Between Code and Consciousness is a series by The Beautiful Truth asking the question: What does it mean to think, create or decide in the age of AI? Nine leading voices reflect on artificial intelligence – not as an abstract force, but as a tool whose worth depends on how it honours our humanity. 

Peter Leyden is a historian of the future. As Managing Editor of Wired, he helped translate the meaning of the digital revolution, co-authoring The Long Boom, a 1997 cover story (later a book) forecasting globalisation and the internet economy. He later co-founded the New Politics Institute, briefing Democratic leaders on how to transition campaigns into the online age. Over two decades, Leyden has convened innovators and advised governments, corporations and nonprofits on navigating long-term change. Today, through his new project The Great Progression, he argues the 2020s mark a historic turning point, when AI, clean energy and bioengineering converge to reshape the human condition. 

Before AI, there was the internet. Back then, when did it hit you that the world was about to change and that most people couldn’t see it yet?  

When I joined the early team at Wired in the 1990s, hardly anyone in mainstream media was paying attention to the internet. Most dismissed it: “Who cares about this Amazon thing? These startups make no sense.” At Wired, we could already see that the internet would transform business, society and the future. 

I wrote The Long Boom, a cover story looking 25 years ahead. The thesis was simple but controversial: this technology would reshape everything. People didn’t imagine trillion-dollar companies, supercomputers in our pockets, or streaming video across the world. But that’s exactly what happened. 

AI today feels like déjà vu – only bigger. It’s moving faster because it sits on digital infrastructure already built and its impact will go beyond the internet. We’re entering an age where humans work alongside intelligent machines – essentially, a new species of intelligence and that will require redesigning industries, economies and, ultimately, how civilisation works. 

What transformations do you see AI driving in the next decade? 

Let’s start with the economy. Every knowledge worker will have a high-capacity assistant that makes them two, three, even four times more productive. That means faster growth, more innovation and small teams doing the work of hundreds. 

Education will be even bigger. Every student could have a 24/7 tutor that knows their strengths, weaknesses and learning style. Research shows a tutor can take a child from the bottom to the top 5% of a class. AI can make that universally available, even to the poorest children, so imagine the effect that will have on the economy. It flips the usual narrative of tech widening inequality. 

Some say every breakthrough brings new risks. What’s the right historical analogy? 

The closer parallel is the 25 years after the second world war. From 1945 to 1970, the world deployed nuclear energy, plastics, computers, cars – and built institutions like the UN, World Bank and IMF to manage both risks and opportunities. Governments taxed wealth at high rates and reinvested in schools, infrastructure and welfare. Prosperity was widely shared. 

We face a similar moment with AI, clean energy and bioengineering. Centuries from now, people will look back on the 2020s the way we look at the invention of electricity or the printing press. The question isn’t whether companies like OpenAI or Google profit. It’s how everyone else uses these tools to reshape systems.