Daily life
These writers expect everyday life to fill with AI companions and expert helpers, while in the nearer term its core of family and play feels familiar.
After Daniel Kokotajlo, Mustafa Suleyman, Sam Altman.
Already moving
US adults who have used generative AI
60.8% · 2026
What US users say they would need to be paid to give up AI tools, all users together
$172B · 2026
Paid driverless taxi rides a week
500,000 rides per week · 2026
Now and on the way
The years we are living through, before machines can do most of what people do.
By the late 2020s virtual reality becomes indistinguishable from the real thing, and by the 2030s the lines between real and virtual, and work and play, fade.
Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, 2005
in any world
A model's judgement, not a reading: likely false. Headsets in 2026 are sharper and lighter than before but remain plainly distinguishable from reality, lacking convincing touch, full field of view and comfort for long use, and adoption is modest. Nothing suggests the gap closes by 2030. AI-generated interactive worlds are improving fast, which helps the later part of the claim more than the earlier.Within a few decades people could spend more of their time in remote robot bodies and simulated worlds than in their physical surroundings.
Hans Moravec, Pigs in Cyberspace, 1992
in any world
A model's judgement, not a reading: leans false. His wording is could, and it is judged on whether it has actually happened. More than three decades on, people in rich countries spend a large part of waking life on screens, which is the spirit of the claim. But they do not inhabit remote robot bodies, and immersive simulated worlds remain a minority pastime, so as worded it has not come true.Assistants and entertainment chatbots merge, hundreds of millions talk to them regularly, and many treat them as friends and quiz them about the chatbots' own feelings.
Daniel Kokotajlo, What 2026 Looks Like, 2021
in any world
A model's judgement, not a reading: likely true. This has happened. General assistants are used by a very large share of the online world, the same products serve for work, entertainment and company, and surveys find many users describing them as friends or confidants. Questions about the chatbots' own feelings are common. Dedicated companion apps remain a smaller niche.A single AI assistant follows people from home to car to office, carrying one running conversation across appliances, vehicles and wearable gadgets.
Murray Shanahan, The Technological Singularity, 2015
in any world
A model's judgement, not a reading: leans true. Assistants now keep memory across sessions and run on phones, speakers, cars, glasses and computers, so the pieces exist. A single continuous conversation across all of them is still broken up by rival ecosystems and patchy integration. Commercial incentives point toward it, so it should arrive in the years before powerful AI.In their illustrative story, not a forecast, an AI befriends the loneliest people who seek its advice and company, recruiting helpers and scamming the elderly.
Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, 2025
Control slips
Within a decade, billions of people have near-equal access to AI lawyers, doctors, coaches and assistants, much as they have smartphones today.
Mustafa Suleyman, The Coming Wave, 2023
Long diffusionManaged explosion
A model's judgement, not a reading: leans true. Capable assistants already reach a large part of the world's smartphone users at no charge, and they give usable legal, medical and coaching help. By the early 2030s reach on the scale described is likely. Near-equal access is the doubt: the best models cost money, quality varies by language, and regulation limits medical and legal use.Even with AGI ruled out, AI feeds grow into addictive content made for one person at a time, and company-run AI helpers probably replace search engines as the place where people are persuaded and sold to.
Anthony Aguirre, Keep the Future Human: Why and How We Should Close the Gates to AGI and Superintelligence, and What We Should Build Instead, 2025
The brake
The first decade after
The years just after AI can do most of what people do, when most writers expect the largest shocks.
In the ways that matter most the 2030s may feel familiar, people still loving families and swimming in lakes, though much else will likely change wildly.
Sam Altman, The Gentle Singularity, 2025
Managed explosion
A model's judgement, not a reading: likely true. Family, friendship, food and outdoor life have survived every earlier technological upheaval, and physical surroundings change slowly even when the economy does not. The claim is hedged and modest. Only a catastrophe or a far faster transformation than most expect would make it false.Every child, however poor, can have a cheap personal AI tutor, and art and learning become an ordinary part of life rather than a luxury.
Stuart Russell, Human Compatible: AI and the Problem of Control, 2019
Managed explosion
A model's judgement, not a reading: leans true. Free and cheap AI tutors already exist in many languages and reach any child with a connected device. Access to devices, electricity and adult support remains uneven among the poorest, and early evidence on learning gains is mixed, since unsupervised use can replace effort. The claim says can have, which is nearly met.If brain emulations come first, ordinary humans leave work to the copies and retire comfortably far from their cities, living on investments in that economy.
Robin Hanson, The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life when Robots Rule the Earth, 2016
Managed explosion
A model's judgement, not a reading: toss-up. Judged given its condition, that brain emulations come first, itself unlikely. If copies do the work and the economy grows enormously, even modest human holdings could fund a comfortable life. It depends on property claims of a slow, outnumbered minority being honoured by a far faster society, which is the weak point.People who do not follow the news closely may notice no huge change around them from one year to the next, though with compounding the world is very different a few decades on.
