Part of Peace Through Prophecy, our team’s entry in the Future of Life Institute’s 2022 AI worldbuilding contest. The contest posed 13 detailed questions about the mechanics of each imagined world; here are our full answers.

1. How has AGI remained safe and controlled?

1. AGI has existed for at least five years but the world is not dystopian and humans are still alive! Given the risks of very high-powered AI systems, how has your world ensured that AGI has at least so far remained safe and controlled?

A. Ultimately, humanity was able to navigate the dangers of AGI development because the early use of AI to automate government services accidentally kicked off an “arms race” for improved governance technology and institution design. These reforms improved governments’ decision-making abilities, enabling them to recognize the threat posed by misalignment and coordinate to actually solve the problem, implementing the “Delhi Accords” between superpowers and making the Alignment Project civilization’s top priority.

In a sense, all this snowballed from a 2024 Chinese campaign to encourage local governments to automate administrative processes with AI. Most provinces adopted mild reforms akin to Estonia’s e-governance, but some experimented with using AI economic models to dynamically set certain tax rates, or using Elicit-like AI research-assistant tools to conduct cost-benefit analyses of policies, or combining AI with prediction markets. This goes better than expected, kickstarting a virtuous cycle:

Even weak AI has a natural synergy with many government functions, since it makes predicting / planning / administering things cheap to do accurately at scale.
Successful reforms are quickly imitated by competing regions (whether a neighboring city or a rival superpower) seeking similar economic growth benefits.
After adopting one powerful improvement to fundamental decisionmaking processes, it’s easier to adopt others. (ie, maybe the new prediction market recommends switching the electoral college to a national-popular-vote with approval voting.)

One thing leads to another, and soon most of the world is using a dazzling array of AI-assisted, prediction-market-informed, experimental institutions to govern a rapidly-transforming world.

2. How is AI capability distributed?

2. The dynamics of an AI-filled world may depend a lot on how AI capability is distributed. In your world, is there one AI system that is substantially more powerful than all others, or a few such systems, or are there many top-tier AI systems of comparable capability? Or something else?

A. Through the 2020s, AI capabilities diffused from experimental products at top research labs to customizable commercial applications much as they do today. Thus, new AI capabilities steadily advanced through different sectors of economy.

The 2030s brought increasing concern about the power of AI systems, including their military applications. Against a backdrop of rapidly improving governance and a transforming international situation, governments started rushing to nationalize most top research organizations, and some started to restrict supercomputer access. Unfortunately, this rush to monopolize AI technology still paid too little attention to the problem of alignment; powerful new systems were deployed haphazardly without considering the big picture.

After 2038’s Flash Crash War, the world woke up to the looming dangers of AGI, leading to much more comprehensive consolidation. With the Delhi Accords, all top AI projects were merged into an internationally-coordinated Apollo-Program-style research effort on alignment and superintelligence. Proliferation of advanced AI research/experimentation outside this official channel is suppressed, semiconductor supply chains are controlled, etc. Fortunately, the world transitioned to this centralized paradigm a few years before truly superhuman AGI designs were discovered.

As of 2045, near-human and “narrowly superhuman” capabilities are made broadly available through a controlled API for companies and individuals to use; hardware and source code is kept secure. Some slightly-superhuman AGIs, with strict capacity limits, are being cautiously rolled out in crucial areas like medical research and further AI safety research. The most cutting-edge AI designs exist within highly secure moonshot labs for researching alignment.

3. How were arms races and wars avoided?

**3.**How has your world avoided major arms races and wars, regarding AI/AGI or otherwise?

A. Until 2038, geopolitics was heavily influenced by arms races, including the positive “governance arms race” described earlier. Unfortunately, militaries also rushed to deeply integrate AI. The USA & China came to the brink of conflict during the “Flash Crash War”, when several AI systems on both sides of the South China Sea responded to ambiguous rival military maneuvers by recommending that their own forces be deployed in a more aggressive posture. These signaling loops between rival AI systems lead to an unplanned, rapidly escalating cycle of counter-posturing, with forces being rapidly re-deployed, in threatening and sometimes bizarre ways. For about a day, both countries erroneously believed they were being invaded by the other, leading to intense panic and confusion until the diplomatic incident was defused by high-level talks.

