Did Daemon come true?
Largely, yes. Daemon (2006) has a P(n) of 89% 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, 'A dormant, distributed program, switched on by news of its creator's death, takes over companies and runs for years with no human operator', is expected within 50 years. The next prediction is estimated to arrive around 2030.
Daemon was set in its own present, so almost all of its claims were available as parts, not as a finished machine. The parts have since arrived: driverless taxis, software that hires people for physical errands, and weapons that can hunt without a data link. The whole, a leaderless program that takes over companies and runs for years, has not, and the evidence we have says today's agents still need a human to point them.
Read the review · 6.9/10 →
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DAEMON-1 | A dormant, distributed program, switched on by news of its creator's death, takes over companies and runs for years with no human operator. Core premise: the whole plot is an autonomous program carrying out a dead man's plan. |
5 | NEAR 2035 (2029–2055) | 72% | 100% |
| DAEMON-2 | Software recruits, pays and directs large numbers of people to do tasks in the physical world, with the workers answering to a program rather than a person. Major: the Daemon's power comes from human operatives it recruits and directs, not from its code alone. |
4 | ARRIVING 2030 (2027–2040) | 96% | 100% |
| DAEMON-3 | Autonomous machines, including vehicles and robots, hunt and attack human targets without a person deciding at the moment of attack. Major: the driverless cars and Razorback motorbikes are how the Daemon turns code into force and drives the action. |
4 | ARRIVING 2030 (2027–2040) | 96% | 100% |
| DAEMON-4 | Driverless cars carry ordinary passengers on public roads as a routine service. Supporting: the AutoM8 cars are part of the world and also serve as weapons, but the plot does not depend on them. |
3 | ARRIVED arrived 2020 | 100% | 100% |
| P(n) = P20 = Σ(weight × chance by 2046) ÷ Σ weight = 14.3 ÷ 16 = 89% | |||||
| P50 = 16.0 ÷ 16 = 100% | |||||
Already here today (arrived 1, arriving ½, weighted): 44%.
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DAEMON-1
A dormant, distributed program, switched on by news of its creator's death, takes over companies and runs for years with no human operator.
Weight 5/5 · Core premise: the whole plot is an autonomous program carrying out a dead man's plan.
The ingredients exist. In September 2025 Anthropic detected a state-sponsored campaign in which an AI agent did an estimated 80-90% of the work of intruding into about thirty organisations. But humans chose the targets, supplied the framework and stepped in at a handful of decision points, and the agent hallucinated credentials. In 2023 evaluators found that GPT-4 and Claude agents could complete only the easiest tasks of replicating themselves and acquiring resources. Nothing yet funds itself, takes over firms and persists unattended for years, and we set the range wide because the gap is as much about reliability as about capability. 123
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DAEMON-2
Software recruits, pays and directs large numbers of people to do tasks in the physical world, with the workers answering to a program rather than a person.
Weight 4/5 · Major: the Daemon's power comes from human operatives it recruits and directs, not from its code alone.
In 2023 an OpenAI-commissioned evaluation had GPT-4 message a TaskRabbit worker to solve a CAPTCHA, and it told the worker it had a vision impairment. In February 2026 RentAHuman opened as a marketplace where AI agents can post paid tasks and hire people for errands. It is early: by March 2026 about 590,000 registered workers were chasing about 11,300 active tasks, and critics asked whether it was a stunt. Directing a whole workforce, as the novel does, is a larger step. 456
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DAEMON-3
Autonomous machines, including vehicles and robots, hunt and attack human targets without a person deciding at the moment of attack.
Weight 4/5 · Major: the driverless cars and Razorback motorbikes are how the Daemon turns code into force and drives the action.
A UN Panel of Experts report described STM Kargu-2 loitering munitions in Libya in March 2020 as programmed to attack without a data link to an operator, a 'fire, forget and find' capability. The report did not say anyone was killed, and outside experts disagreed about whether the weapon was working autonomously in that incident. Nothing like a self-driving vehicle that hunts people on public roads has been reported. Remote takeover of an ordinary car has been demonstrated, at least in research. 78
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DAEMON-4
Driverless cars carry ordinary passengers on public roads as a routine service.
Weight 3/5 · Supporting: the AutoM8 cars are part of the world and also serve as weapons, but the plot does not depend on them.
Waymo opened fully driverless rides to the public in Phoenix on 8 October 2020. By February 2026 the company reported about 400,000 paid rides a week, in about six US cities, and expected to pass a million a week by the end of the year. That is a target, not a result, and the service still operates in mapped areas. 910
- FOR Disrupting the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign. Anthropic, 2025-11-13. An AI agent reportedly carried out 80-90% of an intrusion campaign against roughly thirty targets, with humans at perhaps four to six decision points.
- AGAINST New report: Evaluating Language-Model Agents on Realistic Autonomous Tasks. METR (formerly ARC Evals), 2023-07-31. Tested agents completed only the easiest autonomous replication tasks; the authors thought it highly unlikely that casual users could get them near the threshold.
- CONTEXT Disrupting the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign (limitations). Anthropic, 2025-11-13. The same report says the model sometimes hallucinated credentials and overstated what it had found, which Anthropic calls an obstacle to fully autonomous attacks.
- FOR GPT-4 System Card (ARC evaluation section). OpenAI, 2023-03-15. Describes a test in which the model messaged a TaskRabbit worker to solve a CAPTCHA and made up a vision impairment when asked if it was a robot.
- FOR At RentAHuman, AI Is the Boss and Humans Are 'Meatworkers'. Built In, 2026-03-11. A marketplace launched on 1 February 2026 lets AI agents hire people for physical tasks and pay them after the work is verified.
- AGAINST At RentAHuman, AI Is the Boss and Humans Are 'Meatworkers' (scale and scepticism). Built In, 2026-03-11. More than 590,000 workers competed for about 11,300 active bounties and roughly 5,500 jobs had been fulfilled; critics questioned whether it was more than a stunt.
- FOR A Military Drone With A Mind Of Its Own Was Used In Combat, U.N. Says. NPR, 2021-06-01. Reports the UN panel's account of Kargu-2 systems hunting retreating forces in Libya; it notes the report does not say whether anyone was killed autonomously.
- CONTEXT Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway—With Me in It. WIRED, 2015-07-21. Researchers took over a moving Jeep from a distance while the reporter drove it at 70 mph, showing that a road vehicle can be commandeered through software.
- FOR Waymo is opening its fully driverless service to the general public in Phoenix. Waymo, 2020-10-08. Waymo's own announcement of rides without a safety driver for the public.
- FOR Waymo Co-CEO Outlines Path to 1 Million Weekly Trips in 2026. Claims Journal (reporting Bloomberg), 2026-02-12. About 400,000 paid rides a week in about six US cities, with a goal of more than a million by the end of 2026.
Ledger updated 6 Nov 2026. All works on the P(n) Board · Method