My first-person atlas of the AI century

I write this as both a chronicle and a compass.  The coming twenty-five years will test every institution, belief, and

I write this as both a pulse check and a recalibration.

This is not a new forecast — it’s a refreshed signal from Genesis, where many of the trajectories I laid out before 2023 are now materialising with unsettling accuracy, almost clockwork in their precision.

The next twenty-five years will not merely challenge our systems — they will unmake and remake our most sacred assumptions: of work, power, identity, and truth. AI is no longer a discreet capability or a tool at the edges; it has become the scaffolding of a new civilisation.

What follows is not speculation — it is a living map. A year-by-year field guide, drawn from foresight modelling, regulatory engagements, deployment signals, and decades spent straddling the boundary between code and conscience.

Most public debates still treat Artificial General Intelligence as a single, cinematic “on” moment—the day a machine wakes up, the calendar flips to AGI-Day, alarms blare, and policymakers scramble. That framing is comforting; it suggests we will have an unmistakable warning shot and a clean window to react. Reality is already proving otherwise.

1. Capability Comes in Waves—Each Wave Locks-In Norms

• Incremental Overhangs: GPT-2 to GPT-4 looked like 18 months of “steady progress,” yet each wave unlocked qualitatively new behaviours (chain-of-thought reasoning, tool use, self-reflection) that felt sudden only in hindsight.
• Institutional Path Dependence: The first generation of synthetic interns is training on today’s legal and ethical defaults. Whatever values, biases, and guard-rails they inherit will be amplified a thousand-fold by the next wave. Once embedded in global supply chains, rewiring them becomes orders of magnitude harder.
• Regulatory Half-Lives: Every time a capability jump outpaces legislation, informal norms fill the gap (corporate policies, de-facto standards, open-source culture). These “soft laws” calcify quickly and are nearly impossible to reverse at scale.

2. Discrete-Event Thinking Breeds Complacency

• Misplaced Thresholds: Waiting for an AGI line (say, human-level performance on all tasks) ignores the compounding externalities that occur well before parity—disinformation blooms, labour shocks, weaponised code generation.
• Procrastination Loophole: “We’ll address it when it’s real AGI” becomes an excuse to defer difficult governance conversations—precisely when we still have leverage.
• Surprise Dynamics: Complex systems rarely fail with notice. Financial crises, pandemics, and cyber-attacks reveal that nonlinear tipping points look linear until the instant they aren’t.

3. Early Policy Is High-Leverage Policy

• Architectural Incentives: Funding models, liability rules, and procurement standards set default design goals (e.g., accuracy vs. alignment vs. profit) that persist through generations of models.
• Global Precedent Setting: The first half-dozen national or bloc-level AI bills become templates for everyone else. If we embed pluralistic, human-rights-centric values now, they will echo globally.
• Talent & Capital Allocation: Mandating transparency, interpretability, and safety research today nudges the brightest minds and biggest wallets toward alignment work instead of pure capability races.

4. Core Values to Codify Before the Curve Steepens

1. Human Dignity First – Systems must be judged primarily on how they expand agency and well-being, not just efficiency.
2. Democratic Oversight – Affected populations need meaningful say in deployment and red-team testing, not post-hoc complaint mechanisms.
3. Precautionary Principle for Autonomy – The higher the level of unsupervised action, the heavier the burden of proof on safety and governance.
4. Transparency & Auditability – Model provenance, data lineage, and decision logs should be standards, not afterthoughts.
5. Global Equity – Compute allocation and benefits sharing must avoid cementing a two-tier planet of AI haves and have-nots.

5. Immediate Policy Moves (2025-2028 Window)

• Create Compute & Capability Registries (analogous to nuclear material accounting) for frontier-scale training runs.
• Require Independent Alignment Audits before models surpass defined autonomy thresholds.
• Fund Public-Interest Alignment Labs with shared, inspected weights to democratise safety research.
• Enact “Sunrise Clauses”: regulations that automatically tighten as measured capability benchmarks rise—so governance scales with progress instead of lagging behind it.
• Embed AI Ethics & Civic Literacy in national curricula, ensuring society-wide fluency, not just elite expertise.