Technically, the Flash Crash War was not caused by misalignment per se (rather, like the 2010 financial Flash Crash, by the rapid interaction of multiple complex automated systems). Nevertheless, it was a fire-alarm-like event which elevated “fixing the dangers of AI systems” to a pressing #1 concern among both world leaders and ordinary people.

Rather than the lukewarm, confused response to crises like Covid-19, the world’s response was strong and well-directed thanks to the good-governance arms race. Prediction markets and AI-assisted policy analysts quickly zeroed in on the necessity of solving alignment. Adopted in 2040, the Delhi Accords began an era of intensive international cooperation to make AI safe. This put a stop to harmful military & AI-technology arms races.

4. Where does national decision-making power sit?

4. In the US, EU, and China, how and where is national decision-making power held, and how has the advent of advanced AI changed that?

A. The wild success of China’s local-governance experiments led to freer reign for provinces. Naturally, each province is very unique, but each now uses AI to automate many government services, and advanced planning/evaluation assistants to architect new infrastructure and evaluate policy options.

The federal government’s remaining responsibilities include foreign relations and coordinating national projects. The National People’s Congress performs AI-assisted analysis of policies, while the Central Committee (now composed mostly of provincial governors) has regained its originally intended role as China’s highest governing body.

In the United States, people still vote for representatives, but Congress debates and tweaks a basket of metrics rather than passing laws or budgets directly. This weighted index (life expectancy, social trust, GDP, etc) is used to create prediction markets where traders study whether a proposed law would help or hurt the index. Subject to a handful of basic limits (laws must be easy to understand, respect rights, etc), laws with positive forecasts are automatically passed.
This system has extensively refactored US government, creating both wealth and the wisdom needed to tackle alignment.

The EU has taken a more cautious approach to reforming governance, but has used AI management of the economy to create an advanced hybrid system of “human-centered capitalism”, putting an automated thumb on the scale of nearly every transaction to favor stronger social connections and greater daily fulfillment. Europe has also created the most accessible, modular ecosystem of AI/governance tech for adoption by other countries. Brazil, Indonesia, and others have benefited from incorporating some of the EU’s open-source institutions.

5. Is the world more or less unequal than in 2021?

5. Is the global distribution of wealth (as measured say by national or international gini coefficients) more, or less, unequal than 2021’s, and by how much? How did it get that way? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient)

A. From 2022-2036, profits from AI technology increased inequality, both within and between countries. Between-country inequality was somewhat mitigated by “virtual immigration” and newly-founded charter cities. Many countries also adopted wise policies to reduce the cost of living by producing abundant energy and housing, and by lowering costs in medical care and education. On net, inequality increased, but median incomes also rose — a tide that lifted all boats, but some more than others.

The period of tension and uncertainty around the Flash Crash War, and the waves of nationalization that struck AI and semiconductor industries, was a tumultuous time for markets, destructively reducing inequality by sinking rich boats faster than it sunk poor ones.

Since 2040, the Delhi Accords have capped inequality at a consensus level. The Accords’ inequality targets are enshrined in the value-functions of all major futarchy markets, leading to policies like:

Generous public services including UBI
Huge Marshall-plan-like investment in developing countries.
Tech founders can still profit by finding new applications for AI, but since AI is now government-controlled, rents on AI’s fundamental usefulness flow to the public purse.
AI’s ability to deftly manipulate complex systems makes it possible to subtly tilt markets to create a more emotionally fulfilling, “human-centric” capitalism – boosting families, small businesses, small towns, the arts, etc, without causing undue distortion.

Overall, within-country inequality is similar to its 2022 level; between-country inequality is significantly lower. The whole world, of course, is spectacularly more prosperous than in 2022.

6. A major problem AI has solved: language barriers

6. What is a major problem that AI has solved in your world, and how did it do so?

A. Machine translation existed in a crude form in 2022, but starting in the mid-2030s, AI-powered translation became so high-quality that communication between speakers of a different languages approached the fluency of ordinary conversation.

