Johnny Lam woke with the city, as he had for years. As was his habit, he sat on the balcony for around 30 minutes, watching the pre-dawn glow turn to morning over the seastead in Kowloon Bay. His health mentor recommended daily morning meditation; Johnny reckoned that enjoying the view in peace was its own kind of meditation anyway.

His next order of business was less of a habit and more of a grudging necessity. With a quiet scowl he took each of his morning medications. One of these was a fructokinase inhibitor, genetically engineered for himself (a perk of being a member of Athena) to improve metabolic, renal, and cardiovascular health. Another pill helped him fight any emerging cancer cells – something to do with training his white blood cells to recognise them, but he wasn’t sure on the details.

Both types of pills were cheap, and both have now become widely distributed, having materially increased the life and healthspan among the 9 billion people across the globe. There were many such perks nowadays – especially for people of Johnny’s age – and especially since the 2030s, when the rate of scientific innovations accelerated faster than most had predicted likely, especially in the health, energy, and resource management sectors.

He made use of another perk only a few minutes later, having washed, dressed, and headed down to ground level. As the elevator doors opened, he stepped out into the building’s garage to find a self-driving electric taxi waiting for him, not three meters away. The fare for such vehicles was heavily subsidized by both Athena and the local Hong Kong government; Johnny made use of the little buggers as often as he could. Not only did each ride cost him mere iotas, but the cabs smelled nice and their limited AI personality was surprisingly witty. Because these were now widely used, the concept of traffic congestion now only existed in Hong Kong’s history books.

Johnny still couldn’t believe it – not really. When his daughter had first talked to him about joining a “digital nation” – about joining Athena – he’d been skeptical. First there had been his inherent mistrust of anything that called itself a nation. He had always assumed any “religio-political” leader lied, propagandized and manipulated to help coordinate people around a common “national” trope – at least in Johnny’s experience. But the fact that these new ones were AGI-led, massively distributed, egalitarian, location-agnostic, mutually voluntary — it made no difference. He’d heard it all before. Or so he’d thought.

He initially couldn’t believe how cheap the membership was – at least, vis-a-vis the benefits. The iotas (the officially adopted crypto currency) he contributed each month to Athena covered less than a tenth of his medical expenses alone, he reckoned – to say nothing of his personalized health mentor and other benefits like meeting people who’d become his closest friends, the fulfilling hobbies he’d been able to discover and nurture, and the meaningful work he could do to help continue solving the problems the universe faced, reducing existential risk for all sentient beings, as a group. Indeed, he’s never had such a fulfilling and rewarding social and productive life: he loved his friends, located across the globe, and sometimes he couldn’t believe how much they seemed to love him too. Clearly, for what the benefits were from joining a digital collective, ideas like “cost” and “value” weren’t as concrete as they once were. So many other factors were considered, and monetary value was only part of the equation…

With no more noise than a gentle breeze, the cab pulled up at Miam Bakery, their favorite coffee spot. Sure enough, his daughter Hanna was waiting by the door to help him inside.

‘How was the ride, pa?’ Hanna asked, reaching for him.

Johnny made a show of clutching her arm as if his balance depended on it. ‘As it always is. But tell me – how was your trip??’

Hanna smirked as she led him to a quiet booth, already laden with Johnny’s favorite coffee and ketogenic croissants. ‘It was amazing, pa. I know it’s not true space travel, but seeing Earth from orbit, no matter how briefly…’

Johnny chuckled. ‘I didn’t mean the point-to-point. I meant Switzerland. Geneva. How was it?’

‘Honestly, pa? There was a surprising amount of bureaucracy. A lot of probing questions that weren’t entirely relevant. The UN is still quite old-school in that way.’

That comment made Johnny feel nostalgic, to his own surprise. ‘It’s a bold idea, I suppose, even for these times.’

Hanna smiled. ‘Yes indeed. They had trouble understanding the concept, to be honest. First, Digital Nations were based on a historic nationality or ethnicity. Then the voluntary ones – the first AGI-led ones – were united by common ideology, worldview, interest and so on. But this idea – a bare-bones Digital Nation for people who don’t like Digital Nations, who want the advantages and legal protections without feeling like they’re a member of anything – it’s a bit too rich for their blood.’

‘A Nation for hermits.’

‘Well, hermits, homesteaders, commune members, technophobes, luddites, radical libertarians… people like that.’