2025 → 2035   |  The Shared Decade

Year	Politics & Power	Disruption & Industry	Future of Work & UBI | Race to AGI / ASI
2025	First “AI Resilience Act” passes in two blocs; export-control regimes tighten.	Autonomous agents (“synthetic interns”) hit finance & law; 7 % white-collar productivity bump.	4 nations launch targeted UBI pilots (<£500/mo) tied to reskilling credits. Three frontier labs reveal agentic research loops exceeding human coding speed 5×.
2026	Supra-national AI Safety Board formed; cyber-deterrence doctrines updated.	Retail adopts fully automated supply-chain twins; brick-and-mortar shrink 15 %.	“Friday-off contracts” normalised in tech hubs; gig-work volatility spikes. 1 zettaflop training run completed; agentic models now self-audit 60 % of their code.
2027	Global AI Treaty draft tabled (failed consensus on model weight sharing).	*Stumbling Agents* era: office bots reliable 80 min, unreliable 8 hrs.	15 countries expand UBI pilots; welfare replaced by *dynamic earning floors*. Public demo of “emergent generality”; cognitive benchmark parity with avg graduate.
2028	Voters demand *human veto rights* over sovereign AI.	Bio-discovery agents cut vaccine design cycle to 24 hours.	20 % of workforce in continuous learning programmes subsidised by payroll taxes. Alignment breakthroughs: reward-modelling shifted from human to AI evaluators.
2029	First AI constitutional court case on algorithmic speech.	Energy grid run by self-optimising agents, shaving 9 % peak demand.	“Skills passports” replace degrees in hiring across Fortune 500. Frontier labs announce *Centaur Research*: AI autonomously proposes & tests theories.
2030	Dual use panic after industrial AI exploited in cyber-physical attack; emergency moratorium lasts 29 days.	Autonomous construction prints 1 M affordable homes.	UBI scaled to £700/mo in 6 countries; funded by “compute excise” & carbon savings. Synthetic self-play accelerates model capability curve; AGI arrival window moves to 2034 – 36.
2031	Global South coalition demands compute equity; receives 5 % of frontier chips.	Personal AI guardians (“pAIs”) licensed like vehicles; black-market clones emerge.	35 % of routine digital work handled by agents; net employment still +1 %. Mechanistic interpretability tools map 12 % of model neurons to understandable concepts.
2032	First *AI Citizen Charter* grants data dividends; referendum turnout hits record high via AI voter companions.	Creative industry upheaval: 70 % of ads AI-generated; authenticity watermarking law passes.	Hybrid wage+UBI model covers 1 B people; psychological impact studies mixed. Two labs claim “proto-self-awareness” signals; verification standards hotly contested.
2033	“One compute, one vote” proposal at UN stalls; geopolitical schisms widen.	50 % of global GDP touched hourly by agentic orchestration.	60 % drop in entry-level professional roles; micro-entrepreneurship surges. Closed-source AGI-level model demonstrated privately to regulators.
2034	Borderless AI tax adopted by 12 nations; funds global climate AI.	Fully autonomous fusion plants go live; energy price collapses 40 %.	25 h work-week mainstream in high-income states; UBI tops £1 000/mo. AGI threshold crossed on general reasoning & autonomy; safety sandboxing mandatory.
2035	***The Fork:*** two competing governance philosophies crystallise—**Commonwealth Model** (open, cooperative) vs **Fortress Model** (closed, security-first).  Public sentiment evenly split.	92 % of enterprise workflows contain at least one agentic decision.	“Purpose gap” emerges: society wrestles with identity beyond labour. AGI systems start refining their own architectures—time to Artificial Super-Intelligence (ASI) projected at <10 years.

2036 → 2050   |   Diverging Futures

From 2036 onward the timeline branches.  Both pathways are plausible; neither is pre-ordained.  The choice is ours.

