April 9, 20254 min readWhere AI Is Now: Smaller, Better, Cheaper ModelsA state of the AI industry report shows that 2024 was a breakthrough year for small, sleek models to rival the behemothsBy Nicola Jones & Nature magazine Top AI models’ performance is improving quickly, and the competition between them is growing ever fiercer. J Studios/Getty ImagesThe artificial intelligence (AI) race is heating up: the number and quality of high-performing Chinese AI models is rising to challenge the US lead, and the performance edge between top models is shrinking, according to an annual state of the industry report.The report highlights that as AI continues to improve quickly, no one firm is pulling ahead. On the Chatbot Arena Leaderboard, which asks users to vote on the performance of various bots, the top-ranked model scored about 12% higher than the tenth-ranked model in early 2024, but only 5% higher in early 2025 (see ‘All together now’). “The frontier is increasingly competitive — and increasingly crowded,” the report says.The Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2025 was released today by the Institute for Human Centered AI at Stanford University in California.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Nature; Source: AI Index Report 2025The index shows that notable generative AI models are, on average, still getting bigger, by using more decision-making variables, more computing power and bigger training data sets. But developers are also proving that smaller, sleeker models are capable of great things. Thanks to better algorithms, a modern model can now match the performance that could be achieved by a model 100 times larger two years ago. “2024 was a breakthrough year for smaller AI models,” the index says.Bart Selman, a computer scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who was not involved in writing the Index report, says it’s good to see relatively small, cheap efforts such as China’s DeepSeek proving they can be competitive. “I’m predicting we’ll see some individual teams with five people, two people, that come up with some new algorithmic ideas that will shake things up,” he says. “Which is all good. We don’t want the world just to be run by some big companies.”Neck and neckThe report shows that the vast majority of notable AI models are now developed by industry rather than academia: a reversal of the situation in the early 2000s, when neural nets and generative AI had not yet taken off. Industry produced fewer than 20% of notable AI models before 2006, but 60% of them in 2023 and nearly 90% in 2024, the report says.The United States continues to be the top producer of notable models, releasing 40 in 2024, compared with China’s 15 and Europe’s 3. But plenty of other regions are joining the race, including the Middle East, Latin America and southeast Asia.And the previous US lead in terms of model quality has disappeared, the report adds. China, which produces the most AI publications and patents, is now developing models that match their US competition in performance. In 2023, the leading Chinese models lagged behind the top US model by nearly 20 percentage points on the Massive Multitask Language Understanding test (MMLU), a common benchmark for large language models. However, as of the end of 2024, the US lead had shrunk to 0.3 percentage points.“Around 2015, China put itself on the path to be a top player in AI, and they did it through investments in education,” says Selman. “We’re seeing that’s starting to pay off.”The field has also seen a surprising surge in the number and performance of ‘open weight’ models such as DeepSeek and Facebook’s LLaMa. Users can freely view the parameters that these models learn during training and use to make predictions, although other details, such as the training code, might remain secret. Originally, closed systems, in which none of these factors are disclosed, were markedly superior, but the performance gap between top contenders in these categories narrowed to 8% in early 2024, and to just 1.7% in early 2025.“It’s certainly good for anyone who can’t afford to build a model from scratch, which is a lot of little companies and academics,” says Ray Perrault, a computer scientist at SRI, a non-profit research institute in Menlo Park, California, and co-director of the report. OpenAI in San Francisco, California, which developed the chatbot ChatGPT, plans to release an open-weight model in the next few months.Better, smaller, cheaperAfter the public launch of ChatGPT in 2022, developers put most of their energy into making systems better by making them bigger. That trend continues, the index reports: the energy used to train a typical leading AI model is currently doubling annually; the amount of computing resources used per model is doubling every five months; and the training data sets are doubling in size every eight months.Yet companies are also releasing very capable small models. The smallest model registering a score higher than 60% on the MMLU in 2022, for example, used 540 billion parameters; by 2024, a model achieved the same score with just 3.8 billion parameters. Smaller models train faster, give faster answers and use less energy than larger ones. “It helps everything,” says Perrault.Some smaller models can emulate the behaviour of larger models, says Selman, or take advantage of better algorithms and hardware than those in older systems. The index reports that the average energy efficiency of hardware used by AI systems improves by about 40% annually. As a result of such advances, the cost of scoring just over 60% on the MMLU has plummeted, from about US$20 per million tokens (bits of words produced by language models) in November 2022 to 7 cents per million tokens in October 2024.Despite striking improvements on several common benchmark tests, the index highlights that generative AI still suffers from issues such as implicit bias and a tendency to ‘hallucinate’, or spit out false information. “They impress me in many ways, but horrify me in others,” says Selman. “They surprise me in terms of making very basic errors.”This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on April 7, 2025.

