Today's Kids Could Live Through Machine Superintelligence, Martian Colonies, and a Nuclear Attack

It has become a cliche to declare that the future is full of both "great promise and great peril." Nonetheless, this aphorism expresses an important fact about the Janus-faced nature of our increasingly powerful technologies. If humanity realizes the best possible future, we could quite possibly usher in an era of unprecedented human flourishing, happiness, and value. But if the great experiment of civilization fails, our species could meet the same fate as the dinosaurs. I find it helpful to think about what a child born today could plausibly expect to witness in her or his lifetime.