Did AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future come true?
Largely, yes. AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future (2021) has a P(n) of 91% on Nearfi's P(n) Board, our estimate of the chance its future arrives within 20 years. Of its 4 tracked predictions, 1 have arrived and 2 are arriving. Its central premise, 'Insurers set personalised premiums for a household from continuous data gathered by apps and devices, with a risk that the models learn proxies for protected traits such as caste', is partly here. The next prediction is estimated to arrive around 2032.
AI 2041 bets that AI's near future is a run of ordinary, local harms rather than one big bang, and that bet is holding: behaviour-priced insurance, political deepfakes and driverless taxis all exist in early form. Its quantum-computing thriller depends on hardware that has not been built.
Read the review · 6.6/10 →
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI2041-1 | Insurers set personalised premiums for a household from continuous data gathered by apps and devices, with a risk that the models learn proxies for protected traits such as caste. Major: drives the plot and theme of 'The Golden Elephant', the book's deep-learning story. |
4 | ARRIVING 2032 (2028–2040) | 98% | 100% |
| AI2041-2 | Convincing synthetic audio and video of political figures is produced and used to influence voters in an election. Major: the deepfake trade is the setting and moral dilemma of 'Gods Behind the Masks'. |
4 | ARRIVED arrived 2023 | 100% | 100% |
| AI2041-3 | Fully driverless vehicles are a routine, large-scale form of urban transport, carrying paying passengers in many cities. Supporting: 'The Holy Driver' is built around autonomous driving, but its plot turns on the people training it. |
3 | ARRIVING 2032 (2028–2040) | 98% | 100% |
| AI2041-4 | A quantum computer breaks widely used public-key cryptography, enabling large-scale theft of cryptocurrency. Supporting: the heist and its fallout drive 'Quantum Genocide', one of ten stories. |
3 | NEAR 2040 (2032–2060) | 62% | 98% |
| P(n) = P20 = Σ(weight × chance by 2046) ÷ Σ weight = 12.7 ÷ 14 = 91% | |||||
| P50 = 13.9 ÷ 14 = 100% | |||||
Already here today (arrived 1, arriving ½, weighted): 54%.
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AI2041-1
Insurers set personalised premiums for a household from continuous data gathered by apps and devices, with a risk that the models learn proxies for protected traits such as caste.
Weight 4/5 · Major: drives the plot and theme of 'The Golden Elephant', the book's deep-learning story.
Optional, behaviour-linked discounts exist: in 2018 John Hancock offered Vitality add-ons with up to 15 per cent off premiums for activity tracking. Pricing a whole family continuously, and by default, has not arrived, and regulators are moving early. Colorado's 2021 law bars insurers from using external data and algorithms that unfairly discriminate on protected grounds. We expect discounts to spread faster than mandatory tracking. 12
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AI2041-2
Convincing synthetic audio and video of political figures is produced and used to influence voters in an election.
Weight 4/5 · Major: the deepfake trade is the setting and moral dilemma of 'Gods Behind the Masks'.
Two days before Slovakia's September 2023 election, a fabricated audio clip of a party leader and a journalist discussing vote rigging spread on social media. In January 2024, an AI-generated Biden voice told New Hampshire voters to skip their primary, and the FCC fined the consultant behind it $6 million. How much either changed an outcome is unknown. The story's counter-deepfake hacker is the part not yet on the record. 34
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AI2041-3
Fully driverless vehicles are a routine, large-scale form of urban transport, carrying paying passengers in many cities.
Weight 3/5 · Supporting: 'The Holy Driver' is built around autonomous driving, but its plot turns on the people training it.
Waymo gave about 500,000 paid rides a week earlier in 2026 and began fully driverless operations in Las Vegas in July, targeting a million weekly rides by year end. That is large but confined to a few US cities. The record also shows teething problems: in late 2025 Waymo recalled its software after vehicles passed stopped school buses. Routine and worldwide is a decade off. 56
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AI2041-4
A quantum computer breaks widely used public-key cryptography, enabling large-scale theft of cryptocurrency.
Weight 3/5 · Supporting: the heist and its fallout drive 'Quantum Genocide', one of ten stories.
No quantum computer is close to the scale needed. A 2025 estimate by Craig Gidney of Google Quantum AI puts breaking 2048-bit RSA at under a million noisy qubits and under a week, against 20 million in a 2019 estimate. The estimate is theoretical. Defenders are moving: NIST finalised its first post-quantum standards in August 2024. A broken-key heist is plausible, but may be pre-empted by migration. 789
- FOR John Hancock will offer fitness tracking benefits for all policies (updated). Engadget, 2018-09-20. Vitality PLUS offers up to a 15% premium discount for tracked activity. Engadget corrected an earlier claim that tracking was mandatory.
- AGAINST SB21-169: Protecting Consumers from Unfair Discrimination in Insurance Practices. Colorado General Assembly, 2021-07-06. Signed 6 July 2021. Bars unfairly discriminatory use of external consumer data, algorithms and predictive models, and requires insurers to disclose sources and maintain a risk framework.
- FOR Steve Kramer fined $6 million over Biden robocalls. WBUR, 2024-09-27. An AI-generated Biden voice urged New Hampshire voters to skip the January 2024 primary; the FCC ordered a $6 million fine.
- FOR How to deepfake an election (Slovakia). The Dial, 2023-10-23. Describes a faked recording shortly before the 2023 vote. The article says there is no way to gauge how much it influenced the result. Date is the week of first publication in Respekt.
- FOR Waymo goes fully driverless in Las Vegas, four new cities to follow. Electrek, 2026-07-08. About 500,000 paid weekly rides, over 20 million trips, and a target of a million weekly rides by end of 2026.
- AGAINST Waymo will recall software after its self-driving cars passed stopped school buses. OPB, 2025-12-06. NHTSA opened an investigation in October 2025; Austin's school district documented 19 incidents; Waymo said no injuries resulted.
- FOR How to factor 2048 bit RSA integers with less than a million noisy qubits. arXiv (Craig Gidney), 2025-05-21. Cuts the estimated qubit requirement from 20 million (2019) to under a million, running for less than a week.
- AGAINST NIST Releases First 3 Finalized Post-Quantum Encryption Standards. NIST, 2024-08-13. FIPS 203, 204 and 205, ready for immediate use, so systems can migrate before a capable machine exists.
- CONTEXT Google Researcher Lowers Quantum Bar to Crack RSA Encryption. The Quantum Insider, 2025-05-24. Reports the estimate and its caveat that the hardware does not yet exist.
Ledger updated 5 Nov 2026. All works on the P(n) Board · Method