Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The World in 2029, published by Nathan Young on March 2, 2024 on LessWrong.

I open my eyes. It's nearly midday. I drink my morning Huel. How do I feel? My life feels pretty good. AI progress is faster than ever, but I've gotten used to the upward slope by now. There has perhaps recently been a huge recession, but I prepared for that. If not, the West feels more stable than it did in 2024. The culture wars rage on, inflamed by AI, though personally I don't pay much attention.

Either Trump or Biden won the 2024 election (85%). If Biden, his term was probably steady growth and good, boring decision making (70%). If Trump there is more chance of global instability (70%) due to pulling back from NATO (40%), lack of support for Ukraine (60%), incompetence in handling the Middle East (30%). Under both administrations there is a moderate chance of a global recession (30%), slightly more under Trump.

I intend to earn a bit more and prep for that, but I can imagine that the median person might feel worse off if they get used to the gains in between.

AI progress has continued. For a couple of years it has been possible possible for anyone to type a prompt for a simple web app and receive an entire interactive website (60%). AI autocomplete exists in most apps (80%), AI images and video are ubiquitous (80%). Perhaps an AI has escaped containment (45%). Some simple job roles have been fully automated (60%). For the last 5 years the sense of velocity we felt in 2023 onwards hasn't abated (80%).

OpenAI has made significant progress on automating AI engineers (70%).

And yet we haven't hit the singularity yet (90%), in fact, it feels only a bit closer than it did in 2024 (60%). We have blown through a number of milestones, but AIs are only capable of doing tasks that took 1-10 hours in 2024 (60%), and humans are better at working with them (70%). AI regulation has become tighter (80%). With each new jump in capabilities the public gets more concerned and requires more regulation (60%).

The top labs are still in control of their models (75%), with some oversight from the government, but they are red-teamed heavily (60%), with strong anti-copyright measures in place (85%). Political deepfakes probably didn't end up being as bad as everyone feared (60%), because people are more careful with sources. Using deepfakes as scams is a big issue (60%). People in the AI safety community are a little more optimistic (60%).

The world is just "a lot" (65%). People are becoming exhausted by the availability and pace of change (60%). Perhaps rapidly growing technologies focus on bundling the many new interactions and interpreting them for us (20%).

There is a new culture war (80%), perhaps relating to AI (33%). Peak woke happened around 2024, peak trans panic around a similar time. Perhaps eugenics (10%) is the current culture war or polyamory (10%), child labour (5%), artificial wombs (10%). It is plausible that with the increase in AI this will be AI Safety, e/acc and AI ethics. If that's the case, I am already tired (80%).

In the meantime physical engineering is perhaps noticeably out of the great stagnation. Maybe we finally have self-driving cars in most Western cities (60%), drones are cheap and widely used, we are perhaps starting to see nuclear power stations (60%), house building is on the up. Climate change is seen as a bit less of a significant problem. World peak carbon production has happened and nuclear and solar are now well and truly booming. A fusion breakthrough looks likely in the next 5 years.

China has maybe attacked Taiwan (25%), but probably not. Xi is likely still in charge (75%) but there has probably been a major recession (60%). The US, which is more reliant on Mexico is less affected (60%), but Europe struggles significantly (60%).

In the wider world, both Africa and Indi...