Sep 25, 2023 | Signals to Watch
Nan Nelson, Envision Board Member and Economic Transformation Signals Team
A new startup is using AI to make non-English call center employees, who are often located in India, Pakistan or the Philippines, sound American. Founded in 2020, Sanas now provides companies with a proprietary AI software that works in real-time to alter users’ voices to sound more “Western.” Its aim is to “improve human-to-human relationships,” but critics argue the plan is fraught with ethical and psychological implications. Some say it puts the onus on non-Westerners to cater to Western interests. Read more here.
May 6, 2023 | Signals to Watch
Nan Nelson, Envision Board member
Envision’s World Futures Day featured speaker Professor Thomas Frey has identified six ways the Artificial Intelligence revolution is likely to shape our lives within the foreseeable future. Are you ready for transformation of our reality, creativity, work, and even our sense of free will? Here’s his analysis of the benefits and risks.
Apr 3, 2023 | Economic Transformation Signals
Nan Nelson, Envision Board Member
As you explore creating scenarios to introduce possible, plausible futures to your organization, consider how award-winning professionals — science fiction writers — do this. Not the folks who write Star Wars-type space operas or the sword and sorcery fiction of novels like Game of Thrones. Rather, consider Horizon 3, near-future “hard” science fiction like Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry For the Future or Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock (both about climate change). These “world-building” science fiction writers take trends you are following in areas such as artificial intelligence, gene therapy or cybersecurity and create mind-expanding scenarios that are entertaining and sometimes alarming.
(more…)
