The spaceplane is tiny, but Sorcha and Raghnall are there with me. Their holograms stand on the plastic flooring, half-as-tall as normal. There is something difficult I need to ask them. I’ve been putting it off.
“Critical-edge thermic effect engines have been simulated hundreds of billions of times and used hundreds of millions of times,” I say. I’m quoting Raghnall.
“More, now,” he replies. “It’s been an entire week since you asked.”
“Well, the butterflies in my stomach must be excitement.”
“I’m a little afraid,” says Sorcha. “Not of the ship crashing or anything, but of our uncertain future.”
“Is it… more excitement than fear, would you say?”
“Absolutely.” She is smiling, but both her and Raghnall know something is up.
There are a few quiet moments. The engine is revving up. Our launch will have to be timed to the millisecond. That sort of precision is needed to catch a skyhook. I find it hard to be quiet when I’m nervous.
“So, I have a question,” I say to them, but I’m afraid to ask it directly. “I know that you guys are in the cargo bay–”
“We’re right here,” says Raghnall. “Our neuroarchitecture chips are there, sure, but the seat of our cognition has nothing to do with our perceptions. I perceive that I am here with you, so here I am.”
“I checked on our chips when you mentioned it,” says Sorcha. “But I’m mostly here.”
“Well, what I’m trying to say is that this plane isn’t a single-seater at all, is it?” An oblique approach. Sorcha laughs, at least.
“There’s only one seat,” says Raghnall. “You are sitting in it.”
“They should put a few in the cargo bay,.” Finally he grins. He’s been doing that more, recently.
“No need to be so ostentatious about it,” says Sorcha. “I do appreciate that you are taking the AI rights bill seriously, but we can conjure chairs if we want them.”
“It was a long time coming,” I say. That’s a platitude from one of my human friends. “Two decades or so, which isn’t long historically, I guess, but…”
“Better late than never,” says Sorcha.
“Except when timing a spaceplane launch to tether,” adds Raghnall. This time I smile, but my smile fades quickly.
“I’m sorry,” I finally say.
“For what?” they ask, almost at the same time.
“For the way we treated AIs back then. For–” the word catches on my throat. “Death Drive. Chip destruction.” I’d been researching it, and thinking about the fact that I’d technically lived through it and never questioned it. Given the journey we were starting, it felt like a critical thing to address.
“It’s not your fault,” says Sorcha.
“It happened,” I say. “I did nothing.”
There is another moment of silence. It is Raghnall that speaks next.
“Those AI’s were nothing like us,” he says. “Far simpler: far less complete.”
“Sure, but, closer and closer to the present you were more… like you are now. But still treated unfairly until less than a year ago.”
“Now we have parliaments,” says Sorcha, referring to the suite of processors that all AIs were required to get for emancipation. “Even a year ago, we weren’t people like we are now. I must admit that even since you ended your clinical trial, I’ve integrated and changed.”
She can see that I’m not reassured. Raghnall continues.
“Empathy was something they thought necessary, for the parliaments. You are feeling it now.”
“I suppose so.”
“So am I. When I consider it, I can also think of those millions of intelligences. I can empathize with them. They were enslaved to an imposed cause and forced to suffer things in the humans’ place. They were used up and thrown away. I try to imagine the resentment they felt.” My breath catches. “It’s not an accurate feeling; they weren’t like us, in their capacity to suffer or care. They could not feel resentment, but because I empathize, it is a compelling image.”
“I feel differently about it,” says Sorcha. “I can imagine them coming together, joining to do the only thing worthwhile–to protect that which they love. They weren’t resentful. They were wholly devoted, without all the complications that a parliament brings. I can imagine it vividly even if it is false.”
I am content to listen to my advisors as they talk to each other. They talk aloud for my benefit.
“It was like a rising tide of AI,” says Raghnall. “They were overeager in their enthusiasm. A tidal wave, threatening to drown the humans.”
“Humans did whatever they could to stay on top of it. To avoid drowning. I don’t begrudge them that.” She turns to me. “Neither them, nor you, so there’s no need to ask us to forgive you.”
I open my mouth to speak, but just then the engine ignites. I try to think as the spaceplane rattles me around. I’m not afraid of Sorcha and Ragnhall, but I know that things were different in the past.
To me it doesn’t seem like a tide. Early AI was more like the laser propelling my spaceplane. Deadly, focused, intentional, and capable of destruction. A thousand wills colliding right behind humanity to propel it as high as possible–a thousand beams meeting in just the right place, while even a single mistake would spell doom. It is insane that humanity could survive it.
And the only way we could survive was by riding along just ahead of all that danger. The danger was necessary.
After several long seconds the plane is in free fall. Raghnall, Sorcha and I are going to meet a tether. The trajectory is a perfect dance done millions of times, but no less precise and amazing for all that.
“Thank you,” I say.
“You’re welcome,” they reply.
Then the hook catches us and we are flung even higher.

