AI Prospects: Rethinking Our Options
AI will transform our world in deep and unexpected ways. We must understand our options to rethink our goals.
Advanced AI will transform possibilities, and our future will depend on which possibilities become real. I am persuaded that our options are both narrower and broader than they may seem — narrower because competitive dynamics constrain near-term choices, yet broader because AI-enabled capabilities will fundamentally reshape what’s achievable. Understanding these options could align seemingly opposed interests toward mutually beneficial outcomes.
The stakes are high: In a world where mounting uncertainties make conflict increasingly risky, while transformative capabilities demand new frameworks for security and cooperation, shared understanding becomes essential. Without it, we risk pursuing obsolete goals — dangerous strategies that assume win/lose economic competition and offensive military advantage.
AI’s cascading impacts
Advances in AI capabilities will drive cascading developments in automation, robotics, information systems, and beyond. Consider robotics. For decades, robots have been controlled by rigid programming, but deep learning and abundant data are now enabling machines to see, plan, and act with adaptive flexibility.
As robotics improves, demand will rise, costs will fall, training data will grow, and robots will become far more useful. As applications spread through supply chains, their effects will compound.
Generative models will accelerate design, and flexible automation will accelerate production. Together, these advances will accelerate the deployment of new systems — a pattern already visible in software development, where AI accelerates its own improvement.
New systems, reduced costs, and rapid deployment will speed change across fields ranging from renewable energy infrastructure to military systems. Meanwhile, AI will enable production of provably secure software at scale, transforming possibilities for verification and trust.
Analyzing these developments together reveals strategic opportunities obscured by piecemeal analysis. Understanding how capabilities combine — how verification enables new security architectures, how abundance reshapes competitive dynamics — becomes crucial for navigating the transformation ahead.
Directions
Later articles in this series explore key concepts in depth, following trails marked by well-known facts. Topics span physical and software technologies, climate impacts, economic disruption, military capabilities, institutional dynamics, and a framework for strategic thought in a world accelerating toward deep, transformative change.
Together, these developments will enable both global abundance and better trade-offs among security, openness, and privacy. No single development alone can achieve this impact, yet combined developments could create options which — if widely understood — could become real.
Initial focus
Understanding prospects for advanced AI is central to this project, and this starts with the very meaning of "intelligence". I will re-frame "artificial general intelligence" in terms of extensible capabilities rather than anthropomorphic entities: What we see is not the AI we were looking for (and fearing), it’s something more malleable.
Then, I will step back and consider how AI-enabled capabilities can transform options and could potentially align the goals of diverse actors. This is a topic with many layers and enormous implications.
Looking forward
This series is an invitation to rethink potential futures for a world transformed by AI. The window for understanding and action is open now, but it won’t remain so indefinitely.
You can help shape the future by promoting well-founded ideas. I hope you will join this exploration.
[Updated June 2025]
Exploring the foundations of a hypercapable world
