Future Scenario Project
You have spent this module learning to think carefully about AI's future: how forecasting works, the range of possible outcomes, how to hold optimism and caution together, what stays the same, how to prepare, and what your generation's role will be. Now it is time to put that thinking together into something concrete — a full scenario, authored by you.
What a Good Scenario Looks Like
A scenario is not a prediction that claims to know the future. It is a detailed, internally consistent story of one plausible way the future could unfold. The best scenarios share several qualities. They are specific — they name places, institutions, technologies, and people (fictional or real). They are internally consistent — the causes lead logically to the effects. They acknowledge uncertainty — they identify where things could have gone differently. And they are useful — someone reading the scenario comes away thinking differently about the present and what choices it implies. A scenario is also not just optimistic or pessimistic. The most useful scenarios are mixed — they show how the same development can be beneficial in some dimensions and harmful in others, just as the real world works.
A prediction says: this will happen. A scenario says: if these conditions hold, here is what a plausible unfolding looks like — and here is what we can learn from imagining it. Scenarios do not have to be right. They have to be coherent, specific, and illuminating.
The Building Blocks of Your Scenario
Your scenario should include four elements. First, a setting: a specific time (how far in the future?), place (a city, a school, a country, the world?), and context (what major AI developments have already occurred by the time your scenario opens?). Second, a central development: what specific AI capability, deployment, or event is at the heart of your scenario? Third, consequences: what happens as a result — for individuals, for communities, for society? Be specific and multilayered. Fourth, a tension: every good scenario has a moment where things could go better or worse depending on choices made — what is the key decision point in yours?
Draw from what you have learned across this module. The four scenarios from Lesson 3 are starting points, not limits. Look at trends you read about in Lesson 2. Think about the human needs from Lesson 5 and how your scenario affects them. Use the backcasting method from Lesson 8 in reverse — start now and project forward.
Build and Present Your AI Future Scenario
- PART ONE: PLAN (complete before writing)
- Step 1: Choose a time horizon. How far in the future is your scenario? (10 years? 25 years? 50 years?) Write down your choice and one sentence explaining why you chose it.
- Step 2: Choose a focus. What domain does your scenario center on? Options include: education, healthcare, creative arts, climate and energy, work and employment, governance and democracy, warfare and security, or another area you choose.
- Step 3: Identify the core AI development in your scenario. What capability or deployment is central? Be specific — not just AI is everywhere but something like: AI systems can now conduct real-time personalized therapy sessions at the quality of trained human therapists, and they are available for free.
- Step 4: Choose a type. Is your scenario broadly beneficial, concentrated and unequal, rapidly disruptive, or something that mixes elements? You do not have to choose one from the module list — you can design your own.
- PART TWO: WRITE (the scenario itself, 400-600 words)
- Step 5: Open with a scene. Drop the reader into a specific moment in your future world — one person, one day, one situation. Make it vivid and concrete.
- Step 6: Zoom out. After the scene, explain the larger context: what developments led to this world? What changed and when?
- Step 7: Show the tension. What is the central challenge or decision point in your scenario? Who has power? Who does not? What could make things better or worse?
- Step 8: End with an implication. What does your scenario suggest about decisions being made today? What would have to be different right now for your scenario to turn out better?
- PART THREE: PRESENT (share with your class or a small group)
- Step 9: Present your scenario in 3-4 minutes. Start with the vivid scene, explain the context, and end with your implication for today.
- Step 10: After presenting, answer this question from your audience: What is the one thing someone could do today — realistically — to push toward a better version of your scenario?
- EVALUATION: Your scenario will be evaluated on four things — specificity (is it concrete?), internal consistency (do the causes lead logically to effects?), honesty (does it acknowledge real complexity, not just optimism or doom?), and implication (does it connect to present choices?).
Why do careful thinkers build several different scenarios of the future instead of making one single prediction?
What makes a future scenario genuinely useful rather than just a fantasy?