By Futurist Thomas Frey
The Best Way to Test What You Really Believe
Anyone can say they believe something will happen. But put money on it? Now you’re serious.
Prop bets started in sports. Instead of just picking who wins the game, you bet on specific things that happen inside the game. Will the first score be a touchdown or a field goal? Will the quarterback throw for more than 300 yards? These side bets make you think harder and commit to specifics.
So here’s my challenge: I’ve put together 10 prop bets on future technology. Each one is a specific outcome with a specific deadline—somewhere between 2030 and 2040. Some feel like sure things. Some feel far-fetched. All of them are more possible than most people realize.
Read through them. Decide which ones you’d bet on. The bets you’re willing to make reveal what you actually believe about where the world is going.
Bet #1: The Vitalists Have Kids—Lots of Them
The Bet: By 2040, the Vitalist movement leads to more than 50 million Gen Z women choosing to have 4 or more children each, reversing global population decline.
The Odds: 3 to 1 in favor
What’s the Vitalists movement? It’s a growing cultural shift—especially among young women—that embraces large families as a form of purpose and meaning. The idea: humans need to grow, spread, and populate the universe. Having children isn’t a burden; it’s the most important thing you can do.
Sounds fringe right now. So did the organic food movement in 1980. So did home schooling in 1990.
Population is declining in almost every wealthy country. Japan, South Korea, Germany, Italy—all shrinking. The incentives to have large families have been disappearing for decades. But movements have a way of reversing trends when they tap into something people deeply want.
The question isn’t whether the Vitalists are right. The question is whether they’ll be persuasive enough. At 3:1 odds, the bet says yes.
Would you take it? (Column: impactlab.com — The Vitalists: How Gen Z Women Decided to Populate the Universe)
Bet #2: Robots Eat Our Garbage
The Bet: By 2040, autonomous robotic earthworms successfully mine and reclaim at least 30% of the world’s landfills, turning waste into valuable resources.
The Odds: 2 to 1 in favor
The world has a landfill problem that nobody talks about enough. Billions of tons of material—metals, plastics, organic matter—buried and wasted. Traditional mining for new materials is expensive and environmentally destructive. Meanwhile, landfills are full of things we already spent energy to make.
Robotic earthworms change this equation. Imagine autonomous machines that tunnel through landfills the way earthworms move through soil. They sort materials as they go, extracting metals, reclaiming plastics, converting organic matter into compost or fuel.
The technology components already exist. Autonomous navigation, material sorting, tunneling mechanisms. The challenge is combining them into a machine that works reliably underground in messy, unpredictable conditions.
At 2:1, this bet leans toward yes. Thirty percent of landfills by 2040 is ambitious but achievable if the economics work. And the economics get more compelling every year as raw materials get more expensive.
Would you take it? (Column: impactlab.com — Robotic Earthworms and the Future of Landfill Mining)
Bet #3: Can a Robot Change a Diaper?
The Bet: By 2035, humanoid robots pass a new kind of Turing Test by successfully changing an infant’s dirty diaper, demonstrating true emotional and adaptive intelligence.
The Odds: 5 to 2 against
This one sounds funny until you think about what changing a diaper actually requires.
You have to recognize that the diaper needs changing. You have to pick up a moving, squirming, unpredictable infant without hurting them. You have to manage disgust and stay focused. You have to be gentle but firm. You have to read the baby’s cues and adjust constantly. You have to care enough to do all this without being told to.
This is why the diaper test is being proposed as a new Turing Test—a benchmark for true intelligence. It’s not about answering questions or playing chess. It’s about operating in a messy, emotional, unpredictable real-world situation with a vulnerable being who’s depending on you.
Current robots can change tires in a factory. Tires don’t wiggle, cry, or kick. Babies do all three.
At 5:2 against, this bet says we probably won’t get there by 2035. But the gap is closing faster than most people expect.
Would you take it? (Column: futuristspeaker.com — The Turing Test for Humanoid Robots: Changing an Infant’s Dirty Diaper)
Bet #4: Fusion Power Finally Works
The Bet: By 2040, the first commercial fusion power plant comes online, sparking construction of thousands more and transforming global energy infrastructure.
