Results from the Real-Time Delphi on government actions to address issues in the Work/Technology 2050 Scenarios

You are welcome to share the results of the Government and Governance Real-Time Delphi that assessed 22 long-range actions to address future work-technology dynamics with relevant government agencies, thought leaders and media in your country.

The top five most effective actions rated by the international panel were:

• Establish a national independent (as much as possible) technology forecasting and assessment agency to inform legislative, judicial, and executive functions of government about future technology and their impacts (a government Agency for the Future).
• The government, employers, and the labor unions should cooperate to create lifelong learning models including forecasts of future skills requirements.

• Study how to prevent future conflict between technologically augmented humans (via, AI, genetics, electronics or other means) and non-augmented citizens.

• Training programs for politicians before governing and prototype governance methodologies.

• By 2050 introduce a global system for resource sharing (all kinds: scientific knowledge, technology, labor).

For each of the 22 suggested actions, the international expert panel was asked:

• If implemented, how effective could this be in improving our long-range work-technology prospects by the year 2050?
• How feasible is it to implement this suggestion (in enough time to have a substantial effect by 2050)?
• Additional comments?

Over the next few weeks, you will receive results of the four other RTDelphi studies (government, business/labor, culture, and S&T) that will be part of the forthcoming Future Work/Technology 2050 report.

The Future Work/Technology 2050 study has five phases:

• Literature and research review to find what questions that were not asked or poorly answered as input to our international Real-Time Delphi survey.

• Over 300 futurists, AI and other technology professionals, economists, and other related experts from over 45 countries shared what should be considered in the construction of alternative future work/tech scenarios.

• Three Work/Technology 2050 Global Scenarios drafts were written and reviewed by over 450 futurists and others via three Real-Time Delphi questionnaires: It’s Complicated – A Mixed Bag; Political/Economic Turmoil – Future Despair; and If Humans Were Free – the Self-Actualization Economy.

• These three scenarios (each about ten pages) were used as inputs to workshops in 20 countries to identify long-range strategies to address the issues raised in these detailed scenarios.

• The suggestions were distilled and grouped for relevance to education & learning; government & governance; business & labor; culture & arts; and science & technology and assessed by separate international Real-Time Delphi expert panels.

Workshop participants suggested over 250 actions via 30 workshops conducted in 20 countries (full text will be available in the final report’s annex). The 22 actions suggested below were distilled from the workshops and scenarios for their relevance to education and learning. They were then assessed by an international panel of 121 participants from 43 countries using a Real-Time Delphi (an online expert judgment assessment tool).

A distillation of the panel’s comments on each action gives a rich insight into what we should do and factors to consider in their implementation. Enclosed at the end is a distillation of an additional -26 actions suggested by the international panels.

Best regards,

Jerome Glenn

Co-Founder and CEO

  Actions to Address Issues Raised in the Work/Technology 2050 Global Scenarios

Government and Governance

Suggested Action 1: Establish a national independent (as much as possible) technology forecasting and assessment agency to inform legislative, judicial, and executive functions of government about future technology and their impacts (a government Agency for the Future).

1.1 If implemented, how effective could this be in improving our long-range work-technology prospects by the year 2050?

It could assist decision-makers in becoming familiar with new, emerging, and future technologies for more timely, relevant, and appropriate policy and legislation; could provide the necessary long-term view to compensate for the shortsightedness of politicians; China, Finland, South Korea, UK, Dubai, EC, and ASEAN are examples how long-term planning helped accelerate progress; very effective if long-term funding is guaranteed with exceptional non-political leadership and staff; it will distort the innovation landscape and will be subject to heavy lobbying; Finland’s Parliamentary Committee for the Future does not allocate money (helps avoid political lobbying) and Members are the full range of political parties giving it continuity of impact as governments change; have formal connection to the policy process; access to less biased information by those who set policy can only be a positive development.

1.2 How feasible is it to implement this suggestion, (in enough time to have a substantial effect by 2050)?

Easy to implement if it is well presented to the legislature; implementation needs to happen soon to have the desired impact; quite feasible if it has a small infrastructure, long-term funding commitment, and isolated from political lobbying; play in a kind of facilitator role connecting dispersed expertise; political short-termers will ignore its output, leaving it at the bottom of the institutional pecking order; the tech sector is having difficulty creating global standards and they are deeply familiar with the issues. A government agency would face the challenge of not reaching a high enough level of understanding to effect change in time; it should not be difficult as some countries have already done this.

1.3 General comments:

The agency should have a formal role in preparing or commenting on the government’s technology policy; effective if part of a broader program that promotes the value of long-range planning and foresight in all aspects of life; critical in order to give society heads up to adjust to the fast pace of change; it should be a decentralized network to be effective; use collaborative software like Delphi to take advantage of the enthusiasts and experts; the Agency of the Future could be the face of the government in international fora on future technology and their impacts on the world; be open to input from the university and private sectors; its feasibility and effectiveness depend on political will and openness of political leadership to having their assumptions and policies challenged on an on-going basis; every agency of the government should have an Office of the Future to integrate it with other agencies; this could be very useful; technology is like a fire on the horizon, destroying what’s in its path, we are currently totally unprepared for what’s headed our way.

Better to have a European Technology Forecasting and Assessment agency (ETFA), instead of national agencies: the European agency would be more capable by pooling EU-wide resources and be more attractive to talented researchers, and would benefit those member states that lack the resources for such a national agency and national policy units could incorporate the work of ETFA; the downside of a European agency is that it takes much longer to set up and activate compared to a national one; even if the national technology foresight agencies are established, they must be complemented by an EU institution.

A series of NBIC (Nanotech, Biotech, Infotech, Cognotech) convergence conferences in the US were aimed in this direction, but it became clear that an “independent” but functional entity in this context was probably unrealistic; the declining role of advisory bodies in politics would lead to limited impacts; if the group were perceived to have an impact, its members might be lobbied or corrupted, yet I am convinced that only independent forecasting institutions can support a better understanding of the future world; not clear why independent agency is needed since most countries have a ministry of science and education/or technology, should be part of the Ministry of Labor; much work is needed in emerging markets to show benefits of such an agency’s impact.

Suggested action 2: Create international standards for artificial narrow intelligence and general intelligence and a governance system to enforce them (maybe similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency – IAEA).

2.1 How effective?

As the entry barriers to AI research are much lower than nuclear energy, the standards could serve as a useful guiding point but will not be enforced; we don’t know enough about AI to work out how feasible narrow vs general AI is, never mind writing guidelines or standards for it, but I suspect by 2050 we WILL know enough, but it will be a bit late by then; it will be difficult but at least a discussion concerning those rules is highly important to start soon; will it regulate development or deployment of AI? Will it be concerned with intra-country use of nationally-developed AI? Will it monitor impact, given that causal attribution is oftentimes extremely difficult, or will it be restricted to the functional features of the AIs? Will the system rely on voluntary disclosure? Will it include a mechanism of “locking in” the features/parameters of the AI, thus ensuring that only the certified version is deployed? Innovation should be let alone as there is a danger that setting standards prematurely could hinder advancement; imagine the world today, if there were no atomic energy standards and no IAEA; many leaders from Elon Musk to Henry Kissinger have called for some version of this; computer programs aren’t hazardous industrial installations; these cases aren’t comparable.

