“Twenty years is a long time, but not long enough to change the shape of a man’s nose.” – O. Henry

I am turning 40 this year. So, I am caught a bit more than in the past, thinking of how I viewed the world when I was young. I remember believing, for example, that the skies before 1960 had been a perpetual shade of gray. My reasoning hinged on black and white photography. If there was a device that could reproduce a moment in time, why could it not also reproduce something so fundamental as the color blue?

I have since come to understand that how we view the past is dependent on how we experience the present. Color photography was standard by the time I was born, so imagining a world without it was difficult to grasp. Someone born twenty years before me, say in 1964, would have no misunderstanding of black and white skies, but they may struggle to conceive of a world without a television in every home.

The change in our way of life in just twenty years is enough to boggle the mind. Even twenty years ago, in 2004, GPS devices were clunky, unreliable, and expensive. Less than half of U.S. households had wireless internet. The verb “to follow” was used quite literally and a “cloud” was condensation in the sky.

Twenty years later, we can order food—just about any cuisine—with the tap of a button. We can videoconference with anyone in the world in real time. We can read, learn, work, shop, and see a doctor all with the small rectangle in our hands. In fact, we spend so much of our time using the internet, children today cannot fathom a world without it.

But now humanity is on the verge of another dramatic transformation. In the next twenty years, every aspect of our lives will be altered—much more than by the cell phone, the internet, or color photography.

When early prototypes of Artificial Intelligence were released two years ago, its design was cumbersome, strange, and altogether flawed. The text and media AI created was quirky and sometimes nonsensical.

But in just two years, AI has developed exponentially. It can now render images so real they win high-payout art contests. AI can proofread, edit, analyze, and produce large amounts of written text in a matter of seconds. Not to mention it has shaken up nearly every occupation, from medicine to agriculture.

Over the next two decades, AI will become the most life-changing, humanity-altering concept ever in the history of our species. Babies born this year might not ever use wired headphones or a desktop computer, sure. But when they apply for their first jobs, positions like cashiers, baristas, and bank tellers might be obsolete. Uber and Lyft drivers will have been replaced with self-driving cars. Careers in graphic design, bookkeeping, and architecture might have disappeared as well. It is possible too, that we are witnessing the last presidential election not heavily influenced by AI-generated content.

The computer, as we know it, is the black and white photograph evolving into vivid color. Consider how in less than twenty years the first Macintosh computer (1984) gave way to the first iPod (2001). By this standard, it’s more than possible that in 2044, the average person could have their own live-in maid or life assistant, powered by Artificial Intelligence.

When babies born today turn 40, the age I am now, they will look back on this generation and laugh at our incompetence, our ignorance, our simple ways. They might believe preposterous things about our world and how we lived, much like I thought the skies before I was born were perpetually gray.

After twenty years, everything we know will have completely changed—our jobs, how we connect with friends, the quickness in which we climb stairs. It’s possible that our very way of life will be unrecognizable from the present day. Perhaps all that will remain will be the shape of our nose, but even that is up for debate.

[featured image created by AI]