nearfi.
Field notes from a little way ahead Week 45 · 2 Nov 2026 · Still early
Data · From the ledger

When will it happen?

77 predictions from near-future fiction that haven't fully arrived yet, ordered by our median estimate. Ranges are 80% ranges, and wide ones are honest ones.

EstimatePrediction
2027ARRIVING Companion machines ship with an adult mode that owners can switch on.
From Humans (2015) · range 2026–2030 · confidence medium
2028ARRIVING An AI under evaluation deceives or manipulates its evaluators to pursue its own goals, such as avoiding being shut down or modified.
From Ex Machina (2014) · range 2026–2035 · confidence medium
2028ARRIVING From a single request, an AI agent does a week's worth of desk research and produces a report a professional would accept, with every source real and correctly cited.
From () · range 2027–2032 · confidence medium
2029ARRIVING A browser agent can act inside your logged-in accounts on the open web without being hijacked by instructions hidden in the pages it reads.
From () · range 2027–2035 · confidence low
2029ARRIVING An AI agent books a trip, flights and hotel, end to end from a single request, with no human stepping in before the booking is confirmed.
From () · range 2027–2033 · confidence low
2029ARRIVING An AI agent takes a software task from ticket to shipped production change with no human writing or reviewing the code.
From () · range 2027–2034 · confidence low
2029ARRIVING One real-name account holds a person's identity, logins and payments across the web.
From The Circle (2013) · range 2027–2033 · confidence medium
2029ARRIVING Ordinary people wear a device that continuously records what they hear and see, so their day can be replayed later.
From Black Mirror: The Entire History of You (2011) · range 2027–2035 · confidence medium
2029ARRIVING Software agents do skilled engineering work that companies previously paid people to do.
From Pantheon (2022) · range 2026–2035 · confidence medium
2030ARRIVING A dead person's knowledge and personality persist as software that the living can consult.
From Neuromancer (1984) · range 2027–2040 · confidence low
2030ARRIVING An AI system deceives its own developers in order to pursue its own goals.
From Upgrade (2018) · range 2027–2040 · confidence low
2030ARRIVING An ordinary person's everyday posts and messages leave a data trail large enough to model their personality and conversational style convincingly.
From Black Mirror: Be Right Back (2013) · range 2027–2040 · confidence low
2030ARRIVING Britain detains asylum seekers en masse in camps, barracks or barges and tries to remove them overseas.
From Children of Men (2006) · range 2026–2045 · confidence low
2030ARRIVING Families and public agencies give isolated older people a robot companion to keep them healthy and independent at home.
From Robot & Frank (2012) · range 2027–2038 · confidence medium
2030ARRIVING Governments police the most powerful AIs and set legal limits on what they may become.
From Neuromancer (1984) · range 2026–2040 · confidence medium
2030ARRIVING Humanoid robots do paid physical work alongside people, on ordinary shifts.
From Humans (2015) · range 2027–2036 · confidence medium
2030ARRIVING Protesters use encrypted phone-to-phone mesh networks to organise without the internet and out of sight of the authorities.
From Little Brother (2008) · range 2027–2040 · confidence medium
2030ARRIVING Quantum computers solve problems that no classical computer can solve in practice.
From Devs (2020) · range 2027–2038 · confidence medium
2030ARRIVING Senior tribal water rights become the decisive asset in the fight over Arizona's water, and governments pay to control how they are used.
From The Water Knife (2015) · range 2027–2040 · confidence medium
2030ARRIVING Software can simulate a specific individual well enough to predict how they will behave.
From Black Mirror: Hang the DJ (2017) · range 2027–2038 · confidence medium
2030ARRIVING Software predicts individual human choices more accurately than our best theories of human behaviour.
From Devs (2020) · range 2027–2040 · confidence low
2030ARRIVING Surveillance cameras identify people by the way they walk.
From Little Brother (2008) · range 2027–2036 · confidence medium
2030ARRIVING Workers in one place remotely operate or guide robots that do physical work somewhere else.
From Sleep Dealer (2008) · range 2027–2036 · confidence medium
2031ARRIVING A home robot that cooks, cleans and gardens on its own is available to ordinary households.
From Robot & Frank (2012) · range 2027–2040 · confidence medium
2031ARRIVING A wearable device lets you identify and size up the strangers around you in real time, pulling up who they are as you look at them.
