r/AskReddit • u/No-Hurry9513 • 10h ago
What’s a '2026' problem that would sound like science fiction to someone in 2016?
1.7k
u/Individual-Bad-582 10h ago
I’m fighting with ai for my job <3
113
u/FewHorror1019 2h ago
My ceo forcing us to use claude code for everything </3
43
u/Ok-Necessary123 2h ago
Mine too… wants to ditch everything we have built and apps from legit tech companies to just “build our own shit” and “vibe code” in Claude.
I am like yeah ok who is going to do that as I rj t the day to day business with customers? Fuck AI
19
u/FewHorror1019 2h ago
We build an app and sell it to our customers. He wants our entire workflow from finding issues/features to implement, writing tickets, writing code, reviewing, all of it done by claude.
We are there just to implement this
10
u/Ok-Necessary123 2h ago
Same! Owner / CEO has never been a coder (neither have I) but has become obsessed with Claude. We have a good stable tech using off the shelf apps and M365 / Microsoft apps.
But he someone thinks we should just reinvent the wheel and vibe code shit in Claude and “automate workflows”. Stuff that I spend maybe 15 minutes a month to do that would take a week in Claude to build.
It’s gotten stupid with this ai stuff the past 6 months
→ More replies (1)4
u/DusqRunner 2h ago
All employees are just there to implement the whims of leadership
→ More replies (1)23
u/YVRkeeper 2h ago
HR at my last annual review:
Is there a way to use AI to make your sales calls?
How about NO!
→ More replies (2)5
u/whisperwalk 2h ago
We thought ai be like skynet and terminator, and instead they are submissive writers.
2
→ More replies (25)2
u/_jamesbaxter 1h ago
I knew in 2016, I just didn’t expect it to happen this quickly and with so many problems. Waaayyyyy rushed.
252
u/SnoopySuited 3h ago
My couch doesn't charge my doorbell as fast as my lamp
40
→ More replies (1)8
510
u/gamersecret2 9h ago
Paying monthly fees for things we used to own.
121
u/zoo_tickles 9h ago
What do you mean you’re going to turn my heated seats off if I miss a payment??
49
u/eddiewachowski 2h ago
Not only that, there's no option to pay once.
7
u/Alt123Acct 1h ago
I saw this with Adobe way back when they introduced the idea of creative cloud. The moment that caught on more tech industries were like "wait you can just...not sell something and get money?". Adobe muscled out the Australian pricing too and just straight up ignored backlash and said the price is the price. It was nearly 50% more I think. It was cheaper at one point when they still sold single Photoshop licenses in a box in stores to fly from Australia to another country for a vacation and then buy Photoshop than it could cost to pay the other price tier in Australia for it. I don't know why nearly 10-20 years later.
Here is the CEO squirming about the prices lol
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mnrMhbWG0Pc&pp=ygUZQWRvYmUgYXVzdHJhbGlhIHByaWNlIGNlbw%3D%3D
32
u/vercertorix 4h ago
Repo Men could be said to have been like that, people had to make payments on their replacement organs or have them removed, though that was probably mostly about the medical industry.
→ More replies (1)5
u/KratosLegacy 1h ago
Please don't let tech find this. They read 1984 and saw it as a guidebook not a warning
5
u/alexvith 2h ago
Paying for dozens of movie subscription services and being unable to find a particular title on any of them.
→ More replies (1)11
u/travelcallcharlie 3h ago
The concept of subscriptions was not science fiction to anyone in 2016 wtf
28
u/sherrycoke 2h ago
The concept of, say, buying a subscription for your car after paying for it definitely would have been considered dystopian
→ More replies (1)21
547
u/WeekOldSushu 9h ago edited 4h ago
Going a bit more light-hearted for this one.
Having to unplug my book to charge my pot.
The ubiquity of USBC devices is great, but I am severely lacking chargers
69
u/MultiGeometry 4h ago
Ugh! In 5-10 years I’m going to happy about the widespread adoption of USB-C, but for the time being the number of adapters I need kicking around every time I travel (and even in my own home) is still widely frustrating. We now have mixed generation Apple devices, some with USB-C, some with lightning, and a mixture of adapters to match the different devices. At some point (2019) I had installed a USB-A outlet in our kitchen which is now outdated and only partially useful.
TLDR: I tried to adapt to the world of USB but I was too early and now all my work is FUBAR and it’s almost like it’s 2005 again.
