Let's start with the simplest/quickest of the three articles linked from here, explanations (from a particular POV) - what "AI" in the office can/could mean. We then move on to a rebuttal of the loud voices that "AI will doom us all", and then into some serious research about our future with these things we are calling "AI".
Enjoy.
AI Economics for Dummies
by Andrew Singleton, June 11, 20264. Benjamin owns a farm. He employs 100 workers plowing his fields. His total payroll is $10 million/year. One day, he buys a mule, which provides the worker who uses it with a modest 10 percent productivity gain. Benjamin fires 99 of his workers and purchases 99 mules, expecting a 1,000 percent productivity gain. The driverless mules cause plow damage to his property in excess of $50 million. Benjamin loses another $5 million due to the loss of productivity from his one remaining employee, who no longer guides a plow but instead spends 100 percent of his time shoveling mule shit. Goldman Sachs builds an altar to Benjamin in their lobby and cuts out the heart of a junior analyst on it every Friday. They call it “Blood Sacrifice Friday.” The name isn’t catchy, but the event becomes a management favorite nonetheless.
The following is an interesting look at the future of "AI" and why many, especially online commentators, maybe getting it wrong in their ever constant doom messaging. I always appreciate alternative views to those that have placed a stake in the ground, it means the nuances can be teased out and the black/white opinions can be seen for what they are - an opinion.
What does life after AI look like? Cory Doctorow’s guide is an outdated map, lacking answers
by Michael Noetel, August 11, 2026
If you want your outrage at the AI industry stoked and your side of the fence confirmed, you’ll likely enjoy the book. But if you want to know the truth about where AI is heading, this book will leave you misinformed. If you want to know what to do about it, it will leave you powerless.
The AI 2024 site was mentioned in the above article and it's a dense read tbh, but the amount of research that has gone into it makes me believe is worth time from anyone / everyone that is slightly curious (understatement) about how "AI" could impact us humans on this world. Whilst it is all written from, and focused upon, the US / China it will affect us all, keep reading.
AI 2040: Plan A
by Thomas Larsen, Romeo Dean, Brendan Halstead, Eli Lifland, Ryan Greenblatt, Daniel Kokotajlo
The AI 2040: Plan A scenario is the third major release from the AI Futures Project, alongside AI 2027 and the AI Futures Model. We’re a research nonprofit working to forecast the future of advanced AI and (now) offer recommendations for navigating it. We created this website in collaboration with Lightcone Infrastructure.
You'll want to dive in before checking out the FAQs are they are aimed at those that have genuine questions about the scenarios, assumptions, and research and not just generic, "What's this all about then?".
Note: you can get it all in a 90 page / 14 MB PDF for offline reading
Q: Plan A is complicated. Shouldn’t we do a simpler and more straightforward plan, like shutting it all down (Plan S)?
Our proposed implementation of Plan A is very complicated, and even a good implementation will incur significant existential risk. However, all simpler plans that we are aware of would incur even more risk than Plan A. In particular the main issue with Plan S is that it does worse than Plan A at making forward progress towards solving the safety/alignment problems that prevent further capability scaling, because we are shut down at an earlier capability level. This is bad because at some point, both Plan A and Plan S will break down and return to racing, and in Plan S, much less alignment progress will have been made by this point. That said, we are very sympathetic to Plan S and could imagine being convinced that some version of it is better after all.


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