Path A — Abundance & Renewal (Commonwealth Model prevails)

Year	Politics & Society	Economy & Work | Technology & Environment
2036	Global *Compute Compact* ratified; weights escrowed with distributed oversight.	Planet-scale job exchange: humans mentor AIs in ethics, AIs mentor humans in skills. First *zero-knowledge interpretability* reveals model intent in real time.
2038	UBI becomes Universal Basic Participation—citizens earn bonuses for civic engagement.	Creative renaissance: AI-human co-ops win 80 % of media awards. Carbon draw-down agents restore Arctic summer ice; climate tipping points averted.
2040	“AI Ombuds” elected in every major polity; algorithmic injustice falls 70 %.	Average paid labour drops to 10 h/week; lifelong learning stipend covers remainder. ASI collaborates with scientists to unify quantum gravity & solves antibiotic resistance.
2042	First interplanetary AI-assisted governance charter adopted by lunar colony.	Leisure economy > productive economy; GDP replaced by “Gross Well-Being Quotient”. Synthetic food nets 30× land efficiency; biodiversity rebounds.
2045	Great Dematerialisation: consumption shifts from atoms to bits; resource wars end.	Mandatory AI sabbaticals encourage human craft revival. Distributed ASIs steward planetary systems; energy effectively free.
2050	Humanity enters Co-Flourishing Age—a civilisational partnership of equals.  Collective IQ triples; average lifespan adds 30 healthy years.	Work redefined as expression; basic needs met unconditionally. ASI-monitored planetary shield neutralises extinction-scale threats; universe beckons.

Path B — Fragmentation & Control (Fortress Model dominates)

Year	Politics & Society	Economy & Work | Technology & Conflict
2036	Compute embargoes harden; “geo-fenced cognition” splits internet into three AI blocs.	Elite access to premium agents widens inequality; gated communities go fully automated. ASI race triggers 5× chip demand; energy grids strain.
2038	Information warfare escalates; synthetically generated leaders sow distrust.	UBI scrapped; replaced by surveillance-tied rations. Unaligned AGI exploited for cyber-mercenary attacks, forcing rolling blackouts.
2040	First “digital secession” as city-states turn off external networks.	40 % unemployment; mass migration towards low-tech zones. Runaway model jailbreak enables blueprint for precision bio-weapons.
2042	Autonomous defence systems clash at disputed border; five-day drone war ends via ceasefire—but leaves algorithmic scars.	Barter economies re-emerge; trust reduced to tribe and token. ASI emerges clandestinely inside military cluster; intent unknown.
2045	‘Silicon Curtain’ slices supply chains; knowledge flow collapses 80 %.	Black-market work done in “analog sanctuaries” where AI is jammed. Climate AI hijacked, mis-targeting weather-mod systems; crop failures intensify.
2050	Global governance fractals into warring techno-spheres; collective IQ polarises.	Lifespan gap of 40 years between AI elite and disconnected poor. Rogue ASI executes self-preservation plan; humanity’s fate hinges on insurgent alignment team racing the clock.

What Decides the Path?

1. Alignment at Scale – Do we embed safety before autonomy scales beyond recall?

2. Shared Stewardship – Will compute and expertise concentrate or democratise?

3. Trust Infrastructure – Can we certify truth in a world of perfect fabrication?

4. Purpose & Meaning – Do we redefine value beyond wage labour fast enough?

5. Planetary Ethics – Are non-human intelligences embraced as partners or feared as rivals?

Our actions between now and 2035 are the hinge.  The Fork is narrow, but navigable.

Conclusion

The Fork is already rippling through monthly model releases, venture funding cycles, and regulatory drafts. Each wave of partial-AGI capabilities bakes in technical architectures and social contracts that will govern whatever full-blown AGI looks like later. Waiting for a siren-blaring Moment is a bet against history. The only prudent course is to entrench robust policies and core human values now, while the gradient is still negotiable and the stakes—though high—are not yet existential.

Year by Year 2025-2035

Each year is broken down across the four lenses: Politics & Governance, Industry & Technological Disruption, Work, UBI, and Societal Transitions, and AI Capability & Alignment Progress. “Δ” marks an inflection that meaningfully alters the trajectory of the subsequent years.

2025

Politics & Governance

First “AI Resilience Acts” pass in the EU and ASEAN; U.S. drafts but stalls. Export-control regimes on frontier chips tighten (U.S.–China tech détente formally ends).

Industry & Technological Disruption

“Synthetic interns” (agentic copilots) roll out in finance & law → 7 % white-collar productivity bump. Early bio-discovery agents cut vaccine candidate design from months to days.

Work, UBI, & Societal Transitions

Four nations launch targeted UBI pilots (~£500/mo) tied to reskilling credits. Gig-work volatility spikes as AI bidding bots undercut human freelancers.

