AI of a Thousand Faces

Hundreds of millions of people use it. Trillions of dollars fuel it. In 2025, the conversation around AI turned from what it could be to what it is: Large language models are now everywhere, in our schools and our homes, on therapist couches and government computers. We feed it our data, and tell it our secrets. The world is collectively engaged in a live experiment, with few controls and almost no regulation; the best-case and the worst-case scenarios all seem to end with our planet being forever transformed.

WIRED can’t tell the future, but we can try to make sense of it. Behold: 17 readings from the furthest reaches of the AI age.