"I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart."
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often cited as the first ever work of science fiction. The story is about human mastery over nature, of using arcane technology, and the unforeseen consequences of this pursuit.
I’ve always enjoyed science fiction for how it helps us reflect on the human experience. A good sci-fi story helps us affirm our values and consider both the present and our desired future.
Through my work at Brink, I’ve used stories about the future as a foresighting technique to help people articulate and evaluate the implications of long-term trends and changes, in order to help their strategic thinking.
However, to bring these stories to life (just like Frankenstein’s creation was brought to life), I’ve learned that you can go beyond the text and into the wonderful world of creating tangible things from the future to share today.
Hold this: it’s 2030, and the Arctic ice has melted. What could that mean for our world? Designer Viraj Joshi explored this provocative question by imagining a train ticket from Alaska to Russia, made possible by a newly navigable route across the Arctic. The train ticket was a “thing” from the future, in this case quite similar to what we see in the UK today, but from a moment in time that’s very different.
In my own work with the Frontier Tech Hub, we recently created the Fieldtrip to the Future concept to help UK FCDO staff understand the possible implications of fast-paced technology change for their work.
The first Fieldtrip worked with an FCDO diplomatic team and focused on trends in artificial intelligence. This was an hour-long online session using storytelling methods to immerse people in potential futures, based in the year 2034.
For the session, we created our own ‘artefacts from the future’, speculative objects like fake ads or news bulletins that made the imagined futures feel real. The artefacts engage the senses and offer new perspectives, helping people move beyond abstract ideas to experience how the future might unfold in everyday life.
During the Fieldtrip, in one breakout room we had staff explore a “Human Rights” scenario, where in the year 2034 an AI agent called Diplobot is supporting the drafting of diplomatic resolutions and is trained to be hyper-ethical (with some interesting implications!).
We used ChatGPT to develop Diplobot’s backstory, then built it using Character.AI, an AI platform that lets you talk to custom virtual characters.
We found the most immersive approach was letting participants ask questions and interact with Diplobot directly. It gave people a chance to experience the future first-hand, simply by talking to a character who lived there. I also particularly enjoyed the “reveal” moment where I had asked people what questions they would ask DiploBot if we could… then actually gave it a ring!
Other generative AI tools like DALL-E, MidJourney, and Stable Diffusion can be used to create speculative visuals, such as fictional objects or futuristic product advertisements. They allow facilitators who don’t have a background in visual design to quickly generate immersive content.
From a storytelling standpoint, the rise of Generative AI has been particularly interesting in developing foresight tools, as it has revolutionised the creative process. In many ways, this development is scary, as we don’t really know where it will take us.
However, there is a meta element here too: we are seeing that generative AI is helping us work with scenarios from the future to better anticipate and digest future change.
At Brink, we’re exploring how generative AI can broaden accessibility to foresighting methods, especially those that require speculative storytelling elements.
As well as in immersive storytelling, one way we have used generative AI was to create coherent scenarios based on evidence-backed trends. These trends can come from horizon scanning or similar methodologies, which can themselves be supported by AI tools.
With the trends, we used OpenAI models to articulate underlying drivers and their binary extremes to develop axes of uncertainty, a common way of developing future scenarios. We then used generative AI tools to rapidly flesh out these scenarios and bring to the surface some of the key tensions and implications each of them contained.
When combined with immersive storytelling as part of the Fieldtrip to the Future, this work allowed us to efficiently engage in a strategic foresight workshop with an FCDO team, helping to move beyond abstract ideas and experience how future worlds might unfurl. Participants were better able to understand the implications and tensions within each scenario and evaluate their preferences and priorities for the path ahead.
It’s worth noting that using these tools has implications for data privacy and security, and we avoided using sensitive information in developing the artefacts. Disclaimers were needed for tools like Character.AI, due to high uncertainty about their operation and understanding that they were for educational purposes only.
Nevertheless, the result of the Fieldtrip was that people felt more immersed in potential futures and could relate to each scenario in a visceral way. This can help long-term anticipation, and we saw FCDO diplomatic teams gain confidence in how the future might change and how to be resilient and active in shaping it.
I was excited by how we used new technologies to create and explore these scenarios, but I’m now even more curious about where these tools might take foresighting methods next.
We’re likely to see the space open up. As generative tools become more accessible, more people will be able to build compelling scenarios, faster. That could mean foresighting becomes more routine, and Futures literacy more widespread.
On the other hand, I worry that as these tools get more sophisticated, people will get increasingly deferential, outsourcing too much of the creative and strategic judgement needed for them to be effective. Without a curatorial mindset, we might end up generating futures that are generic, or biased in ways that might not be immediately obvious.
So what do you think? Will these tools help us imagine better futures, or are we at risk of creating our own Frankenstein’s monster?
I’d love to hear from others exploring the same topics. Are you using generative tools in your strategic thinking, and what are you learning from it?
