[Free] Worldbuilding Ai Futures
Learn what’s possible with AI – and build your own 2035 scenario to find your role in it. No technical background needed
Requirements
- You don’t need any technical background in AI to take this course. It is for anyone who is curious about shaping the future for the better.
Description
Most news about AI and the future focuses on fear, but the data tells a different story. Researchers like Hans Rosling and Steven Pinker have shown that global poverty and violence have plummeted while health and life expectancy have climbed. This progress is the result of human choice, science, and technology, not luck.
Applying that same lens to AI is more urgent than ever, because thoughtful visions of a good future with this technology barely exist. Important choices around this technology are being made right now. If we don’t have a clear idea of what we want, the future will be decided by whoever moves the fastest.
This course is for students and young professionals who want to understand and help shape how AI will affect work, governance, and daily life by 2035. You do not need any technical background to participate.
You will learn to use the tools of expert futurists (like scenario planning, stress testing, and backcasting) to build your own future scenario. Through guided activities, you’ll map out a path to a 2035 that is both ambitious and responsible.
By the end of the course, you’ll have:
Your own informed opinion about how you would like AI to shape the future
A 2035 scenario of your own design, grounded in data and technological reality
An understanding of how technologies, human values, and social systems interact
The option to share your vision with our Existential Hope community
Guest contributors include:
Anousheh Ansari – CEO, XPRIZE; First Private Female Astronaut
Helen Toner – Director of Strategy, CSET; Former OpenAI Board Member
Anthony Aguirre – Co-founder, Future of Life Institute
Hannah Ritchie – Lead Researcher, Our World in Data; Author, Not the End of the World
Ada Palmer – Professor of History, University of Chicago; Science Fiction Author
Glen Weyl – Microsoft Research; Founder, RadicalxChange
Christine Peterson – Co-founder, Foresight Institute
Anders Sandberg – Researcher, Institute of Futures Studies
Anton Korinek – University of Virginia; Brookings Institution
Robert Lempert – Senior Scientist, RAND
Gary Ackerman – Threat researcher, University at Albany
Siri Helle – Psychologist and Author
This course is part of the Existential Hope program at Foresight Institute, supported by the Future of Life Institute.
Author(s): Beatrice Erkers
