IELTS Plus: Episode 76 - The Future

Hi everyone and welcome back to the IELTS Plus English podcast where today we're going to talk about the future. This is a topic I'm so interested in. I constantly read articles about the future, watch YouTube videos about the future. I'm always interested in technology and... where we will be in five years, 10 years, 50 years. So that's what I'm going to try to talk about today. I think the best way to start is with a few definitions, because I think these...

These words could come up later. The first one is AGI. I don't know if you've heard of AGI. Now, I did mention this in a previous episode. You can go back to... AI. That was one of my topics. And I mentioned AGI and I had a few people talk about it in the comments and what the definition really is. This is the definition I'm using for today. AGI refers to a hypothetical AI, so it doesn't exist yet, it's imagined, that has the ability

to perform any task, any intellectual task that a human being can. Now, this is sounding a little boring, so please don't switch off yet, but I will talk about AGI. Probably, because that is what's going to lead to so many exciting things in the future. AI will do all of our research, possibly. So just keep that definition in mind. AGI doesn't exist yet. AGI, by the way, stands for artificial general intelligence. That's one thing I want to mention. The other thing is futurology.

Now, if you're interested in today's topic, which I am, then you may want to go down the path of futurology. Futurology is using the past and present to predict the future. I love anything about futurology, almost kind of the study of... predicting the future. And I read books about it. I use Reddit. If you're familiar with Reddit, futurology section. And yeah, you can think about...

how cars will look in the future, will we be flying, will AI take all of our jobs, all of these typical topics when talking about the future. So keep those things in mind. Because I'll probably, I don't know, I haven't planned it, but I'll probably be mentioning them later. Now, I do want to give you a student question. And I think what I'd like to know is simply what technology are you most excited about for the future? Do you want flying cars?

Do you want AI robots in your house doing all of your chores? Maybe doing all of your cooking? What technology are you most excited about? And tell me why. So put that in the comments, the YouTube comments or the Spotify, wherever you are. I'll check. Maybe I'll give you some feedback if you need it. And I'll be interested to hear your opinion. And one more thing, of course. I'm just looking down here at all the wonderful language we have today, such as optimistic, pessimistic, utopian.

dystopian these are wonderful antonyms all related to the future and that can be found in today's in the textbook which is on www.britplus.net

With all that done, let's dive into the future. Part one, question one. How do you think your life will change in the next 10 years? In my case, I think within the next 10 years, I will move back to the UK. So my life will change drastically. I think that... I will live in a city such, I think, Nottingham or somewhere like that. I'll raise my daughter there. And hopefully I'll continue this business. But rather than here.

I'll be in the UK. Good. Next question. Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future? I'm definitely optimistic. I do worry about certain technologies such as virtual reality because I worry that it will be so good that humans will reject reality. or at least not prioritize reality. However, I do imagine a utopian future where we work less, we have more time for creativity.

And hopefully a strong economy. Wonderful. So we're using some of our language already today. And I'm going to go to part two. So let's set up my time. And today's question is describe.

a technological advancement you think will be important in the future. Okay, I'm going to put two minutes on the clock and my time starts now. I'd like to tell you about autonomous cars. A few years ago, I became quite... I started to learn a little bit about the concept of autonomous cars. I seem to remember it was related to Hyundai I think. Hyundai, the car manufacturer, are exploring that. And I think you see it with Tesla and other cars. And I was really excited about this idea.

The idea that was presented at that time, a few years ago, was that humans will no longer own cars. And instead, there will be lots of... autonomous cars like taxis on the road thousands and thousands of taxis on the road and whenever you need to go somewhere rather than driving you just call one of these autonomous cars

and it will take you to wherever you want to go. So this idea really appealed to me. I looked into it a little more, and I found it really interesting, and I thought that this could be part of... a utopian future so let me tell you a little more about this idea of autonomous cars and autonomous taxis in the future i think um we still

are in the early stages of autonomous cars. I understand there are some levels and we need to reach level five to be able to do this. But with the current advancement in technology... I think it's possible. People talk about it happening easily within the next 10 years. And it would mean that we can save our money. We no longer need to buy cars. We don't need to pay road tax. There's a lot of benefits for humans.