Microsoft has locked in the date and time for its annual June announcement extravaganza, the Xbox Games Showcase, and revealed that The Outer Worlds 2 will be getting a dedicated deep dive directly after. Read more

The famous Full House dwelling, featured in the iconic ’90s sitcom and its 2016 spinoff series Fuller House, has sold for $6 million, per TMZ. The residence was at one time owned by Full House creator Jeff Franklin, who purchased it in 2016 for $4 million. He offloaded the four-bedroom, three-and-a-half bath home in 2020 for $5.35 million. It was returned to the market in June 2024 for $6.5 million.The quintessential San Francisco abode was used for exterior shots of the Tanner family home in Full House and its reboot, while interior scenes for both shows were filmed at the Warner Bros. Studio in Los Angeles. The 3,737-square-foot property is located in Lower Pacific Heights, an affluent San Francisco neighborhood near the Golden Gate Bridge. The house was built by architect Charles Lewis Hinkel in 1883.The town house was renovated in 2019 by architect Richard Landry of Landry Design Group, though its original Victorian moldings, bay windows, and charming brick stoop remain. The three-story pad boasts a top floor primary bedroom complete with a fireplace, a spa-inspired bathroom, walk-in closet, and sweeping views of the San Francisco Bay. The chef’s kitchen is outfitted with custom cabinetry, Calacatta Oro countertops, Viking appliances, and a wine fridge. An English garden in the backyard features concrete slabs with the handprints and signatures of the Full House cast, including John Stamos and the late Bob Saget.Join NowFlash Sale: Become an AD PRO member today and unlock your design potential.Arrow“The fact that the front [of the home] is so iconic due to eight years of being flashed on TV screens around the world made it especially fun to be a part of the project,” William Mungall, an architect with Landry Design Group, told AD in 2024. “We were inspired by the show for the interior as well, opening up the living space to feature the staircase for dramatic entrances and combining several small rooms into a large kitchen featuring a walk-around island similar to the show.”

The dramatic suit between OpenAI and its estranged co-founder, billionaire Elon Musk, shows no sign of letting up. In a filing Wednesday, attorneys for OpenAI and the other defendants in the case, including CEO Sam Altman, called for Musk to be enjoined from “further unlawful and unfair action” and “held responsible for the damage he has already caused” to the defendants. “OpenAI is resilient,” reads the filing. “But Musk’s actions have taken a toll. Should his campaign persist, greater harm is threatened — to OpenAI’s ability to govern in service of its mission, to the relationships that are essential to furthering that mission, and to the public interest […] Musk’s continued attacks on OpenAI, culminating most recently in the fake takeover bid designed to disrupt OpenAI’s future, must cease.” Attorneys for Musk didn’t immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. Musk’s suit against OpenAI accuses the startup of abandoning its nonprofit mission to ensure its AI research benefits all humanity. OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit in 2015, but converted to a “capped-profit” structure in 2019, and now seeks to restructure once more into a public benefit corporation. Musk had sought a preliminary injunction to halt OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit. In March, a federal judge denied the request — but permitted the case to go to a jury trial in spring 2026. Musk, once a key supporter of OpenAI, is now perhaps its greatest adversary. The stakes are high for OpenAI, which reportedly needs to complete its for-profit conversion by 2025 or relinquish some of the capital it has raised in recent months. A group of organizations, including nonprofits and labor groups like the California Teamsters, petitioned California Attorney General Rob Bonta this week to stop OpenAI from becoming a for-profit entity, claiming that the company “failed to protect its charitable assets” and is actively “subverting its charitable mission to advance safe artificial intelligence.” Encode, the nonprofit organization that co-sponsored California’s ill-fated SB 1047 AI safety legislation, voiced similar concerns in an amicus brief filed in December.

