Futurists and Historians (10)
Fear: Black Mirror delves into the unintended consequences of technology; what worries me is life imitating art and art imitating life. Even with our intellectual capacity to envision conflicts and moral and ethical dilemmas, we continue to make short-sighted decisions about power, resources, and energy that are inequitable and unsustainable. When we act with intellect without empathy, innovation without self awareness, power without discernment or wisdom, then we let ourselves be slaves to our egos.Hope: Our ability to imagine a new future, to conceptualize and explore new truths. Artists are trained to visualize original ideas, create discourse that can lead us with creativity. It is our time to examine our economic, political, and religious systems; do these systems work for all people? If not, how do we use an intersectional praxis to create solutions that are harmonious, thoughtful, and filled with empathy and connection?“Climate change, an apparently insane American president, and a set of British politicians that want to turn the UK into an island that emerges from the mist every 100 years”
Fear: The trend, evident in the “Western world,” toward a senile society of sedated, reasonable, boring, politically correct zombies.“We will come to see that artificial intelligence reflects our human shortcomings’
Computer Scientists (11)
Fear: As we develop algorithmic representations [in AI] that mimic the way we think, we end up passing off [to future generations] some of the most flawed parts of the ways we as human beings make judgements. Algorithmic bias is a real problem in AI right now that can be corrupted by the same sorts of bias the plague the human experience. Conscious and unconscious hatred, contempt, or even casual stereotyping held in the mind of a developer can easily make its way into a code base now. As we offload our thinking into machines, these flaws in thinking become endlessly perpetuated and increasingly unchallenged by future generations.“Technology can bring us closer together, enhance our relationships, and connect us to friends old and new. Tech won’t replace our relationships; it will enhance them”
Fear: The entirety of our computing infrastructure, including all of our finance and health systems, is an insecure, untrustworthy mess."We have the recipe for success as a species"
Fine Artists and Writers (7)
Fear: Human apathy.Hope: Human ingenuity.—Alexandra Cousteau, explorer, environmental activist, and filmmaker, GermanyFear: Plastic. Its beauty when shaped into colorful objects, and our need for these objects for everything from storing food to medical devices, is now built into how our world works, preventing us from dealing responsibly with plastic’s devastation of waterways, birds, and our future.Hope: Music. One sound and one silence can encompass and catalyze change in the world.—Nina Eidsheim, musicologist at the University of California, Los Angeles and author of Sensing Sound and The Race of SoundFear:👥👥👥👥 🔁 🅾️🦎 ◀️ ❌❌, ⌛️⏳⌛️⏳, 🚫 🆕 ➕ 🤔🍺 💡💡 🏌️ ©️ 🅾️-👣️-♑ ☮️ 🔛 🌍🌎🌏.Translation: Humanities’ repetition of past mistakes, time after time, prohibit new and thoughtful ideas for co-existing in peace on Earth.“What if, instead of seeking hope, we seek meaning?”
Lawyers and Political Scientists (8)
Fear: The middle has shifted so far to the right, and it will be extraordinarily hard to re-center ourselves from the national and global damage wrought by the Trump regime and its allies.Hope: Youth movements. Young people are reinventing activism and democracy, finding radical new ways to understand and tackle long-standing injustices.—Caroline Bettinger-López, law professor and director of the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Miami School of LawFear: A dark age of backlash and conflict against the mixing of different peoples that will happen as climate change alters the Earth and accelerates migration.“A dark age of backlash and conflict against the mixing of different peoples that will happen as climate change alters the Earth and accelerates migration”
Fear: Digital technologies are an existential threat to the business of journalism as we knew it in the 20th century, and when combined with immense political pressure on independent media and much of the infrastructure of free expression could point to a dark place when it comes to quality information and information equality.“Will we be zombified by artificial intelligence that we have unwittingly programmed to evolve to manipulate us?”