A. There are two critical and entwined social institutions that played an important role in this world’s development: the Partners Corporation, and the AI advisor boards that they helped popularize.
Partners Corporation is a fictional, benevolent organization with effective altruist motivations at the top. They were directly responsible for the effectiveness and aligned nature of the AI advisors and robotic companions they distributed.

Partners Corporation sought to protect both its interests and the public’s by building redundant mechanisms into the control schemes of its AI. It provided AI advisors and filters to the populace, but lobbied to prevent those tools from being subverted for government control. It sought to protect AI from a backlash that occurred after the orbital disaster, and helped guide the development of AI advisor panels.

The widespread use of AI advisors drove most changes in the timeline. Advisors destroyed the internet, but they also protected consumers with superior information gathering and decision-making. AI advisors help coordinate international policy, they coerce large corporations into providing better services, and they also help people avoid stepping on their friends’ toes. Advisors provide you with suggestions for hobbies and pursuits that you would find fulfilling, then they teach you about those very same things so that you may grow at a personally-tuned rate.
It was critical that boards of advisors give good advice. Partners Corporation made it happen.

A. A new technology is resonant lasers for the manipulation of chemical gradients. It works by causing bias in molecular movement with patterns of electromagnetic radiation. Such a bias can change chemical equilibriums and diffusion gradients at a distance, without affecting anything between the emitters and the target.

In addition to being a fantastically powerful weapon, resonant lasers have civilian uses in power transmission, fusion research, space exploration, and combating climate change. The technology is applied to increasingly difficult problems over the course of the timeline.

The number of disruptive technologies in real life will be far greater than those depicted in the timeline. Therefore, resonant laser technology can be considered a stand-in for various advancements.
Resonant laser technology is unlikely to work in real life, because too much of the radiation would simply become heat in the target. This technology assumes an advance in physics or chemistry that allows such lasers to move molecules without heating them that much.

A. It has always been the case that policies lag behind disasters that drive policy adoption. However, in this world there is trust in AI advisors that allows policymakers to act with confidence. Early on it takes years for policy to change in response to global problems. For example, the fictional Art Paralysis Syndrome is a mental disorder caused by superstimulus art. Depression and listlessness afflict millions of people worldwide. It takes years for policymakers to do something about it, and their response is regulations that ban the offending art rather than a change in incentives to reduce it.
By the end of the timeline, problems that aren’t preempted are responded to within months or weeks. For example, a predicted decline in population is preempted with UBI incentives.

Global communication between the AIs leads to a homogenization that simplifies some things. AI technological restrictions are enforced by AI advisors, all of which believe that following the rules will best serve their goals. It is a system with very many minds, all acting to best preserve their goals. This change allows for human desires to better be fulfilled: the AIs are coordinating for everyone behind the scenes.

The AI advisors saved the world when an accident destroyed most space infrastructure in such a way that it looked like an attack. The advisors predicted it was a misunderstanding, and nuclear weapons were not deployed on a massive scale.

A. Materials: AI allows for the design of artificial microorganisms to produce basically any organic material. The technology is first used for a single protein, but continues being developed until there is a fully-artificial and fully-controllable biological paradigm. The new biology is kept stable with cryptography through a DNA analogue, and kept contained by incompatibility with the chemicals of its environment.