Airtech Advanced Materials Group, a U.S.-based supplier of composite tooling and additive manufacturing materials, has acquired the filament business of Kimya, a former subsidiary of French industrial conglomerate Armor Group. The deal includes the catalog of technical filaments, production and development infrastructure, validation equipment, and associated intellectual property. These assets will be incorporated into Airtech’s existing portfolio of pellets and filaments for large-format and high-performance additive manufacturing. Filament production is scheduled to resume at Airtech Europe’s headquarters in Luxembourg, where the company already manufactures its Dahltram line of thermoplastic pellet and filament resins. These materials are used in large-format additive manufacturing (LFAM) systems and are designed for demanding industrial environments. The integration of Kimya’s capabilities is intended to strengthen Airtech’s supply reliability and technical support for customers working with engineering-grade polymers. “Airtech is excited to bring Kimya filaments to the global market and build on the great foundation of quality and technical support they had established,” said Gregory Haye, Director of Additive Manufacturing at Airtech. “We found Kimya’s portfolio to be highly aligned with our technical and customer-focused approach at Airtech to develop, sell, and support our family of high-performance resins. These materials are very complementary to our existing offerings, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds as we work to scale Kimya filaments to global markets and launch new and exciting formulations.” Prior to its exit, the French filament company was recognized for its focus on specialty thermoplastics, including carbon-fiber-reinforced filaments and custom formulations such as a PEKK material certified for use in the railway sector. The company also participated in collaborative development projects for clients in need of application-specific performance properties. Its filaments were adopted by equipment manufacturers including Stratasys, Ultimaker, and AON3D, largely due to consistent quality and traceability standards. Airtech’s Logo. Image via Airtech Advanced Materials Group. Kimya’s Exit from 3D Printing The company’s withdrawal from the additive manufacturing sector was first reported by 3D Printing Industry in November 2024. Armor Group had launched the materials business in 2017 with an investment of approximately €15 million, forecasting 30 to 40 percent annual growth. However, demand for high-performance 3D printing materials did not scale as expected, and the business faced pressure from declining equipment sales and broader economic constraints. While the number of industrial systems capable of processing advanced polymers has grown, adoption remains limited by operational complexity and a shortage of skilled personnel. Armor Group President Hubert de Boisredon confirmed the decision via LinkedIn, citing the decline in machine sales and overall economic pressures. In his statement, he expressed pride in the Kimya team’s work while acknowledging that market leaders such as Stratasys were also facing layoffs. He emphasized that while this marked the end of Kimya’s AM operations, it would not deter Armor Group from investing in new industrial technologies, including recent ventures in battery film production. Close up of Kimya’s PEKK filament next to 3D printed PEKK object. Photo via 3DGence. Ready to discover who won the 20243D Printing Industry Awards? Subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry newsletter to stay updated with the latest news and insights. Anyer Tenorio Lara Anyer Tenorio Lara is an emerging tech journalist passionate about uncovering the latest advances in technology and innovation. With a sharp eye for detail and a talent for storytelling, Anyer has quickly made a name for himself in the tech community. Anyer's articles aim to make complex subjects accessible and engaging for a broad audience. In addition to his writing, Anyer enjoys participating in industry events and discussions, eager to learn and share knowledge in the dynamic world of technology.