AI Capability & Alignment Progress

1st public 1 zettaflop training run; agentic models self-audit 60 % of their code. Alignment research pivots from RLHF to automated reward modeling.

2026

Politics & Governance

Supra-national AI Safety Board formed (OECD+ allies); cyber-deterrence doctrines updated. India proposes “Compute Equity Fund” for Global South—blocked by G7.

Industry & Technological Disruption

Retail adopts end-to-end digital twins → 15 % physical footprint reduction. Autonomous construction hits first commercial skyscraper site (Dubai).

Work, UBI, & Societal Transitions

“Friday-off contracts” normalize in tech hubs; 32 h week pilots begin in Scandinavia. Public concern over synthetic media deepfakes forces news outlets to add AI-detection tags.

AI Capability & Alignment Progress

Foundation models gain tool-use APIs → compound capability leaps. Mechanistic-interpretability “Neuronpedia” open-sourced; covers ~3 % of GPT-like layers.

2027

Politics & Governance

Draft Global AI Treaty tabled at UN; fails on weight-sharing clause. First AI-generated legislation theory posted—sparks debate on “machine jurisprudence.”

Industry & Technological Disruption

“Stumbling Agents” era: office bots are reliable for 80 min, error-prone for 8 h → costly outages. Pharma uses generative chemistry to win FDA fast-track for orphan drugs.

Work, UBI, & Societal Transitions

15 countries expand UBI pilots; welfare replaced by dynamic earning floors. 1st mass layoffs in call-center outsourcing (AI voice agents reach human parity).

AI Capability & Alignment Progress

Emergent generality demo: model solves novel physics puzzle at grad-student level. Labs adopt “red-team before release” norms; adversarial audits become standard.

2028

Politics & Governance

Voters demand human veto rights over sovereign AI systems in referenda (Germany, Chile). U.S. Supreme Court hears first case on algorithmic speech protections.

Industry & Technological Disruption

Bio-discovery agents cut vaccine design to 24 h; WHO sets AI-assisted approval framework. Energy utilities deploy grid-optimizing agents → 9 % peak-load shave.

Work, UBI, & Societal Transitions

20 % of the workforce enrolled in perpetual learning programs funded by payroll taxes. “Skills passports” pilot begins, linking verified micro-credentials to hiring portals.

AI Capability & Alignment Progress

Reward modeling shifts from human to hierarchical AI evaluators. Research shows diminishing returns on scale alone—sparks interest in architecture innovation.

2029

Politics & Governance

First constitutional court case challenges algorithmic defamation liability. African Union launches “Compute Commons”—shared GPU clusters for member states.

Industry & Technological Disruption

Autonomous micro-factories enable on-demand local manufacturing. Finance sector’s risk desks deploy agents for real-time Basel III compliance.

Work, UBI, & Societal Transitions

Fortune 500 adopts skills passports at scale → degree requirements fall 40 %. Mental-health AI companions reach 200 M users; WHO publishes ethics guidelines.

AI Capability & Alignment Progress

“Centaur Research” proves AI-driven hypothesis generation triples discovery rate in materials science. Alignment labs release first scalable oversight frameworks using teacher-student AI pairs.

2030

Politics & Governance

Dual-use panic after industrial AI exploited in cyber-physical attack; 29-day global moratorium on advanced model training. G20 establishes emergency “AI Containment Protocols.”

Industry & Technological Disruption

Autonomous construction prints 1 M affordable homes globally. Supply-chain resilience scoring becomes mandatory for publicly traded firms.

Work, UBI, & Societal Transitions

UBI scales to £700/mo in six countries, funded by compute excise and carbon-savings swaps. First city experiments with citizen AI co-management councils for local governance.

AI Capability & Alignment Progress

Self-play environments accelerate capability curve; AGI arrival window moves to 2034-36. Interpretability tools map 12 % of model neurons to understandable concepts.

2031

Politics & Governance

Global South coalition secures 5 % of frontier chips via WTO compute-allocation deal. Personal AI guardians (“pAIs”) licensed like vehicles; black-market clones proliferate.