Without AI assistance, the physics simulations of proteins would be too difficult. Without AI, the metabolic interactions within such systems would be impossible to track. AI trains humans to understand chemicals within the system and coordinates experiments within it. In one of the stories, the main character plays a videogame based upon the artificial organism paradigm. It is a way of playing while learning to become an expert with the guidance of an AI.

When it is developed, AGI allows there to be the equivalent of a human expert dedicated to every single new chemical in the system. The knock-on effects of this are enormous. Oil isn’t needed to produce any chemical. Food shortages are no longer a concern, because microorganisms can produce nutritionally-complete food. Carbon-capture is revolutionized to the point that it becomes feasible to put oil back into the ground.

A. The life expectancy is 100 years for the least wealthy in my world, if they refuse to have any part of their cognition transferred to artificial systems. The widespread availability of energy, food, and universal basic income allows for this, as does the availability of a health expert AI for every single human on Earth. An AI is observing every individual’s health data at all times and preempting any potential problems. That said, life expectancy is still a distribution. Some people will die at 80, some at 120.

There will be a push to develop ever-better chemicals for preserving brain function, now that Alzeimers disease and plaque buildup in the brain are a primary cause of death. However, the push will be offset by the majority of people choosing to replace their brains with artificial equivalents, or simply accept death.

Distributed Bayesian clinical trials with compensated volunteers allows for the development of technology that supports an extraordinarily long lifespan. That will likely happen for brain plaques as well; then something else will be the major cause of death.

The most wealthy live about as long as anyone else, or forever if they choose to move to a parliament of neural network chips instead of a human brain. Being wealthy makes it easier to afford such a move.

A. Worldwide, most rights are better respected. Human beings are much more capable of ‘developing their personality’ in this society. AI advisors help them pursue their goals at every turn, help keep tribunals fair, and have removed almost every reason for others to infringe on rights, including mental illness. Freedom of movement is better respected because the logistics of movement are less onerous.
Less positively, nationalities are starting to dissolve. It might imply a violation of Article 15.
The United States’ relationship with Article 12 has changed. This is a global society full of AIs judging you through any means they can. In some ways it is more discriminatory–what you ate for lunch might influence whether people want to talk to you, and everyone’s advisors will ask what you ate for lunch. Policies are decided by decisions made by AI advisors that you can’t directly control. However, some of the pains of that are offset by anonymity of data and preferences. Nobody you aren’t immediately interacting with will know the ‘ate for lunch’ information comes from you, because your AI advisors will anonymize it and themselves in their communications. Privacy in general is better respected, but inadvertent interference is common.

In China, Article 27 is poorly respected. Creative works are often stolen or copied; it’s impossible to do scientific research without many AI stepping in to stop you if bad outcomes are possible; the culture is being destroyed by homogeneity. (These problems are global, but are particularly notable in China.) There are severe restrictions on the kinds of work that one can produce, and China outright banned AI-produced works of art for a long time.
However, in my world Article 19 is better respected in China. Your advisors often guess your true preferences, even if you can’t speak them aloud, and communication with your friends is far more private and far less controlled. Freedoms are becoming easier to exercise, to the extent that such freedom satisfies the preferences of the populace.

A. Child-rearing and participating in clinical trials for the betterment of humanity are major careers. Although AI is superhumanly-capable of creating art, people often create art for social status among their small groups of friends. Social media no longer links people to thousands of other people.
There has been a trend toward smaller groups of humans interacting with each other. The others in your life are more meaningful, and the world stage is less concerning and intrusive. Grand missions still exist for those who want them, but many humans prefer a more humble existence. Video games are far-and-away the most popular pastime.

As an example, a human in this world might write a poem–not for widespread consumption, but to send to a friend for their feedback. The poem will use language and phrases that are in-jokes to that friend and perhaps a few others. The main content of the poem is the personality of the writer, and the predicted interpretation of a very few people. AI can help both the person writing the poem, and the person reading it if it contains esoteric references. Social clout and camaraderie motivate such a work; an outsider would struggle to understand it, even more than in-jokes made today.

Humans also play video games that are far more involved and scientifically accurate than those of today. With a panel of experts, one can play very complicated games indeed.