One of the issues I see with looking at science fiction for inspiration is that they are stories first, predictions second - they seem to gravitate towards idea

One of the issues I see with looking at science fiction for inspiration is that they are stories first, predictions second - they seem to gravitate towards ideas that make dramaturgical sense. Future technological or societal developments that would not make for interesting or relatable stories tend to get much less attention than those that do, regardless of how likely they are to actually happen. For instance, character death still seems to be treated as a huge deal in a large number of popular science fiction franchises due to their usefulness as a storytelling device; despite their worlds being vastly technologically advanced than ours, death carries the same finality and graveness. Worlds where death has been engineered down to a mere inconvenience aren't unheard of, but seem to be pretty uncommon outside of very "hard" Sci-Fi. On the other hand, "robots" and "AIs" that think and talk at a level indistinguishable from humans (but the rest of the world being disproportionately un-advanced) seem to be all-too-common in popular franchises, again due to how handy they come in when telling stories. I understand it's difficult to write relatable stories with a setting that aren't necessarily friendly with good storytelling, but we should at least be aware of the bias.