Release date April 2, 2025 – 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 “fundamental and revolutionary” over the next decade.

This new report covers the results from the Imagining the Digital Future Center’s 18th “Future of Digital Life” canvassing of a large set of global technology experts. These experts wrote detailed accounts predicting the future of humans in 2035.

Many global tech experts are concerned that our adoption of AI systems will negatively alter our sense of purpose and affect how we think, feel, act and relate to one another. Some hope for a positive influence on humans’ curiosity, decision-making and creativity.

Source: ITDF Webpage

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 in this 2025 Imagining the Digital Future Center canvassing predicted the likely impact of the change that they expect on 12 essential traits and capabilities by 2035.

They were asked:
How is the coming Humanity-Plus-AI future likely to affect the following key aspects of humans’ capacity and behavior by 2035 as compared to when humans were not operating with advanced AI tools?

Most of these experts 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 agency
• sense of identity and purpose
• metacognition