We are now squarely within the cognitive era, as evidenced by a recent report showing almost 10% of the global population using ChatGPT every week, generating billions of interactions with AI. Including users of other leading chatbots, the numbers are far greater and still growing. Another recent report shows that AI is permeating society much faster “and with greater intensity than the diffusion of technologies [such as personal computers and the Internet] in the 20th century.”
With adoption accelerating at this pace, the hopes and fears surrounding AI are no longer hypothetical. They are shaping public expectations, business strategy and political debate. AI optimists believe this era promises economic rebirth, or at least a reinvention with widespread prosperity. This will lead to work becoming optional and a flourishing of creativity. Several leading business executives, including Bill Gates and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, believe this will lead to shorter work weeks. Zoom CEO Eric Yuan recently told The New York Times: “Every company will support three days, four [work] days a week. I think this ultimately frees up everyone’s time.”
At the same time, pessimists, including computer science professor Roman Yampolskiy, warn of massive unemployment within five years and superintelligent systems that could emerge suddenly, outpacing our control and even extinguishing humanity.
Personally, I have my doubts about the latter and lean with hope toward the former. I believe AI will ultimately expand human capacity and create new forms of wealth and possibility. But I also believe that reaching that point will be anything but simple. We are approaching the unsettled years of the cognitive era, a time between fracture and renewal.
The lessons of history
History gives us reason to temper near-term optimism. While major technological upheavals have eventually led to better living standards, their first impact was often not abundance but dislocation: workers displaced, institutions strained, nations unsettled,and relations among nations destabilized. Industrialization remade economies, but only after decades of turmoil, inequality and unrest. The digital revolution created prosperity on a global scale, yet also widened gaps between regions, generations and classes.
Why should we think this time will be different? Has our species suddenly become wiser, more generous and more restrained in the face of pressing challenges? Or are we about to repeat the same tumultuous cycle, faster and with higher stakes?
As Mark Twain is often credited as saying: “History may not repeat itself. But it rhymes.” The cognitive era may not entirely emulate prior technological revolutions. It seems likely, however, that AI will be another chapter in the paradox of progress, where each leap forward first carries us through a difficult passage of rupture and repair. In this process, disruption will be common. Jobs will be lost, and while new roles may eventually emerge, there is little evidence so far that they will arrive quickly or in sufficient numbers to offset the losses.
Dislocation of purpose
Many AI leaders, including Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis and Geoffrey Hinton, believe highly capable systems will emerge within the next five years. By the 2030s, these systems are likely to be embedded across society, with AI agents moving beyond copilots to automate much knowledge work.
This shift would break down the old order and begin not only an economic transition, but a psychological and cultural one. For many who are displaced or disaffected, the greater loss will not be income alone but a loss of purpose, meaning and community. The decade of the 2030s, when AI is highly capable and widely diffused, will be a difficult time of transition.
Work has always carried more than economic value, giving people identity, belonging and pride. Farmers, factory workers and knowledge professionals alike found worth in their contribution. When those roles falter, meaning falters with them. If AI unravels that fabric faster than new sources of purpose emerge, the turbulence ahead may be as existential as it is economic. Many people will be asking tough questions about their value and self-worth and wonder what they were made for.
The rapid advance and diffusion of AI both accelerates and intensifies this fragility. Even as new facets of abundance (such as improved healthcare) emerge, this will not immediately offer new forms of purpose. The new, enriched order may come, but it will take time to settle into shared rituals, institutions and stories that anchor well-being. Until then, many may find themselves unmoored, grieving what they have lost, unsure what will replace it and vulnerable to anger or despair.
Fractures in society
When both meaning and financial stability erode, the consequences do not remain private. They surface in politics and nearly every aspect of life, potentially reshaping the order of nations.
The period of the cognitive era may be marked by rising inequality, strained safety nets and growing anger toward elites. Corporate profits may surge even as workers struggle to find stable or well-paying roles, with Jeremy Kahn at Fortune foreseeing “the most educated and credentialed using AI to become even more productive, while everyone else falls farther behind.”
In a recent Guardian op-ed, labor commentator Dustin Guastella argued that AI is already acting as a powerful engine of upward income redistribution. His view is that much of the present investor enthusiasm is driven by expectations of cost-cutting and job elimination, while founders and shareholders capture most of the gains.