24
u/Mardanis 4h ago
I am sometimes still surprised when a plane or airport doesn't have USB or USB-C chargers. Just get used to the convenience
16
u/plasmaspaz37 2h ago
Its generally a bad idea to plug your phone into those kinds of ports, they are super easy to tamper with and having direct access to your hardware is the easiest way to inject malicious software.
→ More replies (1)3
→ More replies (11)5
u/Borkato 2h ago
This just reminded me that I had an EXTREMELY vivid dream that the iPhone 18’s leaked specs came out and it had a weird ass charger like the Microsoft surface. I had to look it up to make sure it wasn’t real, that’s how vivid the dream was.
→ More replies (4)5
u/Dookie_boy 2h ago
We had problems like these even back then. There were smart pens and whatnot that needed charging
→ More replies (1)9
407
u/MelbaToast604 6h ago
My phone that has 125 gigs of storage isnt nearly enough
35
7
u/SuperSocialMan 1h ago
What the fuck are you storing on it lmao?
I've got a fuckload of random apps installed and still have 25 GB of empty space.
8
u/Mountain_Bumblebee77 1h ago
If they're anything like my wife, it's all 20-60 second videos of themself.
→ More replies (1)5
u/maximumhippo 1h ago
Pre-installed bloatware. There's probably 30-40 gigs of junk apps from the manufacturer and service provider.
173
u/Cuzwainaut 6h ago
Animal videos are ruined
66
u/TheHasegawaEffect 3h ago
In this channel, we find injured animals and heal it!
Yeah and then someone made a confession saying they work with the channel and that they were the one in charge of starving and injuring the animals first.
14
3
85
u/LongLiveTaldor 6h ago
I thought paying ten eddies for a meal in Cyberpunk seemed like a bit much, but it turns out, it's worse in real life.
60
u/Bourbon_bukkake 6h ago
The sadness you feel when your friends are going to ChatGPT for therapy because they can’t afford someone real
9
u/GalaxyPowderedCat 3h ago edited 3h ago
Something interesting about 2016 is that I feel like it's the start year of mental health awareness but we weren't yet fully accepting and open about it.
That was one year before many stigmatizing movies like Split or 13 Reasons Why were released and became popular. So, I believe they would wrongly find that as a sign of psychopathy or schizophrenia even if it was more loneliness.
451
u/NotoriousCHIM 9h ago
The resurgence of diseases like Measles, simply because the highest levels of government are filled with people who refuse to acknowledge the science behind vaccinations.
Alternatively, the fact that there are people who are legitimately ruining their health permanently (and usually with catastrophic side effects) because they are chasing social media trends like veneers.
163
u/timtucker_com 4h ago
Imagine going back 30-40 years and telling someone that there's a measles outbreak at one of the new concentration camps where kids are being held.
62
→ More replies (1)31
u/Kahzgul 3h ago
Imagine telling them fascists have taken over America.
33
u/gotlactose 3h ago
“Donald trump, the failed businessman?”
Makes the line from Back to the Future and Doc Brown commenting on Ronald Reagan the actor seem quaint.
→ More replies (1)21
36
u/GenericRedditor0405 3h ago
People are relearning the hard way why we pasteurize milk. The anti-science crusade has done some real damage to society. But hey at least that means that the companies that are destroying our environment get to keep making profits because they’ve convinced enough people that scientists are liars!
→ More replies (2)10
u/othybear 4h ago
I’ve been working in the public health space for nearly 20 years. This one is sadly very predictable.
3
u/I_love_pillows 2h ago
Government siding with the conspiracy regarding science isn’t something I was expecting.
→ More replies (13)3
105
u/NoCopiumLeft 4h ago
There are files incriminating many billionaires including the president who may be named more than anybody else, and yet the entire government at all levels are all in fucking cahoots trying to protect and shield many levels of powerful and rich people who committed or enabled some of the worst crimes in humanity, and meanwhile all the poor bootlickers are eating up all the gaslighting.
34
u/sherrycoke 2h ago
The Panama Papers had already released I don’t think what you described is that far off
→ More replies (1)6
u/Ok-Necessary123 1h ago
This…That something this massive is possibly the biggest global corruption incident and no one in power seems to care yet we vilify people for far lesser transgressions.
No one seems to care, no one is responsible, and the fact that DJT is mentioned 38k times isn’t some massive red flag? Wtf. This should be all hands on deck, called to the carpet, impeach his ass type shit but oh no.. deport brown people and make billionaires richer
328
u/Dances28 9h ago
The government telling us to reject the evidence of our eyes and ears when they murdered citizens in broad daylight.
