Nobody knows.

The optimists that point out every form of automation to date has by far supported a larger human population with more opportunity could be wrong.

The pessimists that claim (weak)AI & Machine Learning is "different" in that it has a potential to do everything could be wrong.

Frankly, the computer tech and software from the 1980s onward and automation and more primitive robotics have long been technically capable of automating far more business & industrial activities than they actually have to date.

Human labor is adequate, and the bottlenecks are elsewhere.

The investment in hardware and tech vs. a savings or return in profits is just not sustainable, or "never the right time" financially.

The investment in automation was made, and efficiency gains allowed businesses to take on new things that needed human labor elsewhere.

Perhaps AI & ML will be leveraged to design automation and robotics that are cheaper, more efficient, and more out-of-box and "turn key". Requiring less retrofitting to existing workplaces and a more guaranteed ROI and pessimistic predictions of mass unemployment will be right.

Maybe the demographic decline in Europe, the US, and parts of Asia means AI & ML, and associated automation fundamentally saves our ass. Key technologies and sectors, critical infrastructure, etc. stuff we no longer can, or want to live without, may not have a neat 1:1 demand curve with a shrinking population.

Or with longer average lifespans, the demand won't shrink, just the supply of working-age people will.

A very rough example, I know next to nothing about municipal water systems... Say a modern city needs 25 municipal water engineers to function well. Not even the nuts & bolts work crews that dig up streets and fix things, or put new lines in. The people who plan it out, keep track of what's old, determine the needs and loads on the system of anything new. The soil types, seasonal freezing, etc.

Now say that a city needs roughly those 25 municipal water engineers, whether it's Chicago at 2.7 million people or Milwaukee 75 miles to the north with 570,000. Maybe despite the difference in scale is there, but the complexity and challenges are the same.

But because of Gen-X being smaller than Boomers, and Millennials being an even smaller pool than, Gen-X, then Zoomers and so on... there's only 12 graduates from college with the proper degree. And Milwaukee and Chicago are looking at 30 looming retirements between them.

Again, a crude example pulled from thin air. But I'm willing to bet there's multiple key fields like this out there.

Maybe the people who lean r/antiwork and are bemoaning a future of "high-tech serfdom" under tech-giants are right.

Or maybe they're not assholes, or even just out of cynical enlightened self-interest, they realize that they're doomed if big chunks of the public has no economic means to afford their goods & services, and come up with something.

Possibly open source AI & ML will prevent any true monopolies, or unhealthy concentration of power. Or perhaps it's going to make mass unemployment worse, because every business and sector can use it.

Perhaps an exponential acceleration of ML, AI, & automation injects so much efficiency and cost savings, prices of goods and services plummet. Trying to glean more profit margins with yet more automation only makes it worse. Government central banks print money like crazy, but it does no good.

The Great Depression was characterized by bouts of deflation. However, it was largely characterized by huge swaths of the population being unable to buy anything. And with the US Dollar at least, there hasn't been deflation of any kind since 1950.

However, there's never been true hyperdeflation in history. And especially not any deflation driven solely by economic production efficiency. Maybe something whacky happens, and the entire economy flips, and a system of paid consumption begins.

How that even would work, or function, or if it's even a possible concept, I have no clue.

Outlandish, but it's just as good of a prediction as anyone else who stamps their feet and insists their prediction is right.

The one thing I do think applies somewhat to predicting the future is that there's a certain leveling or mediocrity principle at work. Unless something really radical happens, global nuclear war, AI Apocalypse making humans extinct, at least in the broad strokes, a safe bet for a general prediction of "what the future is like" would be "pretty much like today, with bits of surprising tech stuffed in the corners."

Build a time machine, set it for 60 years in the past, kidnap some random American person from 1963, tell them you're taking them to 2023, without any clues as to what they'll see. How would they react when they got here?

Individual bits of tech might be mind blowing, a large flat-screen TV, your smartphone, the Internet, maybe when you explain the "light bulbs" in your disappointingly normal looking lamps are LED, WiFi, and a voice command to Alexa can turn them on/off, and it was only eight bucks ($0.86 in 1963 dollars)... and they'll be impressed if you gave them a list of medical conditions that might be a death sentence in 1963 that are now treatable.

The music, some of it might be disturbing, and they'll wonder why so many obese people are walking around. And perhaps they'll be shocked/surprised if they learn how much of the amazing computer tech, smartphones and Internet etc. is used for cat videos and hard-core pornography. Or that a huge amount of the consumer goods in your house are from China...

But it's a safe bet that the biggest surprise for them would be how banal and mundane 2023 was overall. No dystopian Blade Runner/Cyberpunk city, no UFO on stilts Jetson's condos. No flying cars. No robot cleaning your house, maybe a Roomba at best. Guns still use bullets. We got to the Moon in 1968, but haven't been back since...

That arguably wouldn't be the case if you repeated the experiment with someone from 1903 and dropped them off in 1963. The automobile, aircraft, passenger jet aircraft, electricity and indoor plumbing everywhere, nuclear weapons, space travel, antibiotics, radio & television...

In another 60 years? What will 2083 look like? Never say never, of course. Humanity is extinct, or all in tanks of goo like the Matrix, climbing back from the devastation of a nuclear WWIII, or something radically different we can't imagine, you can't rule those out. But if you had to bet on the broad strokes of what it'll look like on a "predict the future" craps table in Las Vegas...

The square for: "A lot of amazing tech in the corners, but surprisingly not that different from today." might be the best bet. Because fifty years of time travel, the regular way, one day at a time like everyone else, has somewhat impressed on me that: "Everything changes, and nothing changes." at the same time.