I just spent 9 days at a conference about the future. Here are 10 predictions about tomorrow

“The future’s coming and there’s nothing we can do about it,” country music star Koe Wetzel tells me on the phone. He’s performing in Austin, Texas at a big outdoor concert put on by Billboard.

It’s mid-March and I’m at SXSW, where technologists present each other with new ideas. Wezel’s words ring truest.

I ask what gives him pause about the future. “Raising a family, there are concerns,” Wezel acknowledges, before saying (in this order) that he plans to “roll with the tide” and that he’ll be “going with the flow” and “chilling back.”

I don’t blame Wetzel for masking anxiousness about what lies ahead with a rugged, nonchalant exterior.

At this conference, there are robot dogs. Experts are warning us about artificial intelligence, too. As fellow Daily Dot editor Laiken Neumman gathered from an AI source while trying to answer the question of “should you be scared of AI?” in her reporting: 

“There will be people suing, and then court findings, and then standards being set.”

In other words, the politics around AI are insidious and radically different than they were in October, and we’re figuring it out day-by-day. But the thing about the SXSW conference is that weird, mathematical people tend to be right 10 years later.

Futurist Rohit Bhargava told attendees during his SXSW session that “will we be OK?” has become the most common question he fields. His methodology for making projections is all about understanding humans and focusing on what actually matters to us.

Community and love, basically.

Scrolling aimlessly on the internet worrying about the world our loved ones will inherit is something we all do now. “Will we be OK?” was at the heart of the 2025 conference. From doctors to bartenders, my on-the-ground small talk was deeper this year. Everyone needed a sounding board.

Having sampled the conference’s collective vision for tomorrow, and putting on my futurist hat, here are nine predictions about the future. Spoiler: I don’t think you need to worry about AI.

1) Flying cars will flop

There was chatter about private taxi aircraft that could be unmanned or flown by quickly trained pilots. 

LIFT Aircraft’s Matt Chasen made the case that this service is imminent. Ground handlers will simply swap batteries on aircraft and get them over to customers for a ride.

“You simply hail an aircraft in an app” Chase told attendees. “And it goes to some predefined landing spot like a rooftop… It comes to you unmanned. Truly it’s a door-to-door flight. We can do it today.”

Let’s run out Chasen’s idea. What human problem do flying cars solve? There are already airplanes, private jets, and helicopters. And cars. There are also regulated airspaces and highways.

As Chasen said himself, the technology is here for you to hop in an unmanned aircraft (that may smash into a flock of birds) and fly across town.

A man in the drone industry told me a decade ago that we’d have skies full of delivery aircraft by 2020; Amazon alone could have made this happen. But drone delivery is a logistical nightmare that lacks public enthusiasm.

In a hundred years, rush hour will still happen on roads—not in the air.

2) This Google Gemini, Grammarly thing where AI cleans up our writing will flop, too 

It erodes the humanity in our correspondence and creates an uncanny valley of vague, detached messaging. AI-powered writing assumes that communication requires cleansing. And even in the workplace, writing is at its most effective when it’s adaptive, warm, responsive, flawed, and collaborative. Maybe make Gmail usable on a desktop first, Google. I just had to Google how to open an email in a new tab.

3) Bumble’s AI dating tools will not help you find love

Is it ethical to clean up your copy with AI for a cover letter? Sure, because tons of companies use AI to screen candidates so you need a machine matching data inputs with another machine to get a dang job interview in 2025.

Is it ethical to use AI to crack down on fake dating profiles and would-be catfishers? Of course!

Is it ethical to banter with a Bumble match with help from a robot that’s ghostwriting your rizz?

No, it's gross. Then you get into the room and she finds out you’re actually a charmless mouthbreather. Rinse, repeat.

“We have a lot of data about what makes you show up well,” Bumble Chief Product Officer Michael Affronti said during SXSW. He said AI can help suggest what kind of things to write on your profile, what photos to upload, and suggest opening lines to matches.

But it can also give you more “authentic” matches based on the type of profiles you gravitate toward on the dating app, Affronti added.

Got it. So Bumble will help you find even more toxic situationships.

4) Solana is the crypto platform to wager on

I don’t understand the blockchain. What it is or how it works or what its intended function is. I don’t understand Bitcoin, either, and I’ve been editing news articles about this technology for more than a decade. 

This is mostly because the default type of blockchain that people use is Ethereum. It is impenetrable and for nerds. But Solana CEO Raj Gokal articulated a clear purpose and vision for his thriving business.

“Individuals have an ability to cryptographically sign transactions and that’s getting easier,” Gokal said at SXSW.  That’s… it?

In building Solana, Gokal asked himself: Is crypto a great tool for enterprises or not? Are these protocols not for individual people and instead for, say, JP Morgan? Either way, the platform has real human users in mind.

“Don’t be religious. Your investments are predicated on a reality that isn’t here, so don’t ignore reality in the meantime,” he said of both his company and as a guiding business principle.

Another key to his success is questioning the notion that Ethereum is and will remain the default platform for crypto. Solana established a partnership with Visa in 2023.