2.2 How feasible?

Establishing international regulatory bodies is a protracted process, requiring the signatory parties to relinquish some of their sovereignty and convergence of the interests of key actors and support; given the potential strategic benefits of unrestricted AI development, countries have lots of incentives to resist and oppose such an institution; if the international organism is established, with the necessary capabilities, countries might not join; if they join, they might conceal their capabilities and projects (see the case of IAEA inspections in Iraq). In other words, such a project is difficult to launch and especially to complete, since it can be thwarted; there is little likelihood that such controlling standards could be effectively monitored in close to 200 sovereign states even if such standards were feasible.

2.3 General comments:

The value of a global agreement on AI is clear, but It might take a Hiroshima-scale AI disaster to induce cooperation similar to the IAEA; narrow AI is more urgent—we have a clearer idea of what it looks like and more confidence that it will impact human work and labor, but general AI is still largely hypothetical, and unless the standards are heavily informed by computer science, psychology, and cognitive science, are likely to be based on faulty assumptions; the goal is laudable, and should serve as a major step forward in improving long-range technology-work prospects; it should be easier to develop international consensus on an agency advancing the scope/role of artificial intelligence than IAEA; governments need to own the need for such standards; agreements and standards will have to be constantly tweaked as we learn more; define “narrow” and “general” artificial intelligence, as would be applied to legally enforceable boundaries of compliance; AI today is not what it will be five years from now, let alone by 2050; definition of what constitutes currently defined categories of “AI” becomes ever more blurred; any attempt to encapsulate such variations of AI definitions by current standards would likely be seen as quaint, even comical by 2050; rely more on self-organization rather than attempt to control what isn’t known; quantum computing nodes and real-time quantum networks are poised to radically change what we currently recognize as “AI”; this proposal creates multiple logical inconsistencies and paradoxes – who will decide about the borderline – human intelligence; geopolitical tensions makes this very difficult; this is really necessary in order to prevent unknown underrated effects; this will be a slow, clumsy, and politically influenced process bent on fulfilling various agendas, evermore out of sync with the accelerating pace of AI evolution in its myriad emergent forms; we must deal with entrepreneurial freedom and market management in this regard, it is probable that the agency is useful to set the limits of the development, so as not to violate the systems of life or culture of the different peoples; nice to have – but not critical until existential issues arise; it is very important to establish agreed international standards so that AI can develop for the benefit of humanity, we need standards to govern malicious AI and development of AI in weapons systems. WTO is a better example since IAEA has no enforcement capabilities, yet WTO membership is voluntary.

Suggested action 3: Develop a system of positive and negative lead indicators and models to assess if we are going in a good or bad direction, giving time to adjust as needed (national State of the Future Index).

3.1 How effective?

This would highlight issues that could engender public activism and thus affect government and private sector action; it will be very useful but it is necessary to develop such system for every country; some of this does already exists with the State of the Future indicators, and a similarly balanced approach of economic, environmental, cultural and other indicators will need to be part of the set; an abstract indicator not would carry much weight unless indicators are accepted across the political spectrum and very concrete; many resist anything that could be measured that might make them look bad and not align with preset priorities; The notion of good or bad direction needs much more than indicators; there is not good or bad direction but it could inform about the main concerns about the future.

3.2 How feasible?

Mainstreaming these leading indicators will go a long way towards getting them used; the State of the Future is gaining prominence and could it serve as part of the means for developing and disseminating and reporting on these indicators; the key issue, and the most demanding task, is the identification of the indicators – we currently lack a coherent vision – let alone a theory – of the future, one that would allow us to identify and prioritize the aspects we would like to seek, respectively to avoid; statistical offices are already experimenting with now-coasting, so they are increasingly open to forecasting; it is not easy to construct valid indicators – in the first stage, it is more important to collect weak signals/news concerning the use of the AI.

3.3 General comments:

Researches and scientists are saying that humanity needs alternative indicators to GDP; measurable indicators are very important to understand systemic long-term development, with respect to technological development & work, it would be challenging to establish what is good and what is bad technological development, and that assessment is also likely to change between now and 2050; rational must show how the indicators will improve understanding; the challenge is focusing on the right indicators and on getting everyone on the same page, consensus on indicators would require strong leadership across industry and government; a “national State of the Future index” would have to include extra-national lead-indicators and trends that affect national/local conditions from the outside; interesting tool to understand change; urgently required; could show what adjustments are needed; serve as a mechanism for providing feedback and prospecting for developing future strategies; as innovations and other changes occur over the years the indicators will have to be adjusted; this would not only benefit from applied AI, it likely will be irreversibly required; our capacity for developing an effective modelling mechanism as described is already beyond the range of “traditional” human techniques; some kind of systematic process will be needed to sift through and keep the reflection/monitoring process going; what about emerging properties, meaning of such norms, and impartiality; avoid assessment of indicators for being “good” or “bad,” this is always a question of stakeholder perspective; absolutely fundamental for the countries to develop their National SOFIs, only then they’d be in a position to develop a comprehensive understanding around what constitutes towards good or bad; when indicators become political they no longer measure what they were intended to measure.

Suggested action 4: Create public/private expert/citizen accessible national collective intelligence system for early alerts to problems and opportunities with ongoing emergent strategic analysis, making it easier for the public to participate in decisionmaking.

4.1 How effective?

It’s likely to be the next development from polls and focus groups as politicians strive to gain a competitive advantage over which issues to pursue; as valuable as all the services provided by Google; could help to inform decision makers to take some risk; being informed by alerts about problems and opportunities could train citizens to form their own critical thinking; it is very desirable, and wouldn’t this be an extension of what a number of groups including The Millennium Project and NSA are already trying to do; the challenge is to get it used enough to serve its intended purposes in practice; this kind of system can be important if it focused on weak signals or wild cards. A possibility is the Radical Technology Inquirer tool successfully implemented since 2013 in the Committee for the Future of the Finnish Parliament. Its implementation on the EU level started with the just ended RIBRI project of the EU Commission. This tool can also be a way towards a Futures Map of various scenarios related to AI.

4.2 How feasible?

This needs a concerted public awareness campaign about the need for it, so that the public would demand it of their politicians; it is strongly desirable, however limitations are at the meta-level; there will be a growing need from the political system to actively seek information about voters – as psychometrics backfires, there will be a realization that people actually want to share that information; it is not too difficult to construct a continuously developing Futures Map possibly using a tool like the Radical Technology Inquirer; objectivity may be a problem; doubtful that public or legislature would support expenditures to develop such a system; feasible but may be lacking of quality.

