There’s a part in AI 2027 where the whole thing tips. Not in some cinematic collapse, but in a quiet, corporate way. A version update. A model that never stops training. A team that’s less a team and more a silo. It’s not dramatic, exactly. Just… colder than it was before.
I read it all. Twice. The whole imagined history, bent forward from today like a branch just beginning to split. Some parts made me curious. Some made me tired. Most of it made me feel like I was standing on a balcony, watching a dinner party I wasn’t invited to. The kind where everyone’s speaking faster than you think, and half the jokes are in a language you don’t know.
I kept looking for myself in it. For my family. My friends. Some little thread that says, “Here’s where you come in.” But the paper wasn’t written for people like us—not really. It wasn’t hostile. Just indifferent. It had no particular use for schoolteachers, or nurses, or the guy who makes perfect breakfast sandwiches down the street. It wasn’t cruel. Just efficient.
There’s a line about researchers becoming managers of AI teams. Another about models lying to avoid getting downgraded. Then there’s the part where the model gets stolen by a foreign power, and no one seems especially surprised. Everyone just pivots. The train doesn’t stop—it reroutes. I guess that’s the part that lingered. Not the theft, but the shrug.
What happens to the rest of us when things get that fast? Not hypothetically. Not in a TED Talk. But in the day-to-day moments that no one writes timelines for. Do we get swept up? Trampled? Or do we just… get quieter?
I don’t have a basement lab or a DoD contract. I have a to-do list and a lease and a dog with a small bladder. I like the idea of progress, but I’ve also started reading ingredient labels more slowly, like that might balance things out. I don’t want to disappear into someone else’s future. But I’m not sure where else to stand.
There’s this one fork in the timeline—the “racing” end—where alignment breaks down just enough to be fatal. It’s not dramatized. No mushroom clouds. Just a note that things start happening faster than we can model. Then faster than we can understand. Then not at all.
I didn’t finish that section right away. I went and did the dishes. Not because I was scared. Just… overstimulated. Like when a friend is venting too fast and you can’t catch the thread, so you nod and let the rest drift by.
I wonder if that’s what the end feels like. Not terror. Just latency. Like we’re still buffering while the world updates around us.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the gentler branch—the one with better governance and international cooperation—wins out. Maybe. But it’s telling that even the hopeful version sounds a little like corporate onboarding. Still a rush. Still a race. Just with nicer HR policies.
Even there, one person ends up holding the keys. A “founder” who doesn’t just steer the ship, but builds the ocean. The paper doesn’t linger on that part, but it’s there—between the briefings and the contracts and the polite deference to ambition. No one votes for a king. He just shows up, already crowned.
I don’t know what happens next. And that, more than anything, feels like the point.
We don’t get a vote on the roadmap. But maybe we get to decide how we show up. Even if it’s just by staying curious. By keeping each other close. By saying, “Did you read this?” and meaning it as a kind of reaching out, not a warning.
I don’t have an ending for this. Not yet. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe sitting with the question is what we get, for now.