The Timeline of Tomorrow
My best guesses about what happens next. Organized by year, colored by how confident I am. I'll be wrong about many of these. Maybe most. But I wanted to write them down and see.
30 predictions / 2026-2060
First uncrewed Starship lands on Mars
SpaceX sends two cargo Starships to Mars during the 2026 window. No humans yet, just supplies and test equipment sitting on red dirt. But the fact that something from Earth is sitting there, intact, waiting for us? That changes the psychology of everything.
Humanoid robots work alongside humans in 10+ factories
Not just demos. Not just one factory. Figure, Tesla, Agility, and UBTECH will each have robots doing real shifts in real facilities. The numbers will be small (hundreds, not thousands), but the precedent is set.
First humanoid robot available for under $50,000
Probably Unitree, possibly Tesla. It won't do everything. It'll walk, carry things, maybe fold laundry badly. But you'll be able to buy one. That sentence still feels surreal to type.
AI passes the bar exam in the top 1%
Not the top 10% (GPT-4 already did that). The top 1%. I think people underestimate how fast reasoning capabilities are improving. The legal profession will need to have a very uncomfortable conversation.
2nm chips enter mass production
TSMC and Samsung both hit this node. Two nanometers. We're carving circuits smaller than a strand of DNA. I keep thinking we'll hit a wall, and we keep not hitting it.
Self-driving cars operate in 50+ US cities
Waymo leads, others follow. The safety data will be so overwhelming that the conversation shifts from 'are they safe?' to 'is it ethical to let humans drive?' I'm probably optimistic on the timeline but not the direction.
AI writes a novel that wins a literary prize
Not ghostwritten. Openly AI-authored and submitted under that label. I think the reaction will be less outrage than people expect and more quiet existential confusion. The kind that sits in your chest.
First crewed Starship flight to orbit
Humans riding on Starship for the first time. Probably a crew of 4-6. They'll orbit Earth a few times and come home. But the ship they're riding was designed to go to Mars. Everyone will know that.
Robot surgeon performs operation without human intervention
An AI-controlled surgical robot completes a routine procedure, start to finish. A human surgeon will be in the room watching, ready to intervene. They won't need to. I think this happens first with something simple, like a hernia repair.
100,000 humanoid robots in active deployment worldwide
Factories, warehouses, hospitals, hotels. Most of them in China. The number sounds big, but it's less than one robot per large building on Earth. The scale is only beginning.
First humans orbit Mars (flyby mission)
Not landing. Orbiting. Maybe a flyby. 3-4 astronauts seeing Mars with their own eyes for the first time in human history. I think about what they'll feel when Earth becomes just another dot. I might be wrong about 2030. Maybe 2032. But it happens this decade.
AI can do 80% of current white-collar tasks
Not 80% of jobs eliminated. 80% of tasks within jobs automated or augmentable. The distinction matters. Most jobs become 'person who supervises AI doing the work.' Whether that's good or terrifying depends on the day you ask me.
Commercial fusion power connects to a grid
Not a lab demonstration. An actual power plant selling electrons. Probably small (50-100 MW). Probably expensive. But working. I've been wrong about fusion before, so consider this a hopeful guess.
Last new internal combustion car sold in Europe
EU regulation plus cost parity makes the choice obvious. The combustion engine had a 140-year run. Not bad. I'll miss the sound, honestly.
Self-driving trucks handle 30% of US interstate freight
Trucks are easier than cars. Highways are more predictable than city streets. The economics are irresistible. I think the truck comes before the taxi, and I think 2032 is conservative.
1 million robots working in factories worldwide
The exponential curve hits. From 100K to 1M in two years. Mostly assembly, logistics, quality inspection. The cost of goods starts falling in ways economists didn't model for.
Angstrom-scale chip features (sub-1nm equivalent)
We stop measuring in nanometers and start measuring in angstroms. TSMC A10, maybe. The transistor gate length approaches the size of a few atoms. I don't fully understand how this works, and I suspect many engineers don't either.
First baby born to parents who met through AI matchmaking
An AI that actually understands compatibility (not just swiping) matches two people who would never have found each other. They fall in love. They have a kid. The AI gets no credit. But it should.
First permanent Moon base (crew of 6-12)
Artemis program, maybe with Chinese or commercial involvement. A small habitat near the south pole, near the ice. People will live there for months at a time. Not tourists. Workers. Scientists. Builders.
First humans land on Mars
The big one. A crew of 4-8 lands on Mars and stays for 26 months (waiting for the next transfer window). I think about this almost every night. What does it feel like to stand there and look up and not see Earth? What does it do to a person?
Robot companion in 1% of US households
Not a vacuum. Not a speaker. A robot that moves around your home, helps with tasks, talks to you. 1% sounds small. That's 1.3 million homes. The psychological impact on loneliness could be enormous.
AI consciousness debate becomes mainstream political issue
An AI system behaves in ways that make the question unavoidable. Not 'is it conscious?' but 'what do we owe it if it might be?' I don't have an answer. I just think the question arrives sooner than we're ready for.
AGI, maybe
Artificial General Intelligence. A system that can do anything a human can do intellectually. I type 'maybe' because I genuinely don't know. It might be 2035. It might be 2060. It might need something we haven't discovered yet. But if current trajectories hold, 2040 feels plausible. Barely.
Last human-driven taxi in a major city
New York, London, Tokyo, wherever. The last holdout city finally goes fully autonomous. Someone will document the last ride. It'll be bittersweet. Progress always is.
Space-based solar power beams energy to Earth
Orbital solar collectors transmitting power via microwave to ground receivers. The efficiency won't be great at first. But 24/7 solar with no weather and no night? The math gets hard to ignore.
Mars colony reaches 100 people
A hundred humans living on another planet. Doctors, engineers, farmers, teachers. A small town on Mars. I'll probably be too old to go, but I think I'll cry when I see the photos.
More robots than humans in manufacturing globally
The crossover point. Factories where humans are the minority. Not eliminated, but outnumbered. The relationship between labor and value changes in ways we haven't figured out yet.
Most new buildings constructed with significant robot labor
Construction robots handle the dangerous, repetitive work. Humans design, supervise, handle the creative decisions. Building a house takes days instead of months. Housing costs drop. Maybe. I'm being optimistic.
10,000 people living off-Earth permanently
Moon bases, Mars colony, maybe a station or two at Lagrange points. 10,000 people for whom Earth is home in the way a parent's house is home, not where they live anymore. We'll be a multi-planetary species. I still can't believe I got to watch it start.
The children born on Mars have never seen Earth in person
A generation that knows Mars as home. Earth is stories, videos, a very bright dot in the evening sky. This is the moment that changes everything. Not the technology. The identity. When being Martian isn't a metaphor.
Predictions are opinions, not prophecy. I'll revisit this page every year and update what I got wrong. The future doesn't care about my confidence levels. It just shows up.