Fewer cars, faster flights, AI everywhere: Vinod Khosla predicts the world of 2050

Indian-American venture capitalist Vinod Khosla on Monday outlined an expansive vision of how technology could reshape daily life by 2050. He has predicted a future in which cars are largely displaced in cities, flying becomes dramatically faster, and artificial intelligence transforms medicine, labour, manufacturing and entertainment.

Writing on X, Khosla said the projections were first shared two years ago at TED and at his firm's CEO conference, describing them as a picture of "the world we can create". "Here are my predictions for 2050 (the world we can create) two years ago at TED and at our CEO conference," he wrote.

Khosla said expertise would become widely accessible through artificial intelligence, with technology lowering barriers to healthcare and education. "Expertise will be near free: We will be capable of having near free AI doctors for every person & AI tutors for every child, 24x7," he said.

He predicted a profound shift in labour as robotics scale up across sectors. "Labor will be near free: We will have a billion bipedal (and other) robots freeing humans from the servitude of undesirable jobs," Khosla wrote.

Computing itself, he said, would expand as programming becomes more natural and intuitive. "Computer use will grow expansively: here will be a billion+ programmers all ‘programming’ in human language, dramatically increasing the scope of computers. Computers will adapt to humans, not humans to computers," he said.

Artificial intelligence, the veteran entrepreneur added, would play a larger role in creative industries. "AI will play a large role in entertainment & design: Music and entertainment will be plentiful & personalised for you & your mood! Diversity of content & creativity will increase. The celebrity-fan relationship won’t change," he wrote.

Scientific research, he said, would be transformed by AI-driven discovery. "Scientists will be supercharged: AI scientists, working alone or with humans, will become super scientists, able to 10x or 100x their capability, creativity, and volume of research," Khosla said.

He also predicted a shift in how people interact with the internet. "Internet access will be mostly by agents: Most consumer access of the internet will be agents acting for consumers doing tasks and fending off marketers and bots. Tens of billions of agents on the internet will be normal," he wrote.

Healthcare, according to him, would move from experience-based practice to data-driven science. "From the practice to the science of medicine: We will be capable of providing precision care based on patients’ -omics, as well as AI models for each individual, enabling simulation of each body for therapeutics, dosages, etc," he said.

Food and agriculture, Khosla added, would undergo major change. "We will have new food & fertilizers: We will have much better alternate protein production to replace traditional animal protein, & ‘green’ fertilizer. And taste will far exceed that of traditional cows!" he wrote.

Manufacturing, the venture capitalist said, would become intelligent and personalised. "Manufacturing and bio manufacturing: We will have text-to-product manufacturing capability enabling hyper-personalisation and democratization Manufacturing and bio manufacturing will be intelligent," he said.

Urban transport, Khosla predicted, could look very different by mid-century. "Cars could be displaced in cities: We could replace majority of cars in cities with personal autonomous transit as on-demand, affordable, public transit, increasing street throughput dramatically," he wrote.

Aviation, he said, would also see dramatic advances. "Flying will be faster: We will have Mach 5 planes that get us from NYC to London in 90 minutes – on sustainable aviation fuel, making the world closer!" Khosla said.

On energy, he predicted reliable clean power at scale. "There will be clean, dispatchable electric power: By 2050, fusion boilers will retrofit and replace coal and natural gas boilers reducing the need to build whole new fusion plants. Superhot geothermal >400C is also a real alternative," he wrote.

Khosla also challenged concerns about long-term scarcity of raw materials. "Resources will be plentiful: We will discover more natural resources than we consume & prove resource doomers wrong on lithium, cobalt, copper," he said.

On climate change, he said solutions were possible if innovation arrives in time. "Carbon will have solutions...if we have time: Carbon emissions could be a smaller issue because entrepreneurs will develop & scale better technologies for cement, steel, agriculture, transportation, power production, DAC, etc," Khosla wrote.