The Odds: Even money
Fusion power has been “20 years away” for the past 60 years. That joke is so old it has gray hair.
But something changed recently. Private companies—not just government labs—are pouring billions into fusion. Commonwealth Fusion Systems. TAE Technologies. Helion Energy. These companies are moving faster than government programs ever did, using new materials, new approaches, and the urgency that comes with investors expecting results.
Fusion would be transformational in a way that’s hard to overstate. The fuel is hydrogen, which can be extracted from water. The output is enormous clean energy with no carbon and very little radioactive waste. A working fusion reactor would effectively solve the energy crisis permanently.
Even money means this is a coin flip. Not “probably yes” and not “probably no.” We genuinely don’t know. The optimists say breakthroughs are imminent. The skeptics say the physics problems are still unsolved.
This is the most consequential bet on the list. If it comes in, everything else on this list becomes easier.
Would you take it? (Column: futuristspeaker.com — 20 Common Jobs in 2040)
Bet #5: AI Wins a Nobel Prize
The Bet: By 2040, an artificial general intelligence system demonstrates human-level capabilities across multiple domains and earns a Nobel Prize in the process.
The Odds: 3 to 1 against
This bet has two parts bundled together, and both have to come true.
First, AGI—artificial general intelligence—has to exist. Not an AI that’s great at one thing, like playing chess or writing code, but an AI that can think, learn, and problem-solve across any domain the way humans can.
Second, it has to do something Nobel Prize worthy. Discover a new drug. Solve a physics problem. Make a breakthrough in chemistry or economics or medicine that changes the world.
The Nobel Committee would also have to decide whether to award the prize to an AI, which opens a whole separate debate about whether machines can be said to “discover” things or whether the humans who built them deserve the credit.
At 3:1 against, this bet says it probably doesn’t happen by 2040. AGI might arrive, but a Nobel Prize suggests a level of creative breakthrough that even optimistic timelines struggle to predict.
Would you take it? (Column: impactlab.com — The Next 15 Nobel Prizes: Breakthroughs That Rewrite What’s Possible)
Bet #6: Europe Goes Cashless
The Bet: By 2030, physical cash becomes extinct in Europe, with digital currencies fully taking over all transactions.
The Odds: 2 to 1 in favor
Sweden is already 95% cashless. Norway isn’t far behind. The European Central Bank is developing a digital euro. Contactless payment is now the norm across most of Western Europe.
The direction is clear. The question is whether 2030 is the right deadline, and whether “extinct” is too strong a word. Some elderly people, some rural communities, and some specific situations will cling to cash longer than others.
But “extinct” in a practical sense—meaning you can’t use cash most places and most people don’t own any—might actually be achievable by 2030 in the largest European economies.
At 2:1, the bet leans yes. The trend lines point firmly in this direction, and 2030 is only five years away—not far enough for dramatic reversal, but close enough that stubborn holdouts could push the deadline past 2030.
Would you take it? (Column: impactlab.com — Future Quotes on the Cashless Society)
Bet #7: The Truck Driver Crisis
The Bet: By 2035, autonomous vehicles displace 40 to 55 percent of U.S. truck driving jobs, forcing a massive workforce transition.
The Odds: Even money
This is the automation story most people are watching most closely. There are 3.5 million truck drivers in the United States. Autonomous trucks don’t need sleep, don’t get distracted, don’t need breaks, and never drive impaired.
Companies like Waymo Via and Aurora are already running autonomous trucks on highways. The technology for highway driving—where conditions are predictable and controlled—is closer to ready than most people realize. The harder problems are city driving, loading docks, and unexpected situations.
The job displacement might not look like mass unemployment. It might look like trucks that drive themselves on the highway but need a human driver for the first and last few miles. That’s still a dramatic reduction in jobs—just not total elimination.
Even money says this is a real coin flip. The technology is coming. The question is how fast it scales, how regulations respond, and whether 40-55% is the right threshold.
Would you take it? (Column: impactlab.com — Where Do 3.5 Million Truck Drivers Go?)
Bet #8: Mars Gets a Force Field
The Bet: By 2040, artificial magnetospheres are deployed on Mars to protect colonists from radiation and enable long-term habitation.
