No flying cars and no robot armies. The future arrives one routine at a time. Follow six people, from an 8-year-old to an 81-year-old, through a single day: where AI and robots quietly help, where they get in the way, and what families and governments need to decide now for that day to go well.
The context: by 2030 about one person in six worldwide will be 60 or older (WHO). Employers expect roughly 170 million jobs created and 92 million displaced between 2025 and 2030 (WEF). Data-centre electricity use is projected to roughly double by 2030 (IEA). Sources are listed under Evidence.
08:00
Pick an age group and follow one person from waking up to bedtime. Each moment is labelled by how sure we are: whether it is a trend already measurable, something that follows from current plans, or a deliberate stretch.
The home system lifts the blinds and plays the playlist she chose last night. Her parents' assistant already knows one of them leaves early, so it nudges Hana's dad, not her mum.
GroundedAmbient home assistant, Family calendar agent
A small wearable shares her location with the school geofence only. Crossings near the school are watched by roadside sensors that slow robotaxis to a crawl when children are present.
PlausibleChild-safe wearable, Connected road infrastructure, Robotaxi
Forty minutes with an AI reading tutor that speaks to her, listens to her read aloud, and spots that she keeps confusing two letter patterns. The teacher gets a one-line summary, not a dashboard.
GroundedSpeech-based AI tutor, Teacher co-pilot
Schools that adopted AI tutoring used the time it freed for projects, sport and outdoor play. Phones and personal AI are switched off — the rule is set by the school, not left to parents.
PlausiblePhone-free classroom policy
It is 38°C outside, so the school shifts sport to the morning and keeps the afternoon indoors. The schedule changed overnight; parents got one message, not five.
PlausibleHeat-adaptive school scheduling, Shaded play areas
A home robot unloads groceries and tidies, but it is not allowed to supervise her alone. That line is legal in some countries and only a social norm in others.
SpeculativeHousehold humanoid / mobile manipulator, Child-safety regulation
Hana and her mum invent a bedtime story with an AI that draws pictures as they talk. Her mum is the one who decides when the screen goes off.
GroundedGenerative storytelling
12:00
Home, work, learning, community, health, elder care and the resilience under all of them are connected. A robot in a grandmother's home changes a parent's working day; a tutor in a child's school changes what jobs teenagers train for.
15:00
This picks up where lifein2030.ai ends. Every year after 2030 is a scenario, one plausible path among several, built to be argued with.
2030
The lifein2030.ai baseline. Assistants live in phones, glasses and cars; agents do routine office work; humanoid robots are in warehouse and factory pilots.
2031
Scenario: identity, payment and liability rules let personal agents sign, buy and book on our behalf within limits. Trust is the product.
2032
Scenario: ageing societies (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, much of Europe) subsidise assistive robots for lifting, bathing and monitoring before general household chores.
2033
Scenario: AI tutoring for core skills is standard; the school day shifts to projects, sport and social learning. Assessment moves from answers to process.
2034
Scenario: middle-management and entry-level desk roles shrink; care, trades and roles that carry accountability grow. Reskilling becomes a funded right in more countries.
2035
Scenario: robots in hospitals, shops, streets and some homes are unremarkable. The open questions are cost, consent and who is left out.
17:00
In 2016 the Atlantic Council asked people what life in 2035 would look like. Their answers are the best warning we have about our own forecasts.
Asked what 2035 would look like, people talked about global warming, clean energy, peace, education and terrorism. In the whole video, nobody mentions artificial intelligence or robots.
The lesson for us: The biggest change of the next twenty years was invisible to the people living through its start. Expect the same of 2035 — our list of risks is probably missing one.
Watch the 2016 videoPut biology first — CRISPR, genome sequencing, engineered crops — then cyber, then the rise of India. He also said success would come from the private sector more than from governments.
The lesson for us: Cyber held up well. Biology and India are still building. And his prediction that the private sector would lead turned out to be the AI story.
Watch the 2016 video19:00
This edition is a working draft. These are the questions we are testing for each age group, and the answers will reshape the timelines above. Send yours with the comment form below.
20:30
The 2035 moments are scenarios; the trends behind them are not. Each source carries a note on how firmly its figure should be quoted.
Medium-variant projections used for the ~8.8B (2035, approx.) estimate. UN projects people aged 65+ will outnumber under-18s by the late 2070s.
Approximate; verify before quoting
By 2030, about 1 in 6 people worldwide will be aged 60 or over.
Figure as published; check the edition
Projects Japan's population falling toward ~87M by 2070, with close to 4 in 10 people aged 65+ (approx.).
Approximate; verify before quoting
Employers expect ~170M jobs created and ~92M displaced between 2025 and 2030 — a net gain of ~78M.
Figure as published; check the edition
Up to 30% of US hours worked could be automated by 2030 in a midpoint scenario.
Figure as published; check the edition
Data-centre electricity use projected to roughly double to ~945 TWh by 2030 in the base case.
Figure as published; check the edition
Frames humanoid robots as a multi-trillion-dollar market by 2050. A long-range forecast — treat as an upper-bound scenario.
Approximate; verify before quoting
Open technical standard for signing where media came from — the basis for the 'provenance badge' moments on this site.
Figure as published; check the edition
1:1 tutoring produced roughly two-standard-deviation gains — the case for AI tutors in the child and teen days.
Figure as published; check the edition
2016 predictions for 2035, used in 'What 2016 expected'. Primary source: what people actually said on camera.
Figure as published; check the edition
The baseline this site builds on: daily life, education, work, robotics and AGI around 2030.
Figure as published; check the edition
21:30
These scenarios get better when people who live them push back. Comment on an age group, or reach us directly. Comments come to us privately; we may quote them on the site without your name.
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