I deal with AI a lot – projects at Booking.com, getting ChatGPT dialled in for my day-to-day, messing around with agentic flows, the whole shebang. So when I talk about the future of AI, I’m not talking about the Terminator storyline where we all get wiped out (even though, let’s be honest, in the wrong hands… yeah). What I’m talking about is how AI changes how we interact with the world and with each other.
I’m a kid from the 80s – the era where meeting a friend was basically a gamble. You set a time, turned up, and hoped they did too. Running late? Tough. There was no texting, no “I’m five minutes away”.
Right now I’m sat on a tram writing this while everyone – including me – is buried in their phone. We’ve gone from rotary phones to tiny supercomputers we carry around like it’s nothing.
Same story with gaming. My grandfather had “Pong,” literally two lines and a square bouncing around. That was mind-blowing. Compare that to today, where we’ve got games like Unrecord – and you have to double-take to realise it’s not actual bodycam footage. The jump is unbelievable.
AI Today Is Basically the Rotary Phone Era
Every company is pushing AI in some shape or form. Chatbots, search summaries, recommendation engines – even Amazon’s review summaries and Rufus are quietly powered by AI under the hood. We’re at the early-stage, clunky era of AI… the rotary-phone moment. So the real question is:
What does the touchscreen phase look like?
My bet? Everyone ends up with their own AI proxy – the same way everyone has a phone now. Each ecosystem will want to lock you in: Apple AI, Google AI, Microsoft AI… switching between them will feel like uprooting your whole life. Sound familiar?
Your AI Will Know You Better Than You Know Yourself
These proxies won’t just answer questions; they’ll know everything about you:
- Your likes and dislikes
- Your spending habits
- Your health trends
- How you think and make decisions
- Your entire personality blueprint
Want a holiday? You won’t list requirements anymore. Your AI already knows you’ve got a kid who needs a child seat. It knows you prefer taxis to the airport. It knows you hate hostels. It’ll negotiate with other AIs and just sort it out.
It becomes your personal assistant, but on performance-enhancing drugs.
The Merge: Human + Machine Is Coming
And here’s where it gets spicy. AI won’t stay external. The merge of humans and tech is already happening – smartwatches, VR, AR glasses. For now it’s wearable, subtle, optional. But give it a generation or two and you’ll see elective enhancements becoming normal.
Accessing information by thought?
People calling up memories like file folders?
Instant language translation in your head?
That’ll be Tuesday afternoon for them.
And for the people now saying “I’d never let a machine go in my body!” – cool. It’s not for you, bro! It’s for the next generation who will grow up with it and see it as the natural evolution of tech. They won’t just accept it – they’ll expect it.
By the time that era lands, I’ll probably be long gone. Probably. But society shifts with technology, and acceptance always follows convenience.
The Moral Chaos We’re Heading Into
We’ll see debates about AI rights.
Arguments about machine consciousness.
People screaming online about ethical boundaries.
Others pushing to go further, faster.
It’ll be as alien to today as bringing a cowboy from the Wild West into central London and dropping him next to a Starbucks.
So… Is It Good or Bad?
Honestly? I’m settling on … it just is.
Humans always build tools to make our lives easier. Mix that with marketing hype and the eternal love for “the new shiny,” and this future becomes inevitable. Whether that’s good, bad, or a complete curveball is something only time is going to answer.