The AI systems of 2045 go far beyond impeccably translating written sentences; they can translate conversation in real-time, maintaining the proper tone of voice and other vocal characteristics of the speaker. Even subtle forms of humor and metaphor can often be brought across the language barrier by AI systems, just as a skilled translator can often substitute one idiom for another.

Since both rich social connections and conversations about detailed technical knowledge can now be had with anyone, the world has benefited greatly from “virtual immigration” — machine translation, together with advanced and unobtrusive VR remote-working technology, allows people across the globe to collaborate closely on shared projects.

Beyond the economic benefits that virtual immigration unlocked (still very large benefits, despite the fact that the world of 2045 has generally much more open immigration due to a strong desire to attract talent and various governance reforms), advanced translation tools have also led to better cross-cultural understanding, which has certainly led to a lot of cool new art and culture, and likely (although this is hard for scholars to prove) helped make the community of nations more peaceful and cooperative.

7. What is a new social institution that has played an important role in the development of your world?

A. New institutions have been as impactful over recent decades as near-human-level AI technology. Together, these trends have had a multiplicative effect — AI-assisted research makes evaluating potential reforms easier, and reforms enable society to more flexibly roll out new technologies and gracefully accommodate changes. Futarchy has been transformative for national governments; on the local scale, “affinity cities” and quadratic funding have been notable trends.

In the 2030s, the increasing fidelity of VR allows productive remote working even across international and language boundaries. Freed from needing to live where they work, young people choose places that cater to unique interests. Small towns seeking growth and investment advertise themselves as open to newcomers; communities (religious beliefs, hobbies like surfing, subcultures like heavy-metal fans, etc) select the most suitable town and use assurance contracts to subsidize a critical mass of early-adopters to move and create the new hub. This has turned previously indistinct towns to a flourishing cultural network.

Meanwhile, Quadratic Funding (like a hybrid of local budget and donation-matching system, usually funded by land value taxes) helps support community institutions like libraries, parks, and small businesses by rewarding small-dollar donations made by citizens.

The most radical expression of institutional experimentation can be found in the constellation of “charter cities” sprinkled across the world, predominantly in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. While affinity cities experiment with culture and lifestyle, cities like Prospera Honduras have attained partial legal sovereignty, giving them the ability to experiment with innovative regulatory systems much like china’s provinces.

8. A key non-AI technology: governance tech & abundant energy

8. What is a new non -AI technology that has played an important role in the development of your world?

A. Improved governance technology has helped societies to better navigate the “bulldozer vs vetocracy” axis of community decision-making processes. Using advanced coordination mechanisms like assurance contracts, and clever systems (like Glen Weyl’s “SALSA” proposal) for pricing externalities and public goods, it’s become easier for societies to flexibly make net-positive changes and fairly compensate anyone affected by downsides. This improved governance tech has made it easier to build lots of new infrastructure while minimizing disruption. Included in that new infrastructure is a LOT of new clean power.

Solar, geothermal, and fusion power provide most of humanity’s energy, and they do so at low prices thanks to scientific advances and economies of scale. Abundant energy enables all kinds of transformative conveniences:

Cheap desalinization changes the map, allowing farming and habitation of previously desolate desert areas. Whole downtown areas of desert cities can be covered with shade canopies and air-conditioned with power from nearby solar farms.
Carbon dioxide can be captured directly from the air at scale, making climate change a thing of the past.
Freed from the pressing need to economize on fuel, vehicles like airplanes, container ships, and self-driving cars can simply travel at higher speeds, getting people and goods to their destinations faster.
Indoor farming using artificial light becomes cheaper; instead of shipping fruit from the opposite hemisphere, people can enjoy local, fresh fruit year-round.

9. How countries govern emerging technologies

**9.**What changes to the way countries govern the development, deployment and/or use of emerging technologies (including AI) played an important role in the development of your world?