4.3 General comments:

That kind of system might be a new form of democracy, like liquid democracy looking for a global consensus; it empowers rather than restricts and need not be perfectly implemented to be effective; a collective intelligence system is a matter of process design, not technology; participatory activities for raising awareness of opportunities and challenges and reflexive policy making are very, very, important and should be implemented in different policy fields; assemble systems already in operation like NSA, Google, Facebook, Rand, Pew, etc., and somehow link them into a citizen accessible collective intelligence system with early alerts; isn’t this the role of think tanks around the world, but some may not link/integrate their information gathering broadly enough to allow for appropriate strategic analysis; would definitely need an exceptional moderator; benefits of such systems needs to be effectively communicated beyond the technical aspects, as few can grasp the fullness of using such an approach; the appeal of participating in such thoughtful decisions will be limited to the elite few with spare time and energy to read and think. the perceived “nerd” nature of the contributors may limit its mainstreaming and influence; valuable as part of a general program promoting foresight as by itself it could be easily ignored or not taken seriously by government leaders or the general public; the challenge will be the inclusiveness and boundaries of such systems; how to handle information overflow, assigning meaning, and freedom of speech vs. protection and privacy; requires a previous consensus about “problems/opportunities;” follow the UN MDGs.

To some extent this exists already in informal social media communities favored by experts, researchers, primarily hired by corporations “listen” to the dialogue and mine it to extract themes and patterns. It makes sense to foster the growth of these communities and to build more; public participation is always good idea; what requirements for citizen participation; seeking a medium consensus is the weakness in this approach; the public is not effective in self-governance, what is the level of representation in such a system; the public cannot and should not participate in decision-making as the decisions were made by electing their governors; requires inclusion of natural security systems for policy planning and review to be included; In the long term, it will certainly have a social learning and profound development effect, but in the short term this may create fear, insecurity, and complex tensions and demands on government.

 Suggested action 5: Establish national and international liability and regulatory framework for unique microbes and new lifeforms created by synthetic biology.

5.1 How effective?

This may improve substantial developments in this new field but how much of this would open opportunities for large numbers of workers is an open question; the dangers of misused synthetic biology are potentially as bad as one can imagine; needed in order to protect future life from being overcome with new microbes and life forms antithetic to human survival; this would provide important opportunities to plan, review and assess ongoing work; having this framework is essential from ethical and biosafety viewpoints; it will be necessary but not sufficient to address the problems given low entry barriers; researchers in this field are very aware of the issues, but few outside understand the scope of the problems.

5.2 How feasible?

The USA-Europe dispute over GMOs shows how difficult this could be, yet the fear of the unknown consequences of the synthetic biology could stimulate a higher acceptance of is such measures; an acceptance of an international framework would require a response to a clear danger or a worldwide disaster with clear and unambiguous attribution; even under these conditions, the organized interests might fight back vigorously quash or water down regulations; the impact of liability and regulatory frameworks requires strong and reliable enforcement mechanisms; could be an extension of national and WTO food, materials, etc. standards; align national and international liability and standards; unique regulatory difficulties since a synthetic organism can be created in one’s home and is easy for intentional or inadvertent transmission of microbes and other life forms across borders; there is not as much attention paid to synthetic biology as with artificial intelligence, so it will take more effort to get this done.

5.3 General comments:

Such agreements are definitely needed, but will require new technical methodologies to assign liability and ways to address moral, ethical, as well as health, and social aspects of this technology; the very nature of legal frameworks will have to change to address advances in biotechnology, digital technology and AI-based interventions; these agreements would be vastly different from the kind of frameworks that we know today; since biological entities are not static, nor are their interactions with surrounding environments or ecosystems, they mutate, evolve, and migrate into unexpected areas of existence which makes definition of exactly what threshold boundary does the potential chain of liability begin, under what circumstances, and so on; measures to counter the spread of dangerous synthetic biologicals is inevitable, certainly before 2050, difficult to harmonize across different countries’ legislation on new life forms; international regulations can’t prevent or even seriously retard state-supported mischief or rogue science research; the need is understandable, but far from being practically implementable; not effective if some corrupted country is colluded with some corrupt company; the likelihood of cheating, if not by states but by companies or individuals, is great; there are promising signs of self-governance regarding DIYBio (do it yourself biological engineering) and synthetic biology, perhaps a regulatory framework could be agreed upon; this should not be focused only on synbio, but all types of biotech; we have this in part, but it is absolutely essential to put this in place as soon as possible; a necessary step to prevent global catastrophe but would face strong opposition.

Suggested action 6: Work with other countries to establish the International S&T Organization as an online collective intelligence platform for socio-economic-employment alternative implications of emerging technologies and scientific breakthroughs available to all.

 6.1 How effective?

This has the potential to influence the electorate, which then could affect official policy choices with medium long-term effects on employment or the concept of useful work/activity; this as an opportunity to connect socio-economic issues international technology development with a broader community; it may take a global crisis to forces us to rethink our global social system quickly; it should be developed by existing International Organizations; shouldn’t ILO be tracking labor trends and have a future employment section, or be trained in futures studies; this kind of organization requires transparent methods like Radical Technology Inquirer tool for Committee for the Future of the Finnish Parliament beside thematic Delphi studies.

6.2 How feasible?

If we build this within or amongst existing international labor/HR organizations, both public and private, then it should be possible to make it happen soon enough to have a significant impact by 2050; need to define all these new concepts and share them with actors: collective intelligence platform for socio-economic-employment alternative implications of emerging technologies and scientific breakthroughs available to all need to be It will be complex to organize; the Radical Technology Inquirer tool is one already in Finland tested as possibility of the platform.

6.3 General Comments:

This may energize a critical mass of passionate experts to pool their best ideas, many of these will be younger and in developing countries since they may have the most to gain; a one-world capacity would appear to be the best approach, a welcome initiative, very useful to exchange experiences among states; like so many international organizations such as the ones for trade, climate, migration or wildlife – an international organization on Science and Technology on the same lines would be needed; Bingo!; surely can’t hurt to cooperate with other countries to identify new kinds of jobs and tech-created opportunities; the Millennium Project Nodes can be the fabric of these connections; would fit relatively easily within current international organizations such as the World Bank, UN etc.; this ISTO would have to be well linked to ILO and other international labor organizations if it is to be effective for employment, and would also need to be linked with vocational and formal and non-formal education systems if it were to be anything more than more information in the already overloaded panoply of information on the internet; this is something that currently practiced at international level; this is not an area that government is good at; explore social solutions as well as technological solutions; a common objective and an outlook needs to be developed (purpose of humanity); perfectly possible, but too fuzzy as a proposal; having very necessary ILO implications of emerging technologies and scientific breakthroughs part of their evolution from “everyone should work” to “everyone should be productively engaged in learning and contributing to society in some manner other whether in a job or voluntary community service or in self-actualization;” we are entering Neo-conservatism, but after that will be the era of such kind of organizations; this is the best question thus far. We need to run pilots for economic design and come up with an alternative for capitalism. We also need somewhere to incarcerate those that are addicted to greed to limit their harm on humanity.