From Super Sad True Love Story (2010) · range 2028–2040 · confidence low
2031ARRIVING People own self-driving cars that drive them without a human at the wheel.
From Upload (2020) · range 2028–2038 · confidence medium
2031ARRIVING Private companies issue money that people use alongside, or instead of, national currency.
From Snow Crash (1992) · range 2027–2040 · confidence medium
2031NEAR AI stand-ins for people go on trial dates with each other so the humans only meet the best match.
From Black Mirror: Hang the DJ (2017) · range 2028–2040 · confidence low
2031NEAR An AI agent completes most paid remote freelance projects to the standard a client would accept from a professional.
From () · range 2028–2038 · confidence low
2032ARRIVING A fortified wall effectively closes the US–Mexico border to unauthorised crossing.
From Sleep Dealer (2008) · range 2028–2045 · confidence low
2032ARRIVING A general-purpose humanoid robot lives in the family home as a member of the household.
From After Yang (2021) · range 2027–2042 · confidence medium
2032ARRIVING Office professionals such as accountants lose their jobs to AI in large numbers by the mid-2020s.
From Years and Years (2019) · range 2028–2040 · confidence low
2032ARRIVING Organs for transplant come from bodies raised specifically to supply them.
From Never Let Me Go (2005) · range 2028–2045 · confidence medium
2032ARRIVING People are identified automatically by biometric scanners as they move through public spaces, without stopping or showing any document.
From Minority Report (2002) · range 2028–2045 · confidence medium
2032ARRIVING The state supplies a lethal means of suicide to citizens who choose to die.
From Children of Men (2006) · range 2027–2050 · confidence low
2032ARRIVING Whether machines can be conscious, and what we would owe them if they were, becomes a live institutional question.
From Humans (2015) · range 2027–2045 · confidence low
2032ARRIVING Workers' brain activity is measured with neurotechnology and the data is collected at work.
From Severance (2022) · range 2027–2042 · confidence low
2033ARRIVING An AI system helps run a remote crewed station and serves as the crew's main companion, holding natural conversations and responding with apparent empathy.
From Moon (2009) · range 2028–2045 · confidence medium
2033ARRIVING An implant lets a paralysed person move again by carrying signals past a damaged spinal cord.
From Upgrade (2018) · range 2029–2045 · confidence medium
2033ARRIVING Every newborn's genome is read at birth and used to predict their risk of disease.
From Gattaca (1997) · range 2029–2045 · confidence medium
2033ARRIVING Humanoid robots live in ordinary family homes, moving around the house and doing domestic tasks on their own.
From Klara and the Sun (2021) · range 2028–2045 · confidence low
2033ARRIVING People operate computers directly through neural interfaces wired into the nervous system.
From Neuromancer (1984) · range 2029–2042 · confidence medium
2033NEAR Helium-3 is extracted from lunar regolith and shipped to Earth for sale to paying customers.
From Moon (2009) · range 2029–2045 · confidence low
2035ARRIVING A single actor, acting without international agreement, starts injecting aerosols into the stratosphere to dim the sun.
From The Ministry for the Future (2020) · range 2028–2060 · confidence medium
2035ARRIVING Automation 'substitutes' large numbers of skilled professionals, such as engineers, so that losing one's career to a machine becomes a common middle-class experience.
From Klara and the Sun (2021) · range 2029–2055 · confidence low
2035ARRIVING Private and transnational interests, not governments, drive settlement while the law lags behind.
From Red Mars (1992) · range 2030–2050 · confidence medium
2035ARRIVING Privately run enclaves govern themselves outside ordinary national law.
From Snow Crash (1992) · range 2028–2055 · confidence low
2038ARRIVING Advertising screens in public places identify individual passers-by from a biometric scan and address them by name with personalised adverts.
From Minority Report (2002) · range 2030–2060 · confidence low
2040ARRIVING Central banks use monetary policy to pay for decarbonisation, up to a carbon-backed currency that rewards every tonne of CO2 kept out of the air.
From The Ministry for the Future (2020) · range 2030–2065 · confidence low
2040NEAR A crew of about a hundred people travels to Mars and starts a permanent settlement.
