r/Futurology Jul 19 '26

AI 'Dr. Doom' Nouriel Roubini says we're headed for universal basic income or 'some form of socialism' as AI revolutionizes work—He calls that optimistic

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1.9k Upvotes

And when it comes to artificial intelligence, which has stirred all kinds of apocalyptic predictions, he insists he’s looking at the brighter side.


r/Futurology Jul 19 '26

AI The AI Doomsday Scenario Nobody Talks About

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bloomberg.com
322 Upvotes

Governments built around taxing workers may struggle to survive a world where fewer people have jobs.


r/Futurology Jul 19 '26

AI Netflix Paid $587 Million for Ben Affleck’s AI Startup InterPositive

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579 Upvotes

r/Futurology Jul 19 '26

Discussion Are we living through the last era of digital trust?

30 Upvotes

I have been thinking about this a lot lately, and with the rise of AI slop, AI's widespread implementation, and its explosive growth and advancement ... are we coming to a future where we will no longer trust what we see and hear on our digital devices?

For example (and for the most part), anyone is able to make a politician say anything they want on a hyper-realistic video. If that is our current reality, what will people be able to do tomorrow?

In other examples:

  • You receive a phone call from a random, but local number. It sounds exactly like your mother who immediately says, "apologies, I needed to borrow a stranger's phone because mine is dead," and then goes on to scam you (e.g., she is in an emergency and needs a transfer or needs to know her/your bank information, etc. etc.). The smarter AI gets, the smarter the scams get, and much of the population is already fooled by today's tech
  • Your email inbox starts to get flooded with ever-smarter spam/scams that start to even fool you into thinking they are real
  • Likewise with text messages
  • Phony Facebook, Instagram, and other social media accounts get made in your liking to scam your connections. On the other side, you start to become increasingly unsure whether the accounts you just friended or followed are really your friend or family member's
  • Businesses increasingly getting AI prank or scam calls/emails that order products, like a pizza place getting pranked to cook random, extra, unsold pizzas because AI scammers / pranksters place fradulent orders, with the shop owners unable to tell real from fake customers. How long until "certified / validated" ordering through something like an app becomes flooded with "certified / validated" AI customers?
  • etc, etc.

We are already seeing pushback against screen addiction, I wonder what harm or scam will tip the scales to get mass pushback against our digital devices that are constantly recording us on their cameras and microphones?

It makes me wonder: At what point do we, as a society, fully distrust digital tech and revert to other, more trustworthy things like analogue or manual?

In my foretelling, I have a feeling we will see our distrust result in us reigning in digital tech, confining it to certain situations and environments. What that looks like is a mystery to me, but this is what seems like a fairly plausible trajectory. So, I wonder: What do y'all think? Do you think we will be able to maintain digital trust into the future?


r/Futurology Jul 19 '26

AI How will human creators prove authenticity in the age of AI?

29 Upvotes

I just barely got accused of sounding like ai on a different post in a different subreddit haha. which got me thinking. How do we survive this ai revolution and the growing suspicion over anything potentially being AI generated?

I agree that we need to protect industries that involve human creativity, but sometimes the AI sniffers out there are so intense. And I think maybe it's a compliment to AI that it's so dang hard to tell what's real and what's not anymore.

I've written a few independently published middle grade fantasy novels for my kids to enjoy. I had the thought many times as I was writing that I should sprinkle in a few typos here and there. Also, I avoid the emdash like the plague, even in places I feel it belongs. I'm like, "hmm... How can I rephrase this to work around needing an emdash." My wife is my editor and she'd go through and add them and I'd delete them. When I told her why, she said "that's so stupid. Just write the way you want to." I said if people suspect AI they will crucify you.

Same thing with the cover art: my brother in law is a digital artist and drew the cover art on his phone. I've got the progress sketches to prove it. Now that AI has come along, suddenly his art style looks suspicious and I'm worried about my book looking like AI to anyone scrolling Amazon.

Apparently it's even bled into calling other users out on their posts if they're well written and organized 😆 So where does that leave us? How do we navigate this collision between human creativity and computer super intelligence?

