How We Created A Virtual Workshop To Help A Group Of Brilliant Thinkers Explore 'Positive' Futures Around AI

How We Created A Virtual Workshop To Help A Group Of Brilliant Thinkers Explore 'Positive' Futures Around AI

3 years ago
Anonymous $rH7oE7DjRg

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210220/22093346282/how-we-created-virtual-workshop-to-help-group-brilliant-thinkers-explore-positive-futures-around-ai.shtml

Having spent two and a half decades writing about innovation, one of the things that's most fascinating to me is how little most people can envision how innovation can have a positive effect on our lives. Perhaps it's a lack of imagination -- but, more likely, it's just human nature. Human psychology is wired for loss aversion, and it's much easier to understand all the ways in which technology and innovation can backfire to take away things we appreciate. History, however, tends to show that the positives of many innovations outweigh the negatives, but we're generally terrible at thinking through what those benefits might be.

Part of the reason is just that it's impossible to predict the future. There are just too many variables, and too much randomness. But, part of it might also be our general unwillingness to even try to imagine positive futures. But imagining positive futures is one tool for actually getting us to move in that direction. Even by suggesting what interesting innovations and societal changes might happen can inspire individuals, organizations, institutions, and movements to try to make what was first imagined into reality. And we sure could use a bit of positive thinking these days. This is the story of how we attempted to help create more positive visions of the future -- specifically around artificial intelligence.