2025 Predictions

Here are some predictions for the future. I haven’t put that much effort or research into them, so don’t take them too seriously. Or maybe the fact that I didn’t put much effort or research into them means you should take them seriously?

2025

• The stock market will not crash¹ in 2025, despite anxiousness about global unrest and inflation
• “Hybrid remote”, where people will have to spend some days in the office, will become more common. This will in turn make co-working spaces and activity-based seating more popular.

2027

• Computer screens will increasingly be replaced by high-DPI VR / AR glasses; most of the “AR / VR” specific use cases will be surpassed by traditional desktop tasks. See this post for an example of what I’m talking about: https://flaming.codes/en/posts/coding-in-vr-and-how-real-work-is-possible/
• LLMs will become mainstream, mostly replacing search engines for finding information. Google searches will drop by 20%. This will have some second-order effects:
  • Advertising being integrated into LLMs
  • Just like you could make money with AdWords in the 2000s, there will be money in training LLMs
• Typed functional programming languages will become more popular—one of F#, OCaml or Scala will make it to the TIOBE Top 10
• Conversational AI systems will mostly replace traditional GUI interfaces. Instead of mucking about with pivot tables, analysts will ask an AI to generate reports for them. Instead of clicking through dialog boxes to book a trip, you’ll ask an AI to do it for you. These interfaces will be powered by specialized language models, which makes them less capable than the more general models, but also less prone to hallucination.

2030

• First working PoC fusion reactor comes online.
• Autonomous driving finally works; owning a car will become increasingly rare; wherever you’re going you can just order an autonomous vehicle that will pick you up.