Environment, people, technology are changing rapidly. What are some worthwhile problems or ideas that you think would be important to solve or work on by end of the decade.
Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
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Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
#2We have an aging population and many places have a flat birthrate. We need to solve how to deal with this consequences.
Who will care for these people? How will we deal with the consequences of flat population growth? How will we deal with the stock market's expectations of perpetual growth when the underlying population itself is not growing (and especially since productivity has also been relatively flat)?
Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
#3Technology: (1) getting off “free” platforms aka adtech. (2) Software quality aka actually providing good software that is intuitive to use and does what people need.
Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
#4We have an aging population and many places have a flat birthrate. We need to solve how to deal with this consequences. Who will care for these people? How will we deal with the consequences of flat population growth? How will we deal with the stock market's expectations of perpetual growth when the underlying population itself is not growing (and especially since productivity has also been relatively flat)?
This aging topic is very important. Re: stock markets, economies need to shift from eternal $ growth to share holder wallets, to providing equitable outcomes for all people and the planet - that will be very interesting to watch, i can’t see it going well.
Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
#5How to survive as a human race when AI takes over the world?
Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
#6Climate change, environmental remediation, therapeutics solving for cancer and similar maladies.
Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
#7Privacy, longevity, nutrition science, trust, deep space exploration.
Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
#8High interest rates
Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
#9The animals and ecosystems wide scale extinction seems to be a major threat I think. It’s something people don’t seem to notice much as it isn’t in the news constantly, but 60% of wild life disappearing in the last 70 years seems like a disaster snowball that is growing fast.
I think this is the threat that will be largely ignored, and because it is purposely ignored it will keep growing in the background until it takes us all down as a storm of natural disasters.
Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
#10The UN has identified 17 sustainable development goals (https://sdgs.un.org/goals) and the AI for good Global Summit https://aiforgood.itu.int/ (which was held last week) focused on exactly that.
If you check the recordings, some sessions were directly focused on connecting problem experts, data access, computing resources and people with skills or idea or passion. The opportunities span from students or researchers, up to what will take innovative companies or bigtech to solve, or government and international organizations.
It was also the place were a lot of discussions about AI regulation took place. The discussions and the decisions that will follow from that meeting will shape the world to come IMHO.