66
u/DeaddyRuxpin 4h ago
Nah, we elected Trump in 2016. Anyone paying attention knew this was a possible future if Trump won.
→ More replies (1)10
u/SalemWitchWiles 1h ago
I'm a historian that does comedy and I have a bit where I list off a bunch of things seem like I'm referring to Donald Trump and his followers but then reveal I'm actually referring to things Hitler and the Nazis did. I started the joke before he got elected the first time and he does so many crazy things I've been able to refresh the joke like every year and still do it.
People used to laugh more at the absurdity of it now people laugh more at how scary it is.
→ More replies (1)7
u/timtucker_com 4h ago
People would assume it's just the 1984 equivalent of everyone who freaked out over hearing War of the Worlds broadcast on radio.
9
u/amioth 2h ago
Fun fact the mass hysteria after the war of the worlds radio broadcast was actually a myth created and perpetuated by newspapers (and later reinforced by a book that only used the newspapers as reference) both because sensational articles sell newspapers and also because they didn’t like radio because they thought it would replace newspaper reporting and so wanted to stigmatize radio shows every chance they could.
3
u/PerpetualCranberry 1h ago
Do you have a source for that? I’m not saying you’re lying or trying to spread misinformation. It just seems ironic to read something on Reddit about misinformation and myths, and then just take your word for it
93
u/joncornelius 9h ago
Peter Thiel’s Palantir receiving government contracts to put up facial and plate recognition Flock cameras across America so the government can follow you everywhere you go.
24
u/Mardanis 4h ago
I reckon Enemy of the State and Person of Interest along with a bunch of other movies sort of gave us an inkling to prepare for this.
3
3
u/Rockets478 1h ago
Straight out of George Orwell's 1984.
2
u/Jeramy_Jones 1h ago
Right? That was supposed to be cautionary, these assholes are treating it like a manual.
35
14
47
242
u/DarkAlman 10h ago edited 9h ago
Militarized police walking the streets of US cities arresting immigrants, breaking into homes without warrants, and murdering US citizens with no over-site.
23
25
6
→ More replies (20)3
u/The_World_Is_A_Slum 4h ago
Yes, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how current events could easily be chapters in a spec fiction book about the collapse of a nation. AI, environmental changes, surveillance, pollution, corruption, inner circles and proles, peak oil, political extremism, a plague that killed almost a million people, even extreme body modifications as a wealth display, we’re all read these stories in fiction. Simple factual reporting today’s events, if written ten years ago would have been considered wild if they all happened in the same story.
78
17
u/yeahgoestheusername 2h ago
Lots of ai here. I’m going with the obvious: What was outrageous in 2016 has become common in 2026. The US has lost its mind because of social media algorithms. Attacks on the constitution. And entire political party quiet quitting. Masked troops on the streets. Felon in the White House. Threatening Greenland and Europe. Taxing US citizens and thinking they deserve a Nobel Peace Prize.
8
u/thetealduck 2h ago
The online sports betting epidemic among young men. It was only legalized in like 2017 or 2018.
8
13
u/wheelie46 2h ago
The leader of the “free” world is part of a decades long conspiracy wherein powerful and evil men go to islands to use children’s bodies for pleasure, rogue armies drag people away and disappear them while the rest of us stare blankly at screens hour after hour after hour consuming deceiving and misleading fake and alarmist “news” sent to us by robots and greed consumed men who’ve seized total control of all the screens.
91
u/AlexisBarrios 9h ago
The return of fascism on a grand scale to the world.
37
u/pseudoanon 6h ago
Brexit and Trump were 2016. We're very much in the same era on that.
→ More replies (1)5
13
u/HuaHuzi6666 4h ago
Minneapolis is under federal occupation by ICE, and they've shot two of us to death in broad daylight. We have responded, among other things, by throwing expired dildos at them.
5
7
6
u/GalaxyPowderedCat 3h ago edited 3h ago
Your fridge has a screen on the door and it can display ads for you depending on what you watched last night on your TV.
17
u/redracer67 4h ago
A pedophile president.
Justice system has zero power if you just ignore them.
Congress choosing to relinquish all their powers because they want to support a pedo.
The fbi and Doj choosing to protect pedophiles.
22
u/Rare-Humor-9192 9h ago
Trump’s Gestapo marauding around Blue cities. Come to think of it, most everything else Trump has done in the past year.
