It is obviously difficult to make forecasts about the way that humanity will change, similar to asking how will freshly sprouted mountain ranges affect current river flows? Without knowing the contours and locations of the new ranges, all that can be said is, the change is potentially dramatic. Given that the scale of the new mountain range (AI), may dwarf previous ranges such as agriculture, language, the printing press, or computers themselves, it would be apt to say the continental divide (in the US, I’m assuming they have similar concepts elsewhere?) will change, resulting in changes in climate, population density, etc.

To come back from the metaphor, I think it is safe to say that AI will have potentially large scale impact on many kinds and degrees of human individual and collective endevours, and widen the gap between the most capable humans and the least capable, though the bottom rung of the scale will go up as well. Have you heard the phrase, just enough knowledge to be dangerous?Imagine that in the billions. We will live in a much less predictable world, and be influenced by giga-epic mythologies that will have tangible impacts to our day-to-day lives and our futures. It may even create such a dramatic change in selection pressures that it accelerates speciation of the human family. It is now possible for a very precocious teen with funds to engage in genetic engineering. With AI, that capability may drop into the moderately to poorly funded young teen.

Again, all speculation, but that’s all we have on this side of that divide.