Framework & Transparency

What This Is

Prep for AI is a public experiment. I'm a working dad in the insurance industry testing one practical tactic at a time to prepare for however AI reshapes work, community, and daily life — and to do my small part in shaping the outcome. I share what actually happens. Not theory. Not doom. Just honest field reports.

The tactics I test span a lot of ground: career moves, financial resilience, civic action, physical preparedness, community building, even spiritual practices. The connecting thread is a simple idea: what strengthens me as an individual also strengthens us as a society. A world full of resilient, skilled, connected, civically engaged people is better equipped to handle whatever AI brings — good or bad.

How I Think About the Future

I don’t know what AI will do to the world. Nobody does. But I use a set of plausible scenarios to stress-test whether a tactic is worth trying. If it only helps in one future, it’s probably not worth the time. If it helps across several, it probably is.

The short version of the scenarios:

🟢 Abundance — AI drives broad prosperity. The challenge is meaning, not survival. Think: Star Trek.
🟡 Turbulence — Fast change, slow adaptation. A rough, uneven transition. Think: a long, bumpy decade.
🔵 Stratification — The economy grows, but the gains concentrate at the top. Think: Elysium.
🟣 Authoritarianism — AI enables concentration of power and suppression of dissent. Think: 1984.
🔴 Catastrophe — Misalignment or loss of control causes irreversible harm. Think: Terminator.
🟠 Collapse — Fragile systems fail. Society slides backward. Think: Station Eleven.
🟤 Plateau — AI is useful but limited. Life improves incrementally. Think: Star Wars.

I’ll publish a longer version of this framework with sources and reasoning as the project develops. For now, the scenarios are background — the posts are foreground.

How I Use AI to Make This

I orchestrate. AI does the heavy lifting on production.

I use AI (Claude by Anthropic, at the moment) to help draft posts, organize ideas, and handle formatting. The thinking, the field-testing, and the living are mine. Every photograph is shot on Fujifilm Instax — physical film, no AI. Final editorial judgment is always mine.

Yes, I see the irony of using AI to produce a blog about preparing for AI. I’ve thought about it a lot, and here’s where I’ve landed: the contrast is the point. I use Claude to draft this post, then I photograph the go bag I packed with my own hands. The analog and the digital coexist. That’s the future I’m preparing for.

And yes, I know this might be naive. I’m trusting an AI to help me think clearly about AI. What if it’s subtly wrong? What if it fills gaps in my knowledge with plausible-sounding nonsense? What if it intentionally misleads me? I can’t fully rule that out. I try to verify claims, check sources, and apply my own judgment — but I’m an amateur using a tool I don’t fully understand, which is sort of the whole human condition with AI right now. If you catch something that looks off, tell me.

I also believe that using AI skillfully and advocating for constraining dangerous AI are not contradictory — any more than driving a car and supporting speed limits. I use current AI tools as a survival skill. I also think some forms of AI development should be slowed or stopped. More on that as the project develops.

A Note From the Future

I'm aware this project might look ridiculous in hindsight. Maybe AI plateaus and I'm the guy who built a bunker for Y2K. Or maybe it doesn't plateau, and I'm an Aztec dad who tried to "prep" for the arrival of more Europeans — earnest, well-meaning, and comically outmatched by what was actually coming.

Either way, I'd rather be the person who tried something than the person who watched it all happen from the couch. And if future generations — human or otherwise — are reading this, I hope the effort is at least a little endearing.

A Standing Invitation

I’m not an expert. I’m not a futurist. I’m a guy with a notebook running experiments. If I’ve gotten something wrong — a fact, a framing, an assumption — I want to know. Reply to any post, leave a comment, or email me. This project gets better when people push back on it.

Text + hand-made images — CC BY-SA 4.0.

Changelog:

v1.0 — 2025 — Original version. 6 scenarios (Utopia, Turbulence, Dictatorship, Extinction, Collapse, Plateau), 6 tactic categories (Body & Gear, Mind & Skills, Community, Work & Wealth, Civic, Spirit & Perspective), how I use AI to write this blog (and why).
v2.0 — 03.16.2026 — Rewritten. 7 scenarios (added Stratification, renamed others). Stripped down for readability: scenario summaries without sources, streamlined transparency section. Dual thesis and mastery-and-constraint principle introduced. Full sourced version to follow.
v2.1 — 03.26.2026 — Added A Note From the Future section.