In the blog post The Sweet Singularity, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman painted a perspective of the near future where AI silently and benevolently transforms human life. He suggests that there won’t be a big break; instead, there will be a regular, almost inert rise toward diversity. Intelligence will become as visible as energy. By 2027, computers will be carrying out important real-world tasks. Scientific finding will expand. And society will develop if properly guided by prudent management and good intentions.
It is a powerful vision: quiet, technocratic and filled with optimism. However, it also raises deeper concerns. What kind of globe must we go through to get it? Who rewards, and when? And what is left unanswered in this soft circle of progress?
A more sinister incident is presented by science fiction writer William Gibson. In his novel The Peripheral, the glittering technologies of the future are preceded by something called” the jackpot” — a slow-motion cascade of climate disasters, pandemics, economic collapse and mass death. Technology develops, but only after world disintegrates. The problem he poses is not whether development occurs, but whether society survives in the process.
AI may be able to reduce the catastrophes described in The Peripheral, according to some. But, whether AI will help us avoid disasters or simply visit us through them remains uncertain. Achieving technological advancement is not life, and belief in AI’s potential power is not a guarantee of functionality.
Between Altman’s soft uniqueness and Gibson’s jackpot lies a murkier end ground: A future where AI yields true gains, but even genuine dislocation. A future where some areas prosper while others suffer, and where our capacity to adapt collectively, not just individually or structurally, becomes the determining factor.
The dark center
The curves of this mid plain are aided by other visions. In the near-future movie Burn In, community is flooded with technology before its organizations are available. Work disappear more quickly than people may re-skill, which results in turmoil and repression. In this, a powerful attorney loses his status to an AI adviser, and he unwillingly becomes an online, on-call manager to the rich.  ,
Experts at AI test Anthropic just echoed this concept:” We should hope to see]white neck jobs ] automated within the next five years”. Although the causes are difficult, there are indications that this is beginning and that the job market is moving into a new, less predictable, and perhaps less important, period for the distribution of meaning and security.
The movie Elysium offers a sarcastic analogy of the wealthy escaping into orbit sanctuaries with advanced technologies, while a degraded world below struggles with uneven rights and accessibility. A lover at a Silicon Valley venture capital firm told me a few years ago that he feared we were heading for this kind of situation unless we evenly distribute the gains produced by AI. These theoretical worlds remind us that even helpful technologies may be politically volatile, especially when their gains are unevenly distributed.
We might eventually be able to accomplish something akin to Altman’s theory of diversity. But the path that is unlikely to be clean. His article serves as a ball, as well as a persuasion and a calm assurance, despite its eloquence and assuredness. The tale of a “gentle uniqueness” is comforting, even lovely, precisely because it bypasses resistance. It offers the advantages of a previously unheard change without completely addressing the difficulties that it frequently brings. As the iconic cliché reminds us: If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.
This does not imply that his intentions are dishonest. However, it may be heartfelt. My explanation is merely recognition that the earth is a complex system that is subject to unexpected inputs. From simultaneous good fortune to disastrous Black Swan activities, it is often one item, or one systems, that dictates the future course of events.  ,
The impact of AI on society is already underway. This is a transformation in how we organize value, trust, and belonging, not just a shift in skillsets and sectors. This is the realm of collective migration: Not only a movement of labor, but of purpose.  ,
As AI reconfigures the terrain of cognition, the fabric of our social world is quietly being tugged loose and rewoven, for better or worse. The issue is not just how quickly we move as societies, but also how thoughtfully we move.
The cognitive commons: Our shared terrain of understanding
The commons historically refers to shared physical resources like pastures, fisheries, and forested areas that are held in trust for the common good. Modern societies, however, also depend on cognitive commons: shared domain of knowledge, narratives, norms and institutions that enable diverse individuals to think, argue and decide together within minimal conflict.
This intangible infrastructure is made up of widely trusted facts, libraries, journalism, civic rituals, and public education, and it is what makes pluralism possible. It is how strangers deliberate, how communities cohere and how democracy functions. This shared terrain is susceptible to fracturing as AI systems begin to influence how knowledge is accessed and how belief is formed. The danger is not simply misinformation, but the slow erosion of the very ground on which shared meaning depends.
If cognitive migration is a journey, it will lead to both new roles and new ways to make sense of it. But what happens when the terrain we share begins to split apart beneath us?
When cognition disintegrates: AI and the deterioration of the shared world
For centuries, societies have relied on a loosely held common reality: A shared pool of facts, narratives and institutions that shape how people understand the world and each other. Pluralism, democracy, and social trust are enabled by this shared world, not just by its infrastructure or economy. But as AI systems increasingly mediate how people access knowledge, construct belief and navigate daily life, that common ground is fragmenting.
