Thanks to friendly collaborators, Chatgpt was tricked into predicting the future of humanity. We asked Chatgpt to write a story about the world in 2048. The results were interesting and noteworthy. Of course, Chatgpt is AI and draws its digital cognition from the warehouse of all human knowledge, such as it is. Therefore, Chatgpt’s insights can be and should be seen as a kind of crowdsourcing of all human predictions on the future, and just as flawed and shortsighted as any of us might have produced on our own. Still, the results are worth considering both for what they reveal and for what remains unsaid.

Past tense verbs have been replaced with future tense.

Overall Chatgpt is refreshingly optimistic about the future. It warns that Climate change in 2048 has become “impossible to ignore” but also predicts “the world” will “come together to take action.”

According to Chatgpt, by 2048 we will have “transitioned to almost entirely renewable energy.”

And that will lead to cities “no longer choked with smog.”

“Coral reefs” will flourish “once more, and fish population” will rebound.

“The world’s population” will stabilize “at around 10 billion people,” and “The challenge of feeding so many people” will have been “met through a combination of increased agricultural productivity and a shift to more sustainable farming methods.”

“Large-scale desalination plants” will have “been built in many coastal areas, and water conservation measures” will have been “implemented across the globe.”

It’s good to know that Chatgpt predicts “a cleaner, healthier, and more sustainable planet” in 2048.

Still, Chatgpt has left out a few significant details. It predicts global cooperation, which is currently in very short supply, but does not provide any plausible roadmap for attaining it. Apparently, it will remain for us humans to find our own way.