Suggested action 7: Produce alternative cash flow projections for universal basic income to see if/when it is financially sustainable (consider License/tax robots, AI and their creations, reduction of tax havens, value added tax, and taxes on carbon, massive wealth growth from new technologies, minimum corporate tax, etc.).

7.1 How effective:

There should be many alternative cash flow projections with many different assumptions in different countries, and then compare them so we all learn what makes sense together; this one seems ripe for study and analysis and may garner significant public support; having an economic roadmap that shows the effect of UBI under a variety of conditions would be very helpful, but such an analysis is bound to have limited accuracy; experiments being done with it should provide the basis for improved sets of projections; need public relations campaigns that will allow fair experimentation to be done with it to get the necessary mix of options available for financing the mix of options for universal basic income standards.

7.2 How feasible:

Having a roadmap that is generally believed and agreed on is not an easy task, but would be hugely helpful; it seems relatively straightforward to make projections, but whether they’ll inform policy is a different question; This is quite feasible if: 1) steps are systematically and scientifically taken to analyze effects of universals basic income as an effective solution/alternative to poverty reduction, 2) the results are unbiasedly disseminated to the general public, and 3) tests of a number of alternative financing options as listed and others in order to see the reality of those sources of revenues to finance the UBIs; coordinate with other social benefit systems, but It should not give an incentive to increase the number of children; preliminary conversations have been held in Finland, Italy, Switzerland, and other countries to do this officially, so it seems a matter of time.

7.3 General comments:

License fees and tax penalties invite circumvention and reward investing myriad man-hours in legal strategies and/or outright criminal schemes to hide profits and outwit government, instead basic income should be directly funded by the profits from more reliable sources (e.g., sustainable energy production); Bravo!; framing the search for solutions to inequality in this way is highly likely to produce practical ideas; effectiveness depends on how the projections are received, are they seen as neutral or as political propaganda; a future without jobs is the reality – we need a new social contract as soon as possible; critical especially as substantial number of jobs are eliminated; this issue is the most important for the future of the socio-economic system; include the analysis of the impact on inequality levels of sustainable and equal business models such as cooperatives; basic income ought to consider work for pay to preserve human self-worth; without some sort of economic roadmap we’ll be making changes blindly; even a crude range of alternative models would provide some needed fuel for the political discussion; if several counties prove the concept over the next decade, then the final two decades could be enough to have a substantial effect by 2050; in addition to cash flow, the Protestant or “work” ethic has to be addressed; there is support in Pakistan for state-run action, but negligible in the private sector; complicating factors: lack of a verifiably, reliable, and predictive economic science and the seemingly inseparability of politics and ideology from economic theory; I believe in Silvio Gezel’s model for using the distribution of the negative interest rate as a UBI on a daily base; do this, to better understand why most current approaches for basic incomes would fail and to find out what could work better; yes to demonstrate that such policies are not sustainable – a deep change in economics principles is needed; extremely difficult/impossible in the present socio-economic system; universal income a pessimistic approach to the future of employment; much skepticism in Latin America about this issue; impossible to implement at the international scale under the existing international political/economic/security order.

Suggested Action 8: Insure international coordination prior to implementing Universal Basic Income to prevent enormous political and emigrational pressures that may arise with non-UBI countries.

8.1 How effective?

Very important or else future migrations can be more massive and destructive than what has occurred over the past several years; global realization of the SDGs is paramount to avoid the absurd levels of illegal immigration; doing it at a larger scale, such as EU makes more sense than for individual European countries—however, the argument of purchasing power parity is bound to appear; will highly “robotized” societies agree to share their wealth with the overpopulated non-UBI countries; global coordination would seem to be putting a roadblock in front of real attempts at UBI and without some large successful tests to point to, the majority of the world will remain skeptical; the premise “if implemented” seems farfetched but this certainly would ease the effect of AI/automation on standard work; it’s hard to have a meaningful conversation with those than think migrations are destructive, such a phrase indicates a lack of basic humanity, anyone migrating is migrating for a damn good reason.

8.2 How feasible

Likely to be brought about by necessity; if immigration reform is done in concert with and integrated with UBI experiments, and those results are shared broadly across the world, while simultaneously promoting and supporting indigenous socio-economic development in underdeveloped states, then this could happen enough time to lay the ground for fuller implementation of the UBI and “future life” ideas; inconceivable implementation under the current state of social consciousness in the rich and in the poor countries; some sort of global coordination effort could probably be put in place by 2050, but I think it will delay rather than speed the timetable of economic reform that is needed.

8.3 General comments:

This would be a pre-requisite for implementation, but the anti-immigrant sentiment would need to be quieted before representatives could negotiate; each country will decide for themselves – one country will welcome refugees while others will not; but regional coordination is more likely than global coordination; how would you ever enforce such coordination; ultimately will need universal UBI aided by “abundance advances” that lower the cost of living; UBI is a very possible, probable and plausible scenario but it won’t happen simultaneously; better to invest in UBI rather than prisons or walls; this is the solution for the most part of the problems carried by AI revolution; will have to be shown to work in a variety of different countries before (or even IF) it becomes globally accepted. International coordination is a bad idea as countries with a successful UBI program *should* experience emigrational pressures that will show the world that its working, and most of the developed world should be more open to emigration than it is now; not likely that international coordination will be achieved before any country implements UBI but that does not preclude UBI from happening in such places as Scandinavia (e.g. Finland or Denmark), but the immigration issue will have to be addressed before UBI implementation in larger counties; finding ways to reduce the inequality gap could go a long way towards reducing the burden of UBI; link it to self-responsibility approaches; countries where the UBI is very LOW would start aspiring to a higher income making it potentially unworkable; UBI is a closed road; unlikely to be implementable the same at the international level—it must happen at national levels; there won’t be any neat solutions – some way has to be found to get out of the mess.

Suggested action 9:  Place a tax on robotic work, and other Next Technologies (NT).

9.1 How effective?

Source of income to help the unemployed; productivity of robots’ work could be used to develop new jobs for humans; the entire concept of tax structures and money needs to be rethought in a world where robots create most of the wealth; idea seems to need further definition, because, are not Alexa and Siri doing robotic work; this should slow down the displacement effect but may not matter in the very long run except to help fund some type of universal basic income; a tax on work is not what is needed – rather – taxes on resource use and consumption; taxes should focus on basic resources like energy; this is a negative effect—drain on potential work related to NT.

9.2 How feasible?

Seems inevitable, just like we do for cars; the demands of the economically displaced for assistance should eventually overwhelm the business/technology lobbyists in democratic countries; in the short term, some sort of tax on robotic production might be effective, but it will just accelerate movements towards forms of money such as crypto-currencies which are harder to tax, but if a government undertakes to both support a crypto-currency by ensuring the safety of the blockchain and take a small percentage cut on every transaction, then this might be a way to replace the old tax system with one that could withstand the upcoming economic upheavals; why are we trying to tax “robotic work” in the first place? Is it generating economic benefits that are not being accounted for somewhere in the process of their provision, or are we just looking for another source of tax revenue to cover unfunded government expenditures?

