Dear Diary

Alan D. Thompson
November 2025

Dear Diary,

It’s now the end of 2025, and I feel like swearing. (Just so you know, I’ve published 350+ videos, written six books, delivered 500+ keynotes, all without swearing, but it’s time!)

We can see AGI.

We can feel ASI around the corner.

And yet we are living in a very uncomfortable limbo, and it feels like wasted time.

I wanted to leave this note for you to read from the vantage point of utopia. Maybe it’s 2028. Maybe 2029.

Being here is unbelievable. I feel like I’m surrounded by crazy people.

Would you believe that the average person has an IQ of 100, the smartest person in the world has an IQ of 220, but we have access to the equivalent of 1,000+ IQ in our current AI systems?

It’s true, and yet I don’t see the societal effects right now.

Economy: Still capitalism. Still dominator-power-control bullshit. Still based off cognitive labour and physical labour, both packaged up into the equivalent of modern slavery (though that term has been hijacked).

Government: Still the biggest used car salesmen. Voted in based on fame. And bringing all their human quirks and foibles, messing up far more often than they help.

Environment and climate: Still an issue. And average humans are still trying to fix it average-ly. Some even rage that AI is hurting the environment through water use (not true) and energy use (partially true, especially for once-off training). I ask them these two questions:

How much water would you allow an AI system to use if it cures cancer for you and the next generation?

How much energy would you allow an AI system to use if it then discovers a completely new energy source?

The details of this last question are left out, but consider that the new energy source will be cleaner than anything we’ve seen before, harnessed for free, and available in complete recurrent abundance. It will also replace all our old energy sources, so we can finally shut the fuck up about oil & gas.

Travel: Completely fucked. Allowing average humans to operate killing machines is absurd.

Medicine: A bunch of crow-mask-wearing average humans guessing diagnoses and killing people. The wait list to see a doctor for an urgent appointment here in Australia has been documented by ABC and measured in years, with one patient told to wait 70 months. 70 months!

Logistics: This might be the worst of all of them. Have you ever spent time with a toddler? Imagine being forced to go back to kindergarten 24/7. That is every customer service interaction, every support call, every room service order, every government department interaction. And remember, this is 2025. Eight years since the transformer, 5 years since GPT-3, and depending on who you ask a year or two since AI passed the Turing Test.

I’m sure we’ll look back on this time and ask:

What.

The.

Fuck?

I hope this inertia stops soon, the technology is not the blocker.

Love,

Alan

Header image at the top of this page generated by Alan D. Thompson via Nano Banana Pro 2 on 21/Nov/2025. Prompt: ‘beautiful hdr photo of an open diary with ‘dear diary’ written on the left hand page. 750x500px’.

Alan D. Thompson is a world expert in artificial intelligence, advising everyone from Apple to the US Government on integrated AI. Throughout Mensa International’s history, both Isaac Asimov and Alan held leadership roles, each exploring the frontier between human and artificial minds. His landmark analysis of post-2020 AI—from his widely-cited Models Table to his regular intelligence briefing The Memo—has shaped how governments and Fortune 500s approach artificial intelligence. With popular tools like the Declaration on AI Consciousness, and the ASI checklist, Alan continues to illuminate humanity’s AI evolution. Technical highlights.