Okay, I was just about to get into that then. I'll finish my sentence. More importantly than anything, there'll be a lot less crashes and deaths on the road. Okay. I was happy with that. I followed my structure pretty well then. But as you could tell, I didn't get onto the opinion. I didn't get onto the future. But I suppose that happens when you are really into an answer, you're enjoying it and it's going well. So yeah, I think that was pretty good. Let's move on to part three.

I think that I see two sides to this. I think... The side that I like to think about, and I think I, of course, I favor, is that humans will work a lot less, will have a lot more free time, and therefore... hopefully we'll be able to explore arts and crafts more There'll be more creativity. People will be able to open their own businesses. You know, you want to have your own cake shop or knitting, whatever it is, whatever you're passionate about, you'll be able to create a business.

quite easily because we don't need perhaps there will be UBI now UBI means universal basic income which means we'll get a small amount of money each month like a pension but for people of all ages so that's the very optimistic side the pessimistic side is that people will become more lazy They will just sit at home and watch Netflix because they don't need to do anything. And I've had this debate with a lot of people and a lot of people do see this dystopian side of things.

I still tend to be quite optimistic about the future. Okay, just a side note there. I am curious because I have this debate with my students all the time. Basically, the utopian versus dystopian future. Do you think humans will discover more creativity, more innovation? Or do you think they'll move towards being more lazy? They'll just accept whatever money comes in and just stay at home and watch Netflix. Which side are you on? Are you more optimistic or pessimistic about the future of humans?

Let me know. I know I've already given you a student question but that can be additional. Let me know what you think. Let's go to the next question. What are some potential problems that future generations might face? I think that...

I don't want to repeat myself because I've already talked about the problems with motivation and getting stuck at home and that kind of thing. I think what I want to talk about is... virtual reality and addiction to this whole new world, I imagine that in the future we'll have this metaverse where you can... you can go, you can leave your reality and you can go into this virtual reality and you can live and have a job.

You know, you can have thousands of friends and do whatever you want. You can fly. And it will be so wonderful, this metaverse life. It'll be so wonderful that you won't want to come back to reality. And perhaps in this futuristic picture of the young generation. perhaps it will be so good that they will only leave this metaverse in order to go to the toilet, eat and sleep. And that's all they'll do. Now, of course, this is very speculative.

But it's a possible future and I would worry about that. Good. Okay. Well, we're covering lots of different ideas today. I'm enjoying it as much as I expected. But I'll tell you what. At the start of class, I mentioned AGI and futurology, and so far, I haven't mentioned them at all. So, okay, that's okay. You learned some new ideas anyway. Last question. How might future technological advancements affect employment?

It's hard to forecast the timeline of this, but I think with robots and AI and also combining robots and AI, it's inevitable that humans will work less. Now, to what extent they work less is difficult to forecast, but perhaps the majority of humans won't work at all. and robots will be able to do the majority of work that we do right now especially menial tasks and in that future we have to

have an option such as UBI, universal basic income. So I could imagine that when it comes to employment, the concept of employment changes entirely. That it doesn't is not something you have to pursue. If you want, you can just stay at home, get your UBI, your monthly income, and perhaps work on your own business.

your own hobbies, things like that. Okay, I think that's as much as I want to cover today. I did okay when it comes to the language. I can see here there are words I would have liked to use. But I'm happy with that. As you can tell, this is an area I'm very interested in. So if I did the IELTS, I'd be so happy to get this topic, definitely. And that's all I have time for today. Let's...

Meet again next Monday. And it's another pretty kind of futuristic topic. We're going to talk about the internet. So have a wonderful week. As I always say, study super hard. And I'll see you next Monday to talk about the Internet.