Society Posts

When the US Social Security system was designed in 1935, the retirement age was set at 65 and life expectancy at birth was around 61. That comparison is frequently used and is somewhat misleading—life expectancy at birth was depressed by infant mortality, and a person who reached 65 could expect to collect for over a decade. But the direction is right: the system was designed for a population in which many contributors would not reach the age of eligibility, and those who did would collect for a limited period.

Governments are being asked to regulate technologies they do not fully understand, developing faster than legislation can be drafted, built by firms whose technical staff earn several times what any regulator can offer, operating across borders that domestic law does not reach.

The central thesis of this book is simple to state, difficult to accept: the next decade will compress what previously took a century. AI-driven acceleration will transform biology, energy, transportation, space, education, government, media, manufacturing, finance, and more—not sequentially over generations, but simultaneously within years.

Every technology in this book extends what humans can do. This one changes how long they get to do it.

The principles of business strategy have not changed. Differentiation still matters, cost position still matters, and network effects still compound. What has changed is how quickly a defensible position stops being defensible.

What happens when machines can do most jobs?

Every human society has dreamed of escaping death. Gilgamesh sought the secret of eternal life. Ponce de León allegedly searched for the fountain of youth. Alchemists promised elixirs of immortality. The religious afterlives of every major faith are, at their core, solutions to the problem of death.

Sixty-three chapters have described what could happen. This one argues about what should.

Before discussing AI companions, it is important to understand why people might want them.

Most of this book has described change at scale—industries, institutions, civilizations. Nobody experiences change at that scale. People experience a job that changed, a skill that stopped mattering, a field that used to hire and now doesn't.

Every chapter in this book has described a technology that could remake its domain. This one describes what the same capabilities look like pointed the other way.