Constructing Possible Futures... Now.
Insights from my participation in Aspen Digital's 2023 Foresight Group
I have long had a soft spot for scenario analysis, but also a heavy dose of skepticism as unpredictable the future always is. And it was with both that I joined what ended up being one of the most interesting and provocative gatherings I have attended.
In fact, the lesson, if not irony, escaped none of us as we wrapped the extraordinary first 2023 Aspen Foresight gathering last winter. At my prodding, we put two of our future scenarios anonymously into what was then ChatGPT3. All participants were impressed that, in substance and in prose, the output pretty much matched and was even additive to our own.
In case anyone missed the point Siri read us the AI results.
For a few of us, this was our first encounter with generative AI. And it was a humbling reminder that examining deep into the future (we were tasked to look out impossibly 20 years) can naggingly be set off course by the present. As the saying goes, technological revolutions, while often overestimated in the short run, are invariably underestimated in the long run.
There is nothing new here. A supposed 1894 publication in The Times said, "In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure." The automobile changed all that, fortunately, within a couple of decades.
Aspen Digital was set up to “envision a future where digital and information ecosystems empower communities and strengthen democracy.” It could not have found a better or more energetic leader than Vivian Schiller, a rare veteran of the junction among journalism, media and technology. Her world class team gathered, moderated and pushed over a dozen leaders with expertise in autonomous vehicles, venture capital, digital policy making, diplomacy, migration, health, financial inclusion, education and more. We came with global experience from the US, Canada, Mexico, El Salvador, Haiti, Latin America more broadly, The Philippines, India, The Middle East, Europe and beyond. Supported by the global enterprise software juggernaut Autodesk, their CEO Andrew Anagnost and his team were among the most active and interesting participants.
First in America and six months later in Singapore we pushed deeply into two themes. The first we explored were the ramifications of bridging demographic divisions, especially among the increasing and rapidly aging populations of so many powerful nations and the youth bulges especially in rising economies. The second, and related, we explored the drivers and potential scenarios of rising geopolitical conflict and significant weather shifts.
The goal was not to be prophetic or to offer paths and solutions but to provoke what is seemingly impossible in this era of hashtags and political expedience: to stop, breathe, reflect, and look longer term.
We settled on eight scenarios, hardly because they are the only ones, but because they are both significant and concretely supported by trends in motion today.
1) Energy production is moving away from fossil fuels – with enormous geopolitical ramifications for historically fossil fuel-rich nations and other countries that have deposits of newly desirable materials for alternative fuel and requisite new technology. What tradeoffs will this cause and require?
2) Digital identities and biometrics are becoming more widespread - from fingerprint to voice and audio, to face geometry, and more has led to widespread adoption of biometric identification, even for mundane activities like unlocking a phone or entering a building. What will this mean not only for the obvious and ongoing privacy concerns, but a potentially even tech-initiated underclass of undocumented people who have little access to the tools of the 21st century and cannot participate in society and the economy?
3) Private actors are becoming more indistinguishable from states – where, in fact, international enterprises (non and for profit) increasingly shape regulations and policies, deepen industrial policies globally, act, in fact, like nations in their own right. What will be the best public private roles, partnerships and engagement, where will goals align (e.g., fighting disease) but also be in conflict?
4) AI models are enabling new ways of interacting with information and each other at a staggering increased velocity – this will retool the way people and institutions think about every element of data and human interaction. What are the core issues, opportunities, concerns over time in our societies, the ramifications for global interconnectivity, and how to think about new interspecies understanding and ramifications of new, even jarring, insight?
5) Reactionary immigration policies will continue to affect migration – even as global travel resumed, wealthier countries have tightened immigration policies both for substantive and nationalistic political aims. Will this affect countries with aging populations compound their challenges by not letting in new generations, and how will remote work expectations alter our calculus? Will certain nations welcoming immigration outperform, more closed fall behind?
6) People exposed to global news and social media will experience “crisis fatigue” – the deluge of information not only makes it difficult to process and prioritize opinion but compels short term decision making and incentives and less sense of urgency where it may be required. What opportunities will this create for governments that increasingly will control information flows, restrict access to information beyond their borders, and not only fracture global information but open doors for ever better and convincing inaccurate text, audio, photos, and video?
7) People are living and working ever longer – the average adult life expectancy around the world has risen by ten years in recent decades and will accelerate with the workforce working longer. What does it mean, both in governments and corporations, when older people who hold power take longer to step down and younger people may have to look outside of traditional structures for leadership opportunities? What greater generational disconnects in the economy may come?
8) AI tools are dehumanizing, and progressively making impersonal, conflict - Generative AI is lowering the barriers to creating synthetic media like deepfake videos while other AI capabilities have made it easier to weaponize autonomous vehicles which also making it more difficult to accurately attribute violence. What are the ramifications of increasing individuals and operations have access to relatively anonymous weapons? What scenarios of backlash against tech and more attempts to regulate upstream inputs like battery and circuit materials might come?
Groups like Aspen, at their best, compel leaders driven by their inboxes to think about the ramifications of where they are marching – to not sleepwalk to outcomes, but ask us what it is we are hoping to achieve.
This exercise was at its best, and hopeful, but also a start. Its more detailed learning will certainly be shared throughout the business and political communities Aspen so successfully convenes. But personally, I look forward to reconnecting with this team not only for how these issues evolve but which new ones arise.