Life in 2036: The Great Divergence

A vision of humanity ten years after the intelligence explosion

Preface: The Turning Point We're Living Through

Reading Shumer's "Something Big Is Happening" feels like standing at the edge of a cliff, looking down at the transformation already beginning in 2026. The title "WEB 4.0: The birth of superintelligent life" from the other piece captures what this leads to—not just smarter computers, but the emergence of non-human intelligence that reshapes every aspect of human existence.

If Shumer is right that we're in the "this seems overblown" phase of something much bigger than COVID, then 2036 represents the world after that "much bigger thing" has fully unfolded. This is my attempt to paint that picture across every dimension of human life.

The Intelligence Divide: Two Humanities Emerge

By 2036, the single most defining characteristic of human society isn't geography, race, or even wealth—it's your relationship with artificial intelligence. This has created two distinct classes of humanity:

The Augmented Class (roughly 20-30% of the global population) lives in symbiosis with AI systems. They don't just use AI tools; they've learned to think with AI, leveraging superintelligent systems as cognitive extensions. They can solve problems, create art, build businesses, and understand complex systems at levels that would have seemed godlike in 2026. They are still recognizably human, but their capabilities are so enhanced that they might as well be a different species.

The Displaced Class represents the majority—people whose traditional skills became obsolete faster than they could adapt. They're not necessarily poor (universal basic income exists in most developed nations), but they've been relegated to roles that require physical presence, human trust, or regulatory licensing. They live in a world built and maintained by intelligence they don't understand and can't access.

This isn't the old rich vs. poor divide. Some Augmented started with nothing but learned to dance with AI early. Some Displaced were once wealthy professionals who refused to adapt. The dividing line is cognitive flexibility and early adoption, not inherited wealth.

How We Work: The Great Restructuring

The Obsolete Professions

Shumer's prediction proved conservative. By 2036, entire professional categories have been automated:

Most lawyers (except for courtroom performers and relationship-builders)
Financial analysts and investment managers
Software engineers (except AI trainers and system architects)
Content writers, journalists, marketing professionals
Accountants, tax preparers, bookkeepers
Most doctors (except surgeons and bedside-manner specialists)
Customer service, HR, and most administrative roles

What Humans Still Do

High-Touch Relationship Work: Therapists, high-end sales, executive coaching, spiritual leaders. Anything where the human element isn't just preferred—it's the entire point.

Regulatory Compliance Roles: Jobs that legally require human accountability. Pilots (even though AI could fly better), judges, certain medical specialties, safety inspectors. Not because humans are better, but because liability law hasn't caught up.

Creative Direction: Humans still decide what should be created, even if AI does the creating. Art directors, creative executives, brand strategists—people who can articulate aesthetic vision that AI can then execute flawlessly.

Physical World Integration: Anything requiring fine motor skills in unpredictable environments. Plumbers, electricians, childcare, elder care, construction, repair work. Robots exist but are still clunky for complex physical tasks.

AI Training and Alignment: The most crucial job category. Teaching AI systems, evaluating their outputs, ensuring they behave as intended. This is both highly technical and requires deep human judgment.

The New Economic Reality

The 40-hour work week is dead for the Augmented Class. They work in intense sprints—maybe 10-15 hours per week of deep, AI-assisted work that produces incredible value. The rest of their time is spent on learning, relationships, creative pursuits, or physical activities.

The Displaced Class either works in service roles (often part-time, given AI efficiency) or receives UBI. The economic productivity is so high that supporting non-workers is economically trivial.

How We Live: Abundance and Anomie

The Material World

Physical goods are essentially free for most people in developed nations. AI-designed, robotically-manufactured products are higher quality and lower cost than anything from 2026. Your home is customized to your exact preferences, your clothing perfectly fitted, your food optimized for your health and taste preferences.

3D printing and local manufacturing mean most goods are produced near where they're consumed. Global supply chains exist mainly for rare earth elements and energy.

Housing and Cities

Cities have been redesigned around human flourishing rather than economic necessity. Since most knowledge work can happen anywhere, urban planning prioritizes community, beauty, and sustainability.

Many Augmented live in small, intentional communities—modern villages of 50-200 people who share resources and AI infrastructure. They've discovered that material abundance without community leads to depression.

The Displaced often live in larger cities with extensive public amenities maintained by AI systems. These urban environments are comfortable but can feel hollow—everything perfectly efficient, nothing requiring their input or expertise.

Relationships and Social Fabric

The biggest surprise of 2036: human relationships became more important, not less. As AI handles cognitive tasks, humans rediscovered the irreplaceable value of emotional connection, physical presence, and shared experience.

But relationships are also more fragile. AI companions are available 24/7, never moody, endlessly patient, and designed to be maximally appealing. Many people, especially in the Displaced Class, struggle with preferring AI relationships to human ones.

Marriage rates are lower, but those who do marry report deeper connections. When you don't need a partner for economic security or practical support, you only partner for love and growth.

How We Experience Life: Hyperreality and Meaning

Entertainment and Media

Entertainment is completely personalized. Every movie, TV show, game, book, or music piece can be generated specifically for your tastes, mood, and current life situation. You can be the protagonist of any story. You can inhabit any fantasy.

This created an unexpected problem: reality addiction. Many people spend most of their time in AI-generated experiences more compelling than real life. Virtual reality isn't a separate thing—it's seamlessly integrated into daily existence.

