What kind of future do you want?

Almost every prediction I see for the future is dark and pessimistic. All the jobs will go, the economy will crash, AI will lead to some kind of extinction event, we’re plunging into war. It’s not the kind of stuff that leaves you feeling hopeful. We all know that fear sells and that the media are incentivised to grab our attention, but it’s hard not to feel the pessimism sneaking in.

There are pockets of vision, of course - companies and individuals trying to make the world a better place. These tend to be limited, though, to specific domains and discrete projects. There are patches of light breaking through the oppressive darkness, but those patches haven’t yet been knitted into a quilt. Any holistic forward-looking narrative is grim to say the least.

One reason for this is that we’ve become obsessed with danger - unregulated AI, climate change, geopolitical conflict, economic turmoil. All are valid, and I don’t want to diminish the potential impact of any of these issues. I’m glad that we’re talking more about the future of work or AI safety, for example, because it wasn’t long ago that the noise around these topics was pretty faint. The dangers are real, but if we focus solely on avoiding danger, our view of the future is uninspiring and bleak.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The flipside of the danger is that our ability to build and create things is greater than ever. First, though, we have to decide what kind of future we actually want to create, collectively and individually. We need a coherent, optimistic vision of the future that we can aspire to - one that takes the dangers into account and works around them, but also leads us to the kind of world we can be excited about.

I wouldn’t be the first to point out that, by almost any measure, life today is better than it ever has been.  Hans Rosling famously proved this in his 2018 book Factfulness, and while the world has moved on since its publication, the assertion still holds. If I compare the world today with the one I grew up in during the 90s, we take for granted things that would have been considered unimaginable luxuries then. Near-universal access to information, seamless global communication, and greatly increased life expectancies are wondrous advances. There are issues as well, such as social media’s impact on mental health and wellbeing, but life is better overall than it was then.

So when I look to the future and think about what’s actually possible, given the tools and technology we have and the trajectory of advances, I see that the potential upsides could be enormous. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, wrote about this in his essay Machines of Loving Grace in 2024. While I don’t accept all of his technical assertions, the breadth of potential positive impact is captured well. We have within reach in our lifetime technologies that have the potential to largely eliminate disease, shift the balance of work and leisure, increase the security of the world and even reverse climate change. The key question, therefore, is not what can we do, but what will we do? 

Some things are beyond the scope of an individual, but all positive change starts with a personal, internal conversation. Each of us must decide what we want the future to be like. While we can increasingly do anything, no-one among us can do everything, so we need to make our own individual judgements about where to focus our imagination and positive energies. Picturing the future you actually want is the first, most important, step.

The second is taking action. What can you do or learn today that will take you a little closer to your vision of the future? Who can you connect with, speak to or get in touch with that you think may share your ambitions? Where can you go to begin the process of change? What’s the tiny step that begins the journey to the future for you? Decide, then take it.

Despite what the media would have you believe, we are not powerless. The future is not inevitable, and the world twenty years from now (or fifty, or one hundred) can be better than the one we live in today. But what you do matters. If we only focus on danger, we’ll become anxious, paranoid and cautious. If we open our minds, engage our imaginations and build the future we want, the possibilities are incredible.

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