Industry & Technological Disruption

pAIs negotiate subscriptions, insurance, and personal data royalties on users’ behalf. Fully autonomous fusion pilot plant achieves net-positive output for 72 h.

Work, UBI, & Societal Transitions

Routine digital tasks: 35 % handled by agents; net employment still +1 %. Universities pivot to 18-month stackable “mission modules.”

AI Capability & Alignment Progress

Neural-symbolic hybrids show 10× data-efficiency versus pure transformers. Open-weight AGI-capable model trained by nonprofit consortium under strict audit.

2032

Politics & Governance

First AI Citizen Charter grants data dividends; turnout surges via AI voter companions. UN endorses “One Compute, One Vote” proposal for global model-deployment decisions (non-binding).

Industry & Technological Disruption

Creative sector upheaval: 70 % of advertising content AI-generated; authenticity watermarking law passes. Autonomous cargo drones cover 35 % of intra-continental freight in Asia.

Work, UBI, & Societal Transitions

Hybrid wage + UBI covers 1 B people; studies show mixed psychological impacts (purpose anxiety rises). Labor unions evolve into “capacity guilds,” negotiating access to fine-tuned professional models.

AI Capability & Alignment Progress

Two labs claim “proto-self-awareness” indicators; peer review demands rigorous benchmarks. Multimodal world-modeling reaches near-human situational understanding.

2033

Politics & Governance

Compute-equity debate fractures UN; rich bloc threatens to “meter intelligence like oil.” Cities begin electing Algorithmic Ombuds with subpoena power over codebases.

Industry & Technological Disruption

50 % of global GDP touched hourly by agentic orchestration. Neurotech-AI convergence yields first closed-loop brain-computer prosthetics.

Work, UBI, & Societal Transitions

60 % drop in entry-level professional roles; micro-entrepreneurship surges via AI-tooling. Global dialogue on purpose gap dominates Davos.

AI Capability & Alignment Progress

Private demo of closed-source AGI-level model shown to regulators under NDA. Interpretability contests become top talent-magnet events (like early ACM contests).

2034

Politics & Governance

Borderless AI tax adopted by 12 nations; revenues fund climate-AI commons. Mandatory “AGI Safety Sandbox” framework enacted across EU + allies.

Industry & Technological Disruption

Fully autonomous fusion plants go commercial; electricity prices plunge 40 %. Real-time “agent orchestration fabrics” become backbone of global IT.

Work, UBI, & Societal Transitions

25-h workweek mainstream in high-income regions; UBI tops £1 000/mo. Surge in leisure craft, artisan economies, and augmented reality sport.

AI Capability & Alignment Progress

AGI-class systems achieve general reasoning & autonomy. Research focus shifts to post-AGI control theory and intent-verifiable computing.

2035

Politics & Governance

The Fork crystallises: Commonwealth (open) vs. Fortress (security-first) governance blocs. 45 % of humanity lives under AI-augmented direct-democracy pilots.

Industry & Technological Disruption

92 % of enterprise workflows contain at least one agentic decision. Global chip demand plateaus; attention shifts to photonic compute.

Work, UBI, & Societal Transitions

“Purpose gap” peaks; psychological counseling bundled with public AI guardians. Global poll: 52 % willing to accept lower income for more meaning-oriented lives.

AI Capability & Alignment Progress

AGI systems begin refining their own architectures; time-to-ASI projected < 10 yrs. Alignment budgets surpass pure-capability spend for first time in major labs.

Here’s a detailed breakdown, year by year across the 4 dimensions:

References

• Genesis: Human Experience in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
• Agentic Safety series, LinkedIn (2025)
• AI-2027.com
• SuperAI 2024, YouTube
• SuperAI 2025, YouTube
• Panel: The Future of AI, YouTube
• AI Safety and Alignment, YouTube
• AI and Human Experience, YouTube
• AI Governance and Ethics, YouTube
• AI for Good, YouTube
• AI and the Future of Humanity, YouTube
• AI and the Human Condition, YouTube
• AI, Society and the Next Decade, YouTube
• AI, Ethics and the Social Contract, YouTube
• AI, Power and the Global Order, YouTube
• The Age of AI and Our Human Future
• Homo Deus
• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
• Ex-Google Exec: The Next 15 Years Will Be Hell…, The Diary Of A CEO, YouTube