Futures thinking

“People with certain diseases like retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration slowly lose their eyesight as photoreceptors at the center of the eye degenerate,” said Udo Römer, an engineer whose expertise is in photovoltaics, commonly known as solar panel tech. “It has long been thought that biomedical implants in the retina could... See more

Whatever action I take, walking, eating and excreting, incurs a cost to other lives, whether by killing and eating them directly, or by eating foods that they could otherwise have lived on. The most extreme impact my life has on other species is extinction, not just of their physical presence, but also of their memories, both those acquired within... See more

Optimizing future well-being with artificial intelligence: self-organizing maps (SOMs) for the identification of islands of emotional stability

The present findings also show that it is possible to develop systems that can instantly interpret emotional cues to provide immediate and intuitive feedback in a wide range of situations. This could lead to scalable, cost-efficient applications in various domains where understanding emotional context is crucial, such as therapy and interpersonal... See more

Research has found that strategic foresight has a significant impact on an organisation’s bottom line – those who think about the future could be looking at up to 33% higher profitability and 200% higher market capitalisation within their industries.

Unlike humans, AI can’t flexibly navigate changing environments yet because it does not have a notion of its “self” and what it can do with it.

You can’t really be in favour of both democracy and billionaires, because democracy requires equal opportunity in order to participate, and extreme wealth gives its holders unfathomable advantages with little accountability.

I believe that in nearly every instance where science fiction has successfully ‘predicted’ a turn of events, it’s more true to say that it has inspired that turn of events.

While it’s tempting to play with scenario planning and leave it at the implications, we must not hide behind the data, deck or titles of our roles, protecting us from the vulnerability of getting out there and doing the messy work: making the futures we wish to see.