4/ The Power of One
Autonomous futures
AI is not just a tool, it is a force redefining our world. From reshaping industries to transforming human relationships, the change is beyond our imagination. As it accelerates change, we are forced to think about questions around privacy, autonomy, and what it means to be human.
The Industrial Revolution played out over a couple of hundred years; we will have a scale of change that is comparable but compressed over a couple of decades. AI can lead to the end of the economic problem, enabling us to address the scarcity of food, clothing, and shelter through enhanced efficiency, productivity, and accessibility. It also raises many concerns, including energy use, data harvesting, bias and discrimination, job loss, privacy, ethical dilemmas, questions about truth, and the risks of autonomous weapons. It is uncharted territory.
AI and automation are fundamentally disrupting the economic landscape. With predictions from 20% to up to 90% of jobs that could be automated in the coming decades, the very nature of work is being redefined. The next wave of winners will be AI-native, just like the previous wave of winning companies were digital-native, leaving many sectors behind.
As AI reshapes industries, we may look to new sources of meaning beyond traditional careers through creation, human connection, and tangible experiences. The “real economy” could shift from being seen as outdated to becoming the space where we reclaim our humanity, finding purpose in the physical and emotional realms that AI cannot replace.
Banner image: The Bigger Picture by Carlo Bramanti
“The future is unfolding faster than we can adapt, we must learn, imagine and prepare for its implications as they ripple through every aspect of society.”
1/ Autonomy Reimagined
Agentic AI
Many tasks and processes, from self-driving cars to automated factories and AI-driven decision-making in business roles, will become autonomous. While these advancements will increase efficiency and productivity, the concept of full autonomy has its limits. The human need for oversight, creativity, ethical judgment, and social interaction will continue but in different roles. The replacement of jobs will lead to more free time, but it will also demand a rethinking of regulations, upskilling, and personal development.
AI agents are active participants in a growing digital ecosystem. They can negotiate, collaborate, and make decisions independently, moving beyond simple automation. Picture billions of these agents, working as coding assistants, customer service representatives, information providers or even CEOs of autonomous companies, communicating and trading data across decentralized networks. They will challenge traditional roles, becoming the internet’s main users. This shift could create a new economy where data becomes the currency, fueling agent-driven marketplaces that operate outside traditional systems of control.
It will shape a new kind of infrastructure. AV’s, AI agents and robots, equipped with sensors and connected systems, are transforming industries like manufacturing and transportation. Imagine factories where agents work autonomously or cars that predict and react to real-world scenarios using advanced simulations.
IT departments will act like HR, onboarding AI agents and connecting them to company systems, just like employees. This leads to a networked intelligence. It’s not just a technological change but a shift in how we think about work, economy, and collaboration.
Why this matters
Agent-based AI refers to a system that can act autonomously, make decisions, and perform tasks without requiring constant human instruction.It will transform the concept of human autonomy.
Fetch.ai, open market place for AI agents
Choreorobotics/ Catie Cuan
Choreorobotics combines choreography and robotics to explore and enhance human-robot interactions through movement. Dr. Catie Cuan integrates her expertise in dance, engineering, and artificial intelligence to develop expressive robotic systems that move in ways resonant with human motion. See more here
Interconnection/ Nigel Howlett
Nigel Howett uses anonymous, armour-like figures and monochrome minimalism to explore the complexities and nuances of human experience, blending mysticism with universally resonant emotions. See more here
Blueprint/ Nvidia x Sanctuary AI
Humanoid robots rely on vast datasets. Using Apple Vision Pro, robots can be trained by demonstrating tasks, simulating the movement, generating synthetic motions and the robot mimicking the movement. See more here
2/ The Physical World
Imagination & automation
The rise of automation means more room for leisure and self-expression. Work will become more flexible, we will have more knowledge about our productivity and best hours for deep work and creativity. As work recedes, we will change how we think about learning and careers placing more emphasis on health, creativity, and connection.
