Pause

The treaty buys time. AI can do only 12% of human tasks and employment barely changes: 57% of the working-age population has a job. Schools and universities use the pause to change what they teach.

AI is useful but bounded: training far more capable systems requires permission. There are 21 million robots in operation, almost all in factories, and data centers use 1,134 TWh a year.

Science speeds up more slowly than in the futures without brakes: the pace of discovery is ×2.7 that of 2026. Some drugs that could already exist are still waiting.

The energy transition moves steadily, without rushing: clean energy reaches 34% and warming is around 1.6 °C.

An international body verifies the compute of large data centers, as is done with nuclear material, and some countries push to break away. The power concentration index holds at 42/100 and the cumulative risk of catastrophe stands at 1.2%.

Automation grows gradually to 36% of tasks, with time for people to change trades. Inequality falls to 55/100, because the benefits of AI are shared through public policy.

Robots take off late, but they take off: there are 322 million robots in operation.

Science moves ×5.3 compared with 2026. Cures that arrived a decade or two earlier in other futures are still in trials here.

Clean energy is now the majority: 74%. Warming reaches 1.8 °C and begins to slow.

The central debate is when to lift the limits and how to know it is safe to do so. The cumulative risk of catastrophe holds at 3.4%.

More than half of all tasks are now automatable (59%) and 50% of the working-age population has a job. The transition was slow and, because of that, less traumatic.

There are 4.6 billion robots. The technologies the pause delayed arrive, with rules tested over decades.

The pace of science is ×7.9 that of 2026: slower than in the futures without brakes, but without anyone losing control of what is being researched.

Almost all energy is clean (98%) and warming levels off near 1.9 °C.

Power remains spread out (43/100). The cumulative risk of catastrophe, 6.5%, comes mostly from threats unrelated to AI.

A century later, 48% of the working-age population has a job: fewer than today, but with lower inequality (49/100).

There are 7.2 billion robots. The same technologies that other futures got earlier arrived here, only later.

Science now moves almost ten times faster than in 2026 (×9.8).

Warming was held to around 1.9 °C.

The cumulative risk of catastrophe, 10%, is among the lowest of the four futures. The cost was different: several generations waited for cures and advances that could have come sooner.