The Odds: 5 to 3 against
Mars has a big problem: no magnetic field. Earth’s magnetic field acts as a shield that deflects harmful radiation from the sun. Mars lost its magnetic field billions of years ago. Without it, anyone living on Mars faces radiation levels that would cause cancer and damage DNA over time.
One proposed solution: deploy a network of satellites or ground-based generators that create an artificial magnetic field around Mars. NASA has actually studied this. The physics are sound in principle.
But deploying infrastructure at planetary scale by 2040 is an enormous engineering challenge. You’d need to get enough hardware to Mars, deploy it correctly, and get it working—all while also trying to set up colonies there in the first place.
At 5:3 against, this bet says we probably won’t get there by 2040. But the fact that it’s not 10:1 against is itself remarkable. A generation ago this would have seemed pure fantasy.
Would you take it? (Column: impactlab.com — Artificial Magnetospheres and the Future of Mars Colonization)
Bet #9: AI Reads Your X-Ray Better Than Your Doctor
The Bet: By 2040, AI fully automates routine diagnostic jobs in radiology and pathology, leaving human doctors to handle only complex cases.
The Odds: 3 to 2 in favor
This is already happening. AI systems today can read mammograms, chest X-rays, and pathology slides with accuracy that matches or exceeds human radiologists for routine cases. The technology works. The barrier is regulatory approval, hospital adoption, and the slow pace of change in medical institutions.
The word “fully” in this bet is the tricky part. Fully automated routine diagnostics by 2040 means that the standard first-pass reading of X-rays, MRIs, CT scans, and pathology slides happens without a human looking at them. A human only gets involved when the AI flags something unusual or difficult.
This will save money and potentially improve accuracy by eliminating human fatigue and inconsistency. It will also eliminate or dramatically reduce the jobs of thousands of radiologists and pathologists who currently do routine reading.
At 3:2 in favor, the bet leans yes. The technology is ready. The adoption just needs to catch up.
Would you take it? (Column: impactlab.com — The Future of Healthcare Jobs: AI Automation in Radiology and Pathology)
Bet #10: Mining Asteroids for Trillion-Dollar Treasure
The Bet: By 2040, asteroid mining becomes a trillion-dollar industry with fleets of spacecraft extracting rare metals and fueling a space economy.
The Odds: 4 to 1 against
The asteroids in our solar system contain more minerals than Earth’s entire crust. A single metallic asteroid could contain more iron, nickel, and platinum than humanity has mined in all of history.
The economics seem obvious: go get it. But the execution is staggering. You need spacecraft that can travel to asteroids, extract materials in microgravity, process them, and return them to Earth or a processing facility. The infrastructure doesn’t exist. The cost per kilogram of material returned would have to drop dramatically to make it worth doing.
A trillion-dollar industry requires the entire supply chain to work at commercial scale. That means hundreds of missions, reliable extraction technology, and a market for space-sourced materials.
At 4:1 against, this bet says probably not by 2040. But “against” isn’t “impossible.” Private space companies are moving faster than anyone predicted ten years ago. If SpaceX makes launch costs cheap enough, asteroid mining economics change completely.
Would you take it? (Column: futuristspeaker.com — 20 Common Jobs in 2040)
What Your Bets Say About You
Now look back at which bets you’d take and which you’d pass on.
If you took Bets 2, 4, 6, and 9—the ones leaning yes—you’re an optimist about practical technology. You believe human ingenuity solves engineering problems on reasonable timelines.
If you took Bets 3, 5, 8, and 10—the ones leaning no—you’re an optimist about human exceptionalism. You believe some things are still beyond machines and that the really audacious goals take longer than people expect.
If you took Bet 7 (the even money truck driver bet), you’re comfortable sitting in genuine uncertainty. You know the direction but not the speed.
And if you took Bet 1 (the Vitalists bet), you believe that culture can surprise us. That human beings don’t just react to technology—they push back, create movements, and sometimes reverse trends that seemed inevitable.
The future isn’t just something that happens to us. It’s built by the people who decide what they believe in and put something behind it.
What do you believe?
Related Articles:
The Case for Fusion Energy’s Commercial Future
How AI Is Already Transforming Medical Imaging