The conversation went on in this vein for quite some time. Johnny could listen to his daughter talk about her big ideas and her career all day.

Later, after a productive but tiring session with his health mentor, Johnny reflected on how thankful he was to spend time with his daughter in such good health. Hanna really cared for him, in a way that exceeded the usual societal expectations. “Filial piety”, they used to call it. Well, she embodied it to a fault.

As Johnny readied for bed, a startling thought entered his mind. Maybe he’d been thinking about Athena and other AGIs all wrong. The true dynamics of their relationship with Johnny — and by extension, with humanity itself — suddenly became clear.

They weren’t deities — they were children.

Children who cared.

A. The most important new social institution that has played an influential role is that of “digital collectives” or “digital nations” – many of which are headed by AGIs. These are non-coercive groups that transcend geographic boundaries but still rely on identity and shared interests, with an ever increasing power (monetary policy, recognized passports, internally bespoke “rights”). The origins of these collectives occurred with the dissolution of Tonga as a physical state – which was able to keep their “nation” in a digital manner, laying the precedent for other digital collectives.

These collectives began to undermine physical nation states, a process that’s still ongoing, but which is being managed effectively with guidance from AGIs who head some of the more popular collectives (to mitigate the threat of usurping independence and autonomy from traditional nation-states). The effect is essentially improved competition for loyalties across the world’s population; because the value of each collective is not based on scarce physical resources, the only way to sustain individual loyalties is to persuade non-coercively. As such, these collectives have become ever more pacifist and dignified.

A. Commercial hydrogen power (using tides and waves to generate it cleanly) as a power for shipping containers was a breakthrough in reducing the carbon footprint of the shipping industry, and though while still nascent, nuclear fusion energy has begun to revolutionize productivity because it essentially provides unlimited power for decentralized manufacturing (using micro-reactors). With their optimal safety record, micro-fusion reactors are being deployed rapidly thereby enabling an “abundance” of wealth creation across nations who originally relied on large centralized power plants. Now – manufacturing bases are set up in disparate regions globally, contributing to the economic advancement of the less urban or Western world populations.

A. The 2030s and 40s demonstrated one clear policy effect – and that was a classically liberal take on politics, science, and innovation fared better than more “heavy handed” or “directed” measures from more repressive countries. Strong-state or corporatist countries certainly were able to maintain power by investing in optimizing and rewarding research, but liberally open countries — while much messier and uncertain — provided fecund environments for critical reviews of knowledge, theory, and innovation, allowing for quick error correction in the sciences and policy making, without stigma or fear of retribution.

This also applied to AI, where societies who had the greatest freedom to tinker and innovate also developed more sophisticated AI, and — like in the U.S. — essentially “invented” AGI. And, with this environment of openness and forward moral thinking, providing AGIs with safe places to cultivate engendered goodwill and improved AGI capabilities.

More specifically, the funding mechanism for research became much more democratized, so that everyone in the U.S. had a better say of how their tax dollars could contribute to innovation. This incentivized a more responsible citizenry that looked out for the betterment of the world. And this helped guide researchers into solving more problems, responsibly — without the heavy (or bureaucratic) hand of a government. And finally, these open societies were much more diverse in how the funding of research occurred – it was much more varied (short and long term, abstract and applied, etc.), cultivating a rate of knowledge growth that was unprecedented.

A. Healthcare had some of the greatest innovations in the past 20 years as a result of incorporating AI. For one, the simple management of record keeping (and incorporating all the data from wearables) had by itself a profound boost on improving health outcomes.

In research, this resulted in matching known compounds (enzymes, proteins) and simulating their effects in biochemical pathways without resorting to crude animal trials. In effect, AIs were able to cheaply yet drastically accelerate the “testing” of drug development outside of animal models through simulations. This required extensive cataloguing and screening of, among other items, natural plant compounds found in the wild (this is an example of where AIs – compared to AGIs – did not directly create new areas of knowledge, but accelerated the ability to optimize on existing theories of biology with improved “matching” and calculations to discover “relevant” drugs).

Then when adding in regular genomic and other types of screening, humans essentially where able to prevent any and all preventable diseases, and curing those that slipped through with the appropriate pharmaceuticals.

