BEING HUMAN IN 2035 How Are We Changing in the Age of AI?
Janna Anderson & Lee Rainie, Imagining the Digital Future Center
Note to my Substack subscribers and followers:
The following overview details a just released report from the Elon University Imagining the Digital Future Center. I just received BEING HUMAN IN 2035: How Are We Changing in the Age of AI? and am proud to have made a very small contribution to the material. I found the report to be fascinating, intellectually stimulating, and extremely informative on a diverse set of complex and challenging issues with which we must deal as the historically unique technologies of AI/Robotics transforms not only what we do but who we are. This Substack message contains an introductory explanation of the report and its aims, and the links by which the voluminous document can be accessed.
I am including immediately below a note I received from Lee Rainie, Director of the Elon Center, and it includes contact information as well as questions about how the Center could focus on subsequent issues relating to AI. Lee was founding Director of Internet and Technology research at the Pew Foundation Research Center, and before creating the Pew Internet Project, he was managing editor of the U.S. News & World Report. I am certain he would welcome your ideas on these critical issues.
Given the views and downloads I have seen on several of my postings I am aware that there is substantial interest in these matters and trust you will find the report of some interest.
David
Dear David,
This morning, the Imagining the Digital Future Center at Elon University released new findings based on the survey to which you responded this past winter about being human in the Age of AIs. I hope the material, especially the main findings and scores of quite marvelous essays, strikes you as valuable and illuminating.
I’m writing to thank you so much for participating in the survey and giving us your time. Each time we field one of our expert canvassings on the future of digital life, we have to hold our breath to see if you and your peers are interested in the subject and have compelling things to say about it. We’re acutely aware that this is a huge – and time-consuming – request. I so much appreciate your contribution.
And yet, I have more requests of you. First, please let me know if you have any feedback on the report and your overall experience of hearing from us in December and in subsequent follow-up reminders.
Second, if you’re interested, please share the report link with those you think will find the report useful. And cite it – as well as your contribution – on social media.
Third, please let me know if you have any thoughts on how to build on this work and what subjects or lines of questioning we might pursue next winter when we conduct our next canvassing survey about the future of digital life. Basically, what would you be interested in writing an entry about as we ponder the future.
Hand over heart, I could not be more grateful for your engagement and goodwill.
Warmest wishes,
Lee
—
Director, Imagining the Digital Future Center
Elon University
lrainie@elon.edu
M-202-527-3367
www.elon.edu
Mailing Address:
Elon University, 2185 Campus Box, Elon, NC 27244
BEING HUMAN IN 2035
How Are We Changing in the Age of AI?
Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie, April 2025
Many experts are concerned about how the adoption of AI systems over the next decade will affect essential human traits such as empathy, social/emotional intelligence, complex thinking, ability to act independently and sense of purpose. Some have hopes for AIs’ influence on humans’ curiosity, decision-making and creativity.
A majority of global technology experts say the likely magnitude of change in humans’ native capacities and behaviors as they adapt to artificial intelligence (AI) will be “deep and meaningful,” or even “dramatic” over the next decade. The results are based on a canvassing of a select group of experts between Dec. 27, 2024, and Feb. 1, 2025. Some 301 responded to at least one of the parts of the canvassing. Nearly 200 of the experts wrote full-length essay responses to a longer qualitative query: Over the next decade, what is likely to be the impact of AI advances on the experience of being human? How might the expanding interactions between humans and AI affect what many people view today as “core human traits and behaviors?” Their revealing insights are featured on the 228 pages of essays directly following this report’s three introductory sections. We lead off with highlights emerging from the highly revealing quantitative questions.
The 301 experts who responded to the quantitative questions were asked to predict the impact of change they expect on 12 essential traits and capabilities by 2035. They predicted that change is likely to be mostly negative in the following nine areas:
Social and emotional intelligence
Capacity and willingness to think deeply about complex concepts
Trust in widely shared values and norms
Confidence in their native abilities
Empathy and application of moral judgment
Mental well-being
Sense of individual agency
Sense of identity and purpose
Metacognition
Pluralities said they expect that change for humans in by 2035 will be mostly positive in these areas:
Curiosity and capacity to learn
Decision-making and problem-solving
Innovative thinking and creativity
Many more details, statistical graphics and expert quotes digging more deeply into these experts’ opinions on each of the 12 essential traits they were asked to weigh are found in a section following this initial briefing on overall results.
The magnitude of change by 2035:
These experts say they foresee significant change ahead in regard to these human capacities and behaviors.
They were asked, “What might be the magnitude of overall change in the next decade … in people’s native operating systems and operations – as we more broadly adapt to and use advanced AIs by 2035?”
Some 61% of these experts said the change will be deep and meaningful or fundamental and revolutionary.
They were asked how much humans’ expanding use of AI tools and systems“might change the essence of being human,the ways individuals act and do not act, what they value, how they live and how they perceive themselves and the world.”
50% of these experts said they expect the overall impact of change in being human for those adapting to AI is likely to be for the better and for the worse in fairly equal measure; 23% said it will be mostly for the worse; 16% said it will be mostly for the better.
Only 6% said they expect to see little or no change on the essence of being human by 2035.
Nearly 200 of the experts wrote full-length essays on the primary topic: Being Human in the Age of AI
An overwhelming majority of those who wrote essays focused their remarks on the potential problems they foresee. While they said the use of AI will be a boon to society in many important – and even vital – regards, most are worried about what they consider to be the fragile future of some foundational and unique traits. At the same time, a plurality of these experts’ essays are leavened by glimmers of hope that ever-adaptable humans will find ways to prevail and even flourish. These experts’ essays provide a wide range of predictions and descriptions of what life might be like a decade from now.
We suggest that you read all of the report site pages in order by continuing to read to the end of this page, where you will find a link to the next. However you can browse through nearly 200 experts’ full essays by navigating to the web pages named Part I, Part I Continued, Part II and Part III. Following is a series of representative brief excerpts from a few of the essays. (Additional brief excerpts from various experts’ essays will follow through the remainder of the introductory sections of this report.)
< UP NEXT… Experts Predict Change in 12 Essential Traits…
The following 25-page section exposes these experts’ opinions on each of the 12 essential traits they were asked to weigh. Each section includes a selection of direct quotes from several experts and a numerical breakdown on whether the respondents think change in this aspect of human activity will be mostly positive or mostly negative by 2035.