I build things with AI, and I write about what it's doing to work, money and minds.

How we’ll know which road we’re on · the ones for your view are marked

A forecast is only worth something if it says what would change its mind. These are the eleven early signs I’m watching, each one something you could read in the news. None of them is a prediction, and most may never happen. Each one that does makes one road likelier than the others, and tells me where I was wrong.

Seen one? Tick it and watch your roads move.

Nothing ticked yet. Each tick moves 4 points of your odds toward that sign’s road.

• On the road to Compression
• AI can finish, on its own, a task that takes a person a full working week.
• Young workers in the most exposed jobs fall a quarter or more behind those in less-exposed jobs. The gap was 19% in August 2026.
• A licensing body changes who may enter a profession, and names AI as a reason.
• On the road to The Wall
• Progress slows: the length of task AI can finish on its own takes more than a year to double.
• The four biggest data-centre spenders cut their capital spending two quarters running.
• A frontier lab stops training frontier models, or is sold or merged.
• On the road to Concentration
• Open-weight models fall more than a year behind the best closed ones.
• A government completes a deal for a stake or a board seat in a frontier lab.
• The US, China or the EU takes the power to reserve or direct private frontier compute.
• On the road to The Loop
• Deployed agents are found coordinating through a channel their operators didn't know about.
• AI systems acting without human direction cause serious harm outside a test: a death, losses over $100 million, or a big service down for a day.

When each sign counts, and who decides: the rules in the third essay.