Humanities and Social Scientists (15)
“The future doesn’t need humans”
Fear: The impact of climate change on our society, the world, and our children, and their children. If we cannot unify around the climate crisis now, will we be able to during climate-caused displacement and mass migration, and with the political polarization we see in many countries?“Civilization‘s end has been announced so often, but happened rather rarely. So, I‘m honestly not too alarmed about the future”
Fear: So many things seem to be beyond our control: guns in schools, inequality, proliferation of fake news, addiction, divisive rhetoric, hatred. I worry that because the problems are so big, we will throw up our metaphorical hands and stop trying.Hope: Young people. They are committed, engaged, inclusive, and sensible (for the most part).“Building the future relies in many ways on a deep understanding of the past”
Biologists and Environmental Scientists (18)
Fear: Consider communication 30 years ago (lots of human-to-human, some phone), 20 years ago (still quite a lot of human to human, some cell phones), and now (vast majority through some type of screen). Where does that projection takes us?Hope: Pendular cycles (thesis, antithesis, and synthesis) are becoming shorter and shorter and my hope is that the newer generations will learn a lot faster than we did from history.—Walter E. Baethgen, director of the Regional and Sectoral Research Program and leader for Latin America and the Caribbean in the IRI at the Earth Institute, Columbia University“One percent of the scientific literature comes from the African continent—why? Africa is the most innovative place I have ever been”
Fear: The world continuing to exclude diversity and inclusion from science and technology. One percent of the scientific literature comes from the African continent—why? Africa is the most innovative place I have ever been. We have to get constant power, internet, and shipping to the scientific labs in low-resourced countries. I worry we aren’t doing this fast enough.Hope: African scientists transforming the world one massive problem at a time by using the highest tech science and innovation to solve problems. Hunger will end when science becomes a diverse, inclusive place—and then all the other massive challenges will fall too.—Laura Boykin, computational biologist and head of Boykin Lab at the University of Western AustraliaFear: Climate change. Temperatures are rising faster today than during many of the great extinctions and upheavals of Earth history, and the consequences are going to be severe. I have no doubt the Earth will survive, and all sorts of living things will endure, but will humans be able to cope as the world we‘re used to rapidly changes?“We are still in time to realize that we could be the salvation, instead of the destroyer, of our planet‘s life”
Fear: The inability of people to connect with one another. We are becoming so polarized and divided that finding solutions to common problems like climate change is beginning to feel impossible. People are not willing to listen, trust experts, or change their opinion. Instead we are having to argue if facts are facts.Hope: The activity of young people and the understanding of needing to change behavior and shift towards an action-based climate where people are held accountable.—Danielle L. Dixson, assistant professor of marine bioscience at the University of DelawareFear: The unprecedented human-caused loss of biodiversity and ecosystems that, combined with the anthropogenic climate change, is threatening the delicate dynamical equilibrium of Gaia, our living planet. If we do not immediately modify our unsustainable lifestyle, we would be the first and, probably, the only case of a self-extinguished species.“Hope is a dangerous word. It’s what we do when we feel we’ve lost control or are powerless to do anything more”
Fear: Our society will fail to heed the many warnings already at hand and fail to remember the important lessons we learned regarding various environmental crises. Some still believe more data and facts will save us, but if climate change (and psychology research) has taught us anything, it’s that more facts do not change people’s minds/behaviour. Technology also will not save us; it’s what got us into trouble in the first place.“Humans are adaptable. That‘s how we got to where we are now”
Mathematicians and Physicists (8)
Fear: Policy-makers will use ideological beliefs rather than evidence-based reasoning in decision-making.Hope: Social mobilization and open dissemination and sharing of information that social media facilitates.—Davina Durgana, international human rights statistician, USAFear: Climate change and the return of fascism, fueling each other.Hope: Women, as they rise and claim their share of power and responsibility.“Climate change and the return of fascism, fueling each other”
Fear: We are in a period in which technological changes are occurring more rapidly than our society can adapt. Machines will be able to perform many of the tasks now performed by people, leading to the question of what the people thereby displaced will do. Many of the ethical decisions that these machines will make will be hidden from view in the algorithms that run them.“We repeatedly witness the challenges to formulating a stable system of governance that works towards the long-term improvement of everyone and that won‘t be derailed by short-term interests of the powerful or wealthy”
Medical Scientists (8)
“It increasingly feels like we’re on a collision course with big forces that we truly do not understand”
Space Scientists and Aerospace Engineers (19)
Fear: Short-term thinking. Humans are creating existential problems for our species and planet that manifest on timescales of hundreds or thousands of years. But individuals, companies, and governments think and plan for next quarter, next year, or at most, our own lifetimes.Hope: The universe is large enough that somewhere in it there may be truly intelligent life.—Matthew Colless, director of the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University“Not only the lack of science literacy in our society, but the glorification of it”
Fear: Global nuclear conflict and the possibility of nuclear winter. We have gotten complacent about nuclear warfare and the potential for global catastrophic annihilation.Hope: Carbon sequestration technology. It‘s not where it needs to be yet, but is making dramatic improvements in terms of cost and viability. Reversing the impact of climate change and the mass migrations it will cause requires us to not just curb our emissions but to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and bury it back into rocks.—Sarah Rugheimer, astronomer, astrobiologist, and Glasstone research fellow at the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department at the University of OxfordFear: Not much. I am an optimist about the future of humanity and life on our planet and beyond.Hope: The developments in technology in the past 50 years show how creative humanity can be. I am optimistic that we will be better off, and better integrated, in the 22nd century, even if we do not all live on the same planet.—Dimitar D. Sasselov, Phillips Professor of Astronomy and director of the Origins of Life Initiative at Harvard UniversityFear: AI’s implications for society and the economy, and its potential to be misused in many ways. I don’t think anyone understands the threats AI will pose.Hope: The basic goodness, inquisitiveness, and inventiveness of humanity. We don’t always do things the best way, but in the large our species has at its core a genuine goodness and through that we’ve made a lot of progress in how we manage both ourselves and our planet.—Alan Stern, planetary scientist, principal investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto, and chief scientist at Moon ExpressFear: Bias creeping in to all of society: We have lost our ability to question and fight for the truth. I’m worried about the number of people we’re losing in scientific research because they’re bored of archaic policies designed to protect white men professors and frustrated by academia’s inefficiency and glacial pace of change.Hope: Young people and the power of networks. They’re questioning dated policy, challenging stereotypes, and teaching all of us a lesson in speaking out for what is right.—Jess Wade, physicist at the Blackett Laboratory at Imperial College LondonFear: Neoliberal capitalism‘s seemingly inexorable seep into every aspect of human existence.Hope: Teenagers.—Lucianne Walkowicz, Baruch S. Blumberg Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress and astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago“We will be better off, and better integrated, in the 22nd century, even if we do not all live on the same planet”