A. While known for decades, in the mid and late 2020s, the value of metabolic health became widely known, and the underlying culprit of fructose (triggering heightened polyol / aldose-reductase pathways) as the agent that triggered systemic and difficult to reverse disease became widely known. (Example outputs include cardiovascular disease, Alzheimers, diabetes, and many cancers). As such, it had become clear that the cost of metabolic illnesses were utterly devastating with the potential to cost hundreds of billions of dollars globally per year. This caused a slow tsunami of investment and policy change to return to “real” (non-processed) foods in markets globally. Furthermore, the introduction of fructokinase inhibitors also was a step change and this came out in 2028.

As such, average global life expectancy grew to 84 years (up 8 years). Most in the rich world are implanted early on with minimally invasive continuous glucose monitors to help monitor their metabolic health.

What really happened here is that the “traditional rich world diseases” (like diabetes) were eradicated, saving the newly rich countries from having to “go through that period” of shortened lifespans from metabolic illnesses, while benefitting from the modern innovations and treatments to cure any bacterial infection and most cancers (via cheap, regular, and non-invasive screening tech, including liquid biopsies).

Ultimately, the 0.01% wealthiest could achieve 102 years on average, but not much more than that. There was a limit. The bottom 20% was closer to hitting 84 years of age.

A. The right enshrined in Article 22 in the US appears to have been greatly “enhanced”. (This right includes “Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, … of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality”).

The reading for American policy makers here is that achieving social security and dignity requires more than just “freedom”. It requires a baseline set of services and protections from which the citizen can realize his or her potential. These baseline services/protections include universal healthcare coverage, support in covering the costs of parenting, food subsidies for the poorest, etc.

Based on nuanced readings of UBI experiments, and with the involvement of digital nations, many benefit from targeted programs for the most pressing needs. An increase in healthcare coverage, food and exercise stipends for the poor, and above all, subsidies for the cost of childcare has helped most of all women in the United States.

Kenya comparatively has seen progress across most of the articles. A place where, in 2022, a normal traffic violation would be handled mainly through arbitrary arrest (regardless of actual violation), national policies have increased both governmental accountability and transparency, greatly reducing the threat of such arrests (Article 9) as well as greater legal rights – thereby making Kenya not only a more vibrant country where one does not fear the threat of indiscriminate theft or assault (including from white collar corporate actors), making Kenya (within the East African Community State) a remarkably reliable, friendly, and conducive place to conduct business.

Globally, the protection of some rights have stagnated. Article 12 which protects privacy has been “having a troubled time” since the advent of personalized marketing with Google in the early 2000s, especially in less well regulated markets (i.e. in Africa and elsewhere, where institutional checks against privacy violations from global tech companies had little effect).

But, as more and more individuals have joined “digital collectives”, these privacy violations have reduced as the incentives for data have weakened. Be that as it may, consumers of tech in 2045 have had decades of learnings to help safeguard their own privacy; and companies have begun to meet them halfway as part of building brand loyalty.

While the ability to “stay” private has decreased, unwarranted state intrusion has also decreased in 2045 from what it could’ve been. Digital collectives have become the fifth pillar of safeguarding individual rights and privacy.

A. There are three trends in how people are finding increased meaning and fulfillment:
1. Organization around newly discovered existential risks: astrophysicists and planetary scientists in the 2030s discovered numerous new potential natural phenomena that could become existential risks. These risks provided the seeds for human collaboration and a concerted effort for policy makers, scientists, and amateur researchers to come together in a meaningful way to safeguard the cosmic endowment (which also helped aligned humanity with AGIs)

2. Friendships from better social cohesion and matching (via digital collectives) – and nurtured by games / e-sports, partly designed by AIs: One of the most rewarding elements of digital collectives was the optimized ability for personal matchmaking. By knowing “someone is likely to be a great friend” – people were open to making some of the best friends possible (eliminating “loneliness” as an epidemic), and to close the distant gap, many friends met virtually to play games designed by AIs that were both fulfilling, educational, and engaging (as pastimes). AR and VR come into their own in the 2040s.

3. The evolution of education also contributes to fulfillment, in that new pedagogical findings were implemented to instill a sense of awe and wonder about the world. This led to many digital humans (AGIs) and humans to research and answer their curious questions: from how the microbiome worked to Nigerien arts to the history of Australian aviation. The 2040s was called the New Age of Wonder (digital collectives also helped organize how people satisfied their curiosities)