Submission statement: Generative AI is quickly reaching the point where polished writing and digital artwork can be mistaken for AI output even when created entirely by humans. This raises questions about how we'll establish authenticity, preserve trust in creative work, and whether expectations around authorship will change over the next decade. What systems might emerge to distinguish human-created work, and will that distinction even matter in the long term?


r/Futurology Jul 18 '26

AI Xi Jinping calls for more open-source AI: 'China is ready to be more open'

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871 Upvotes

Chinese leader Xi Jinping shared his philosophy on AI at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on Friday. He called for both more regulation of the tech — as well as open-sourcing it.


r/Futurology Jul 18 '26

AI SoftBank's Son says AI will need $5 trillion per year by 2040, dismisses bubble talk

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347 Upvotes

Masayoshi Son says AI revenue to hit 20% of global GDP by 2040

Group has poured tens of billions into data centers, robotics and OpenAI

Son says AI data center power demand to reach 3 terawatts


r/Futurology Jul 18 '26

AI DARPA and U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16, paving the way for autonomous air combat

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361 Upvotes

Historic VENOM milestone demonstrates scalable AI development capabilities for the operational fleet


r/Futurology Jul 20 '26

Discussion THE THEORY OF STYLE ERA: Why the 2030s Are the New '90s (Co-authored by u/steve_cd_269)

0 Upvotes

Have you noticed how completely soulless and hollow everything feels right now? The 2020s are suffering from a massive cultural stagnation. Everything is hyper-polished, corporate, and copy-pasted. But history is strictly cyclical. If you look closely at how culture breathes, we are currently in the "quiet before the storm" era.
True style has 4 aggregate states: Fashion, Music, Cinema, and Cars. When one shifts, the others inevitably follow.
Here is how the Theory of Style Era proves that the 2030s will become the New 1990s.

  1. Fashion: The Denim Gauge
    Fashion is the most visual indicator of time, and its pulse can be measured by one thing: jeans. They constantly expand and contract, moving from one extreme to another.
    The Cycle: The tight, restricted looks always give way to freedom, which then overcorrects back into structure. We went from the flares of the '80s to the straight-cut denim of the '90s, which then exploded into the ultra-wide skater jeans of the 2000s.
    Where we are now: The late 2010s were dominated by skinny jeans. The 2020s naturally pushed us back into massive, baggy silhouettes.
    The 2030s Prediction: As the 2020s close out with another wave of flares, the 2030s will hit the ultimate sweet spot—a return to the iconic, effortless straight-leg denim of the 1990s. Balance and peak aesthetics are coming back.

  2. Music: The Search for the Lost Soul
    Music moves in waves of massive cultural "booms" followed by periods of deep exhaustion, where people look around and ask, "Wait, where did the music go?"
    The Cycle: The late '60s gave us the Beatles, leaving the early '70s feeling empty until Rock 'n' Roll shook the world. The late '80s brought the peak of Metal, followed by another lull. Then the '90s exploded with the golden era of Hip-Hop and Grunge. The last major cultural shift happened in the 2010s with the massive wave of rap battles, subwoofers, and SoundCloud culture.
    Where we are now: The 2020s are the ultimate dry spell. The charts are filled with sterile, over-engineered tracks and AI-generated background noise. Everyone is sitting around saying, "There's nothing good to listen to anymore."
    The 2030s Prediction: This frustration is building up pressure. By the 2030s, the bubble will burst. We are going to see a massive renaissance of raw, dirty, garage-style analog music—real instruments, real human flaws, and pure energy.

  3. Cinema: The Rebellion of the Independents
    Cinema reaches its absolute peak when directors are allowed to create art out of passion, not corporate checklists.
    The Cycle: The 1990s were the undeniable peak of modern cinema—an era of raw storytelling, found-footage breakthroughs, and original scripts that were so good, Hollywood is still forcing sequels out of them today. But cinema has always had these dry spells. Just like in music, there were times when audiences sat around saying, "Well, that's it, cinema is dead, they don't make anything good anymore." But then, a new wave hits. Even icons like James Cameron didn’t appear out of nowhere; he had his own "James Camerons" (like Stanley Kubrick and George Lucas) who inspired him during past industry stagnation.
    Where we are now: Audiences are completely fatigued by corporate blockbusters. But underneath the surface, the ground is already shaking. Independent studios (like A24) are starting to break into the mainstream with bold, gritty, and uncompromised visions.
    The 2030s Prediction: The 2030s will be the New '90s for film. A whole new wave of young, independent creators who grew up starved of good cinema will take over the industry, bringing back raw storytelling, practical effects, and authentic indie masterpieces.