A. After the world woke up to the dangers of powerful misaligned AI in 2038, nations realized that humanity is bound together by the pressing goal of averting extinction. Even if things go well, the far-future will be so strange and wonderful that the political concept of geopolitical “winners” and “losers” is impossible to apply.

This situation, like a Rawlsian veil of ignorance, motivated the superpowers to cooperate with 2040 Delhi Accords. Key provisions:

Nationalizing and merging top labs to create the Alignment Project.
Multi-pronged control of the “AI supply chain” (inspired by uranium & ICBM controls) to enforce nonproliferation of powerful AI — nationalizing semiconductor factories and supercomputer clusters, banning dangerous research, etc.
Securing potential attack vectors like nuclear command systems and viral synthesis technology.
API access and approval systems so people can still develop new applications & benefit from prosaic AI.
Respect for rights, plus caps on inequality and the pace of economic growth, to ensure equity and avoid geopolitical competition.

Although the Accords are an inspiring achievement, they are also provisional by design: they exist to help humanity solve the challenge of developing safe superintelligent machines. The Alignment Project takes a multilayered approach – multiple research teams pursue different strategies and red-team each other, layering many alignment strategies (myopic oracle wrappers, adversarial AI pairs, human-values-trained reward functions, etc). With luck, these enable a “limited” superintelligence not far above human abilities, as a tool for further research to help humanity safely take the next step.

10. How AI transformed computing, creativity & education

10. Pick a sector of your choice (education, transport, energy, healthcare, tourism, aerospace, materials etc.) and describe how that sector was transformed by AI in your world.

A. The everyday experience of interacting with computers has changed dramatically. It is physically different: rather than looking at phones or sitting at workstations, people often walk around and use their hands to interact with a virtual view through AR glasses. But more importantly, AI-infused tools have made creating and designing things much more accessible.

People can create entire software applications, automate their own workflows, edit videos, or create whole videogame worlds, just by talking with their computer: AI tools will interpret the speaker’s commands and present different proposed solutions for the user to choose between. Creating software, art — even industrial components! — becomes an iterative process as accessible as having a conversation. Naturally this is hugely beneficial for the economy; it also changes how people spend their free time, as described in the next question.

AI’s ability to create uniquely tailored experiences for each user has also transformed education. AI tutors can easily queue up high-quality videos, readings, quizzes, exercises, and videogame-like simulations, even on niche subjects. These sequences, customized for your exact needs, can be optimally spaced to help you learn and keep you interested. Naturally, schools are huge users of this technology, alternating AI study sessions with in-person socializing.

AI tutoring abilities also make it much easier to pick up new skills or get into a new hobby. Just as internet search engines allowed people to instantly look up simple questions, AI has made it easier for anyone to build a deep understanding of complex topics.

11. Life expectancy in 2045

11. What is the life expectancy of the most wealthy 1% and of the least wealthy 20% of your world; how and why has this changed since 2021?

A. In 2045, the technical definition of life expectancy is less relevant than today. The world is changing rapidly; “life expectancy” is expected to greatly increase when the superintelligent AIs being designed and tested finally get rolled out for early medical research applications. But if technology was frozen in place forever at 2045 levels, the “life expectancy” of the wealthiest 1% would be 116, and the life expectancy of the poorest 20% would be 89.

Life expectancy gains have come from several sources:

Cleaner air and other public-health benefits of a prosperous, well-governed world.
Abundant healthy food, and improvements to some foods (like swapping excessive fructose for allulose and developing plant-based meats).
AI has driven the development of advanced biotech, especially in genetics. Early-detection multi-cancer blood tests are now universal, and cancer can be powerfully targeted by personalized gene therapies. Formerly incurable genetic diseases can be reversed using CRISPR-derived techniques. Small-molecule drug discovery has led to effective treatments for most types of Alzheimer’s and powerful interventions to reduce obesity.
The biggest gains have come from medicines which target aging itself, either by slowing the rate at which age-related damage accrues or by partially restoring youthful function to specific tissue types. Fourth-generation senolytic drugs clear inflammatory damage; gene therapies targeting transposons reduce the accumulation of DNA damage; drugs designed to break accumulated cellular cross-links reduce vascular stiffening to improve heart health; another treatment can restore a 75-year-old’s thymic & immune system function to the level of a 60-year-old.