With automation taking over routine tasks, health and creativity will become a primary drivers in society. Freed from the constraints of traditional jobs, people will dive deeper into sports, nutritional literacy, art and culture. Through physical AI the boundaries between digital and physical will fade, integrating human-machine interaction into everyday life.
Much of the change brought by AI will happen beneath the surface. The systems that drive our economies, factories, supply chains, decision-making processes, will operate quietly in the background. These invisible shifts will reshape the physical world, from smart infrastructure supporting automated logistics to new forms of energy production. As AI systems take over, we will interact with a world where technology’s presence is felt but not always seen, challenging how we understand its impact.
The concentration of the wealth of a few technology giants raises concerns. These companies not only dominate the economy but also shape the way we work, communicate, and think, exerting profound influence on society, pressing questions emerge about economic inequality and social stability. Worries about excessive energy consumption, data theft, and misuse of information add to the growing unease surrounding their unchecked power.
Why this matters
AI reshapes how we work, create, and connect, blending automation with imagination to transform the physical world.
Simulator Golf League/ Tiger Woods & Rory McIlroy
The Tomorrow Golf League (TGL) is a tech-driven golf league designed to blend traditional golf with advanced technology, offering a new, fast-paced, and immersive golfing experience for fans and players. See more here
Mirokaï/ Enchanted Tools
Mirokaï, anime-inspired logistics robots are designed to assist professionals in social environments, such as hospitals, by handling repetitive tasks and enabling humans to focus on interpersonal care and connection. See more here
Eden Tower/ Neri Oxman
AI enhanced the adaptability, sustainability, and efficiency of the Eden Tower project, blending technology and nature in innovative ways using the concept of ecological programming. See more here
3/ AI & Humans
Purpose, complexity & culture
AI models tailored to specific cultural contexts, such as developing African language models, highlight the importance of diversity in technological development. This focus on culture, heritage, values and the vibe of AI ensures that it grows and evolves with local traditions, languages, and moral frameworks.
What remains uniquely human when machines mimic our ways of writing, speaking, and interacting? While some embrace technological advancements, others, like the Luddites, resist the growing dominance of AI and the loss of agency and humanness. 78% of the respondents to the Section AI Report said they feel anxious or overwhelmed by AI, and just 23% feel excited. Proper training and change management is needed for adaptation and success.
The integration of AI into our lives will inevitably transform how we understand relationships, emotions, and even ourselves. AI will not only act as a partner in tasks but also as a companion, capable of sensing our emotions, sometimes better than our closest friends or partners. Human complexity lies in our irrationality, our unpredictable emotions and impulses that defy logic. AI could enhance our sense of humanity by encouraging self-improvement, mindfulness, and healthy living or lead us to passive lives, staring at screens while outsourcing our tasks to machines.
The shift away from traditional full-time employment challenges societal norms but also opens opportunities for reimagining productivity, leisure, and well-being. Through policies and societal adjustments, the AI economy could lead to enhanced living standards and greater personal freedom, a shift away from a consumer-driven economy to one that places more value on leisure, creativity, and personal fulfilment.
Why this matters
As AI becomes an integral part of our lives, it has the power to redefine human identity, relationships, and well-being.
Vulavula/ Lelapa AI
Vulavula converts voice to text and detects names of people and places in written text, which can be useful for document summarization or online searches, and currently supports isiZulu, Afrikaans, Sesotho, and English, with plans to expand to other African languages. Read more here
All Media is Training Data/ Holly Herndon & Matt Dryhurst
Anybody Can Be A Mexican Designer/ Cooperativa Panorámica
This project uses AI to help users create unique designs, drawing from Mexican influences like Neo-Prehispanic history, modernism, and popular culture, showcasing the evolving and global nature of creativity and authorship in Mexican design. See more here
Emotion Recognition Model/ Hume AI
Hume AI's 53-emotion model allows machines to engage more deeply with human emotions for more empathetic, effective, and personalized interactions. It interprets a wide range of human emotional states through facial expressions, voice, and physiological signals with high granularity. Read more here
4/ Stacking Skills
Synergic knowledge compression
When skills and interests layer over one another, transformative creativity happens. In a world where creativity and technology collide, the result is more nuanced, a human-centered approach. By combining storytelling, creativity, technical expertise, and empathy new technologies can be used to create new unexpected expressions hat connect on a deeper, more resonant level.