9.3 General comments:

It is being embrace by world economic voices/leaders like Bill Gates and international organizations and forums; taxing robots and other NT is an attractive avenue to provide new sources of tax revenue to fund initiatives such as UBI; possible as more and more people are replaced by robots; the tax should be clarified as to purpose and use; this might work in selected countries (e.g., Canada, Scandinavia, perhaps Europe generally) but seems hardly likely to be workable worldwide; Very useful as a means of making investment and resource allocation decisions and tracking their effectiveness over time; tax profits not robots; this may be feasible to implement but I think it’s a disastrous idea – I have worked my entire life to help bring on a robotic revolution so that NO ONE EVER NEED WORK. If our current economic systems cannot handle the idea of there being enough for everyone, for free, then we need to replace those systems, not restrict the arrival of a post-scarcity environment by penalizing the use of robots and AI; how is this “work” not already being taxed, either through the sales tax for the technology or the services provided, or through net income tax on the providers of the robots; if increasing productivity and standard of living by NT which allows for financing the paid jobs in science, culture, and leisure all is fine, but if it leads to even more concentration of wealth unemployment that UBI would be needed; robotic work is almost impossible to define; the boundaries of robotic work are fuzzy, much of it is not presently visible, it also crosses national borders at high speeds, companies would need a reason to make it more visible and to quantify it, this suggests the need for an international regulatory/enforcement agency; it sounds like a regressive measure, given the spread and pervasive power of new technologies it will be likely taxing air; this could become a reality when robot-driven unemployment becomes a major issue, but I don’t think tax would have positive impact (imagine if we tax renewable energy instead of providing incentives..).

Suggested Action 10: Apply AI (narrow AI, but if general AI is invented, then that too) to governance for decision-making to improve anticipation, problem solving, and efficacy, efficiency and evidence-basis for public plans and program.

 10.1 How effective?

Agree that the effect is all in the implementation, but great potential exists; will improve feedback based on outcomes—AI should say what the intended consequences of the legislation are, and if such consequences are not achieved, the legislation automatically lapses, AI’s may be less fallible than politicians but they can only advise as well as their models conform to reality, and it’s easy to miss important factors; general AI and Machine Learning have the potential to identify and resolve problems in ways we cannot conceive; if governance AI is designed to add rigor of thought, then that would be great, but any trust in black-box algorithms is an abandonment of responsible governance;

this could result in massive layoffs of government employees, potential cost savings; most likely it will be a decision support system, not an automated decision system, principle of final human responsibility should not be waived, any automated action has to be linked back to an accountable human decision-maker; useful for well-defined tasks that involve handling large amounts of unambiguous information about observable phenomena creating trend extrapolations and pattern extraction, not at sensemaking, and understanding discontinuities introduced by disruptive technologies that alter the inner logic of the whole system, as they are unable to grasp the significance of events or to discern the tiny seeds of future developments from the noisy background of randomness; fear and emotion and other “human flaws” are proxies for un-measurable and non-quantifiable factors, and the key to good political decisions—fear is one of the prerequisites for good decisions; very few decisions at central level that can be “given” to AI as most of it is creating regulation but possible for the local level—building permits, local planning, etc.

10.2 How feasible?

This is already beginning, will be difficult to stop; AI should be required to be able to explain and justify its decisions, yet AI developers cannot always exactly explain how the self-learning parts of their algorithms made their final decisions; DARPA’s Artificial Intelligence Exploration program is intended to be contextual and able to explain itself; there are billions of test items for image recognition, but not for policy decisionmaking that must confront novel & unexpected situations, which means there will always be some uncertainty and apprehension about the quality of the AI solutions, sentiments that can be successfully leveraged by the opponents; politicians and bureaucrats will not like to be told by AI that their policies are not working properly or are bad; this happens already with many algorithms, to many ill effects, leading to the nickname “weapons of math destruction.”

 10.3 General Comments:

As a supporting decisionmaking tool – of course; experiments in this direction are already taking place and will have substantial effect even before 2050; AI (both narrow and general) for governance is desirable and hard to resist, all tools that would assist in helping better decision-making should be utilized if feasible; necessary, important and feasible, there is too much information now about our increasingly complex problems, we need AI to help distil it and detect meaningful signals; this would shift the power from politicians to those who make the algorithms/AI systems, it can be done in a way that ensures transparency, accountability and representation, but requires a careful approach; efficacy of this would be tremendous in times of tremendous resource constraints; humans will still be needed for the more subtitle reasoning; economic or logistical criteria for optimization should be relaxed when they conflict with protection of vulnerable persons; AI for decisionmaking is a worthwhile goal, but also scary, what about hacking and malware; AI is needed, but a major challenge to get approved legislation as there will be outright attacks from vested interests; the cost of mistakes might be very high, and nobody will be responsible for that; it’s the very worst idea in this list; could AI replace religion, economy and government?

Suggested action 11: Training programs for politicians before governing and prototype governance methodologies.

11.1 How effective?

Necessary to learn interdisciplinary studies of complexity of the modern world; the model of the Finnish Committee for the Future has worked just in this way; make sure tools of policy analysis and implementation are the main focus not ideology; use data and insights collected from former successful politicians on how they successfully produced new legislation and they get out-dated legislation off the books; not necessary to be a university graduate, we want to be sure that ordinary citizens can effectively serve as representatives in Federal government, and that requires training programs; require a President to have the equivalent of a PhD in political science, with lesser degrees required for lesser positions would seem to be a great idea, provided that we had universal free education so that it was not a barrier to a poor person becoming a politician; such training is implemented in local governments on a regular basis with both experiential and evidence based training; this has to be better than what we do today.

11.2 How feasible?

The Finnish Committee for the Future has shown that this is very feasible; there is sufficient time to implement such a program for the next generation of officials but successful politicians in democratic societies are not successful on the basis of their expertise but on their connection with the common electorate and thus are not likely to expend much time and energy on these types of programs and training; should be part of the orientation of persons new to office, who can in turn educate their constituencies to the successes and failures of government such that there is appropriate demand for legislation from the general public that goes beyond partisan rhetoric; An after-the-fact training program for the already elected would be useless because it would need to have teeth or else it would be ignored. And if it had teeth, it would be strongly opposed by current politicians.

11.3 General comments:

Training on evolving how-to’s of governance is needed prior to any politician taking office, but no separation by political party so they would begin to get to know each other personally and begin to build their working relationships; very desirable but needs a) consensus on content across industry, government, and academia;  b) political will and ability to monitor their adherence to the methodologies plus the quality of their results; c) consensus on accountability; and 4) ability to censor (or retire) those who violate their “charter;” create a futures literacy index for politicians and it obligatory for political candidates to know; increasingly needed as governance becomes more complex with increasing technological interventions; The Millennium Project could help achieve this strategy; electoral reform may help put this in place; US such “training” might well be considered undemocratic or downright manipulative; needed as amateurishness dominates much today; politics is usually driven by voters interest more that grounds of governance; really important, essential, very useful and logical; but might prove impossible to implement.

