Life in 2040
Scenes change at each decade and scenario band. Indicators move continuously. Tap an image to enlarge it.Breakdown
The machines arrive, and the old rules stay.
- Capability races ahead with few safety rules
- Tax still rests on wages, so revenue falls as jobs go
- Ownership of AI, chips and robots concentrates
- Data centres outrun the clean grid
Muddle Through
Governments react late, but they react.
- Wage insurance, retraining and an AI levy, a few years behind the shock
- A sovereign AI fund pays a modest dividend
- Hours fall, and most people adapt unevenly
- Clean energy wins, more slowly than it could
Abundance
The gains are shared on purpose.
- Every child gets a stake at birth in public AI and robot funds
- Tax shifts from payslips to profits, land and compute
- Free public AI agents, tutors and doctors for all
- Clean power and restoration get the AI dividend first
How to read this
These are scenarios, not forecasts. Each indicator is an illustrative value set by the author at nine anchor points (2030, 2040 and 2050 under each scenario) and blended between them as you move the dials. They are meant to show the shape and spread of plausible futures, and they should not be quoted as predictions.
Where a published source exists, the anchors respect it: the extreme 2030 case in Anthropic’s economic scenarios (unemployment near 12 per cent, labour share falling from 60 to about 45 per cent) bounds the Breakdown path, and forecasters’ tendency to underestimate AI progress argues for wide ranges.
The images are AI-generated illustrations of possible futures, created by Lisa Pedrosa. They are not photographs.
Sources and further reading
- Korinek, Jones et al., “Economic Scenarios for Transformative AI,” The Anthropic Institute, Sept 2026. PDF
- Forecasting Research Institute, “How Accurate Have AI Progress Forecasts Been So Far?” 22 Sept 2026. forecastingresearch.org
- FRI, Longitudinal Expert AI Panel (LEAP). forecastingresearch.org
- Stanford Digital Economy Lab, Canaries update, Aug 2026. stanford.edu
- John Maynard Keynes, “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren,” 1930. full text
- Lisa Pedrosa, the After Wages series: The Hole in the Budget, The Turkey Problem, A Stake at Birth.
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