Hi everyone, I wanted to share an open-source plugin I put together for Unreal Engine: Niagara Destruction Driver github.com GitHub - eanticev/niagara-destruction-driver: Turn CHAOS destructibles (Geometry Collection... Turn CHAOS destructibles (Geometry Collection assets) into very performant GPU simulated destructible static meshes driven by Niagara particles. The Problem: Chaos Fracture tools are great for creating destructible geometry in the editor, but the chaos physics runtime can be too expensive on the CPU to drive a lot of cosmetic destruction of props in your scene. The Solution: Niagara Destruction Driver turns CHAOS destructibles (Geometry Collection assets) into very performant GPU simulated destructible static meshes driven by Niagara particles. SETUP + USAGE getting started info in the github README. Under the Hood (can’t add architecture diagram since I’m a new user… but it’s up on github) Under the hood the plugin uses a niagara system to simulate the physics of the fragments (bones) on the GPU, write their transforms to render targets, and finally a vertex shader to constrain the vertices of a specific fragment to its respective bone using the render targets. Next Steps There’s a rough roadmap up on the github README. Hit me up on here or on twitter (@eanticev) if you’d like to contribute.

It was George Costanza who claimed to know every “magnificent facility” in all of New York. “Anywhere in the city, I’ll tell ya the best public toilet,” Costanza famously bragged, lying on Jerry’s couch in Seinfeld. “Mention my name and she’ll give you the key.” Seinfeld ended in 1998, twelve years before Brooklyn Bridge Park opened. Were George to have traversed the waterfront park by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) today, he may have been none too pleased, that was until this week. For years, park goers have relished in Brooklyn Bridge Park’s open spaces, but have had to walk long distances to relieve themselves. A new pavilion by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA) makes things right, however. Under Roebling’s Brooklyn Bridge, new bathrooms and a bakery greet visitors when they enter from Old Fulton Street. Billie Tsien got straight to the point in highlighting the project’s value: “This new pavilion opens its arms to all,” Tsien said. “And [it] offers one of the most important civic amenities: beautiful public bathrooms!” The pavilion’s defining feature is its roof, pierced by a dramatic oculus. (Courtesy Brooklyn Bridge Park) The grand unveiling of the new Pier 1 pavilion and entryway happened this week at a ribbon cutting ceremony attended by TWBTA, local politicians, and community members. The structures are located within a grove of honey locust and gingko trees, reachable by sloping pathways and wide stairways. Two-tone pavers delineate the new entryway. TWBTA designed three stone structures with a shared roof, topped by photovoltaic panels. Brooklyn Bridge Park’s first private family and gender-neutral facilities are located in the pavilion, as well as a Breads Bakery, known for its artisanal pastries and famous babka, like the kind Jerry and Elaine would have written home about it. (Cue: “That was our babka!”) The pavilion affords sweeping views of the East River and Manhattan skyline. (Courtesy Brooklyn Bridge Park) An oculus pierces the thick roof, creating dynamic shadows. The roof’s underside is faced with yellow-green penny tiles, that mimic the nearby trees, and how they change colors with the seasons. Tod Williams called the ensemble “a front porch to Brooklyn and the world,” a “small, but powerful marker of the entrance to the park,” and “a synthesis of landscape and architecture.” For MVVA, the Pier 1 Pavilion is a milestone. Paul Seck, MVVA’s COO, added: “The new pavilion and plaza will redefine how many of the visitors enter the park and encounter the landscape, now grounded by a comfortable civic landmark and a beautiful meeting place.”

