From “How AI Changes Your Customers: The Marketing Guide to Humanity’s Next Chapter” by Mark Schaefer
The inspiration for this book was planted in 2025 when I was invited to participate as one of 300 futurists in a project to determine how AI will change humanity by 2035. I’m pretty sure the researchers had found 299 participants and called me to make it a nice round number, but hey, I got in.
We came together to answer one impossible question: What does it mean to be human when the machines know everything?
The outcome of that collaboration was a landmark study, published by the Institute for Digital Future, titled Being Human in 2035. Drawing on the insights of global experts – researchers, technologists, ethicists, and entrepreneurs – the report offers a glimpse into what it might mean to be human in a world utterly dominated by AI.
The answers were profound, conflicted, sobering, and sometimes, beautifully hopeful.
The report identified essential human capacities that are likely to be transformed by artificial intelligence – some enhanced, some diminished, some possibly lost forever. We explored topics such as deep thinking, empathy, purpose, creativity, human agency, and more.
This research is a gift. Nobody knows where AI is heading – not even the Silicon Valley elite. But when 300 thoughtful experts reach consensus on even a few signals of what’s to come, we’d be wise to listen.
It’s not speculation. It’s preparation.