Updated: November 19, 2025 | Written: February 3, 2025

Credences

I believe there is a 20% chance that we create a eutopia (a “real” utopia) in the next 1-15 years. Leaving aside 5% for an indeterminate future and 75% for a dystopian extinction or disempowerment future, I think we will likely develop technology that radically improves our civilization. 

Our first eucatastrophe will likely be solving human flourishing extremely quickly. This I define as high levels on the following scales (see details):

• Holistic Flourishing Scale
• Total Well-being Adjusted Life Years
• Total Life Congruence
• Life Goal Value Attainment
• Life Goal Attainment 

But measures of wellbeing will likely change dramatically as we start to “upgrade” our species. Roughly speaking, I expect a galaxy full of blissful life. A sublime post-humanity. There are no words to describe how amazing this existence could be. 

I’ve predicted this since I was a child. It’s surreal that it’s finally upon us. 

Short-Term Prediction

My rough short-term timeline for eutopia is:

• 2025: 1% (5% cumulative of 20% total chance over 15-year period)
• 2026: 2% (10% cumulative of 20% total chance over 15-year period)
• 2027: 5% (25% cumulative of 20% total chance over 15-year period)
• 2028: 8% (40% cumulative of 20% total chance over 15-year period)
  
• 2029: 10% (50% cumulative of 20% total chance over 15-year period)
• 2030: 12% (60% cumulative of 20% total chance over 15-year period)
• 2035: 15% (75% cumulative of 20% total chance over 15-year period)
• 2040: 20% (100% cumulative of 20% total chance over 15-year period)

I’m most optimistic about our future if we immediately create effective international governance and enact a nearly universal global pause of frontier AI development. This amounts to developing civilizational-level wisdom. Immediately.

If we survive through intentional action or luck, we will likely gravitate towards higher and higher states of wellbeing. It is extremely unlikely we will plateau at early 21st century standards of wellbeing. 

If you can’t visualize the extreme upside we’re fighting for, try exploring the existential hope repository. I’ve yet to ever get compelling answers to why these futures aren’t plausible given a long enough timescale. Instead, I’ve gotten an enormous amount of denial, rationalization, and closed-minded thinking from people who nearly always fail the holistic understanding test. Eutopias (or utopias) are indeed possible. Unnecessary suffering can be entirely eliminated. 

My Relevant History

I’ve spent many thousands of hours in direct reflection, research, and work on social change and human flourishing. I built several organizations in the broad space since high school, including Effective Altruism Global, Effective Altruism Ventures, Upgradable, Center for Existential Safety, International AI Governance Alliance, and others.

I’ve also been making predictions for decades, but admittedly not rigorously. I’ve been more right than wrong when I’ve written them down. I’ve done this hundreds of times and followed up on hundreds of them to roughly gauge my calibration and accuracy. I do this professionally with clients to predict their short-term and long-term life outcomes, as well. This has taught me that no one can predict the distant future extraordinarily well, least of all me.

For eutopia, in ~1998 I loosely predicted it for ~2030 (shortly after my prediction for the invention of artificial general intelligence) and have roughly held the same view since. 

Since ~1998 I’ve known that AI would be humanity’s most important and transformational invention. I have been quietly mystified since then why others didn’t also come to this conclusion. I actually spent tens of thousands of hours trying to teach others to see this and other important truths about reality more clearly. And even more time trying to train myself to be able to shape this future toward eutopia and away from dystopia. I’m proud that I spent decades trying, but admit that I’ve mostly failed. 

Change My (or Your) Mind

If anyone with a credible background wanted to share their reasons for optimism or pessimism, I would love to speak with you. I will pay $1,234 USD to anyone that moves my credences up or down by >20%. Credibility usually means:

• Has evidence of understanding social and technological development (e.g., PhD in related field, startup that accurately anticipated a major change, etc.) 
• Has evidence that they have processed most of their subconscious defense mechanisms (e.g., denial, repression, rationalization, wishful thinking, etc.)
• Has evidence of making calibrated and accurate predictions over a 10+ period