By 2030, 59 out of 100 people worldwide will require additional training, according to the WEF Jobs Report. With 86% acknowledging the transformative impact of technology, particularly AI and information processing, businesses are evolving rapidly. The fastest-growing jobs are in AI and Big Data, while analytical thinking, alongside creativity, resilience, flexibility, and curiosity, tops the list of in-demand skills.
It is no longer about absorbing information, but about developing the ability to think critically, solve complex problems, and connect ideas across disciplines. Learning is an ongoing process, one where curiosity and adaptability are just as essential as technical expertise. The value lies in cultivating a mindset that can navigate a rapidly evolving world with flexibility and insight. Education has to change to teach in ways that prepare people for this long learning and personal development timeline.
The blending and stacking of diverse skills and disciplines sparks innovation and redefines archetypes and tradition. As technology becomes a collaborator rather than a tool, the boundaries between fields blur, creating a new kind of interdisciplinary fluency. The results are not just functional but impactful, opening ways to a now unimaginable future.
Why this matters
The idea of combining diverse skills and disciplines to create something greater than the sum of its parts.
Human-AI Interaction Model/ Quentin Loisel
The model illustrates humanity’s knowledge, individual knowledge, and model data. They overlap but remain within humanity’s knowledge, never fully covering it.
The Sentinel of Memory in the Valley of Vulnerability/ Alexander Reben
Alexander was Open AI’s first artist in residence. He used AI tools to generate a digital model for the sculpture. The AI produced an amalgamation of human body parts arranged in unexpected ways, a 3D-printed model was used to fabricate the sculpture in bronze. See more here
Exo Cortex 3.0/ Jeremy Oury
Immersive dome experience that challenges perception of reality by exploring technology as an external cognitive layer that interacts with and enhances the brain’s natural processes, extending or modifying human perception, identity, and consciousness. See more here
High-NA-EUV/ Zeiss x ASML
The complex system, consisting of over 25,000 individual parts, employs advanced optical technologies, including mirrors, lenses, and light sources, to precisely direct EUV light onto the photomask and wafer, achieving the precision needed for semiconductor fabrication at the smallest scales and driving the miniaturization of chips and next-gen electronic devices. See more here
Further reading
Co-Intelligence/ Ethan Mollick
Co-Intelligence explores the transformative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on various aspects of human life, particularly in business and education. Ethan sees AI as a collaborator, a co-worker, co-teacher or coach. He emphasizes the importance of engaging with AI to enhance human capabilities rather than viewing it as a replacement. See an interview here
The AI Mirror/ Shannon Vallor
This book explores how AI can help reinvent flawed human power structures, reflecting on the interplay between technology and human values and the impact on human identity and societal structures. She proposes that AI can serve as a mirror, reflecting our values and prompting us to engage in deeper self-reflection.
Supremacy/ Parmy Olson
This book describes the AI arms race and the competition between OpenAI and DeepMind in their quest to develop artificial general intelligence and how they navigate the complex terrain of AI development, commercialization, and regulation. Supremacy was the FT book of the year 2024.
The Shape Of a Life/ Shing-Tung Yau
Shing-Tung Yau has developed a mathematical model to analyze complex systems in biology, society, and the environment. It uncovers hidden patterns, offering a “model of one” framework for diverse phenomena. His work connects geometry and topology to foundational AI principles like neural networks and optimization.
Index
The Shifts