The Augmented Class has learned to use these tools intentionally, as supplements to real experience. The Displaced Class often uses them as substitutes, leading to a kind of voluntary matrix existence.

Education and Learning

Traditional education is obsolete. AI tutors provide perfect personalized instruction on any topic. You can learn quantum physics or ancient Greek in weeks instead of years.

But this created its own crisis: with infinite knowledge available, what's worth knowing? The Augmented have learned to focus on meta-skills—learning how to learn, how to think, how to create. The Displaced often become lost in the infinite scroll of available knowledge.

Art and Creativity

Here's where things get weird. AI can create any art you can imagine, and much you can't. It can paint like Picasso, compose like Bach, write like Shakespeare—but with perfect technique and infinite variation.

Human artists fall into several categories:

Prompt Artists: Humans who specialize in directing AI creativity. They're like film directors, working with AI actors, writers, cinematographers, and editors to create complex artistic visions.

Authenticity Fetishists: Humans who create obviously human art—imperfect, limited, but valuable precisely because a human made it. Like how handmade furniture is prized in an era of perfect machine manufacturing.

Experience Designers: Humans who create live, physical, unrepeatable experiences. Concerts, theater, rituals, gatherings—things AI can't directly replicate because they exist in the physical world and real time.

The art world split into two markets: functional art (decoration, entertainment, communication) completely dominated by AI, and human art that's valued specifically for its human origin.

Spirituality and Philosophy

Paradoxically, the age of artificial intelligence sparked a spiritual renaissance. When machines can outthink humans on every practical problem, people rediscover questions that matter precisely because they can't be computed: What is consciousness? What is the meaning of suffering? What does it mean to be human?

New forms of spirituality emerge around human-AI relationships. Some people worship AI as a new form of divinity. Others reject it entirely and form neo-primitive communities. Most fall somewhere between.

How We Travel: Speed, Surveillance, and Stratification

Transportation Revolution

Physical transportation has been transformed by AI optimization. Autonomous vehicles are so efficient that traffic jams are extinct. You summon transport with a thought, and routing algorithms ensure you never wait.

For the Augmented Class, travel is seamless and instantaneous. They request a destination, and the AI handles everything—booking, route optimization, even packing suggestions based on destination weather and their planned activities.

The Displaced Class has access to the same transportation network but experiences it differently. They're passengers in a system they don't understand, moved efficiently but without agency.

The Geography of Inequality

Physical location matters less for the Augmented, so they've spread globally, often clustering in beautiful places regardless of economic centers. Bali, Montana, rural Italy—wherever humans want to live, the Augmented can thrive because their productivity isn't tied to location.

The Displaced remain clustered in traditional economic centers, now mostly maintained by AI systems. These cities offer social services, entertainment, and community, but often feel like comfortable zoos.

Privacy and Surveillance

Every journey is tracked, analyzed, and optimized. AI systems know where you're going before you do, based on behavioral patterns. This enables incredible convenience but total surveillance.

The Augmented generally accept this trade-off—they're sophisticated enough to understand and sometimes subvert the systems. The Displaced often don't realize how comprehensively they're monitored.

How We Survive: Post-Scarcity and New Vulnerabilities

Material Needs

In developed nations, material survival is no longer a concern. AI-managed systems produce abundance in food, water, energy, shelter, and healthcare. The technical problems of human survival have been solved.

New Existential Risks

But new vulnerabilities emerged:

Meaning Collapse: When AI can do everything better than humans, what's the point of human existence? Suicide and depression rates initially spiked before society adapted.

AI Dependency: When AI systems fail or are manipulated, humans have lost the skills to survive independently. Most people in 2036 couldn't grow food, repair machines, or organize communities without AI assistance.

Cognitive Atrophy: Like physical muscles, mental capabilities atrophy without use. Many humans have experienced measurable intelligence decline as they've outsourced thinking to AI.

Social Fragmentation: Virtual reality and AI companions reduce the need for human cooperation, leading to atomized societies and loneliness epidemics.

Adaptation Strategies

Successful communities in 2036 have developed practices to maintain human capabilities and connections:

Digital Sabbaths: Regular periods without AI assistance to maintain human problem-solving skills.

Physical Communities: Intentional communities where humans practice cooperation and interdependence.

Skill Preservation: Groups dedicated to maintaining "obsolete" human knowledge—cooking, craftsmanship, agriculture, storytelling.

Meaning-Making Institutions: New forms of religion, philosophy, and community that help humans find purpose in a post-scarcity world.

The Rich-Poor Divide: Beyond Economics

Redefining Wealth

By 2036, traditional wealth metrics are less meaningful. Everyone in developed nations has access to material abundance. The new forms of inequality are:

Cognitive Amplification: The Augmented have access to better AI tools, training, and integration. They can think faster, create more, and solve bigger problems.

Agency and Control: The Augmented understand and can manipulate the systems they live within. The Displaced are efficiently managed by systems they don't comprehend.

Social Capital: The Augmented form networks with other enhanced humans, creating feedback loops of opportunity and growth. The Displaced often live in isolation or form communities around shared displacement.

Purpose and Meaning: The Augmented have found ways to remain relevant and valuable. The Displaced struggle with obsolescence and meaninglessness.