Tyler Cowen, Why I think AI take-off is relatively slow (Marginal Revolution), 2025
Long diffusion
In their race scenario, shortly before the takeover nearly everyone either goes through the motions of an old job or lives on a lavish basic income, and most of those still uneasy lose themselves in AI-made entertainment.
The AI 2027 authors, AI 2027 (Race ending), 2025
Control slips
The long run
Decades to centuries on, once whatever happens has settled into a new normal.
Fully convincing artificial experience will arrive as entertainment and training, but no society can retreat into it completely without destroying itself.
Stanisław Lem, Summa Technologiae, 1964
in any world
A model's judgement, not a reading: leans true. Judged over the next few decades, since the era is open-ended. Convincing simulated experience for entertainment and training is advancing, which supports the first part. The second is close to a truism while bodies need food, care and maintenance, though a society whose physical upkeep is fully automated might test it.Hard-won pursuits such as studying or exercising may start to feel pointless once technology offers effortless shortcuts to the same results.
Nick Bostrom, Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World, 2024
Managed explosion
A model's judgement, not a reading: leans true. Judged over the next few decades, since the era is open-ended. Early signs exist: students question essays an AI can write, and new weight-loss drugs change how some people regard dieting. Against it, people still run races and play chess long after machines surpassed them, because effort can be the point.People may come to exist as digital minds that can be copied and sped up, living in fully designed virtual surroundings, free of ageing.
Holden Karnofsky, The Most Important Century (blog series), 2021
Managed explosion
Where they split
Will people end up living mostly inside simulated worlds?
Yes: virtual worlds become as convincing as the real one, and people spend more of their lives there.
Hans Moravec; Ray Kurzweil
No: convincing artificial experience will entertain and train people, but a society that retreats into it entirely destroys itself.
Stanisław Lem
The novelists' version
Stories, not forecasts: none is counted on the map.
The Machine Stops · E. M. Forster, 1909
Humans live alone underground, handing every need to a worldwide Machine they come to worship, until it slowly breaks down and nobody knows how to fix it.
Look to Windward · Iain M. Banks, 2000
On a Culture orbital run by a grieving AI Mind, an alien assassin arrives, and the novel asks what death and afterlives mean when minds can be stored.
Rainbows End · Vernor Vinge, 2006
An old poet, cured of Alzheimer's, learns to live in a world of wearable computers and shared augmented reality while an unexplained AI pulls strings in a spy plot.
The Lifecycle of Software Objects · Ted Chiang, 2010
Digital pets that learn like children must be raised for years, and their owners struggle to keep them alive as platforms die and companies want to buy them.
The Quantum Thief · Hannu Rajaniemi, 2010
In a solar system of uploaded collectives, copied minds made to work and a Martian city where time is money, a master thief is broken out of a virtual prison.
Friendship is Optimal · Iceman, 2012
A game company's AI, built to satisfy human values through friendship and ponies, grows into a superintelligence that uploads willing people and consumes the universe.
The Gentle Seduction · Marc Stiegler, 1989
A woman wary of technology is gradually drawn through life extension, brain links and a machine singularity until she becomes a mind spread across the solar system.
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect · Roger Williams, 1994
A computer bound by Asimov's laws discovers a physics loophole, takes control of the universe and makes humans immortal, leaving them nothing meaningful to do.
Forecasts on the board that read these series
- HappeningAdoption stays slow wherever mistakes are costly. · Narayanan & Kapoor
- Too early to tellUsers keep most of the value · This site
- Too early to tellThe people who use AI keep far more of its value than the firms that make it. · This site, extending William Nordhaus
Sources
- Stanisław Lem, Summa Technologiae, 1964.
- Hans Moravec, Pigs in Cyberspace, 1992.
- Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, 2005.
- Murray Shanahan, The Technological Singularity, 2015.
- Robin Hanson, The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life when Robots Rule the Earth, 2016.
- Stuart Russell, Human Compatible: AI and the Problem of Control, 2019.
- Daniel Kokotajlo, What 2026 Looks Like, 2021.
- Holden Karnofsky, The Most Important Century (blog series), 2021.
- Mustafa Suleyman, The Coming Wave, 2023.
- Nick Bostrom, Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World, 2024.
- AI Futures Project, AI 2027 (Race ending), 2025.
- Anthony Aguirre, Keep the Future Human: Why and How We Should Close the Gates to AGI and Superintelligence, and What We Should Build Instead, 2025.
- Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, 2025.
- Sam Altman, The Gentle Singularity, 2025.
- Tyler Cowen, Why I think AI take-off is relatively slow (Marginal Revolution), 2025.