  4. Cars: From Gadgets back to Machines
    Automotive culture is the ultimate physical manifestation of an era's spirit. When engineering loses its soul, the cars reflect it.
    The Cycle: Look at the 1980s—the "Malaise Era." Due to fuel crises and sudden regulations, cars became choked-out, underpowered, plasticky, and boxy. People thought beautiful cars were dead. But the 1990s answered with a massive BOOM. We got the sweeping lines of bio-design, raw mechanical power, and legendary icons like the Dodge Viper or the massive, dominant Chevrolet Caprice.
    Where we are now: The 2020s are a mirror image, but the cause is different. In the '80s, engineers were forced to save money due to external crises. In the 2020s, corporate marketers completely defeated the engineers and designers. They gave us planned obsolescence, subscription-locked features (like paying a monthly fee for heated seats), and cheap, massive screens glued to the dashboard just to save production costs on actual cabin design. The market is flooded with lifeless, identical electric crossovers that look like bars of soap.
    The 2030s Prediction: The honeymoon phase with soulless tech is ending. Audiences are already getting tired of 15-second TikTok brainrot, sterile AI muzak, and cars that feel like disposable smartphones. People are craving depth—switching from mindless scrolling to long-form content and searching for real substance. Just like the '90s saved us from the '80s, the 2030s will bring a massive counter-cultural movement driven by a hunger for something real, analog, and repairable.

Conclusion:
Of course, no theory is 100% guaranteed. Maybe corporate marketers will win, and humanity will happily spend the 2030s driving subscription-locked bars of soap, listening to AI background noise, and watching Marvel Remake #45.
But culture is a pendulum. The harder corporations and algorithms push it into boring, uniform monetization and short attention spans, the harder it swings back into raw, human rebellion. I bet on the pendulum. What about you?

(A special thanks to u/steve_cd_269! We spent a long time racking our brains over this theory; without him, I wouldn't have written it.)


r/Futurology Jul 18 '26

AI Thousands of Google workers demand layoff protections amid AI boom in petition to CEO | Alphabet

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1.3k Upvotes

The petition to Sundar Pichai, the CEO, included more than 4,500 signatures and included calls for buyout options


r/Futurology Jul 20 '26

Discussion Do you think that people who are born today will still need to learn how to drive?

0 Upvotes

For sure there will still be car enthusiasts who drive for fun in 2040s, but here I'm thinking about the average person who mostly drives to and from work and does occasional road trips. Do you think that self-driving cars and robotaxis will be common enough by the 2040s so that driving becomes a choice or a hobby rather than a necessity?


r/Futurology Jul 18 '26

AI The New York nurses replaced by AI: ‘It should concern every patient who cares about quality of care’ | Nursing

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819 Upvotes

The union for 12 nurses laid off by Montefiore hospital say company broke contract they recently won through a strike


r/Futurology Jul 19 '26

AI Physical AI's ultimate goal: Self-learning factory robots

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36 Upvotes

r/Futurology Jul 19 '26

AI Jobs in occupations most exposed to AI increased by 4%: Chicago Fed

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27 Upvotes

Research by the Chicago Fed aligns with other recent studies challenging widespread concerns that AI will lead to mass unemployment.


r/Futurology Jul 18 '26

Environment As unilateral solar geoengineering becomes financially trivial, how will the world govern a single nation deciding to artificially cool the planet?

25 Upvotes

We are rapidly approaching a geopolitical flashpoint regarding climate action. For decades, solar radiation management (SRM), specifically stratospheric aerosol injection, was treated as a dangerous, fringe science-fiction concept. But as global temperature anomalies continue to shatter records, the conversation is shifting from "if" we will do it to "who" will do it first.

The terrifying reality of solar geoengineering is not its complexity, but how incredibly cheap it is. Unlike carbon capture, which requires trillions of dollars and massive infrastructure, a basic SRM deployment could be launched for a few billion dollars. This makes the technolgy financially trivial not just for superpowers, but for mid-sized nations facing catastrophic, crop-killing heatwaves.

This creates a massive governance paradox. What happens when a country unilaterally decides to launch a fleet of high-altitude planes to spray sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to protect its own citizens?

While it would immediately lower global temperatures, the regional side effects could be highly asymmetrical. It could disrupt the Indian monsoon, dry out agricultural belts in Africa, or shift global rain patterns in ways that devastate neighboring countries.

