Confronting Impossible Futures
to be helpful futuring, your imagination should be disciplined.
Ideally your imagined future would have a history. Whatever happens has to happen one-step at a time. So for every new technology or cultural innovation there needs to be versions that are economically viable one step at a time.
the game for the futurist is to try and imagine what led to... See more
Ideally your imagined future would have a history. Whatever happens has to happen one-step at a time. So for every new technology or cultural innovation there needs to be versions that are economically viable one step at a time.
the game for the futurist is to try and imagine what led to... See more
Kevin Kelly • How to Future
Keely Adler added
The problem with expertise is that it's entirely backward-facing. Worse, the more experience we have the more we imagine we "know" what will happen when of course we don't. Peter Drucker's maxim still holds: "The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different". With AI, the right questions to ask are "how different, how fast, and ... See more
Ethan Mollick • Confronting Impossible Futures
MargaretC added
Of course, there are major ethical issues to work out—leaps forward in technology often walk a fine line between deeply-impactful and dystopian. Among the questions we need to figure out:
- Who is responsible for AI’s mistakes?
- Who is the creator of an AI work? Is it the AI? The developers? The person who wrote the prompt? The people whose work was use
Rex Woodbury • AI in 2023: The Application Layer Has Arrived
sari added
With technology racing forward at an ever increasing pace, some advancements can impact us on an unprecedented scale. As shapers of the future, we must strive to understand the consequences and implications of emerging technology. We do this by asking ourselves uncomfortable questions about possible outcomes.
IDEO • To Design a Better Future, Embrace the Uncomfortable
Laura Pike Seeley added
A technologically advanced culture cannot flourish without getting better at anticipating the future. That’s why science fiction matters. That’s why scenario planning matters. That’s why complex software simulations that enable us to forecast things like climate change on the scale of decades matter.
And here I want to bring us back to another idea... See more
And here I want to bring us back to another idea... See more
Steven Johnson • Ways of Flourishing
That is why I suggest that people and organizations keep an “impossibility list” - things that their experiments have shown that AI can definitely not do today but which it can almost do. For example, no AI can create a satisfying puzzle or mystery for you to solve, but they are getting closer. When AI models are updated, test them on your impossib... See more
Ethan Mollick • Gradually, then Suddenly: Upon the Threshold
MargaretC added