Ansel Elgort: A futurist playing actor

DN: Between the world of "Divergent" and "Men, Women and Children," which is more dystopian?

AE: This movie has that dark undertone that the world is screwed, but I don't think the world is screwed. The story line between Kaitlyn and I is positive, and I think that there are people that no matter what happens with technology are still going to be people. It's not going to completely destroy the world.

I'm not overly worried about humans. Right now is interesting because there are a lot of people in the world who were alive before any of this happened. But that's a very short amount of time in the grand scheme of things. Very soon, everyone on the planet will be alive only when there was a smartphone, so people will really know how to handle technology and use it.

For example, there were all the iPad leaks, which someone hacked and got everyone's pictures. But in the future, people are going to know where to put the pictures and where to not put the pictures, so the hackers can't get them. People are going to become more technology-savvy because it's just going to be a part of human nature.

DN: But won't the hackers also get better at hacking?

AE: Right now it's such a specialty thing, but once it's taught in school and it's not a specialty thing, everyone will know how to hack. Everyone will know how to use technology.

DN: What will this mean for the workforce as a whole if all educated people understand tech?

AE: I don't think there will be jobs at McDonald's anymore because McDonald's will be run by machines. There's no reason to have a human give you a burger when a machine can give you a burger that's perfect and cheaper, because you don't have to pay a human to make it. That's why the only jobs will be people making machines and programming machines.

DN: That sounds like a lot of unemployed people.

AE: I think 100 years from now, there may be an 80 percent unemployment rate. It's super scary.

Read more:
Ansel Elgort: A futurist playing actor