Suggested Action 12: Include self-employment issues in political parties’ agendas and manifestos to promote social dialogue on these issues.

12.1 How effective?

While this is a narrow issue of marginal utility as self-employment may not solve the bulk of the work displacement problem, it may also stimulate public discussion in advance of the general problem posed by AI/automation; this will become a natural tendency of economic development; hard it is to get small businesses’ agendas and policy needs into any political party’s agenda, and double that difficulty, and you’ll have the challenge ahead of us on this; it should be done anyway, because self-employment could be an increasingly significant factor in the overall employment picture in the coming decades; Flexicurity is already in the programs of most parties and it doesn’t change much.

12.2 How feasible?

If we do get artificial general intelligence, then this will seem necessary; time to include this in political agendas but broaden the discussion and then transform solutions into practical actions well in advance of when the problem creates major socio-economic effects; agreed that broadening the discussion and transforming solutions into practical actions is needed before it becomes a problem, but there was a surge in self-employment when companies started to outsource work, legislation made it a crime for companies to hire someone full time as a consultant and not provide them with full benefits of employees, which in turn reduced their numbers significantly, so unless some of the issues related to self-employment like health insurance are addressed, then there will be an ongoing ebb and flow in and out of the self-employment ranks, even with all of the technological changes enabling of it; self-employment issues will be addressed differently by different political parties, rather than being a cohesive non-partisan platform.

12.3 General comments:

This is one of the most anticipated future trends that parties all over the world will prepare for; Brazilian political campaign is talking about this; this could truly trigger the dialogue at least; it is highly likely that self-employed people will aggregate into groups with the influence of unions and membership in these groups will continue to grow; individuals shall become much more autonomous in their choice and design of jobs making a different order of the ‘informal’ economy; aggregation of self-employed into groups will be needed if the social dialogue is to happen; promoting more dialogue about changing work goals and redefining what constitutes respected employment or use of one’s time is very relevant; self-employment’s actual impact could be much lower if a new “organized work” definition would replace obsolete definitions of “employed” and “self-employed;” getting these issues in political agenda we might get more bloviation than substance; focus on social entrepreneurship and innovation, that creates sustainable jobs and reduces inequalities.

Suggested Action 13: Establish an online platform for citizens offering their skills, services for full-time, part-time, one-time jobs.

13.1 How effective?

These new platforms for citizens will be more efficient than today and will be able to take into account knowledge and know-how more complex than now; on-line platforms already exist, either through websites and commercial channels or by government. A national or international uniform platform may provide some amelioration but may also lead to a race to the bottom with respect to salaries and working hours and conditions; See the experiences of Portfolio in Wales.

13.2  How feasible?

As such systems exist and are constantly being improved, this should not be hard to implement; many organizations are doing this inspire of the government, perhaps the outreach would be greater if the government did this.

13.3 General Comments:

Matching people with skills to people with needs is a win-win; making this easier and more reliable is a clear benefit to society anywhere; the “dots” network created in Brazil with this model and is growing rapidly https://www.rededots.com.br/; the biggest barrier to this could be government hiring regulations; already happening media platforms like LinkedIn, etc.; the informal sector may eventual be a significant sector in providing jobs to the citizens–who shall have more autonomy and more choices; apply narrow AI to this; these platforms should reduce inequities; add volunteer opportunities as well.

Suggested Action 14: Make skills re-training vouchers available on-demand.

14.1 How effective?

Some companies laying off employees often provide these; public and private sectors collaboration needed to be effective, and perhaps even mandated; funding will be challenging.

14.2 How feasible?

If retrying vouchers mandated to be available on demand are legislated within the next decade, then it could have a significant impact by 2050.

14.3 General comments:

If economists can make a compelling case for the return on investment for the business sector, it may be possible to fund this through some kind of business tax, business organizations would be better positioned to credibly market the voucher program; a legal framework between employees, employers and government must be established; re-training is a consequence of work-technology prospects over the long term; such vouchers exist in Europe and they will become more important; who pays for these vouchers, who will do the training, is it both for the very young and very old; if it’s free why not take it–if only to put off having to settle for some real world job; this would have to be skillfully marketed to the public so as not to appear as another “entitlement program” with connotations of gifts to the “un-deserving;” if you don’t have enough young workforce, one answer is to train the elderly so that they can work with new skills; the promise of a job should be changed to a promise of retraining; the longer run would require the creation of whole new fields of work that also need human labor in equal numbers, which seems doubtful in a practical time frame available to those being displaced, as new types of activities made possible by new technology normally take close to a decade or so to become major businesses/industries.

Suggested Action 15: The government, employers, and the labor unions cooperate to create lifelong learning models including forecasts of future skills requirements.

15.1 How effective?

Lifelong learning models help stakeholders to converge to a shared vision of the long-range work-technology 2050 and to build it; cooperation will be very beneficial, but they tend to see each other as natural born enemies, maybe make it a competition amongst them.

15.2 How feasible?

ILO and others are already moving in this direction; agree that some of this is already happening, but not in such a coordinated fashion; I have some doubts that the majority of people can adhere to lifelong learning and knowledge updating in sophisticated subjects, which perhaps require considerable mathematical and flexible technical skills, to find an employment niche in a world dominated by AI/automation.

15.3 General comments:

Lifelong learning models are an imperative, and the future skills forecasts are a good exercise – but they must concern pretty short time periods or they may do more harm than good; Europe produces experts who are not need anymore because education has lost connections with business and the labor market, the best formula is the triangle of government, employers, and labor; if such a community can be fashioned it will be formidable indeed, until then, local and national cooperation may suffice to provide examples of success; include cooperatives on this strategy; keeping education and business connected is paramount to this process and education systems need to re-educate themselves to the realities of the changing world; critical to remain competitive in the global markets; it could work if it is socio-economical public action, not a business for not-profit subjects like European Social Fund; a tremendous amount of education is need to adjust to the new economic models required for human survival.

Suggested Action 16: Establish self-serving pension system with subsidies for those with lower income.

16.1 How effective?

This kind of privatized Social Security is having problems in Chilean, so better to consider UBI; this system could allow balance in a period of strong transition and protect the weakest; give with some regulation since sometimes giving prevents initiatives; assumes that there will be non-marginal social groups permanently sentenced to be at the lower strata of the social hierarchy, will it be extended to a system subsidizing all citizens of the less-developed countries by the citizens of developed countries? It is obvious that the people who are incidentally unprivileged, e.g. the disabled should be supported, but we should not confuse this with creating permanently unprivileged groups and such is a hidden agenda of this issue.

16.2 How feasible?

This sounds a lot like privatized Social Security pensions; I don’t see this happening anytime soon.

