AI is going to replace a lot of peoples jobs and no real government is prepared for the aftermath.

Something like Detroit beyond human where AI is causing massive unemployment and real humans are really suffering. While the super rich are in lofts doing their own thing.

Its not all bad, Ive heard some short stories on the importance of open source and manufacturing your own thing. Theres stories on communities banding together in such times and rejecting that which makes the rich richer. But I personally think it will be far and in between. People have to want to change, and I just dont see it happening.

On the optimistic side, I think it's likely a gene treatment is developed that greatly extends the lives of dogs.

The United States of America will become Ununited. A group of states will break away and wall themselves off from the rest of the country, creating their own Trump worshipping society. They will create their own version of utopia and tell stories about how the rest of the world is going to die off because they will make everyone transgender and have no more children. The rest of the world will rejoice and join together in actually fixing climate change, eradicate poverty and spread the Eurovision worldwide.

In 100 more years the walled off states will emerge to repopulate what they expect to be an empty planet with their own eugenically created race of clones and finally realise that they were completely and utterly wrong.

Humanity globally shifts to an economic system of guarantees instead of our current extortional approach as we aknowledge we are already in a post scarcity world and work to fix distribution chains of human needs.

Either that or the corporate elites start a literal apocalypse so they don't have to work a fucking job like the rest of us.

The surveillance of chats and the prohibition of encryption in many Western countries must have a purpose. It mostly makes sense if democracy is dismantled.

Since the West doesn't show signs of sharing resources voluntarily, my prediction is that the West is willing to fight a nuclear war to preserve its lead which cannot happen in a democracy.

Without that war, Asia will take over as the center of commerce and innovation. The brightest will move there, which means that the remaining people in the West have to be innovative without the main ingredience for innovation.

The collapse of the petro dollar.

Economical collapse in multiple countries, including the US. Like Great Depression II.

Another economic depression in the US, on a similar scale to the 1930s, maybe a lot worse. Probably a lot sooner than 10 years.

For a run-down of some of the key reasons, this video is long (40m), but worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqtrNXdlraM

In order of hopeful least hopeful:

1. I finally create my first ever original song using something like Vocaloid or UTAU. Would absolutely prefer Vocaloid because I tried v6 once and it was so much nicer than UTAU/OpenUTAU and so much easier.
2. I actually finish a Wattpad series I started instead of letting it rot after I lose interest.
3. Pokémon Empire (my absolute favorite fan game, just below Uranium) doesn't get nuked by Sintendo.
4. The devs still working on Uranium finish the post game and let you capture the legendaries mentioned in the Tsukiyomi village museum(?).
5. I finally get the remaining books in the Bakuman manga series and actually read the whole series. I've got the first 9 volumes, so I should hopefully be done at some point before the end of the decade, assuming my favorite place to go for used manga has the other 11 volumes at some point or doesn't close down.

Peak human population will occur within the next ten years. Previously this was driven by falling birth rates. Now it will be driven by rapidly rising death rates. Within the next ten years, I think 300 million - 1 billion dead from starvation due to bread basket collapse is a conservative estimate.

Since I'm not feeling very optimistic, and given that everything I predicted today was the exact opposite, I'll say this.

1. Campi Flegrei explodes, creating a noise louder than Krakatoa.
2. Santorini sinks into the ocean.
3. Nuclear war.
4. Groundwater runs out all over the world.
5. A massive solar emission hits earth, throwing us back into the Stone Age.

Doing my duty, to protect the world by predicting things, so the exact opposite happens 🍺.

Just to cover all the bases, some extra points.

1. AI superintelligence is evil.
2. A gamma-ray burst hits earth.
3. Aliens are evil.
4. Vacuum decay is possible and something accidentally triggers it.
5. Nobody likes me romantically.

At least five new countries acquire nuclear weapons.

Conservatives who are getting their face eaten will not learn a single thing from anything

Wars over water in North America

"Hey, remember when everyone was so freaked out by AI?"

The US falls behind more countries in average lifespan, education and avg income.

The gulf monarchies' oil will dry up, and they will collapse under their own weight.

... Probably not. But hey, a man can dream...

World War 3: Return of the Civil War

Pandemic 2: Bird Measles

Depression 2

All at the same time

Famine will enter the American lexicon again.

Communicating with AI becomes indistinguishable from human contact, unless it's face-to-face. While promising to solve the loneliness epidemic and provide safe and effective therapy for anyone who wants it, it also unleashes a torrent of convincing AI propaganda. Technocrats using AI and charismatic humans as useful idiots and a front, effectively rule the world. Most people are poor and go hungry, but resistance is futile. There is no safe way to communicate except meeting in person, and there are few safe spaces to even meet that aren't under constant surveillance. Organizing any resistance is incredibly difficult, if not hopeless. Truth is no more.

Following the path of other regimes around the world, the USA builds their own "great firewall", segmenting most people here away from the global internet. At around the same time, personal VPNs become explicitly illegal. We might also see the government seize control of at least one certificate registrar, if they don't fire up their own, thereby "owning" TLS online.

On the upside, there's a chance we will see more grass-roots efforts to reboot a lot of institutions that were co-opted by the rich. You're just never going to hear about that through conventional channels. For instance: local newspapers with real journalism behind them. Or more small businesses with the intent to last, rather than sell. It's possible that more of those things will be co-ops, union shops, or even Mondragon inspired. Either way, there's a path forward for more community, real communication, and eventual prosperity, provided folks keep their heads and take things offline where necessary.

China will overtake US as the dominant economic power, exert their influence on neighbouring regions and get more push back than it thought (similar to Russia).

The world will fracture into different regions with different day to day life (even more so).

US will become the wild Wild West where everything goes in the right state.

Canada and Europe (western not Eastern) will stay put in terms of peace, but they will no longer have “the best standard of living”.

Africa will get abused by China and become the next China.

Australia will be like, wtf mate, but they’ll be dead soon… stupid kangaroos.

Humans are quite bad at predicting the future, so I'm going with an easy one.

China will do nothing and somehow win.

I will get up and go to work.