This is contributing now to the challenges many young college graduates are facing, finding themselves locked out of stable careers, while low-wage jobs in sectors such as logistics, retail and food service face rapid automation. If this trajectory continues, the transition years will feel less like a renaissance and more like stratification, with wealth concentrated at the top and dislocation widespread below.
The consequences of this shift would not be limited to economics. Recent reporting shows AI is already opening divides within political coalitions, with pro-business voices emphasizing growth and productivity while more populist currents warn of job loss and social dislocation. These fractures foreshadow a stormy period in which the institutions and alliances that once provided stability may no longer cohere, especially as citizens look for someone to blame.
Nations with weaker institutions will be especially vulnerable, but even those with strong social contracts will feel the strain. The challenges of the 2030s will be written not only in productivity statistics, but in the daily lives of people who sense that the future is being built without them.
An alternative scenario
This is one plausible path through this unsettled period. Yet fracture is not destiny. The same forces that threaten to divide us could, if guided with care, help shape a more humane passage into the cognitive era. In this alternative scenario, AI becomes less a force of replacement and more a partner of augmentation.
MIT economist David Autor has argued that AI could, if designed and implemented with care, help rebuild middle-class work rather than erode it. His view underscores that the future is not fixed but will depend on whether AI is harnessed for augmentation or for replacement.
In medicine, AI could analyze scans and lab results, so doctors spend more time with patients. In education, AI tutors might oversee routine instruction while teachers focus on mentoring. In law and business, AI could draft standard documents, leaving professionals to concentrate on judgment and strategy. With deliberate design, many jobs evolve rather than vanish, and new forms of work emerge that expand rather than diminish the middle class.
Institutions, while slow to adapt, begin to respond with deliberate design. Safety nets are strengthened rather than abandoned. Programs for reskilling and lifelong learning become widely available, supported by both public funds and private enterprise. Governments experiment with mechanisms to share AI-generated wealth, including targeted basic income pilots, expanded public goods and tax reforms that link corporate gains more directly to social benefit.
In this trajectory, the political story shifts as well. Anger and division are still present, but new coalitions arise around solidarity and shared financial and health prospects. Movements form not only to resist displacement, but to insist on a more inclusive prosperity. Rivalries between nations continue, yet some cooperation emerges on safety, regulation and responsible use, which helps temper the worst outcomes of an unchecked AI race.
Such a world is still turbulent, but less convulsive. It may be a fragmented patchwork, but one that can gradually settle into renewal rather than collapse. The difficult passage will remain real, yet it can be navigated with care. The shape of this period is not preordained. It will be defined by the choices we make, and by whether we allow division to dominate or if we are able guide this passage toward a shared renaissance.
The unsettled package
The cognitive future may not unfold at either of the poles described at the outset. Disruption could prove shallow, with hardship lasting only a few years before new roles and institutions take root. Some optimists even imagine skipping this period altogether and moving directly into an age of plenty, though history suggests this as unlikely.
What seems more plausible is a mixed and uneven course. Many people will endure deep loss, not only of jobs but of confidence, identity and community. Careers that once felt secure may collapse, families may face years of financial strain, and entire towns could hollow out as industries are automated.
For some, the upheaval will be brief as new opportunities appear quickly. For others, the struggle may last through the 2030s, leaving scars that shape a generation. These middle years of the cognitive era will at times be harsh and challenging. They will be marked by contrast, with positive stories of AI advances and new industries unfolding beside stories of despair.
This is the paradox of progress that has always accompanied great technological shifts. Optimists will continue to see in AI the promise of reinvention and prosperity, while pessimists will warn of decline. The truth, as before, will likely fall somewhere in between.
Beyond this unsettled passage lies the possibility of safe harbor, where institutions regain balance, economic security is more broadly shared, work and life are better aligned and new forms of meaning have taken root. That destination is not assured, but it remains within reach if we summon the maturity and imagination to make it real.
Gary Grossman is EVP of technology practice at Edelman.
Welcome to the VentureBeat community!
Our guest posting program is where technical experts share insights and provide neutral, non-vested deep dives on AI, data infrastructure, cybersecurity and other cutting-edge technologies shaping the future of enterprise.
Read more from our guest post program — and check out our guidelines if you’re interested in contributing an article of your own!