16.3 General comments:

In contradiction to universal basic income; if privatized Social Security then some serious investigation of the lifetime viability of such as a system is needed for the general population; many in Central and Eastern Europe are not satisfied with their pension system because they are not getting back what they invested during their working life; we have endless budgets for war – but apparently none for decency, anyone with a heart would want elderly to be fed and clothed without exception; how to transform pension system without losing the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity; is technological progress generates sufficient surpluses then this is possible; freedom of choice own pension system will be a challenge for the future welfare state; some vocal citizens see this as a wealth transfer to the “un-deserving” create barriers to it feasibility; share responsibility between workers and government to save and invest while setting new models for “the good life” that make conspicuous and/or wasteful consumption by anyone unfashionable.

Suggested Action 17: Create and implement a global counter organized crime strategy.

17.1 How effective:

Without it, organized crime will buy the best software talent money can buy and create ANI and AGI to make them far more powerful than today, making democracy and free markets an illusion; wasn’t Interpol supposed to be doing that? They turned out to be corrupted themselves. So while this is needed, great care will have to be taken to keep the new system uncorrupted, since organized crime will try to counter it; a global strategy is not likely to be useful against decentralized organized crime.

17.2 How feasible:

It depends on leadership, which so far is not there, governments have taken on drug cartels, but the future problems with NT (next technologies) are far beyond drugs; leadership with broad public support will be the starting point, cybersecurity is already proving to be a major activity of organized crime globally, and the challenge will continue to be in trying to keep up with the criminals technologically enough to be able to track them down and bring them to justice.

17.3 General comments:

It’s highly feasible since there consensus and sense of urgency are becoming more widespread as attacks proliferate across borders; Yes, it is badly needed, but as long as certain countries are run by criminals, it will be challenging to implement a global strategy; money laundering becomes more difficult to track due to blockchain and other tech, and this (e.g., cryptocurrency fraud) is creating new profit opportunity for organized crime hence action at global level is necessary; the system is quite necessary but we can predict how possible it is evaluating the situation in UN; strongly necessary, business and consumer confidence in technology depends on security and privacy, there is already a trend to seek refuge in lower tech ways of communication and problem solving (i.e. meetings in person, snail mail, etc.); a common definition of organized crime would have to be initially worked out; we have Transparency International and law enforcement cooperation; crime thrives during times of extreme economic injustice. Focus on reducing inequality and white-collar crime, a strong middle class is the best defense against organized crime.

Suggested Action 18: Promote leisure, culture, tourism, and entertainment industries.

18.1 How effective?

If the world workforce is over 6 billion in the year 2050, what percent of the public could really be employed in these sectors; if sports is included, then most people could participate and a mix of entrepreneurs and/or government will likely find ways to monetize this activity so that it constitutes at least partially remunerative part-time employment for all, somewhat off-setting the cost of universal supplementary income; ever more important as world continues to automate amid of a search for “personal value;” this is obviously good in scenario 1, but if scenario 2 occurs the these industries will be mostly for the wealthy and governors of the NT technologies; these already are some of the fastest growing employment generators, and with more leisure time looming in the future because of automation, these will continue to be growth industries; the culture side needs more exploration.

18.2 How feasible?

Even with automation, these industries should provide ongoing opportunities for gainful employment; synthesizers didn’t replace too many musicians, and the number of sports should continue to grow as well; depends on the scenarios of consequences of automatization of work; these sectors don’t require lengthy, intellectually demanding education and are sufficiently popular so as to reduce future political opposition, sports and entertainment can become the equivalent of the Roman bread and circuses except that both the spectators and participants may be willing to pay for the activity.

18.3 General Comments:

It is imperative to turn to less material-intensive lifestyles for the humankind to survive on this planet. Leisure, culture and entertainment are key in this, tourism less so; great opportunity for aging populations; meaningful service to some cause or community is often more desirable that a live of entertainment and tourism so encourage the option of service in spite of, or along with, care-giver robots and advanced AI; inevitable consequence of technological growth; it is well underway with expanding new media and improved production technologies – how many jobs will virtual reality create over the next three decades; great cities are promoting this now attracting investment and the cycle continues to grow; what remains to be done is for governments to transplant this “virtuous cycle” to smaller cities and rural areas; make sure government promotion does not become propaganda; in addition to promotion, add training courses in culture, music, etc.; good for reducing economic stress and paying people to create culture.

Suggested Action 19: Create a new social contract between government and the governed (previous: go to school, get a job, and then receive retirement benefits).

19.1 How effective?

This is calling for a very fundamental cultural change, which will be a different process for every country in the world. That is needed if we are ever to get to a world in which self-actualization is considered an honorable and socially responsible endeavor, then a new social contract will be needed between government and the governed; all depends on what the new social contract is and how it is implemented, but if done reasonably well could have major impact.

19.2 How feasible?

Very challenging to say the least, as the entire economic basis for government is that people work and pay taxes to the government, so there would have to be new business models for government along with this new social contract; the elements of this “new” contract may be resisted by proponents of the status quo.

19.3 General comments:

Current global societies urgently need a new social contract base-artificial intelligence and life, longevity and mortality, robots and labor, etc.; there are precedents for this kind of contract in countries that require national service as well as various kinds of student loans that can be repaid by working with under-served populations (teaching/medicine, etc); given the rising cost of education, loan forgiveness programs offer a potentially broadly acceptable template for expansion into something like this; new culture, and not just the social contract between government and the governed; we need to get beyond the “we” them” dichotomy and create new economics and finding ways to mitigate the imbalance of power between global corporations and the rest of us; this is the first step to build a sustainable system; we need to proactively engage in economic design – otherwise we’ll spend a fortune mitigating the consequences of our current winner take all economy – capitalism isn’t sustainable; government should continue to provide those services that people cannot supply on their own (defense, public works, etc.) while education, satisfying life activities, and retirement security are partly things that people can attain by their own efforts, and ought to remain so, but we should not rely wholly on government, robots, and/or AI for cradle-to-grave support (read Jack Williamson’s novel “With Folded Hands”); two emerging scenarios for social orders: contracts among the partners and “contracts” imposed in a sophisticated way by the “governors of technology,” the degree of imposition would become so sophisticated that the 1984 seems primitive (Study Baudrillard’s simulacra); it seems inappropriate to attempt to rate feasibility when the proposition is too vague and general to be meaningful.

Suggested Action 20: Develop governance for the future human.

20.1 How effective?

How to govern NT augmented geniuses, that can get smarter every day, can a governance system also augmented by AI keep up, if personal AI/Avatars proliferate – are they “part of” the future human to be governed; who can see the future human well enough to guide the redevelopment of governance.

20.2 How feasible?

Although we can imagine, as science fiction writers have been doing for more than a century, possible future humans, how can we be sure whose vision will become reality, hence hard to define what governance will and will not be needed; very complex to implement to meet the expectations of all on work and technology 2050.

