Did A.I. Artificial Intelligence come true?
Partly. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) has a P(n) of 41% on Nearfi's P(n) Board, our estimate of the chance its future arrives within 20 years. Of its 4 tracked predictions, 0 have arrived and 2 are arriving. Its central premise, 'A company sells a child-shaped companion robot designed to form a lasting emotional bond with a family and to be loved in return', is partly here. The next prediction is estimated to arrive around 2035.
A.I. is most prescient about its core idea: a companion built to be loved, sold into homes with an attachment that is hard to undo, which children and teenagers now form with software and small robots. Its household machines are arriving more slowly and less autonomously than shown. Its flooded cities are a long-run risk, and its licensed births ran against the demographic trend.
Read the review · 8.1/10 →
How this P(n) was calculated
P(n) is the chance that this work's future arrives within 20 years, by 2046. For each prediction we turn our estimate into a probability: arrived is 100%, diverged is 0%, and otherwise the low end of our 80% range counts as a 10% chance, the median year 50% and the high end 90%. Each prediction is weighted 1–5 by how pivotal it is to the story, and P(n) is the weighted average. P50 does the same by 2076. P(n), explained.
| Claim | Prediction · why this weight | Weight | Status · estimate | By 2046 | By 2076 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI-1 | A company sells a child-shaped companion robot designed to form a lasting emotional bond with a family and to be loved in return. Core premise: David, a mecha built to love, and the cost of that love to a family, is the whole story. |
5 | ARRIVING 2035 (2029–2055) | 72% | 100% |
| AI-2 | Humanoid robots (mechas) are common household and service workers. Supporting: the mecha economy is the world David lives in and the target of the Flesh Fair. |
3 | ARRIVING 2037 (2030–2055) | 70% | 100% |
| AI-3 | Sea-level rise from global warming has drowned the lower parts of major coastal cities, including New York. Supporting: the flooded world explains the ruined Manhattan and the scarcity behind the mecha economy. |
3 | FAR 2150 (2090–2250) | 3% | 8% |
| AI-4 | Governments strictly license who may have children because the world's resources are running out. Supporting: scarcity and licensed births create the market for a mecha child. |
3 | DIVERGED — | 0% | 0% |
| P(n) = P20 = Σ(weight × chance by 2046) ÷ Σ weight = 5.8 ÷ 14 = 41% | |||||
| P50 = 8.2 ÷ 14 = 59% | |||||
Already here today (arrived 1, arriving ½, weighted): 29%.
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AI-1
A company sells a child-shaped companion robot designed to form a lasting emotional bond with a family and to be loved in return.
Weight 5/5 · Core premise: David, a mecha built to love, and the cost of that love to a family, is the whole story.
Companions that children bond with are already sold, as software and as small robots. Common Sense Media found in 2025 that nearly three in four US teenagers had used an AI companion and half used them regularly. In December 2024 the maker of the $799 Moxie robot shut down and its robots stopped working, leaving children who had bonded with them distressed. What does not exist is a lifelike, physically capable child that a family treats as a member, so the claim is only partly here. The date reflects how fast conversational companions are spreading and how slowly convincing bodies are arriving. 1234
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AI-2
Humanoid robots (mechas) are common household and service workers.
Weight 3/5 · Supporting: the mecha economy is the world David lives in and the target of the Flesh Fair.
Home humanoids are on sale in the sense that orders are being taken. 1X opened pre-orders in 2025 for NEO at $20,000 or $500 a month, but the Wall Street Journal reported that its demonstration was piloted by a person wearing a VR headset and that it could not perform a task on its own. Figure has announced a home-oriented design without a published price or date. A humanoid that is both capable and cheap enough to be common is some years away, and the date is uncertain. 56
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AI-3
Sea-level rise from global warming has drowned the lower parts of major coastal cities, including New York.
Weight 3/5 · Supporting: the flooded world explains the ruined Manhattan and the scarcity behind the mecha economy.
Sea level is rising and the rate is accelerating, so flooding that is a nuisance now will get worse. But the film's drowned Manhattan is set in the 22nd century, and the projections for the 2050s are about one to two feet around New York, not permanent loss of districts. Large, lasting losses depend on ice-sheet behaviour that is uncertain and on future emissions. The Met Office describes a low-probability storyline that adds about another metre by 2100. 78
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AI-4
Governments strictly license who may have children because the world's resources are running out.
Weight 3/5 · Supporting: scarcity and licensed births create the market for a mecha child.
The trend went the other way. China, which ran the most far-reaching limits on births, moved to allow three children in 2021 and removed its penalty fee for larger families. The UN's 2024 projection has world population peaking in the mid-2080s, with birth rates below replacement level in more than half of all countries and population already past its peak in 63. Governments are trying to raise birth rates. Some countries restrict surrogacy or access to fertility treatment, but these are not resource-based quotas on births. 910
- FOR Talk, Trust, and Trade-Offs: How and Why Teens Use AI Companions. Common Sense Media, 2025-07-16. Nearly three in four teens have used AI companions, and half use them regularly.
- FOR Embodied's abrupt shutdown of its Moxie AI robots (AI Incident record). OECD.AI Incidents Monitor, 2024-12-09. A company that sold $799 emotional-support robots for children shut down, and the cloud-dependent robots stopped working, distressing children who had bonded with them.
- AGAINST Comparing the value of perceived human versus AI-generated empathy. Nature Human Behaviour, 2025-06-30. Across nine studies, identical replies were valued less when labelled as AI, which limits how fully a machine can fill a human's place.
- CONTEXT First-in-the-Nation AI Chatbot Safeguards Signed into Law. Office of California State Senator Steve Padilla, 2025-10-13. California's SB 243 sets safeguards for companion chatbots and gives families a private right to sue.
- FOR Humanoid hype meets reality: 1X's $20K home robot draws skepticism and memes. Decrypt, 2025-10-29. Reports pre-orders at $20,000 or $500 a month, and a demo that was remotely operated by a human pilot.
- FOR Introducing Figure 03. Figure AI, 2025-10-09. A humanoid designed for the home, with soft materials and wireless charging. No price or availability date is given on the page.
- CONTEXT Past and future sea level rise. Met Office, 2026-11-06. Global sea level rose about 20 cm from 1901 to 2018, with the rate accelerating. A low-likelihood ice-loss storyline adds roughly another metre by 2100.
- AGAINST New Climate Projections: NYC Will Keep Getting Hotter and Wetter. The City Reporter (formerly THE CITY), 2024-01-22. The New York City Panel on Climate Change expects at least another foot, and up to almost two feet, of sea-level rise by the 2050s.
- AGAINST World Population Prospects 2024: UN projects world population to peak within this century. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2024-07-11. Population is expected to peak in the mid-2080s; more than half of all countries are below the 2.1 replacement rate.
- AGAINST Three-child family planning amendment passed into law. Caixin Global, 2021-08-20. China amended its family planning law to allow three children and dropped the fee for exceeding the old limit.
Ledger updated 6 Nov 2026. All works on the P(n) Board · Method