arsdigital - stock.adobe.com News US tariffs drive PC sales boost IT buyers appear to have spent the past few months refreshing PCs in preparation for the new US tariffs By Cliff Saran, Managing Editor Published: 09 Apr 2025 15:48 The latest market data from analyst Canalys has reported that PC shipments experienced a surge in first quarter of 2025 (Q1 2025), driven by manufacturers accelerating deliveries to the US in anticipation of initial tariff announcements. Small and mid-sized organisations that have yet to refresh their PCs before 14 October, when mainstream support from Windows 10 ends, may experience a price hike due to tariffs. The analyst firm reported that total shipments of desktops, notebooks and workstations grew 9.4% to 62.7 million units in Q1 2025. Notebook shipments, which include mobile workstations, grew to 49.4 million units, up 10% compared with a year ago. Shipments of desktops rose 8% to 13.3 million units Ishan Dutt, principal analyst at Canalys, which is now part of Omdia, noted that both Lenovo and HP grew shipments to the US in the first quarter by around 20% and 13%, respectively. “This pre-emptive strategy allowed manufacturers and the channel to stock up ahead of potential cost increases, boosting sell-in shipments despite otherwise stable end-user demand,” Dutt said. Canalys noted that the major PC makers began supply chain diversification during Trump’s first term. It expects them to continue moving away from China towards Vietnam, Thailand and India, despite these countries also facing the imposition of tariffs. According to Canalys, by the end of 2025, most major PC manufacturers are expected to have completed the shift of US-bound shipments out of China, aiming to enhance supply chain resilience and mitigate the impact of tariffs.  As an example, HP CEO Enrique Lores stated during the company’s latest quarterly earnings that 90% of the company’s products sold in the US would be made outside of China by the end of this year.  During the 27 February earnings call for its quarterly results, Jeff Clarke, chief operating officer at Dell, was asked about the tariffs the US administration was imposing on China and how that would affect Dell. According to the transcript of the earnings call posted on Seeking Alpha, Clarke responded saying that the company had built an industry-leading supply chain that’s globally diverse, agile and resilient that helps minimise the impacts of trade regulations and tariffs. “We’ve taken our digital supply chain, our digital twins actually, using some AI modelling to look at every possible scenario that you might imagine to help us understand how we optimise our network and how we do that in the least amount of time,” he said, warning that whatever tariff cannot be mitigated are viewed as input costs, which may require adjustments in prices. When asked about the tariffs during Lenovo’s quarterly earnings call, the company’s chairman and CEO, Yuanqing Yang, claimed the US tariffs were an advantage. In the transcript of the earnings call posted on Seeking Alpha, he said: “It’s not a disadvantage, but probably an advantage for Lenovo. “We have already built a very strong and a unique business model. We call it the ODM+ model. We do both in-house manufacturing and outsourcing manufacturing. And we have a global manufacturing footprint.” Yang said Lenovo operates 30 manufacturing facilities in Argentina, Brazil, India, Japan, Hungary, Germany, Mexico and the US. It is also building a new facility in Saudi Arabia. “Compared to our competition, we are more flexible and resilient to adapt to different scenarios.” This means that when faced with unexpected challenges, Lenovo said it could move customer orders between sites. The company’s supply chain resiliency is based on owning the supply chain end to end. It has also put in place a geodiversity programme to enable sourcing of commodities from locations other than China and Taiwan. In a document published in 2023 looking at ODM+, Lenovo said: “As part of Lenovo’s global/local model, building devices locally dramatically reduces the freight miles these products incur, providing more efficient and sustainable transportation options.” Although major manufacturing countries have been targeted with tariffs, Ben Yeh, senior analyst at Canalys, noted that their rates remain relatively competitive compared with China’s. “These countries have shown a willingness to negotiate, raising the possibility that the tariffs may eventually be reduced or waived, while China has responded swiftly with a new round of reciprocal tariffs. As a result, production relocation plans are still ongoing and are unlikely to change significantly before further implementation details are announced,” he added. The analyst firm warned that businesses, especially small and mid-sized organisations, could face some pressure that may slow down the transition away from Windows 10 ahead of the October 2025 end-of-support (EOS) date. A Canalys poll of PC resellers reported that 14% believe their small and mid-sized business customers are not aware of Windows 10 end of support, while a further 21% said their customers are aware but have no plans to upgrade. “For customers in these situations, the delay in planning means they are likely to face a higher cost environment when the time comes to refresh their PC fleets,” Dutt added. Canalys also predicted that the impact of tariffs on consumer demand will be greater, as purchasing a more expensive PC will need to be prioritised against other spending categories facing price increases. Read more articles about the US tariffs What is the impact of US tariffs on datacentre equipment costs: Moore’s Law predicts that every 18 months, IT buyers can get more for the same outlay. But US tariffs may mean they end up paying a higher price. Making America great, but at what cost: The current tariffs affecting manufacturing is set to disrupt IT hardware. What about software? In The Current Issue: Interview: The role of IT innovation at Royal Ballet and Opera ‘Bankenstein’ and a cold calculation means banking crashes will continue Download Current Issue Making America great, but at what cost? – Cliff Saran's Enterprise blog Turning data into gold: the business intelligence story – Data Matters View All Blogs

You may not be the intended target of these malicious apps masquerading as legitimate programs - but you can still be their victim.

