HUMANITY’S CONSIDERATIONS
Our near future is an interconnected mass of mind-boggling, assumption-challenging, thrill-creating and fear-inducing questions, challenges, opportunities, dilemmas, threats and complications. To try and create a picture, or tell a story, is a common human tool to group and distil the masses of data our brains are unable to store and compute. Of course, artificial intelligence is much better at storing and computing, and potentially could create a more meaningful picture. But whether we want it to is one of the macro questions within our interconnected mass. For now, therefore, a human brain created attempt to distil humanity’s considerations into a picture - with all its limitations - will suffice.
POWER
‘Datacrats’, monopolists and spies! Which institutions, organisations, individuals and machines do we want to grant power to as transformations gather a pace. Should engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs and learning machines decide the advancements that we are comfortable with? How could and should we limit power to manipulate our thoughts and desires in the attention economy? How much recognition and surveillance technology should be controlled by our governments and what should be the limitations of its use? Is the balance of economic power shifting further away from that which is, in some semblance, equitable and transparent?
SOCIETY
Enrichment or isolation? Can we develop a common shared destiny for our species that brings us back together to mutually benefit from (and manage) the transformations in our near future? Can we maintain a sense of community in the face of the disintegration of the high street and the rapid rise in digital and virtual worlds? How can tech transformations meet challenges of demographics, population growth and inequality? As individuals do we want to build personal relationships with voiced domestic companions, and what are the social consequences? How comfortable are we in the creation of digital identifies that exist externally to us?
PLANET
Addressing an existential threat! How can we prioritise deployment of tech to the monitoring, management and reduction of climate change and energy provision? Can we use it to reduce pressure of resources, help protect bio-diversity and prevent pandemic as well?
WORK
A sharp shock to the learn, work, retire cycle! Will human ingenuity create enough new occupations to counter the dramatic elimination of existing jobs by AI and robotics? What role does government, business and charity play in providing a safety net for those displaced and for inevitable periods of transition? How does the education sector need to transform to provide lifelong learning and develop flexibility and adaptability to a career paradigm of periodic reinvention? How as individuals should we face career disorientation and the stresses of change? How much more active do employers need to be in developing the talent they need for the essential jobs of the future?
TECH
Unprecedented opportunity with big ethical questions! How can we keep up with the amazing plethora of tech developments and choices and adapt to their impacts on our daily lives? How much of augmented and virtual reality should we choose to become normal for efficiency and life-enriching gains? In health, do the benefits of biomonitoring overwhelming compensate for the sacrifice of private information, and how far down the biotech advancement line are we comfortable with (biomechanical enhancements, bionic implants from stem cells, cognitive enhancing, disease elimination through nano-robots, gene editing, the re-engineering of life)?