“I expect we will see a trifurcation in people’s approach to AI and resilience, so there’s no single answer to human resilience in the age of AI. Some people will embrace AI fully and pursue the future path laid out by transhumanists, which includes applications such as external memories, personal digital twins, delegation of decision-making to AI and a host of virtual experiences. This is group one. They will increasingly rely on technology for their form of resilience, looking for tech fixes to the problems tech causes. They won’t be able to imagine a world without AI, and so their resilience depends on AI evolving more rapidly than their problems.
Some people will be pragmatic late adopters, bringing some AI into their lives once it’s proven valuable to others, or when they simply can’t avoid it in the pursuit of normal activities. This is group two. Some of these folks will feel left behind, ignored or shunned by the purists in the first two groups. But by being pragmatic, they have a very good shot at resilience by focusing on proven value, usability and a diversity of approaches to problem solving.
Group three will reject AI completely and instead curate more-genuine human experiences as an antidote to the ‘horrors’ they see happening in group one. They may be increasingly shut out of aspects of the world that integrate AI, even for things as simple as shopping. For them, resilience means remaining fully human and retaining their agency above all. They would do the best in a tech-crash but may find themselves looking at modern civilization much as the Amish do.
“The ratio between these groups will also vary by country and culture. I’d always hope for the pragmatic late adopters to be the biggest segment. If the first and third groups ever become larger it could cause significant conflict in society and an eventual permanent caste-like split.
“It is interesting to apply today’s caste-like divides into this framework. If people in group number one are the elites and if people in group number three separate themselves (necessarily) to remain clear of AI, then people in group number two always have the most diversity and flexibility.
“How might these groups map to the existing economic and racial castes we see perpetuated today?”
This essay was written in January 2026 in reply to the question: “AI systems are likely to begin to play a much more significant role in shaping our decisions, work and daily lives. How might individuals and societies embrace, resist and/or struggle with such transformative change? As opportunities and challenges arise due to the positive, neutral and negative ripple effects of digital change, what cognitive, emotional, social and ethical capacities must we cultivate to ensure effective resilience? What practices and resources will enable resilience? What actions must we take right now to reinforce human and systems resilience? What new vulnerabilities might arise and what new coping strategies are important to teach and nurture?” This and 200-plus additional essay responses are included in the 2026 report “Building a Human Resilience Infrastructure for the AI Age.”