Ask A Genius 1153: 2065
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/11/09
*Interview conducted October/November, 2024.*
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about 2065?
Rick Rosner: So yesterday, we were talking about 2045. In talking about it, I kind of got the idea that it’s gonna be much like now, with all the weirdness being fairly superficial. 20 years after that, down the road, the weirdness will be more deeply penetrating. There will be all sorts of conscious non-organic entities. There will be humans merged with AIs.
The beginning, it’ll be rich people—maybe rich tech people—either trying to merge themselves with bio-circuitry or some setups that increase their brain power, their information processing ability, or help fix their failing old brains. Or they’ll be paying people to be experimental subjects, the way Musk is doing. If he pays people, but he won’t stick a chip in his head until he sees that it works in other people. He says he has it working in other people to some extent. His ideal subjects now are people who can’t do anything.
Well, because they’re paralyzed. So they need something in their head to help them operate stuff, if that’s feasible. People who are paralyzed are probably more amenable to taking the risk of having hardware installed in their heads. By 2065, court cases will start popping up about the rich guy who wants to marry his robot girlfriend, or the rich guy whose brain is failing and still wants to maintain all of his “self,” or her “self,” by claiming they’re still him or her, even though they’re mostly artificial circuitry at this point.
Medicine—well, it will take a long time to know whether longevity medicine works because you have to live long enough to see if it helps you fight off dying. So 2065 is only 40-some years from now. If you’ve got a bunch of boomers who are over 100 or near 100—no, in 2065, the youngest boomer would be 101—if you’ve got a bunch of them who still can walk around, think, and have the bodies and minds of 80-year-olds, then that’ll be fairly convincing proof that longevity medicine is starting to work.
The devices in 2045, they’re a little bit robot-y. Your cell phone might have little legs so it can hold on to you. In 2065, people’s devices are gonna be a lot more like little robots. Some of them might come in whimsical shapes. In my novel, they start selling pocket stars, which are little Barbie-sized robots who have the personalities of the stars they look like.
So if you wanted a little Taylor Swift to hang out with and be your friend, and she’s 12 inches tall, and she says Taylor Swift-y things, and maybe she’s your assistant in some way, I can see people wanting that. We’ll start to see the beginning of helper armies, robot armies. The falling birth rates mean we’ll have a ton of older people. They’ll be tended to by robots. It’ll be the market for robots, and robots will be competent enough. Right now, our only household robot is a vacuum cleaner.
It seems to work, and people seem to like it. By 2065, robots will do a lot of other shit, and people will feel about the first household robots the way they feel about self-driving cars—liking it, but wary because of all the fuck-ups that will happen. I’m guessing that more automation, tech disruption, and helper robots will obviously fuck the hell out of the workplace, but they may also disrupt other systems.
Where in 2045, traditional couple structures will still be in place, and that’ll remain true in 2065, but maybe only for 85% to 88% of all people in relationships, as opposed to 98% in 2045. The extra 12% will be in non-traditional relationships, maybe facilitated by AI and robots. I’m talking out of my ass at this point.
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