The future's bright - just try not to get burned

The last few weeks have made our shared future look increasingly like a straight race between man, nature and technology to see which one can wipe us out first. And while the head of tech giant Nvidia provided some reassurance that there was a “0% chance” AI would wipe out humanity, he did then add “before 2030”.

Still, that gives us four years to focus our worries on the fact that our galactic house is, quite literally, on fire and the most powerful people on the planet seem to think drone strikes and drilling for oil are the best way to put it out.

These massive global problems and doom-laden prophecies can make it hard to muster much energy for thinking about and planning for the years to come. The future might be bright, but like the sun or a nuclear blast it’s not something you want to look at directly.

Look we must though! This month has seen workers across the UK urged to take a long hard look at their future - with growing concerns the country is facing a pensions crisis to add to our growing list of crises.

Pension experts have warned that far too many us are far too ignorant of both what we already have squirrelled away for when we eventually stop work, and how much we’re likely to need to keep ourselves in factor 5000 suncream, canned foods and automatic weapons to fight off rampaging hordes of killbots.

Or cruises, heating and fine dining, in the increasingly unlikely event the world somehow manages to trundle along as normal.

Workers need to be putting aside their own nest eggs for later life, and most will have been automatically enrolled into at least one workplace pensions scheme. With people often moving through multiple companies on their career track however, they can find themselves picking up a number of pension pots along the way and losing track of how much they’ve actually saved.

The freelance gig economy is also leaving a growing number of workers outside the traditional pension system, with the onus on them to join a pension scheme and set aside some of their income for an (acid) rainy day.

They don’t get any employer contributions, meaning they need to put away more. And with reports that around one in six people in the UK have cut back or stopped their pension contributions entirely to focus on paying the day to day bills it’s easy to see how short-term needs are creating big problems in the future.

Fortunately help is at hand - as long as you’re willing to let an artificial intelligence poke around in your pension pots.

New AI tools are making it easier than ever to track your pension pots, dig up old pensions you’d forgotten all about and get sound advice on exactly how much you should be putting away to ensure you can lead the life you want to live.

Whatever happens it seems there is one future certainty - one way or another, the quality of your retirement will be decided by computers.