12. Which human rights fare better, and which worse?

**12.**In the US, considering the human rights enumerated in the UN declaration , which rights are better respected and which rights are worse respected in your world than in 2022? Why? How?

In one other country of your choice, which rights are better respected and which rights are worse respected in your world than in 2022? Why? How?

A. Article #21 promises the right to participate in government “directly or through freely chosen representatives”, by voting in “periodic and genuine elections”. Of course Americans already enjoyed this democratic right in 2022; but in 2045 it finds a much fuller expression.

In addition to voting for representatives in the usual way, Americans can:

Delegate their voting power via “liquid democracy” to a trusted friend or expert.
Trade on prediction markets, using AI research tools to evaluate the likely impacts of a proposed law.
Join community projects to design new laws and submit them to be judged, and maybe passed, on the markets.
Provide feedback about what they need and how a new law would affect them.
Make small donations to help direct their local community’s quadratic matching funds to beneficial causes, like improvements to a local park or support for a theater group.

This is a lot of civic participation! But processes are convenient and easy (like online/mobile voting). Importantly, when government becomes more capable and responsive, it becomes more motivating and worthwhile for people to participate, especially with all the important decisions being made as the world changes rapidly.

Futarchy certainly has a technocratic aspect to it, doubly so when policy evaluation is aided by powerful AI tools. But despite this, people in 2045 (in the US and elsewhere) have a much stronger experience of voice and representation in decisionmaking than the framers of the UN declaration imagined.

Several rights promised by the Declaration (such as #23, #24, and #25) require both freedom AND prosperity. The incredible abundance created by the AI and governance booms, and the Delhi Accords’ agreement to limit inequality, means that for the first time in history, high pay, quality housing, and advanced medical care are the standard living conditions of most humans, including in the former “third world”.

Other Articles focus on enabling everyone to achieve their full potential. #19 says the ability to “receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” is essential to free speech. #26 says of education, “Technical and professional education shall be made generally available… Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights.” These areas have benefited from the transformative effect of AI on education described earlier.

Two technically worse-respected rights in many countries are #12 and #17, promising freedom from “arbitrary interference with privacy, family, or home” and strict property rights. The world of 2045 has strong rule of law, but also relies on many “nudges” (like subsidies/taxes on different foods to promote healthy eating) to promote helpful behavior without resorting to bans & mandates. This strikes an efficient balance between public interest and private freedom, but some might consider the elaborate carrot-and-stick schemes an undue “interference” in personal life, and things like land value tax or SALSA to be an imposition on property rights.

13. How do people find fulfillment?

13. What’s been a notable trend in the way that people are finding fulfillment?

A. The world of 2045 is rich enough that people don’t have to work for a living — but it’s also one of the most exciting times in history, running a preposterously hot economy as the world is transformed by new technologies and new ways of organizing communities, so there’s a lot to do!

As a consequence, careers and hobbies exist on an unusual spectrum. On one end, people who want to be ambitious and help change the world can make their fortune by doing the all the pressing stuff that the world needs, like architecting new cities or designing next-generation fusion power plants.

With so much physical transformation unleashed, the world is heavily bottlenecked on logistics / commodities / construction. Teams of expert construction workers are literally flown around the world on private jets, using seamless translation to get up to speed with local planners and getting to work on what needs to be built using virtual-reality overlays of a construction site.

Most people don’t want to hustle that much, and 2045’s abundance means that increasing portions of the economy are devoted to just socializing and doing/creating fun stuff. Rather than tedious, now-automated jobs like “waiter” or “truck driver”, many people get paid for essentially pursuing hobbies – hosting social events of all kinds, entering competitions (like sailing or esports or describing hypothetical utopias), participating in local community governance, or using AI tools to make videos, art, games, & music.

Naturally, many people’s lives are a mix of both worlds.

Answers to the Contest Prompts