Cell Phones:
Cameras will move from the top of the screen to behind the screen itself. First dead center, then partway up the screen, to align with your eyes.
Fingerprint scanners will get embedded in the screen, then moved (when people get sick of having fingerprints on the screen all the time) to the back or side of the phone again.
Cell phone cameras will eventually be as good as any DSLR camera, even with optical zoom.
Cell phone cameras will get night-vision/IR/multi-spectrum sensors. Why? Because.
Cell phones will eventually replace keys and wallets entirely.
Cell phone screens will eventually become stretchable/extendable. Holographics will not catch on because they offer no privacy. The device itself will either be stretchable, like rubber, or extendable, but with as few moving parts as possible.
Mesh networks will become more popular for communication between phones, as a way to decrease data usage. First in small ways, like sending messages and emails, then in bigger ways as security improves: entire networks will be formed device to device.
Some company will experiment with cellphone augmented computers. Using your cellphone as a hard drive and processor in a larger screen and keyboard. It’ll be like a mini-tower, holding your desktop Os and files.
Smart Watches:
They will get additional non-invasive health monitors. Something that gathers data from sweat or breath, or both. Blood sugar monitors will definitely get added.
If smart watches get cameras, they will not point up from the face. They will point out from the side of the watch, down towards the wearers knuckes. Same with a flashlight.
Smart watches will replace keys and wallets in the same way phones will.
Smart watch mesh networks will also become more widely used, in the same way as phones.
Medicine
Computers will eventually replace family physicians and surgeons, but it will occur in stages.
First, an AI will work alongside doctors to provide information and diagnoses. A doctor may consult with the AI for additional information, or to confirm a diagnosis. This is normal, and kind of already used as doctors check resources for information.
Eventually, someone will build a booth at can provide diagnoses. It’ll be placed in a doctors office, or pharmacy. A patient goes up to it, inserts their healthcard, and tells it their symptoms. The system will make a diagnosis based on hundreds of thousands of research papers, and print out the result. The patient will take this result to their family physician, and the family physician can verify it, or provide another recommendation. Later, legislation and confidence in the AI will reach a point where the machine will offer over the counter medications, like Tylenol, if that’s all it determines the patient needs. The machine will be build like an ATM so it cannot be easily robbed.
More legislation and research later, the machine will begin suggesting prescription medication and referrals as needed. A clinic visit and family physician may have to sign off on it though.
MORE legislation and research later and the machine will be able to write and sign it’s own prescriptions and make it’s own referrals without any interference from a family physician. At first the patient will have to take the script to a pharmacy, then later (after more legislation), the machine will begin dispensing it’s own medication.
To reach this point, the machine will have to be able to prove a 99% confidence in diagnosing, in addition to an ability to
A) determine the patient that provided the health card IS the owner of the health card, B) determine that ONLY the patient is present and that two or more people aren’t providing different pieces of the data to build a “composite” patient that tricks the machine into giving them a drug.
C) determine that the patient isn’t lying about their symptoms within at least as much confidence as a physician would have when presented with the same patient.
This machine will probably look like a small bathroom. It will take all kinds of measurements: urine-analysis, stool analysis, blood test, breath test, sweat test, retinal scan, heart rate, pulse, speech analysis, ecg, weight, height, body fat percentage, lung capacity, bone density, age, gender, patient history. It’ll use thousands of records of “tells” as well as the biometric data to determine if a patient is lying about their history or symptoms. If the AI believes the patient is lying, they will refer them to a clinic (which the patient can book right from the machine), and send it’s finding to the clinic ahead of time.
People will agree to use the machine because it’ll be MUCH cheaper than visiting a family physician, and it’ll have a much shorter waiting time, won’t require any embarrassing human-human interaction of a clinic, will be MUCH more accurate than a physician, and have a more complete record of the patient. With multi-patient permission, it will even be able to link relative health records (in its database) and make predictions about patient health. Although these machines will probably start off installed in clinics, eventually they will be found all over the place.
As for surgeons, they will get replaced by robots probably much faster than even family physicians will. First they will require the supervision of a surgeon, then eventually they will be able to work on their own.
EMS and nurses will be the slowest to replace, given the nature of their work. First responders work in a wide variety of environments that cannot be predicted, and nurses handle patients while they are awake and sometimes in unpredictable states. They will get replaced eventually, it will just take a bit longer since robots will be involved, not just sensors and AI.
Law
Lawyers will eventually get replaced with search engines and web-available AI. AI will quickly take over the task of providing forms and information. Their ability to scan and search thousands upon thousands of documents very easily and quickly will make lawyers redundant for MANY situations.
The last to go will be defence lawyers, but even they will not last long: judges and juries will be MUCH more inclined to believe impartial, cold, unfeeling robots over emotionally invested, prone-to-lying, humans. They will also gain popularity as they dispense equal justice without taking race/age/religion/sex,etc. Into account, everyone will get treated the same, for the same cases. But they will also be feared as they will probably not be prone to mercy. Stealing food to feed your family will probably get the same sentence as stealing food because you didn’t want to pay. But the developers will probably find a way to take these factors into consideration, eventually.
First, Law AI will be used to consult on cases, like for physicians: for data lookup and course-of-action suggestions based on the letter of the law and previous cases. Then they will provide sentences for judges to consider. Finally, they will provide sentencing on their own. Judges will be brought on by developers to review cases and adjust the code.
Defence lawyers will be replaced, mostly by public demand, since they can’t be bought, and are truly impartial, and for the reasons mentioned above. Eventually, courts will just become the defendant, the accuser, an AI lawyer for each of them, and an AI judge, and will take about 10 minutes. Of course, all 3 AI’s will have lie-detection algorithms in them.
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