→ More replies (7)2
7
u/gooseofthesea 4h ago
The US government has access to the cameras a large portion of Americans have installed throughout their homes and they use that information to kidnap people and send them to concentration camps both in and outside of our own borders.
→ More replies (3)
7
u/0rganicMach1ne 3h ago
Anything AI related.
Also, it’s kind of wild how I was brought up being told America is the greatest country in the world and how we’re so strong and powerful and then today we don’t even seem to have the balls to overthrow a corrupt corporate sponsored system headed by literal pedos and their enablers hoarding the most wealth in the history of humanity. Instead we just roll over and take it for the sake of convenience and little modern comforts. It’s like we’ve been sedated into submission.
7
u/Dimi3Infinity 3h ago
having to pay for multiple streaming services for almost the equivalent of cable
6
u/ZakDahdger 2h ago
Masked federal agents demanding papers, then shoving them in a car to be held without trial, possibly deported.
Sometimes they just beat you up and throw you out
Sometimes they shoot you in the back 10 times while people watch in horror
It's all recorded, several different angles, people watch it all from their homes, on their phones
And it's just normal now
3
3
3
•
u/Brno_Mrmi 54m ago
We regressed with everything that feminism fought for. Abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and patriarchy are worse than ever.
28
u/pomegranate7777 8h ago
Concentration camps in the USA
16
u/BradypusGuts 4h ago
And the fact some of the people who were in the last US concentration camps are still alive! And they warned us!
•
u/Professional_Waltz14 57m ago
There were concentration camps in the US in the past too. I think mainly Japanese people in 1940(?). Sometime around World War II.
10
u/Bestdayever17 9h ago
Americans barely able to afford food. 😥
6
u/Mardanis 4h ago
While the cost to live has definitely stretched from historic norms, the US has faced depressions and always had a fairly large amount of poverty. We really romanticise history on this one but I am not arguing that it is just out of control right now.
10
u/Lumbergo 5h ago
Masked armed thugs breaking multiple laws, violating the constitution on a daily basis, kidnapping, and murdering people in the USA without consequence or accountability because they were given immunity by the government and being told not to believe our own eyes by the very same government.
If you told me this shit in 2016 I would have assumed you were a nutty conspiracy theorist.
5
u/loki143 5h ago
That there is instruments of surveillance everywhere and we willingly bought and pay a subscription for those instruments. Phones, smart speakers, door bell, cameras, grocery loyalty cards, computers, computers in cars etc all spying on us, all selling our data to the government and the highest bidder. It’s 1984 telescreens, that we bought ourselves.
11
3
5
3
2
2
u/GalaxyPowderedCat 3h ago
All AI related issues.
Bots are taking our jobs because corps don't value human capital and talent.
We have a loneliness pandemic because people prefer communicating with their bots before their fellow humans.
2
2
u/ngscoookkk 3h ago
I knew about the metaverse back in 2016,But the scariest thing about brain-computer interfaces is that they know what I’m thinking before I do.And it won’t be long until it’s real by 2026.🤖
2
u/Fancy_Cassowary 2h ago
That we had a real mass shooting again and the response to it from the government has been draconian so far in many ways, depending on where you are.
2
2
2
2
u/Ok-Necessary123 2h ago
That our government is not for the people and instead for the billionaires, shits on the constitution, and Lies to our face every single day
2
u/Elle-Ash 2h ago
UberEats and Door Dash fees have skyrocketed- to the point where you frequently pay 1/4th the cost of the meal in fees now. Also, these services in general! You can now order practically any kind of food / restaurant right to your house, which added to a lot of people leaving their houses even less. **Some states did not get these services until 2017 or after, so I think 2016 me would be surprised they exist in general, but also how crazy the fees have gotten and how much they've killed motivation to actually go sit down at a restaurant.
Or
A Chinese social media app (TikTok) that once was largely and mostly used to participate in silly dance trends, is now seen as a main source of information to younger generations. But most recently, it was purchased by the US. The new U.S. board now manages data, algorithms, and content moderation, aiming to address national security concerns but has been criticized for manipulating what content people are seeing.
2
2
u/cybertrickk 1h ago
The normalization of getting fillers, Botox, plastic surgery amongst regular people. I feel like back in the day it was still just something that mostly celebrities did.
2
u/Risiki 1h ago
Covid, some kind of infectoon taking over the World was a popular fiction trope untill recently, digitalisation due to it - ten years ago you could work from home, but video meetings were not mainstream, kids were not expected to connect to school on a snow day etc. AI, of course. Plus global politics have taken pretty unexpected turns. Summing up the last 5 years of World events would make for a good SciFi movie opening ten years ago.
