Across the technologically mature economies, citizens, society, businesses, and governments alike are becoming aware of the emergence of powerful technologies and their potential to reshape every aspect of human activity. The names of rapidly advancing technologies are becoming part of our everyday experience, even if we don't fully understand their functionality, capabilities, long-term potential impacts, or implications. There is though, a growing understanding and expectation that our lives will be increasingly dependent on, and enhanced by, the coming together of a range of these technologies. The most impactful of these exponentially advancing technologies are likely to be 5G communications, smartphones, smart wearable and embedded devices such as watches, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), big data, cloud computing, smart objects, smart speakers, home automation, blockchain, digital currencies, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), 3D printing, drones, robotics, sensors, the Internet of Things (IoT), and quantum computing. So, how might these technologies combine to create previously unimaginable changes in everything from lifestyles, relationships, and work, to our food, leisure, and travel experiences? To explore these possibilities, the Life in 2025: Say Hello Say Goodbye Scenarios were developed for Huawei Consumer Business Group. The scenarios preview what we could see emerge across ten different aspects of human activity by the year 2025: Dating, Leisure Time, Friends and Family, Food and Dining, Entertainment, Fashion and Beauty, Travel, Health and Wellness, The Workplace, and Communication. The next five years will see AI take the possibilities for dating to a new level. Dating apps could tap into information on our lives from across the web and social media, to enhance our composed profile.

While governments around the world are wrestling with the potential for massive on-rushing technological disruption of work and the jobs market, few are extending the telescope to explore what the knock-on impacts might be for the planet. Here we explore some dimensions of the issue. Although replacing humans with robots has a dystopian flavor, what, if any positives are there from successive waves of artificial intelligence (AI) and other exponentially developing technologies displacing jobs ranging from banker to construction worker? Clearly, the number of people working and the implications for commuting, conduct of their role and their resulting income-related domestic lifestyle all have a direct bearing on their consumption of resources and emissions footprint. However, while everyone wants to know the impact of smart automation, the reality is that we are all clueless as to the outcome over the next twenty years, as this fourth industrial revolution has only just started.

A combination of breathless excitement and near-paralysing fear are driving the debate along with countless – often ill-informed – predictions about how the technology which will revamp our future lives. While it is far too early in AI's evolution to understand its true potential or how quickly it will have a fundamental impact, it is already penetrating our lives. From smartphones and dating sites to web searches and driverless vehicles; it is becoming part of the fabric of life. Over the next few years, businesses, homes and schooling could be completely different with AI on the scene. At its core, AI is a type software or hardware that learns – and it could become programmed to learn mostly about us, its users.