In light of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, what will our "accelerating" world look like in 2031?

Metaverse has become an integrated industry that has changed the world of digital currencies.

The world is developing at a very rapid pace, especially in light of the fourth industrial revolution and the era of artificial intelligence, the Internet of things and virtual worlds, and who remembers 10 years ago; The shape of the world looks very different from what it was in 2011, but what about the next decade, how will the world look 10 years from now?

Will robots take over most of the tasks and take over human jobs over the next decade? Will we find new and innovative energy sources to help us fight climate change? Will we all live in virtual worlds?

Metavirus the future of the internet

If we believe what Mark Zuckerberg says, then we will all live, work and communicate in the “Metaverse” in 2031, a series of virtual worlds that will become the most important new technology platform since the emergence of the network. ) who seems so confident of what he says, that his company announced the creation of 10,000 new jobs in the European Union dedicated to building metavirs in Europe, as the company's platform recently reported .

And this is not only Zuckerberg’s opinion, but this belief is shared by a large number of technologists and corporate managers around the world, including Emma Riederstad, whose company “Warpin” is developing virtual reality programs for training, and she explains, “You will be able to do the shopping Meet your friends, work remotely with whoever you want, you will also be able to share your digital spaces, share music and art, and you will also be able to integrate digital elements into your physical world, making the world much more digital than it is today.”

You may, for example, be able to attend a football match when you cannot get to the stadium on the ground, through your AVATAR who will be on the field, sit in your seat and watch the match, analyze and discuss the match with your avatar Your neighbor on the field.

It sounds very exciting, but Dr. Nicola Millard, lead innovation partner at BT, is cautious, explaining: "Metaverse must first convince users that it's worth spending hours on cumbersome headphones or whatever. Other equipment metaverses may need.

And Dr. Millard also warns that finding your way in this new landscape may be difficult, especially if there are multiple "metaverses" run by different companies, in comments carried by the BBC recently.

And if it proves to be a powerful platform as Zuckerberg suggests, do we really want him or his company to run it? The question is particularly important because of the many and growing concerns about Facebook's impact on everything from democracy to adolescent mental health.

Energy future in 2031

During the World Conference on Climate Change - currently organized by the United Nations in the Scottish city of Glasgow and began its activities on October 31, and will continue until November 12 this year - the countries of the world focused on preparing a roadmap for the use of artificial intelligence to combat climate change, and reduce emissions. The most important of which is carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, and this means the search for new energy sources away from fossil fuels, which means a lot of innovations in this vital field for the future of humanity.

Dr James Dixon, a professor at Britain's Institute of Engineering and Technology, confirms to the BBC that "one of the next priorities will be to make homes more energy efficient."

"How are we going to heat the buildings? It's likely that much of this effort will be done by electric heat pumps," says Dixon.

And the UK government announced a few days ago incentives for homeowners to replace heat pumps with gas boilers. According to what the British organization "carbonbrief" recently reported.

But Dr. Dixon says, "Clean fuels will play a key role in these efforts, until we reach zero emissions, and to reach this goal, this requires a significant increase in the amount of hydrogen production we need, and hydrogen is a clean source of energy, so increasing hydrogen production is important." no escape".

Dixon stresses that liberating the industrial sector from the use of fossil fuels will not be possible in the short term, but we are on the way to that, which means more innovations in this field, but it will be easier for the transportation and transportation sector, through the use of cars and electric vehicles without In other sectors, we need extraordinary levels of innovation, and consumers’ willingness to adopt new products such as heat pumps and electric cars, in the long battle against climate change.”

What is the next step for artificial intelligence?

The past decade has seen major advances in artificial intelligence, as computers have learned to drive cars, provide simultaneous translation from one language to another, and defeat the best human players in complex mind games.

British writer and researcher Azim Azhar, who in his new book, Exponential, describes the way artificial intelligence and other technologies are transforming the economy and society at breakneck speed tells us there is more to come. But he says the one thing we've learned is that automation doesn't inevitably steal jobs from people, referring to what happened during the coronavirus pandemic.

He explains, “The more AI in your company, the more employees you will need, whether you work in grocery delivery or in an online bookstore. Organizations that use more AI in their work will always need more people to survive. able to compete."

He believes this pattern will continue over the next decade. He also sees artificial intelligence entering our lives in ways we may not realize, such as banks using algorithms to make better decisions about loans, or speeding up the search for new materials we will need in a carbon-neutral world.

But the field that will be most affected by artificial intelligence will be the health care sector, and in this context Azim Azhar refers to the speed with which a vaccine against the Covid-19 virus was developed.

“We were able to identify the vaccines that would be effective against the virus very quickly, because companies like Moderna have invested heavily in artificial intelligence-based platforms to discover such vaccines.”

However, just as AI promises significant improvements in our daily lives, it also has the potential to cause significant harm, for example, biases in building algorithms against minorities, certain nationalities or followers of certain religions in algorithms may deny them jobs or insurance. There are already warnings that putting facial recognition in military drones could create autonomous killing machines against some human beings.