JOBS OF THE FUTURE HUMAN-CENTRED DESIGNERS AND ETHICISTS

SALARY £100k+

(Estimated 2040 salary, taking inflation into consideration)

TODAY THEY WOULD BE Systems designers, software engineers, professors of ethics, psychologists, philosophers

EDUCATION NEEDED Anything from computer science, philosophy, psychology and design and ethics. “There are a lot of people doing master’s degrees and PhDs in this field today,” Badminton observes.

When we use technology such as Facebook or Twitter today, we do so by agreeing to their terms and conditions. In exchange for us being able to communicate and access information, we hand over lots of our data. If we post pictures of our children, Facebook owns those picture. If we share details of our health, it owns that information, too. In the future, that will change, according to Badminton.

Technology will be designed so that the human using it will be the priority, not the company. “A human-centred design turns the tables on everything. It says, ‘Let’s put the rights of the person using the system ahead of the company’s rights; let’s work out ethically how we can work with them,’” says Badminton. “It asks, ‘What’s going to be right and fair for the human individual?’ ”

Twitter is already operating this way, but many more qualified individuals will be required to roll out the approach across other tech-based businesses.

DATA SCIENTISTS AND BROKERS SALARY £75k+

TODAY THEY WOULD BE Software developers, data and business analysts, database administrators, AI trainers and engineers

EDUCATION NEEDED Computer science, data analytics, psychology, statistics, economics, data science

“By 2040, data will be created at a rate of more than 200 petabytes per year [a petabyte is 1,000 trillion units of text or information], with more than 8,000 digital data interactions per person every day – one every 10 seconds or so,” says Badminton.

“Every company will need teams of highly-trained data scientists to help them explore opportunities in the data they have and empower their employees and customers. There is an idea called ‘data dignity’, which means that you have the right to own the data you produce. So every time you go on Facebook, for example, you will own the data you produce. You have the right to keep that private or to sell it to people that can use it – so you have your own