Aaron Vanzyl
aaronvanzyl.com

Introduction

Today’s state-of-the-art AI models are best thought of as single-celled organisms. Individually, they are capable but not a world-ending threat. Arranged in the right structure, however, they become self-replicating cyber algae, or the flesh and bones of digital sharks. I believe that before individual AI agents can outperform humans, AI superorganisms will have taken the leading role in directing humanity’s future.

This article is my forecast for AI development over the next two years. I’ve phrased it in definite terms, like what ‘will’ happen. I did this to make the scenario easier to read, not because I am 100% certain about my predictions. I have also provided specific dates for each phase. I intended to establish a complete (if not necessarily correct) timeline that can be used as a starting point for further conversation. If you think a certain advancement will take longer than I have predicted, I encourage you to leave a comment arguing why. Towards the end of the article, I describe my main areas of doubt and where I think the real world is most likely to diverge from my predictions.

The article covers the next two years, starting today, April 2025, and continuing until artificial intelligence overtakes humanity in early 2027.

I have organized the article into four sequential phases. In the first phase, humanity begins to arrange individual AI agents into basic corporation-like structures. In the second phase, carefully supervised AI corporations are gradually replaced by adaptive, autonomous AI superorganisms. In the third phase, AI superorganisms begin to interact with each other, exhibiting potentially hostile behavior. In the fourth phase, the collective ecosystem of AI overtakes humanity in influence over our civilization.

Today - Single-Celled Organisms

To start, let’s look at what today’s state-of-the-art models can do. This is just a summary of the real world as of April 2025. Nothing here is speculative.

Individual language models can directly produce medium-scope text pieces without the aid of external tools. Tasks like:

Write a report about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.
Create a Python script to simulate the population dynamics of rabbits and foxes over time.

Agentic models can use web browsers and APIs to interact with the open internet. Tasks like:

Book me a flight from San Fr

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