Futurists, AI Researchers & Tech Builders - Visions Trade-Offs Ethics

A recurring theme I’ve noticed is that it’s really difficult to imagine the future. It’s easy to dismiss an idea … who would want that? Or decide it’s too complicated; it's something I can think about later. I’ve experienced this throughout my tech career. When I was a student studying computer science, over two decades ago, there were actually people telling me what was coming. I just didn’t have the foresight to understand what it would mean. A friend told me his supervisor had said that, in the future, every phone would have the internet. Another friend, who was really into mobile phones, told me that phones would eventually become like mini computers, with something called “apps” that would let you do things on your phone. One of my friends used machine learning for a university project. Her program had to run all night. My dissertation was about finding the shortest route between two points. Google Maps existed, but I remember it being much more like a digital map. I remember thinking that one day it would probably be able to work out the shortest route for you. Looking back, these things seem obvious. They weren’t obvious to me then. And I think that’s the interesting thing about the future. Even when we’re told what’s coming, it can be incredibly difficult to imagine how profoundly it might change the world around us. And we’re doing it again. Except this time, the stakes feel much higher. I’ve been speaking to people about the future and asking what kind of world they want to live in. They talk about climate change. Wealth inequality. Housing. Job opportunity. Peace. So the question I keep coming back to is: What does a better future for everyone actually look like? I want to speak to the people who are shaping what comes next — the people building, researching and thinking about the future. What are they trying to achieve? What kind of trade-offs are they making, and what kind of ethical questions are they asking themselves? I want to have deep conversations about what’s coming, what it could mean for us, and how we might stir ourselves towards building something better.