What if the future of AI wasn’t about slowing down or handing control to a few, but about spreading power widely? The d/acc Pathway imagines a 2035 where federated networks, privacy-preserving systems, and community-driven infrastructure help society adapt and thrive.
Most debates about AI strategy focus on either slowing down development or centralizing control. d/acc offers a third option: accelerating technologies that defend, distribute, and empower. This part of the report explains why decentralization and defensive acceleration could make rapid progress survivable — and why this pathway deserves serious consideration alongside other AI futures.
A timeline of 2025–2035 explores what could plausibly push the world toward d/acc. From supply chain collapses to cyberattacks, it shows how repeated crises exposed the fragility of centralized systems — and how decentralized alternatives proved more resilient under pressure.
If d/acc took root, how would it reshape the world? This section explores transformations across governance, infrastructure, science, healthcare, law, finance, climate, and education — highlighting how decentralized and cooperative systems enabled new forms of resilience and innovation.
What would daily life actually feel like? Here we look at shorter but more varied work weeks, portable healthcare, community-run infrastructure, and new forms of civic participation — optional but widely available. Everyday life is more complex, but also more resilient and participatory.
This section outlines the biggest challenges for d/acc to work at scale. Can decentralized systems coordinate fast enough in crises? Where should we decentralize, and where is centralization still needed? Will people trust and adopt federated systems when failures happen? These open questions show where this pathway might falter.
Includes short explainers of key terms, the list of scenario contributors, methodological notes on how the scenario was developed, and references for further reading. It also connects the scenario to the broader AI Pathways project.