Giant robot throwing man in a trash can. Artifical intelligence replacing jobs concept. Vector ... More illustration.getty New research from Elon University’s Imagining the Digital Future Center has surveyed nearly 200 global technology experts on the future, as humans brace for the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The result is a fantastical glimpse into a near future defined by a mixture of dystopia and utopia. What is clear is the scale of change on the horizon: 61% of experts surveyed in the study envisaged the impact of AI to be ‘deep and meaningful’ or ‘fundamental and revolutionary.’ Co-author of the report, Janna Anderson told me, “It’s a revealing and provocative declaration of the profound depth of change people are undergoing, mostly without noticing it at all, as we adapt to deeper uses of advancing digital technologies. A majority of the experts we have been surveying the past few years have also been calling on humanity to think intentionally and carefully about all of this and take wise collective action, so we don’t sleepwalk into an AI future we never intended and do not want. Many say we are running out of time. It has to be now”. Here are five major implications for evolving leadership from the report. Multiple Selves and Mental Health We are no longer static selves. We have avatars, proxies, and digital twins that manage our deadlines and perhaps even our deaths. As I note in my own contribution to the report, we will come to redefine ourselves as ‘database selves’, a constellation of algorithmically-managed personas tailored to context, platform and audience. This will render the notion of authenticity obsolete. The increasingly mediated future we are heading towards contains the potential for context collapse, and identity collapse too. Until now, most experts have warned about digital deepfakes, but it is beginning to dawn on many that in an age of AI we will face an internal rather than an external crisis. Perhaps that is why 45% of experts surveyed think this kind of AI co-evolution will have a more negative than positive effect on mental well-being by 2035. Barry Chudakov, of Sertain Research, imagines a future in which schizophrenia becomes the natural state of most humans, with part of us online, and part of us using AI to help self-promote, self-brand and self-improve. Strategist, Neil Richardson, suggests that our digital shadows, the sum total of our online expressions and biometric traces, may soon outlive us, creating some kind of posthumous identity that transcends mortality. Whilst Silicon Valley based technology forecaster Paul Saffo suggests that an AI-generated actor will win Best Supporting Actor in the 2035 Academy Awards. A Crisis of Moral Autonomy Evelyne Tauchnitz, a senior research fellow at the Lucerne Graduate School of Ethics, explores the implications of this shift for human freedom and personal agency. Her concern is clear: AI recommendations, manipulations and algorithmic systems designed to nudge us to what is considered ‘normal’ will create additional pressure to conform and render our ability to choose differently, and freely, much compromised. As AI continues to optimize every choice we make from what we eat to whom we trust, she ponders whether it will even be possible to contradict oneself in the future, adding: ‘Freedom is the very bedrock of moral capability. If AI directs our actions shaping our behavior based on data-driven predictions of what is ‘best’ , we lose our moral agency.’ It’s a haunting thought: in our pursuit of perfection, we may abolish the very imperfections that make us human, imperfections that, in this century, leaders have been encouraging us to embrace. Indeed 44% of the respondents surveyed think that AI’s effect on individual agency and ability to act independently is likely to be more negative than positive with only 16% predicting a fairly equal split between positive and negative change. Synthetic Companions, Parasocial Lives AI won’t just inhabit our minds. Increasingly, it will replace our relationships. Nell Watson, president of EURAIO, the European Responsible Artificial Intelligence Office, suggests that “AI romantic partners will provide idealized relationships that