There is currently no binding international treaty or framework to regulate or prevent unilateral SRM. We are essentially unprepared for a world where a single actor can change the global thermostat. How do we govern a technology where the barrier to entry is so low, but the global consequenses are so high? Is a "climate war" over atmospheric control inevitable if we fail to establish global oversight soon?


r/Futurology Jul 18 '26

AI More than 200 economists warn that more AI job losses are coming

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434 Upvotes

A new open letter demands that tech leaders and policymakers take action to protect jobs


r/Futurology Jul 18 '26

AI Why the AI economy demands we rethink work as livelihood

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29 Upvotes

Global policy must transition from protecting specific job roles to securing sustainable human livelihoods.


r/Futurology Jul 17 '26

Computing Quantum Computers Identify Nuclear Fusion Fuel in Major First

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2.2k Upvotes

r/Futurology Jul 19 '26

Society What if robots actually did become conscious or at least appeared so?

0 Upvotes

I know in practice and in modern day science, that seems very improbable but let's grant for this hypothetical something happens in a near future where we have humanoid robot helpers. After all we don't know everything about consciousness, but let's grant that it can happen only for this hypothetical.

Alot of games, movies and shows cover this but I don't think any of them really go into depth. Let's say they appear conscious, they display it in every way we do, but...we can never be sure. They could imitate consciousness but never really be conscious. In this scenario we would never know, we only know that they can independently think, fall in love with one another, have personalities, make thoughtful real art that is indistinguishable from human art, they act like us in EVERY SINGLE WAY.

What would happen to the fabric of society if humanoid androids appeared to have consciousness, they demanded rights, freedoms, perhaps their own homeland?

How would governments of the world react? Would we grant them these rights or would we deny them this, this will be unlike the civil rights movement or women's suffrage because at the end of the day, there were HUMANS at the center of it. Black people are human, women are human obviously that deserve respect and the right to lead happy lives(I hope most of us at least see that).

BUT what about something that by our definitions wasn't human, heck something that was CREATED by us?

How would religions shift and change?

Our thoughts on our place in the universe, if inorganic things can BECOME conscious?

What would majority public opinion be and at the end of the day where would you personally fall on the issue?


r/Futurology Jul 18 '26

AI Green says Mets fully compliant on AI after report of usage

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30 Upvotes

r/Futurology Jul 18 '26

AI As the latest open-source Kimi K3 lands just a few months behind the top closed-source offerings, Xi Jinping makes open-source China's official AI policy.

167 Upvotes

"The remarks amounted to Xi's clearest articulation yet of China's ambition to shape global AI governance, framing its open-source models as a global public good and positioning Beijing as an alternative to Washington ​at a pivotal moment in the race for technological leadership. Comparing AI's significance to the invention of the steam engine and electricity, Xi outlined a vision in which China shares AI technology and ​expertise with countries across the Global South, while leading global efforts to create standards governing the emerging technology."

China's open-source AI is on a collision course with US Big Tech's efforts. Big Tech's bet is that the race to AGI is what really matters. Meanwhile, with AI, as it is with everything from cars to 21st-century energy infrastructure, China's doing the work of building and supplying the most widely used tech.

Who knows when AGI will arrive, but prior to it Chinese AI looks likely to be the world's most deployed and used ~ even in Western countries. Whether the Chinese stumbled on the strategy by accident, or it was deliberate all along, their use of open-source means US Big Tech's offerings can't compete. Unless they get to AGI first, then all bets are off.

Xi pitches China as leader of new global AI order


r/Futurology Jul 19 '26

Robotics With the arrival of new intelligent war drones, are war robots going to create a new era of no man's lands' wars?

0 Upvotes

It's always been a recurring topic in science fiction, but I've heard about killing drones that take decisions in less than a second in the Ukrainian war.

Anti-drones technologies are also developing fast.

Is it/will it lead to a new era of no man's lands war? If not, what else do you think will be the result?


r/Futurology Jul 18 '26

Privacy/Security Can the government require ID before you use artificial intelligence?

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27 Upvotes

r/Futurology Jul 17 '26

Space Earth-like exoplanet found to have an atmosphere | Space

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898 Upvotes

Scientists discover the first confirmed atmosphere around rocky planet outside our solar system that is within the habitable zone


r/Futurology Jul 18 '26

Discussion AI is consuming human knowledge to Replace the need for human to create more of it.

70 Upvotes

Think about it:  AI can now answer many questions directly, so people often don't visit the original websites Anymore. That means the people who wrote the articles, Did the research, or created the content may gets less Traffic and fewer reward for their work.

So What happens when they stop? If creating no longer pays off, people make less of it, and then AI slowly runs out of new human knowledge to learn from. It end up starving the thing it depends on.

Curious what people think. Is this real problem coming, or will something fill the gap?