The following article was written by Scott A. Snyder, a senior fellow at Wharton, adjunct professor at Penn Engineering, chief digital officer at EVERSANA, and author of a new book, Your AI Life: Foresight, Insight, and Advice to Help You Start Living Your AI-powered Life Today.

The risk of an “AI Divide” seems to be growing by the day, separating those who harness AI’s power from those left watching from the sidelines. This divide isn’t just about tech elites versus everyone else. It cuts across economic lines, educational backgrounds, and communities everywhere.

A recent NBC News Poll reveals that only 44% of U.S. adults are using AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot, and 42% of respondents feel that AI would make their lives worse. This data is similar to a Pew Research study conducted at the end of 2023 showing more Americans are concerned rather than excited about AI. This apprehension also seems to be showing up in the workplace where executive expectations about AI’s impact continue to grow faster than employee adoption. A recent BCG study shows 81% of leaders are optimistic about AI’s impact, while only 51% of front-line employees feel the same.

Five AI Trends Everyone Should Know

My recently published book, Your AI Life, attempts to bridge this divide by providing a practical guide for anyone to discover their personal “AI superpower” regardless of their background, education, or current relationship with technology. It starts by demystifying AI and some of the underlying concepts in plain language like generative AI, which has suddenly made powerful technology accessible to everyone, and AI Agents, which are transforming how we get things done. The book also highlights five “irreversible” AI trends already reshaping our world and what they mean for you personally:

Trend #1: Everyone Gets an AI Superpower

“AI superpowers” are capabilities derived from AI that extend and elevate our own innate capabilities, and in some cases make us an expert in an area where we may have limited or ordinary ability today.

Trend #2: Screens and Apps Decline

Soon we will all be interacting naturally with personal AI Assistants that can not only get us the information we need “in the moment” but will also take action to make our lives easier.

Trend #3: AI Personal Coaches Close the Opportunity Divide

AI-based learning programs will adapt to each individual learning journey to maximize both our comprehension and retention, making learning more accessible to anyone able and willing to engage with AI.

Trend #4: Teams Will Include AI Co-workers

As AI Agents take on more of the activities we choose to offload or task them with, they will effectively become “co-workers” in our professional and personal lives, forming our own personal AI workforce or “AI crew.”

Trend #5: Data Becomes Your New Currency

The need for unique data and content to train future AI models creates an opportunity for individuals and companies to use their “data as currency” when they interact with new AI solutions and even create their own personalized AI models that provide more relevant and useful answers.

Transforming your life with AI is not a single event or quick fix, but rather a commitment to personal transformation starting with small steps and building towards reimagining most of your activities and decisions.

Making AI Personal

Most people have not yet experienced their “AI moment” — the “aha” event or experience that demonstrates the clear benefit of applying AI to something important in their life. In the future, people could transform their education, careers, parenting, health, finances, and even retirement by tapping into their unique AI superpower. Here are some examples:

  • Building your own personal AI learning journey that integrates the best AI-powered tutors or sidekicks, facilitating micro (everyday) and macro (long-term) experiences working alongside AI, and building robust critical thinking skills to effectively navigate AI’s inherent risks.
  • Evaluating career opportunities in an AI-first future using an AI-driven job opportunity map that explores the intersection of AI with your career interests, and AI-first future role descriptions to inform your AI-first resume.
  • Building an AI-powered parenting game plan that identifies where AI can assist and augment your parenting activities and allow you to focus more time on the uniquely human interactions with your child.
  • Mapping out your AI-powered health care journey, including prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and ongoing care, to understand where AI can significantly improve health outcomes while also understanding the potential risks.
  • Creating an AI-powered financial staircase showing where you can use AI to overcome financial challenges in the near-, mid-, and long-term and improve your overall financial security.
  • Using AI to multiply the value of an existing or new business by understanding where AI can extend or augment your team, improve your financials, and assist with venture creation and growth activities.
  • Using AI to boost your retirement quality of life by understanding where AI can enable your retirement “bucket list” and how to prioritize these goals based on money, time, and the impact or joy they may bring.

Getting Everyone AI Ready

In order for everyone to benefit from the opportunities listed above and unlock their unique AI superpowers, they will need to overcome the typical AI adoption challenges and develop both the “skill” and “will” to move up the AI adoption curve. “Skill,” or ability, progresses from literacy to proficiency to mastery, and “will,” or mindset, moves from openness to engagement to excitement. Training alone is not sufficient without the dedicated time, peer support, incentives, and real experiences applying AI to move us towards AI mastery and excitement.

In addition, like a triathlon with distinct events, the AI race will require most of us to stretch ourselves in new dimensions to stay ahead. AI readiness includes the ability to:

See the AI change coming: spotting relevant AI trends, connecting them to your life and work, anticipating how these could create significant change, and envisioning how you could benefit.

Act on AI opportunities: mobilizing yourself and others to act on the highest-impact AI opportunities in your life or work, collaborating across diverse skills and perspectives to get to the best solutions, mentoring and developing AI skills in others, and scaling the impact of AI solutions through repeatable tools, processes, and data.

Imagine an AI-powered version of your life or work: embracing disciplined AI experimentation, seeking out step-change AI innovation opportunities in your life or work, tapping into AI innovators and tech partners that can help you accelerate your own AI experiments, and transforming how you invest your time and money into AI opportunities.

Upgrade yourself to stay ahead of the AI wave: gaining and maintaining your AI literacy, having flexibility to pivot and adapt to new AI opportunities, identifying and applying responsible and ethical AI development and use, and engaging in continuous learning to elevate AI-related skills and competencies for future success.

After you evaluate your AI readiness, you are ready to build your own AI readiness plan to address your gaps and build on your strengths to not only survive but also thrive in an AI future.

Transforming your life with AI is not a single event or quick fix, but rather a commitment to personal transformation starting with small steps and building towards reimagining most of your activities and decisions. And most importantly, it involves using AI to complement, amplify, and extend the things that make you uniquely human so you can shape your own AI-powered life.