The 21st century is already in its mid-twenties. Yet this is this year that we seem to have reached the cusp of a new millennium, because technology has now brought us to a moment of great uncertainty.

Much turmoil has taken place since the actual turn of the millennium: terrorist attacks, wars, a global financial crisis, a pandemic, the rise of China, the rise of Donald Trump, the mass migration of millions from the Global South to the rich north and the great shift toward life online. Many of these changes have been scary, but most have been largely familiar.

If you worried that Trump would undermine American government, or that too many immigrants would strain the country’s resources or our culture’s ability to assimilate them, you could look back to how similar challenges were handled in the 20th century. If you feared that China would displace the United States as global hegemon - well, many earlier geopolitical rivalries were there as reference points. Ditto plagues, wars and global depressions. Americans can also look back and see continuity despite the convulsions: Institutions survived, and ordinary life carried on.

Today, it’s no longer clear how much of ordinary life will survive the next 25 years.

I’m talking about AI, of course - but even more, the entire digital world in which we spend an increasing share of our lives. People are struggling with the basic human practice of making friends: In 1990, only 3 percent of Americans reported having no close friends, while 33 percent said they had 10 or more. By 2021, those numbers were about equal: 12 percent said they had no close friends, and 13 percent claimed 10 or more. Now, all kinds of social activity are declining: dating, marriage, having kids, volunteer work, attendance at religious services and, of course, working in an office. I’m not sure what human life looks like if we’re all locked in our homes looking at our phones - and I’m not sure I want to.

The digital world has already wreaked havoc on a number of venerable institutions that once shaped American life: News media, academia, Hollywood and the political parties have lost influence to podcasters and video streamers - and with it the power to shape a semi-coherent political and cultural consensus. What sort of consensus can emerge from the chaotic influencer economy?

AI, for its part, seems to be on course toward economic and cultural disruption on par with the industrial revolution. For decades, computers have been replacing human occupations, but this time the takeover is faster, broader. AI is getting better more quickly than any technology before it.

I won’t speculate about the risk of an emerging artificial superintelligence casually disposing of its inefficient carbon-based architects; I’m not enough of a technician to understand whether this is likely. What’s clear is that things are going to get weird.

AI will replace a lot of work that humans do now, from writing code to diagnosing illness to analyzing databases to making art. Aesthetes may protest that the computer-generated stuff will lack the crucial human element, but a quick glance over the past 200 years suggests that most people will eagerly substitute cheap, mass-produced anything for a lovingly handcrafted version that’s more expensive.

And this time around the machines will displace some of the highest-status, highest-paid jobs. This is not entirely a bad prospect, especially as regards the problem of inequality. A whole lot of affluent people are likely to become considerably more equal. But those folks will not give up good jobs quietly. Political and cultural upheaval can be expected as the elite fight to maintain their status.

And this is only the most obvious, immediate effect of a technology that will touch all of life, everywhere. Imagine if we could survey the Americans of 1900 about the likely effects of the automobile: How many would have predicted it would warm the planet or hollow out urban downtowns?

We’re in a similar position, but while the automobile was competing with the horse, the AIs are competing with us. And this competition will outpace anything we’ve seen before: Changes that our ancestors absorbed over generations will happen at transistor speeds.

I wish I had helpful hints for coping, a tidy message to carry into the new year. But all I have is a haunting question: Is humanity nimble enough to adapt to a technology that might deliver a millennium’s worth of change in the space of a few decades?