bramwell.

Cybernetics professor Kevin Warwick is equally interested in studying augmentations, going one step further than most.

In 1998 he became the first human to have a microchip implanted into his nervous system, earning him the title "Captain Cyborg".

Professor Warwick believes by 2050, advancements in cybernetics - the science studying the links between natural and mechanical systems - could lead to trailblazing treatments for diseases.

Kevin Warwick

Professor Warwick has undertaken several pioneering experiments with the chip, including controlling a robot arm across the Atlantic Ocean using only his brain.

He predicts the use of "deep brain electronic stimulation" as a partial treatment for some conditions such as schizophrenia, rather than medicine.

He adds it is likely we'll see more cybernetic enhancements of the kind he has already trialled himself, so that "your brain and body can be in different places".

And what if we wanted to test out how the latest enhancement, or even new diet worked on our bodies, without any risks of experiencing the side effects?

Professor Roger Highfield, director of the Science Museum Group believes "digital twins" - virtual versions of a physical object, updated using real time data - could become a regular feature in our lives.

He imagines a world where each of us could have "thousands of simplified twins", using them to explore how "different medications or lifestyle changes affect your unique biology".

In other words, we could preview our futures before we live them.

The next generation of AI

Many technology firms, including Google and IBM, are currently locked in a multi-billion dollar race to revolutionise how we push fields like AI even further - in the form of quantum computing.

Quantum computers are machines which can do very complex calculations at incredibly fast speeds - for example, simulating molecular interactions to design new drugs faster.

In January 2025, Jensen Huang - boss of the leading chip firm Nvidia - said he believed "very useful" quantum computing would come in 20 years.

AI itself will undoubtedly continue to loom large in our society as we journey towards the half century mark.

Futurist and author Tracey Follows, who helped write a government White Paper on UK education in 2050, believes learning will take place across "virtual and physical realities" using AI teachers which "adjust in real time".

Rather than textbooks, she predicts children will use "immersive simulations".

Meanwhile, education will be less standardised, with each child's individual DNA or biometric data studied to understand how they learn best.

Traffic-free roads and lunar bases

Bloomberg

Waymo is a company developing autonomous driving technology

The writer Bill Douglass is well-versed in making compelling forecasts - in 2000 he won a $20,000 (£14,800) global futurist writing contest entitled "The World in 2050".

While he still agrees one of his original predictions - pilotless planes - will come true by 2050, he believes we will first see more advances in driverless cars, making traffic congestion "largely a thing of the past".

"Cars will drive so much closer to each other than they can now," he told the BBC. "And if one has to break, they all break.

"On private toll roads for autonomous vehicles, there's no reason traffic can't go up to 100 miles an hour or so - you'll see mortality from traffic accidents plummet."

Away from Earth, the space race will equally continue at speed, journalist and co-host of the Space Boffins podcast Sue Nelson told the BBC.

She says in 25 years, it is likely there will be a liveable base on the Moon; and some industries could be almost entirely based in space.

For example, she believes we may see pharmaceutical companies making the next generation of medicines in microgravity, i.e. on board an orbiting spacecraft.

This is because, she says, crystals grown this way rather than on Earth, are "often larger and better quality".

Sci-fi meets science

The film Minority Report, based on a novella by science fiction author Philip K Dick, was released in 2002 and set in the year 2054.

Three years before production began, director Steven Spielberg invited fifteen experts, including the founder of virtual reality Jaron Lanier, to a three-day summit to reflect on which technologies could possibly exist in the 2050s.

The discussions shaped many of the innovations featured in the film.

If the events of the Tom Cruise-starring science fiction thriller are to be believed, by the mid-2050s we will all be using gesture recognition (and fancy gloves) to swirl through videos on our transparent monitors, while policemen on jetpacks fight impending crime with the help of vomit-inducing batons.

Like much science fiction in the arts, the film paints a dystopian view of our future years.

It's a feeling which some experts have begun to echo in our current timeline - with some going even as far as to suggest that artificial intelligence could lead to the extinction of humanity.

Perhaps before getting too despondent about what may await us in 2050, it's worth returning to the words of Philip K Dick himself.

"I, for one, bet on science as helping us," he wrote in his 1968 personal autobiographical essay Self Portrait.

"Science has given us more lives than it has taken," he said.

"We must remember that."