Measured in thinking rather than years
Looking ahead to 2035 is like looking back to 1344.
From now to 2035, AI will think as much as all of humanity did from 1344 to today.
Thinking is counted in tokens, the small chunks of words that AI models think in. We generously assume a person thinks about 150 a second. The past counts every human who ever lived, the future counts AI alone. Read the thread behind this on X
Play with the assumptions
The headline above updates as you change them. The defaults are rough: generous to humans on speed, and they count every token AI processes.
Google alone reported about 3.2 quadrillion tokens a month in May 2026. The whole industry is a few times that.
1 counts an AI token the same as a human one. Most tokens counted today are text being read rather than thought, which argues for less; smarter models argue for more.
Tokens per second, per person. Measured conscious thought is closer to 10 bits a second, so 150 is generous to humans.
Add a shock
Wars, pandemics or a pause can cut AI capacity or slow its growth for a while. Then the trend resumes from where it fell.
No events yet. Try a world war or an AI pause.