I was taken by Gokal’s goals because they weren’t rooted in a futuristic idea, but rather in how to “increase bandwidth and reduce latency” in his product.

Always bet on smart people who build things with the end user in mind.

5) We will all be going to Fyre Fest

The future is about experiences. SXSW panelist and Easol VP Ben Samuels talked about the new “experience economy.” Young people love to “overspend” on experiences like music festivals with unique settings, he said. They care less about saving up to own real estate, more about intimate, curated dinners with renowned chefs.

In the era of people making money off of their vacation pics, experiences are competitive. And this leads to outlandish events such as an EDM DJ throwing a rave in a Moroccan desert. Or three-story minigolf courses in Dubai. AI holograms in futuristic arcades.

Samuels said that AI will eventually book and curate your trips “in seconds” and “guide you on the ground.” All in service of putting you somewhere distinct, where you can watch live music in an Icelandic geothermal pool.

6) In the future, we will all go to immersive saunas with light shows

Speaking of thermal baths, my favorite business presentation was Submersive. Here CEO Corvas Brinkerhoff, also the artist behind the collective Meow Wolf, is taking his love for bath houses and building them with art installations. So you’re taking a hot bath and there’s a light show; it indulges your senses and you come out of there feeling like a million bucks.

It’s technology that, as Brinkerhoff argued, makes us more human via awe, wonder, euphoria, and inspiration.

The science behind this is legit, too, as Susan Huganir Magsamen, who directs a lab at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, argued.

“Each of us will have our own experience in this space,” she said, which leads to positive “physiological, biomedical changes.” 

She said that as people, we are optimized for “productivity.” So a well-balanced future, she argues, means deviating from the norm and indulging our parasympathetic nervous system in new, tech-powered ways. 

Siri, play “Age of Aquarius” by The 5th Dimension.

7) The golden age of recreational THC is just getting started

Sure, Texas lawmakers are likely to crack down on the Farm Bill loopholes that have allowed the cannabis industry to flourish. But you can’t stop progress.

As Ryan Winkler, former Minnesota House majority leader and founder of THC seltzer Crooked Beverage Co. told me at SXSW: “Our customers are looking for healthy alternatives, and we are committed to a high-quality experience.”

He watched me sample his product at a punk rock club and then introduced himself. Later via text, he noted that yes, there are regulatory hurdles and “this category is legal under federal law under the 2018 Farm Bill, but each state is creating its own rules that can change on a dime. So we keep our business flexible and ready to respond.”

He added that Crooked, one of tons of THC beverages available at America’s gas stations right now, emphasizes “simple, clean ingredients: real fruit puree, natural cane sugar, and water. That’s it.”

“We also use a 1:1 ratio of THC to CBD” for the “smoothest possible effect.”

As a longtime drinker of alcohol, which studies show isn’t great for the human body, I think regulated, clearly portioned THC is the best alternative. You’re relaxed but social, loose but alert. Everything is OK when the gummy hits.

And as people we need vices as a social lubricant to do what we really want: Begin conversations with interesting strangers.

8) Apple’s Vision Pro will never take off

The only people who will walk in public with augmented reality glasses or headsets will forever be the nerdy, perpetual early adopter types.

Do you want to walk into a coffee shop with a headset on that detaches you from the human beings in your periphery? No, because you look preposterous.

And that’s the problem with Apple’s Vision Pro: Girls will never think it’s cool. No matter what Lars Ulrich of Metallica says while promoting the product at SXSW.

Going back to futurist Rohit Bhargava’s key to predicting the future: Does this new tech solve any human problems? No, because Apple Vision Pro is a $3,400 workstation that plays movies. So, it’s a laptop—that costs thousands and makes you look like an extremely lost scuba diver.

9) We’re gonna bring back the woolly mammoth and it’ll be really cool

I just feel like we all want it. And we are soft-launching this new era of animal reboots with the dire wolf and woolly mice.

As Colossal Biosciences CEO Ben Lamm, the company spearheading these experiments, told us at SXSW: “I think for us to be successful is three-fold. One is bringing back extinct species and successfully putting them back into large ecological preserves where they can have a positive impact on the environment. As well as having a halo effect of conservation with that. Number two, I think advancing genome engineering for both conservation and human healthcare to a level of what we’d all dreamed of. And the third is we’ve really been pushing this concept of biovaults. There isn’t this true backup like there is with a seed vault for animals. I think we need to continue to do existing conservation.”

The woolly mammoth does solve a human problem: It’s the public face of a new era in species conservation. Where we create backup files of endangered species. 

In the meantime, the wonder and enthusiasm for an animal that hasn’t existed in 4,000 years keeps us dreaming big, looking forward.

10) AI will be a tool that helps us meet the political challenges of 2025

AI is a tool. As a speaker at the recent International Symposium for Online Journalism, also in Austin at the University of Texas, said: “A knife can harm another human being or it can cut tomatoes.”

For example, in Venezuela amid political crackdowns on free speech, journalists used AI reporters to deliver the news across the internet. It masked them from being identified by the state.

We’ve entered the era of community. If we leverage AI to find each other, we’ll be just fine.

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