Humans might be ‘hotter’ in 1,000 years, say boffins – nevertheless it’s not all excellent news
AI has revealed what humans will look like in 2035 based on experts predictions. Some traits we will get are good, some are not so good. Here is what will happen and why
It’s official. Future people are going to be absolute smokeshows – at least, according to experts and artificial intelligence.
The Daily Mail asked AI to show what humans might look like in 1,000 years time, based on expert predictions — and the results have left us wanting to jump in a time machine. While some people are thinking about robot helpers in retirement, or fearing AI will put an end to online dating, it turns out the future might not be all that bad.
Due to natural selection, scientists predict people will get better looking, as the hotties among us will be getting it on like there’s no tomorrow while the less physically desirable will be missing out on the action.
Experts predict the average skin colour will be darker, and by the year 3025, a great deal of people will have tanned skin more often seen in warmer climates like Mauritius or Brazil. We will also look more uniform as evolution will take us to a place where the desirable attributes, such as wide jaw lines for guys and smooth complexion for women, will become the norm, boffins reckon.
Professor Mark Thomas, an evolutionary geneticist from UCL, said: “The natural state of affairs in mammals is really for females to do all the choosing but when you have strong patriarchies, as we do in many places around the world, then the males end up doing a lot of the choosing and controlling.
“Thankfully we’re moving into a world where females do the choosing, and they’re going to choose males who they like for one reason or another. It might be for brains, success, because they look good, or look muscly but as there’s more female choice you would expect those traits to increase.”
It isn’t all good news, however. According to some scientists’ predictions, we might be shorter than we are today.
In the past, one of the biggest evolutionary forces came from humans dying before they had the chance to reproduce. However, one modern theory suggests that some populations around the world are getting shorter, because people reach sexual maturity earlier.
Professor Thomas said: “This is one of the arguments that’s been put forward to explain why you get pygmy populations in many places around the world.
“Their lives are relatively short because it’s a tough life in the rainforest, so they’ve traded off sexual maturation against physical growth.’
Experts think we are also going to have smaller brains.
Professor Robert Brooks, an evolutionary biologist from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, said he would expect to see human brains shrink over time.
Professor Brooks’ theory suggests that as computers take over more of the computational, factual, and social dimensions of living, the advantage of having a big brain decreases.
Writing for The Conversation, Dr Nicholas Longrich, a palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist from the University of Bath, compared humans’ future development to that of a domesticated animal.
Dr Longrich wrote: “Arguably we’re becoming a kind of domesticated ape, but curiously, one domesticated by ourselves.
“Sheep lost 24% of their brain mass after domestication; for cows, it’s 26%; dogs, 30%.
“This raises an unsettling possibility. Maybe being more willing to passively go with the flow, like a domesticated animal, has been bred into us, like it was for them.”
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