An Exploration of
AI for Human Agency
Could increasingly capable AI be designed not to run our lives, but to help us become more capable of creating our own?
The people are fictional. The future capabilities are imagined. The stories are not predictions or descriptions of something that exists today.
Introduction: Imagine What Might Be Possible
What if every person could have continuing access to knowledge and assistance designed around one purpose: Helping them become increasingly capable of creating the life they choose? Not the life someone else thinks they should live. Not the life an institution defines as successful. And not the life an artificial intelligence calculates would be optimal. Their life. That possibility is at the heart of work I have called the Human Operating System, or HOS.
HOS begins with a simple premise: humanity has accumulated extraordinary knowledge about health, relationships, learning, work, money, human development and many other dimensions of life. Artificial intelligence may now make it possible to place far more of that understanding in continuing service of an individual human being. But with that possibility comes an important question: Could increasingly capable AI be designed not to run our lives, but to help us become more capable of creating our own? The twelve stories that follow imagine what that might mean.
The people are fictional. The future capabilities are imagined. The stories are not predictions or descriptions of something that exists today. I used AI to help me create them from the HOS work developed to date as a way of making the possibilities easier to see. The people begin in very different circumstances. They face opportunity, poverty, work disruption, family responsibilities, success, failure, relationships, illness, aging and a world increasingly transformed by AI. HOS does not create the same life for any of them. As you read, don't worry yet about how HOS works or whether everything imagined here will someday be technically possible. Just meet the people. Watch what happens in their lives.
And consider one question: Would it matter if people could have something like this?
Different lives. Different circumstances. Different choices.
A Life I Am Glad I Lived
I never woke up in the morning thinking about personal agency. I doubt many people do. I was living real life. I had good days and bad ones, people I loved, bills to pay, problems at work, time conflicts, disappointments, hopes, frustrations, and occasionally moments when everything seemed exactly right. I graduated from college in 2026. I was 22, had no college debt—which I now realize was a tremendous advantage—and took a job with a hotel company. I wasn't wealthy, but I was doing okay. I wanted a career I enjoyed, enough money not to worry constantly about it, good friends, and eventually someone I loved with whom I could share my life.
Read this life 02More Choices Than I Could See
When I was 18, I didn't need anyone to explain personal agency to me. I needed money. I needed my little brothers to get home safely from school. I needed my mother to stop looking so tired. I needed the guys on the corner to leave my 13-year-old brother alone. I needed a job that would hire someone who hadn't finished high school. Mostly, I needed some way to believe that the next ten years weren't already decided for me.
Read this life 03I Thought My Working Life Was Over
I was 46 when the plant manager gathered us together and told us the company was installing a new generation of automated manufacturing systems. He said it was necessary to remain competitive. He said there would be new opportunities. What I heard was: They don't need you anymore. I'd worked there for 23 years. I wasn't poor. I wasn't rich. My wife, Denise, worked three days a week at a dental office. We owned a modest house with a mortgage. We had two teenagers, one getting close to college. I was good at my job. Then suddenly being good at my job didn't seem to matter.
Read this lifeAs artificial intelligence becomes increasingly capable, can we use that extraordinary capability to help human beings become increasingly capable of creating their own lives?
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