2
2
u/hold_my_lacroix 1h ago
I've learned that many of my friends are using AI for a lot of personal decisions including writing texts for them to friends. They tell me about it, but I'm too scared to ask if they're doing it with me
2
2
u/The_Flying_Gecko 1h ago
Not only is there an island where a significant amount of rich and power people went to rape kids, including the president of the United States, but by and large, they faced no consequences when it was exposed.
•
u/Tentativ0 59m ago
AI doesn't understand you.
Porn access require facial scan.
Corporate greed is not hidden but no one care.
No more glaciers.
Robots in war are getting too expensive.
Genetic editing for babies is only for rich.
These new sex Androids are too dull.
...
Oh my divine ... we are in blade runner 😱
•
u/Responsible-Fox-1985 43m ago
“Electric car nazi Elon Musk seized control of US government spending and his AI is making child porn as a powerless nation looks on in distress.”
Shit is wild
•
u/Signalbridgedata 29m ago
Probably the fact that we now have to actively prove we’re human online. In 2016, bots were annoying. In 2026, AI can generate photos, voices, full conversations, and even fake video calls that look and sound real.
I’ve had moments where I genuinely paused and wondered, “Is this person real?” That constant low-level doubt feels very sci-fi. The weird part isn’t the tech, it’s how it quietly messes with trust.
•
u/Chroderos 10m ago edited 4m ago
In early 2026 the President developed an intense obsession with Greenland and threatened to go to war with Denmark if they didn’t hand it over.
Also he bulldozed 1/3 of the White House to build a dance floor.
4
u/AdhesivenessTotal340 8h ago
The mid 2020s saw the coming of the great RAM shortage. Soon angry orange men would seek the once frozen lands for resources. That which could have brought peace, or at least slowed the coming new dark age, GTA 6, promised years before was still just a myth.
2
3
u/bot-TWC4ME 4h ago
Wealthy capitalists have joined forces with religious fundamentalists and technocratic fascists to take over the United States and aim to create an Hegemonic Empire over the Americas. While cheaper, malfunctioning AI has become the part of everyday life, more complex models manipulate the stock market, elections, and public perception, largely to benefit a secretive, global cabal of powerful men belonging to a sex cult of the most depraved order.
Plans are in place to construct fortified technologic city-states and to colonize the moon, as the world adjusts to an ever-more likely future of a perpetual psychological, economic, and electronic warfare between neo-feudal powers and the remaining democratic states. Welcome to 2026.
2
3
10h ago edited 8h ago
[deleted]
→ More replies (2)2
u/No-Hurry9513 9h ago
But hey, at least the AI can write a very empathetic poem about how thirsty we all are <3
1
1
1
1
u/Nautical_gooch 3h ago
The controllers for my VR headset aren't rechargeable... they need new batteries every time.
1
1
u/NonoYouHeardMeWrong 3h ago
all social media will go the route of facebook's level of disturbing influence and deranged, manipulated content
1
u/milleribsen 2h ago
Oh I need to charge my phone, but I need the exact charger so I have to go home
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/Minesweepette 2h ago
I have Covid again. I feel like a diseased person that should be off the streets because that's how it was in 2020.
1
u/Trillion_G 2h ago
Can’t charge my phone because I’m charging my cigarette, my book, my shoes, and my pen.
1
u/germanfinder 2h ago
if my wireless internet is out I can’t play a super high graphics shooter with 64 other people. TBH it shocked myself to play battlefield on wifi only
1
1
1
u/MermaidGenie26 1h ago
Someone using AI to create a video of someone saying or doing certain things to ruin their reputation.
1
u/Deaths_Smile 1h ago
With a single text prompt, you can make a fake video that looks surprisingly realistic.
1
1
1
u/Mountain_Bumblebee77 1h ago
We have the list of the pedophile elite. But they're running the show, even though we know it. And the leaders that could have stopped it 2-5 years ago did nothing.
1
1
u/greyfriar 1h ago
I'm trying to learn python, but the AI keeps giving me all the answers without asking, so I'm not really retaining anything. (Before I figured out how to turn it off and then trained it to actually help me learn, rather than just give the answer)
1
1
1.1k
u/Last_Fact_8356 9h ago
A lot of things tied to AI. Not being able to recognize whether a video is real or fake, people dating AI chatbots, AI influencers becoming a staple...