make human partnerships seems unnecessarily difficult’. Along the same theme, Henning Schulzrinne, former co-chair of the Internet Technical Committee of the IEEE, reflects that we will treat bots as ‘training wheels or the equivalent of treadmills at the gym’ for improving our social interactions. Overall the report paints a future where the most intimate corners of our lives are increasingly shaped by code. In this parasocial future, emotional attachments become programmable. We form bonds with digital personas that neither disappoint nor require compromise. The relationship is one-way, the affection is frictionless. After all, why struggle to understand another work colleague when your AI work partner is already optimized to agree with you? As Schulzrinne points out about personal life, online dating might hold its disappointment but ‘who will proudly look back on a 25-year marriage with a bot?’ The same might be said of longtime, loyal working relationships with companies. Curiosity Through Cognitive Partnership Not all the findings are dark. Some respondents see in this transformation a chance for personal growth. David Weinberger from Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society, envisions a future in which AI enables us to notice things that humans cannot. By lifting the cognitive burdens that limit human perception he believes AI might expand rather than diminish our understanding and encourage humans to see the world differently. AI will be there to teach us about ourselves and inspire us to explore in new ways. Dave Edwards, co-founder of the Artificiality Institute, offers a complementary vision. He speaks of AI systems as ‘minds for our minds’, part of a distributed knowledge system that augments rather than replaces human judgment. The challenge, he warns, is to avoid commodifying intimacy, and reject technology companies who continue to mine our intimacy for profit. There is much more positivity from the experts about the way in which AI will improve and enhance human curiosity and our capacity to learn. 42% foresee more positive change than negative change in this area and only 5% see little or no change by 2035. AI is seen as an expansive tool for human learning and a kind of motivator to ask more questions, consider more options and generally expand, rather than diminish, human thought. Avoiding Mediocrity Finally, there is a warning about the implications of attempts to standardize information through machines. Professor of Innovation, Alf Rehn, describes AI systems in 2035 as ‘mediocrity engines’ saying AI falls short when it comes to spark and wit thus deadening creativity. It does seem that today’s intelligent machines mostly produce acceptable, average outputs en masse, flattening the peaks and valleys of true human innovation. However, the future does not have to pan out like that. In fact, he offers a counter-image: alien-like AI he calls ‘octopodes’ that generate truly strange outcomes, not by mimicking humans, but by thinking differently. This way, a brighter future lies in hybrid intelligences, not homogenous outputs. Leading with Humans What becomes clear across the essays and survey results, is that the core question of the next decade is not technical—it is existential. The ultimate fear is not that by 2035 we will be replaced but that we will be utterly reshaped in AI’s image, forgetting what we once were. Indeed, Paul Saffo predicts the best-selling book of 2035 will be called ‘What Was Human?’ written by AI and purchased by more AIs than actual human readers. However, co-author of the report, Lee Rainie told me, ‘Our expert respondents gave us a major insight. When they identified creativity, curiosity and decision-making as three human traits that might be a positive benefit as AI systems evolve, they were highlighting the building blocks of leadership. Essentially, they told us that good leadership built on those traits might be humans’ ultimate saving grace in the world to come’. This suggests successful co-evolution with AI should not be judged by how well these systems serve us, but by how well they preserve our ability to grow and chart our own course as humans. The author was one of the 200 global technology experts surveyed.