The Last Generation

If you are over 50, you are probably among the last people on earth where you will complete your life in a traditional way.  Namely,... You were born, grew up, matured, reproduced, grow old and then pass away, without the assistance or hinderance of massive data about you, nor excessive intrusion into your life. 

If you’re younger, you’ve been fully tracked.  By the time you retire, there will be so much information about you online and for sale, that just about anyone with a couple of bucks can purchase your life story in data.  AI (Artificial Intelligence) will project accurately your future medical problems as you age. Your financial condition will be known even sooner. Your credit history will cover decades. All your jobs and performance ratings will be available. Your complete family and their records will be correlated as well into the giant record, which will be you.  

In future, you may see the courts order an AI monitor to assist with your finances, diet, and exercise in retirement. Such monitors may insist on doctor visits, sleep regimes, or limit sedentary activity. 

On the other hand, AI may establish the retired are nothing more than an expensive luxury. This can be achieved only a matter of switching on the “optimization” option. The cost of medicare in FY 2018 was $582 billion, 14% of the national budget. In 2018, the cost of Social Security benefits to 42 million retirees was $988 billion*. Retirees cost the United States $1.52 trillion.  A lot of money the impersonal AI might tell us for unproductive, useless, citizens.

For good or bad, governments around the world are becoming more involved in their citizens’ lives. When it’s for your own good, as will be argued, there may be no stopping point to their help (i.e. intrusion). 

*https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/payment.cgi