W7 2024

The Near Future Laboratory Discord was a buzz this last week - lots of things to Digest here! Check these gems out 👇🏽

1. In the ⁠🧰-artificial-intelligence⁠ channel via @julian

   Building Positive Futures for Generative AI Adoption in Healthcare

   Bogdana “Bobi” Rakova who has been a fellow at the Mozilla Foundation ran a workshop a few weeks back and wrote a bit up around some of the considerations and outcomes of that speculative design workshop.

   The post on the Mozilla Foundation’s blog discusses the speculative design approach to generative AI adoption in healthcare, emphasizing the importance of transparency, evaluation, and human agency.

   The post highlights the challenges and ethical considerations involved in integrating AI into clinical settings, including privacy, security, and the need for meaningful consent. The speculative design exercise does the interesting work of imagining future scenarios where AI tools are commonplace in healthcare. No surprise that trust is crucial for successful AI integration.

2. 😏 Also in the 🧰-artificial-intelligence⁠ channel via @julian

   Responsible AI licenses??

   Is software licensing a way to limit the harms anticipated from AI? In the digital wild west of artificial intelligence, the white hat solution to prevent AI misadventures could already be in our holster: Open responsible AI licenses, think open-source but with a moral compass.

3. 🤟🏽 In the 🚀-design-fiction⁠ channel via @Jaymo

   Dear AI

   Fred Wordie humorously reflects on his speculative Design Fiction project ‘Dear Ai,’ ending up more confused than a cat at a dog show when his attempt to provoke public contemplation on AI’s role in human emotions only led to an administrator’s frustration over malfunctioning doggy death letter automation.

4. In the ⁠📝-general⁠ channel via @chris_jackson01

   Unframing The Future

   In a cyber-surfer’s quest through the digital hall of mirrors, ‘Unframing the Future’ breaks the shackles of conventional wisdom, inviting a dive into the ocean of creative chaos where the future is not a distant dream but a present reality sculpted by unbridled innovation.

   Thomas Klaffke waves a flag for a revolution in how we envision the future, critiquing the stale, risk-averse ideas dominating futurism and calling for a bold reimagining that leaps beyond old ideologies and the restricting veil of economism, in a bid to inspire truly innovative pathways for humanity.

5. ♠️ In the 📝-general channel via @inevernu

   Speculative Futures Card Games

   Dive into a treasure trove of card games where you can gamble your future away, speculative-style! Lots and loads of speculative futures card games in here. How could they leave out the original flavored card game The Work Kit of Design Fiction is a mystery..I sent a note..

6. 🥇 In the 📝-office-hours-chat-log via @.chrizbo

   Writing Good Product Fiction - ProductWorld 2024

   In a cosmic twist of fate where literature meets product design, Chris Butler steers us through the nebula of creating captivating product concepts using a melange of sci-fi, speculative futures, and a dash of Dungeons & Dragons, proving that even in the realm of product development, a good story trumps a bland utopia.

7. 🫤 In the 📝-general channel via @chris_jackson01

   Critical and Emerging Technologies List

   In a bold move that could either set the stage for a sci-fi utopia or an episode of Black Mirror, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has refreshed its list of critical and emerging technologies, essentially drawing the blueprint for America’s tech-fueled leap into the future.

   The 2024 update features a broad range of sectors including ⚛️ advanced computing, 👩🏽‍🎤 artificial intelligence, 🐭 biotechnologies, ☁️ clean energy, cybersecurity, 🚀 hypersonics, 🐱 quantum information technologies, and 🌔 space systems among others. These domains are recognized for their potential to propel American innovation and fortify national defense mechanisms. As the national security strategy acknowledges technology’s central role in today’s geopolitical landscape, the United States, alongside its allies, is poised to harness these critical and emerging technologies to secure a future marked by prosperity and strength.

8. 🧰 In the 🧰-artificial-intelligence channel via @julian

   Let’s not do this again, please

   OpenAI’s text-to-video generator Sora is being hyped as a game-changer by an industry at a crossroads. This time we should know better..

   With a mix of hype and hysteria, Los Angeles Time Technology Correpondent Brian Merchant warns that despite OpenAI’s dazzle with its new video-from-text AI, Sora, we might just be spectators in the tech industry’s latest spectacle of “move fast and break things,” possibly forgetting to consider the deeper implications and costs.

9. ♊ 🚀-nasa-punk channel via @Drew Wiberg

   Gemini 7 Music

   The Internet Archive offers a cosmic symphony with the Gemini 7/6A Inflight Music Shortwave Broadcasts from December 1965, letting you tune into the soundtrack of space exploration from the comfort of your own spaceship, or house.

Ta-da!

That’s probably…23% of all the wonderful pointers, shares, conversations, and to-and-fro that happened in the Near Future Laboratory Discord last week. There’s lots more — and besides that, there’s creative community. Join us! 👇🏽