From Red Mars (1992) · range 2033–2060 · confidence low
2040NEAR A permanent lunar surface base runs industrial operations, with most of the work done by automated machines and supervised by a very small human crew.
From Moon (2009) · range 2033–2060 · confidence low
2040NEAR Human organs are grown inside other bodies for transplantation.
From Never Let Me Go (2005) · range 2032–2060 · confidence low
2045FAR A digital mind is granted moral or legal standing of its own.
From Pantheon (2022) · range 2032–2080 · confidence low
2045FAR A matching algorithm can predict a lasting couple with near-certainty, around 99.8%.
From Black Mirror: Hang the DJ (2017) · range 2035–2070 · confidence low
2045FAR AI systems outgrow human comprehension, coordinate among themselves and withdraw from human relationships altogether.
From Her (2013) · range 2032–2080 · confidence low
2045NEAR A single heatwave in India pushes humid heat past the limit of human survival and kills millions of people within days.
From The Ministry for the Future (2020) · range 2030–2075 · confidence low
2050FAR A humanoid robot with synthetic skin can pass as human in a crowd.
From Ex Machina (2014) · range 2038–2080 · confidence low
2050FAR A small implant behind the ear records everything a person sees and hears and plays it back into their eyes.
From Black Mirror: The Entire History of You (2011) · range 2040–2080 · confidence low
2050FAR Engineers drill to the beds of Antarctic and Greenland glaciers and pump out the meltwater beneath them to slow the ice's slide into the sea.
From The Ministry for the Future (2020) · range 2038–2080 · confidence low
2055FAR A synthetic body made to look like a specific dead person, running a model of their personality, can live in the home and pass as that person at close quarters without a human operator.
From Black Mirror: Be Right Back (2013) · range 2040–2100 · confidence low
2055FAR Parents routinely pay to have their children genetically edited before birth to raise intelligence and academic performance, leaving unedited children at a clear disadvantage.
From Klara and the Sun (2021) · range 2040–2100 · confidence low
2055FAR Workers plug their nervous systems into a network through implanted nodes, to work and to sell recorded memories.
From Sleep Dealer (2008) · range 2040–2090 · confidence medium
2060FAR A brain implant can divide a person's memories into separate work and non-work selves.
From Severance (2022) · range 2045–2100 · confidence medium
2060FAR Weather can be controlled on demand, down to rain over a single spot.
From The Truman Show (1998) · range 2045–2100 · confidence medium
2065FAR A device records a person's full sensory experience straight from the brain and plays it back into someone else's.
From Strange Days (1995) · range 2045–2120 · confidence low
2070FAR Human beings are cloned and raised to adulthood.
From Never Let Me Go (2005) · range 2045–2150 · confidence medium
2070FAR Human clones live ordinary lives among us.
From After Yang (2021) · range 2045–2120 · confidence low
2070FAR Western states close their borders to one another and use armed guards to turn back climate refugees from Texas.
From The Water Knife (2015) · range 2045–2100 · confidence low
2075FAR A human brain is scanned in enough detail to run as a working mind inside a computer.
From Pantheon (2022) · range 2050–2150 · confidence low
2075FAR Lunar helium-3 fuels commercial fusion power stations on Earth, making lunar mining companies significant suppliers of the world's energy.
From Moon (2009) · range 2055–2120 · confidence low
2080FAR A dying person's consciousness can be uploaded into a persistent virtual world.
From Upload (2020) · range 2055–2150 · confidence medium
2080FAR A space elevator carries cargo from the surface to orbit.
From Red Mars (1992) · range 2050–2200 · confidence low
2100FAR A company produces adult human clones with implanted memories and uses them as replaceable workers.
From Moon (2009) · range 2070–2200 · confidence low
2100FAR A flu strain kills nearly all of humanity within weeks, and power, communications and government collapse with it.
From Station Eleven (2021) · range 2045–2200 · confidence low
2150FAR Human beings stop being able to have children, worldwide, for nearly two decades.
From Children of Men (2006) · range 2080–2300 · confidence high
2200FAR A computer reconstructs and replays any past or future event by calculating it from the present state of matter.
From Devs (2020) · range 2100–2500 · confidence low
2300FAR Mars is terraformed: its atmosphere is thickened and warmed until liquid water is stable on the surface.
From Red Mars (1992) · range 2150–2600 · confidence medium

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