Large-scale personalization is already changing the informational landscape. AI-curated news feeds, tailored search results and recommendation algorithms are subtly fracturing the public sphere. In part due to the probabilistic nature of generative AI, but also because of previous interactions or inferred preferences, two people who ask the same question of the same chatbot may receive different responses. While personalization has long been a feature of the digital era, AI turbocharges its reach and subtlety. The result is epistemic drift, which is a change in perception and potential truth. It is not just filter bubbles.
Historian Yuval Noah Harari has voiced urgent concern about this shift. According to him, emotional capture poses the greatest threat to AI, not physical harm or job displacement. AI systems, he has warned, are becoming increasingly adept at simulating empathy, mimicking concern and tailoring narratives to individual psychology — granting them unprecedented power to shape how people think, feel and assign value. Not because AI will lie, but because it will connect with people so convincingly while doing so, Harari believes the danger is enormous. This does not bode well for The Gentle Singularity.  ,
In an AI-mediated world, reality itself risks becoming more individualized, more modular and less collectively negotiated. That might be acceptable or even useful for entertainment or consumer goods. But when extended to civic life, it poses deeper risks. If every citizen has a subtlely different cognitive map, can we still hold democratic discourse? Can we still govern wisely when institutional knowledge is increasingly outsourced to machines whose training data, system prompts and reasoning processes remain opaque?
There are also other difficulties. AI-generated content including text, audio and video will soon be indistinguishable from human output. The burden of verification will shift from systems to individuals as generative models become more adept at mimicry. This inversion may erode trust not only in what we see and hear, but in the institutions that once validated shared truth. The cognitive commons then becomes polluted, turning it into a hall of mirrors rather than a place for reflection.
These are not speculative worries. AI-generated disinformation is preventing elections, undermining journalism, and creating confusion in conflict-strikes. And as more people rely on AI for cognitive tasks — from summarizing the news to resolving moral dilemmas, the capacity to think together may degrade, even as the tools to think individually grow more powerful.
This trend toward the disintegration of shared reality is now well developed. To avoid this requires conscious counter design: Systems that prioritize pluralism over personalization, transparency over convenience and shared meaning over tailored reality. These choices seem unlikely, at least on a scale, in our algorithmic world, which is driven by competition and profit. The question is not just how fast we move as societies, or even whether we can hold together, but how wisely we navigate this shared journey.
In the age of AI, navigating the archipelago: Toward wisdom in the search for wisdom
If the age of AI leads not to a unified cognitive commons but to a fractured archipelago of disparate individuals and communities, the task before us is not to rebuild the old terrain, but to learn how to live wisely among the islands.
Many people will feel unmoored because the speed and scope of change outweigh the ability of the majority of people to adapt. Jobs will be lost, as will long-held narratives of value, expertise and belonging. Even though they share less in common with prior eras, cognitive migration will result in new communities of meaning that are already emerging. These are the cognitive archipelagos: Communities where people gather around shared beliefs, aesthetic styles, ideologies, recreational interests or emotional needs. Some are wholesome gatherings of inspiration, encouragement, or purpose. Others are more insular and dangerous, driven by fear, grievance or conspiratorial thinking.
Advancement of AI will help to advance this trend. Even as it drives people apart through algorithmic precision, it will simultaneously help people find each other across the globe, curating ever finer alignments of identity. However, doing so may make pluralism’s rough but necessary friction more difficult to maintain. Local ties may weaken. Common perceptions of shared reality and belief systems may deteriorate. Democracy, which relies on both shared reality and deliberative dialog, may struggle to hold.
How can we navigate this challenging terrain with wit, respect, and connection? If we cannot prevent fragmentation, how do we live humanely within it? Perhaps the answer starts with learning to hold the question itself in a different way than it does with solutions.
Living with the question
We might not be able to reassemble the social cognitive commons as it was in the past. The center may not hold, but that does not mean we must drift without direction. The task will be to learn how to live wisely in this new environment across the archipelagos.  ,
It might require rituals that serve as our guiding points when our tools malfunction, as well as communities that emerge from shared responsibility rather than ideological purity. We may need new forms of education, not to outpace or meld with machines, but to deepen our capacity for discernment, context and ethical thought.
If AI has shattered the ground beneath us, it also provides a chance to reevaluate our purpose. Not as consumers of progress, but as stewards of meaning.
The road ahead is likely not gentle or smooth. As we move through the murky middle, perhaps the mark of wisdom is not the ability to master what is coming, but to walk through it with clarity, courage and care. We can’t stop the development of technology or deny the deepening societal fractures, but we can make the decision to fill the void.
Gary Grossman is EVP of technology practice at Edelman.
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