I was challenged by the editors here at Work: Reimagined to imagine what a corporation might look like in 2050.

My immediate response was to think ‘that’s a long ways off.’ But on the other hand, it does take an incredibly long time to make foundational changes in society, except when major disruptions occur, as with the rise of the Internet over the past few decades, or the Black Death, when over 100 million people died, leading to the shifts in power that ultimately sparked the Renaissance.

So I am resorting to a futurist sleight-of-hand to get to an answer in several steps. I can’t just scramble to the roof of the house to see out over the horizon: First, I have to build a ladder to climb up to the roof. And the kind of ladders futurists build are indirect. Rather than simply extrapolating from the present — which leads to very boring stories about the future — I’ll pick several forces that could have a major impact on the world of business in 2050, and imagine edge cases for each one. This leads to scenarios — essentially, bedtime stories about the future that don’t need to be true. They only need to help us think about our future in a structured way.

The Three Forces That Will Impact Our Future

I’ve selected three extremely pressing problems, and their impact on jobs and work, to serve as the dimensions for scenario development: economic inequality, climate change, and artificials (AI and robots).

Inequality

In the past several years, the growing spread of income (and wealth) inequality has been front page news, and a defining issue of our economic era. Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century was perhaps the tipping point for economic inequality to ascend to the highest and broadest levels of public discourse.

In a report released this month, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported that economic inequality continues to grow, is leading to higher levels of poverty, and has reduced the rebound from the Great Recession. As the report’s authors say,

In most countries, the gap between rich and poor is at its highest level since 30 years. Today, in OECD countries, the richest 10% of the population earn 9.6 times the income of the poorest 10%. In the 1980s, this ratio stood at 7:1 rising to 8:1 in the 1990s and 9:1 in the 2000s. In several emerging economies, particularly in Latin America, income inequality has narrowed, but income gaps remain generally higher than in OECD countries. During the crisis, income inequality continued to increase, mainly due to the fall in employment; redistribution through taxes and transfer partly offset inequality. However, at the lower end of the income distribution, real household incomes fell substantially in countries hit hardest by the crisis.

My inclination is to hope for a world where inequality can be limited, but because it is increasing at the present time — both by the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer — I’ve imagined two scenarios where inequality is even worse 35 years from now, and one where it has been checked in a scenario called Humania.

Climate Change

The second force is climate change, specifically as a result of human activities. I won’t even link to source information since we are beyond that now, despite foot dragging by powerful, entrenched interests. Only yesterday, Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobile, continued to deny climate science, and refused to join a group of European energy companies working on a climate strategy in advance of UN climate talks planned for December.

However, it continues to be possible that we can sidestep a worldwide extinction through moderation of climate change, and therefore two of my scenarios are based on that, while one — Collapseland — does not manage that.

The Impact of AI and Robots on Jobs and Work

The Pew Research Center created a ‘canvassing’ of 1,896 experts and asked them this question:

The economic impact of robotic advances and AI — Self-driving cars, intelligent digital agents that can act for you, and robots are advancing rapidly. Will networked, automated, artificial intelligence (AI) applications and robotic devices have displaced more jobs than they have created by 2025?

In the consequent report, AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs, the results were mixed: Roughly half of the experts see a future in which AI and robots will displace significant numbers of workers, and roughly half that said they would not. I fell into the camp of yay-sayers: Those that think artificials will have a major impact on work, writing,

The central question of 2025 will be: What are people for in a world that does not need their labor, and where only a minority are needed to guide the ‘bot-based economy?

But I believe that there will be necessary regulatory checks on AI and robots. While we will allow autonomous vehicles to shuttle us around, and algorithms to select the best candidates for a job — because AI is better than us at that — people will remain wary of AIs. I don’t think we’ll be handing over control of our nuclear weapons — or the strategic direction of our companies — to artificials, no matter how smart. As a result, in two scenarios AI is checked or limited in its impact, while in one scenario — Neo-feudalistan — AI and robots become the primary means of production.