y 2050, the most intimate aspects of our lives may be shaped by systems that know us better than we know ourselves.
Digital innovations are moving fast. Imagine AI–generated “health passports” that could determine access to employment, insurance, even travel. Where hormonal fluctuations may trigger nudges from your smart home to alter daily behaviors. Where mental health can be monitored through voice, keystroke, and biometrics.
This is not speculative fiction. There are already innovations that predict your body’s future with astonishing precision. AI can now detect early–stage diseases before symptoms appear. Digital twins are being built to simulate a person’s unique physiology. Wearables track not just steps, but micro–fluctuations in mood, glucose, hormone levels, and even pre–symptomatic infections. Your mental health can be monitored through voice, keystroke, and biometrics. In many ways, this is the promised future of health and wellbeing: predictive, personalized, and optimized.
But for whom and at what cost? In a world of algorithmically sculptured health, the deepest driver of wellbeing may be what technology cannot provide—human presence and empathy. Yet for a planet fractured by climate shocks, authoritarianism, conflict, polarization and shrinking public health budgets, the temptation may be to replace costly human care with algorithmic “solutions.” To treat digital innovation as a cost–containment strategy and not an engine for equity.
Where does this leave the unconnected? Today, nearly 1.7 billion people remain excluded from digital systems. Meanwhile, the datasets training AI are dangerously incomplete with women, marginalized groups, and those in low–resource settings remaining under–represented, or simply invisible. Without radical course correction, AI will deliver precision wellbeing for the privileged, and scalable neglect for the rest.
The deeper risk is that human connection itself may become a luxury good. In an automated wellness economy, access to human–centered care, such as time with a doctor, a counselor, a caregiver, may be reserved for those who can pay a premium. For others, wellbeing may be reduced to algorithmic nudges and risk scores.
We need governance frameworks that move faster than our hype cycles. Health AI must be treated as a public good, with inclusive, representative data. And we must prioritize values–led design over purely tech–driven disruption.
In the end, the most precious resource in the wellbeing economy of 2050 may not be the most advanced AI, but an increasingly rare one: time with another human being who listens, sees, and cares.
a global affairs media network
Optimized lives, lonely futures?
June 11, 2025
Digital innovation in healthtech means the most intimate aspects of our lives may soon be shaped by systems that know us better than we know ourselves. One under–recognized risk of this is that human connection could soon become a luxury good, writes Lesley–Anne Long.
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y 2050, the most intimate aspects of our lives may be shaped by systems that know us better than we know ourselves.
Digital innovations are moving fast. Imagine AI–generated “health passports” that could determine access to employment, insurance, even travel. Where hormonal fluctuations may trigger nudges from your smart home to alter daily behaviors. Where mental health can be monitored through voice, keystroke, and biometrics.
This is not speculative fiction. There are already innovations that predict your body’s future with astonishing precision. AI can now detect early–stage diseases before symptoms appear. Digital twins are being built to simulate a person’s unique physiology. Wearables track not just steps, but micro–fluctuations in mood, glucose, hormone levels, and even pre–symptomatic infections. Your mental health can be monitored through voice, keystroke, and biometrics. In many ways, this is the promised future of health and wellbeing: predictive, personalized, and optimized.
But for whom and at what cost? In a world of algorithmically sculptured health, the deepest driver of wellbeing may be what technology cannot provide—human presence and empathy. Yet for a planet fractured by climate shocks, authoritarianism, conflict, polarization and shrinking public health budgets, the temptation may be to replace costly human care with algorithmic “solutions.” To treat digital innovation as a cost–containment strategy and not an engine for equity.
Where does this leave the unconnected? Today, nearly 1.7 billion people remain excluded from digital systems. Meanwhile, the datasets training AI are dangerously incomplete with women, marginalized groups, and those in low–resource settings remaining under–represented, or simply invisible. Without radical course correction, AI will deliver precision wellbeing for the privileged, and scalable neglect for the rest.
The deeper risk is that human connection itself may become a luxury good. In an automated wellness economy, access to human–centered care, such as time with a doctor, a counselor, a caregiver, may be reserved for those who can pay a premium. For others, wellbeing may be reduced to algorithmic nudges and risk scores.
We need governance frameworks that move faster than our hype cycles. Health AI must be treated as a public good, with inclusive, representative data. And we must prioritize values–led design over purely tech–driven disruption.
In the end, the most precious resource in the wellbeing economy of 2050 may not be the most advanced AI, but an increasingly rare one: time with another human being who listens, sees, and cares.
