18 AI Futures. You're Already Living in One.

Physicist Max Tegmark described twelve scenarios in his 2017 book Life 3.0, and Dirk Werner added six because trajectories have become visible since then that Tegmark could not map out. The map ranges from worlds where poverty has been eradicated to worlds where we no longer exist.

The first three concern the technology itself, the other three are about what happens to people. What all six have in common is that they don't need a defining moment.

It is the only scenario on the map that isn't set in the future, and at the same time the psychological path to Silent Disempowerment.

That happens when returning becomes expensive because one's own ability has atrophied, difficult because the alternative is no longer institutionally provided for, or impossible because no one knows how it works anymore. Delegation alone is not disempowerment: using a GPS doesn't disempower you.

The videobook narrates this essay.