Thread by @randylubin

Earlier today, @mmasnick and I had the pleasure of running a 4-hour workshop on Positive AI Economic Futures for @wef and @CHAI_Berkeley

We're thrilled with how it went – here's an overview with details on the goals, exercises, and output:

The event was part of a broader Positive AI + Economy initiative that will include reports, scenarios, and an @xprize film competition that will build on the workshop’s outputs. weforum.org/agenda/2020/10…

We had ~90 attendees, including top economists, technologists, and sci-fi authors – they were awesome and brought a ton of creativity, energy, and expertise!

We ran 5 highly interactive and collaborative exercises to envision the world after transformational AI remade society. Each exercise was done in breakout groups of 4-6 participants. Here's a quick dive into each one:

Exercise 1 focused on what will be newly abundant in the futures and what scarcities and consequences might ensue.

Here's an example of one of the group submissions:

Exercise 2 had participants creating Metrics Dashboards to guide humanity and then discussing the tradeoffs and unexpected consequences of their chosen metrics. The groups had some great debates and critiques.

Here's a sample dashboard:

Exercise 3 had each group pick a final hurdle (economic, power / political, meaningfulness) for humanity to overcome. The groups then told the story of overcoming those hurdles through a series of news headlines.

The group stories ranged from serious to zany but all were great:

Exercise 4 focused on the new essential institutions, participatory organizations, and social moments that might play a critical role in the future. We had groups do this both before and after a major earthquake.

Groups were very creative in generating future tensions:

Exercise 5, designed by @ruthhickin, zoomed in to the individual level. Participants adopted future personas and held in-character discussions about difficult questions about their obligations to society and finding meaning in a post-work world.

We’re thrilled with how the event turned out and we’ll be sharing the output in the future. Also, keep an eye out for the reports and X-Prize competition next year.

Deep thanks to @Caro_Jeanmaire and @ConorSanchez for bringing us in and being great collaborators on the workshop design!

Also thanks to the dozen facilitators who helped each group stay on track and create great visions of the future!

You can check out Mike's thread for more details and highlights of the experience:

https://twitter.com/mmasnick/status/1339691201365065728

With 5 collaborative exercises and ~90 participants, this was one of our most ambitious workshops / activities so far.

We're thrilled with how it went and are excited to keep exploring the future through storytelling and worldbuilding games!