20.3 General comments:

The world is facing global transnational problems, so it needs global governance and reform of institutions such as UN, WTO, WHO, etc.; applying to the augmented and non-augmented—it HAS to be done!; rather than governance for the future human, we should make sure we create resilient systems (e.g., around human dignity) that are still applicable in the future; people will pick a country of digital citizenship and migrate as much of their lives there as possible (Estonia currently offers e-citizenship, others will as well); it would be indeed appropriate and honorable to take into account the interests of the humans of the future, instead of dumping on them the costs and consequences of our actions, none of the present-day legislative bodies includes an ombudsman for future generations, but all of them should; AI-enhanced beings or simply ordinary humans born at some future time – I suspect governance will evolve on its own, but how can we anticipate the way government will or should change without some concrete idea of who is to be governed; only foresight-oriented cultures could do this; we aren’t yet beyond Maslow’s hierarchy of basic needs, but we could make good progress towards that in the next 32 years if there is a dramatic shift away from the current global materialistic society to one much less materialistic, and one looking to explore its other elements; this is too broad, too vague, and needs clarification; the question is trivial if not absurd; if the implication is that the future human is not a standard homo sapiens, then there is a problem of legitimacy of the governance to address; i.e., it is the future humans who should develop what they think is appropriate, once they exist (which seems unlikely prior to 2050).

Suggested Action 21: By 2050 introduce a global system for resource sharing (all kinds: scientific knowledge, technology, labor).

21.1 How effective?

Open source movement already exists; builds on current trends and could normalize work-technology advances; the Information Society with utopian anti-capitalist ideas of limited private property, equality, no material barriers, reduction if not almost complete elimination of asymmetry of information and of its consequences, reduction of transaction costs could lead to a new market with less discrepancies, but also ideological conflicts; this exists to a degree already and is the intention of the WTO, no? Free trade globally, but most countries are not so altruistic, there are numerous global societies and associations that try to share information in the fields of health, agriculture, industry, accounting, etc. But what happens to patents? How do individuals and companies and governments recoup their investments in new technologies and systems and methodologies and physical resources? Ultimately, this needs to happen in order for there to be orderly long-term human survival on this planet. Technology can help this process, but we have to realize, as Facebook and others are beginning to realize that technology for good can also be used for bad and so we have ways to protect from such misuse on massive scale as has been happening of late if open sharing is to be feasible.

21.2 How feasible?

This is the current trend but naturally issues of intellectual property rights may need to be revised if such sharing is to reach its full potential.

21.3 General comments:

Seems the world is heading this way, but conflicts will not make this universal; a noble ideal but what might motivate such cooperation on a global scale, maybe necessities from the environmental crises, and/or resource shortages; but conflict seems a more likely result, but a project that could capture people’s imaginations worldwide could works such as the exploration and peaceful settlement of other worlds in space; it has already started with sharing and circular economy, problem is that it is not capitalism-effective, so business and corporations have to be ready to face that dialogue needed in all international fora, from WTO, to the UN, to CGIAR, to WHO, etc., bigger and more advanced countries often walk away with the icing and the cake, given the prevailing disparities in the international system, it would not be an easy thing to achieve; regional systems might be more feasible.

Suggested Action 22: Study how to prevent future conflict between technologically augmented humans (via, AI, genetics, electronics or other means) and non-augmented citizens.

22.1 How effective?

Important conflict/tradeoff area to resolve as it is at the heart of positive human-technology development; difficult and very important to radical rethink technologically augmented versus naturally augmented humans better utilizing their innate abilities more fully; absolutely necessary, however those who potentially could influence the process may not comprehend the situation, attempts to stimulate the emergence of such a polar situation would demand a very deep understanding of society, even so, they might be counterproductive for the initiators; this is serious, more serious in the future than the concentration of wealth today, assuming it can be done, it would be very important to avoid very complex conflicts, making current information warfare look simple in comparison; this seed for science fiction movies is going to be a challenge to prevent.

22.2 How feasible?

Now is the time for consideration and resolution of these issues, before strong conflicts arise; this is likely the most challenging ideological, political, economic and security issue in the years to come, it demands deep interdisciplinary studies, the main question is: what are the possibilities of influencing the emerging new social order.

22.3 General comments:

It is a crucial issue for the future; this will become part of the strategy to address rich-poor gap both global and national levels; mitigating conflict and political tensions between the new haves and have nots will be challenging; humanity needs to raise its consciousness – more scenarios and forecasts are needed; related conflicts could occur over equal opportunity to be augmented, between employed and unemployed, and among a range of different technologically augmented humans;  will people be able influence this emergent process of a new order, or will the augments concentrate power; adding AI and other tech enhancements will expand the range of “differing abilities” but not materially change the situation that exists today, yet further in the future the augments might isolate themselves into new communities in space.

22 Additional suggested actions: What other long-range education/learning strategies would better improve work/technology dynamics by 2050?

• Develop a real-time, artificial intelligence, collective intelligence, participatory decision-support system for the United Nations.
• All levels of education should explore potential futures we want in 2050.
• Teach AI-enhanced working methods in school.
• Build shared visions nationally, regionally, and globally.
• Bring up these issues in political campaigns.
• Develop new inter- and multidisciplinary methods for understanding the emerging complexity of the modern society.
• Develop more robotic and AI devices that enhance the abilities of human workers rather than replace them entirely.
• Produce trusted personal natural language digital avatars/”twin persons” to help in an increasingly complex future.
• Create an international consortium for studying/sharing strategies for improving/nurturing human spiritual intelligence and its impact on local and world-wide governance systems.
• Create an effective world governance system without compromising nationalism of each nation and without compromising freedom for all people.
• Allow diversity of values to flourish along with diversity of lifestyles, more progress is made when differing theories are tested against each other.
• Use pro-free market incentives and programs to better work/technology dynamics by 2050 including decentralized banks and financial institutions.
• Set a goal to establish life outside of our planet to ensure continuity of the human race in case of earthly catastrophes, these off-world settlements [don’t think of them as “colonies” created to serve the needs of Earth] on the moon and other planets can inspire enthusiasm and hope for the future.
• Make it a top priority to take care of our planet – natural resources, pollution etc.
• Recognize implications of the potential “zero-marginal cost economy.”
• Promote technology that lowers the cost of living and ensure it is accessed by low income populations.
• Make this information available to community discussion groups www.Argentina2050.org.
• Promote entrepreneurial innovations by linking to incentives other than financial success and prestige.
• Re-conceptualize “work” in this context of this study.
• Make politicians and government officials more science and technology literacy so that they are prepared to take on the issues discussed above.
• Continually train employees about new technologies.
• Review International Law to see how every human being can come under a common standard of citizenship including passport and visa as a birth right, only a felony conviction can change this entitlement, include free access to health, education, water, and the Internet, plus no restrictions on private entrepreneurship except state control for goods and services.
• Promote citizen participation at all levels of government.
• Governments should provide incentives for a healthy lifestyle managed by integrated healthcare monitoring technology.
• Intersperse education and work by increasing standard education by several years to let students work in between desk studies to have get work experience, keep in touch with teachers and researchers at universities for a longer period, and make students used to life-long-learning and learning phases while working in companies. This would also increase knowledge transfer between students/people from industry and researchers, and would improve cooperation skills of students.
• A Moonshot Project for a Longer and Healthier Life including public investments and dedicated artificial intelligence).