TheGoodFuture Blog (Futurist Gerd Leonhard)

“New companies have sprung up to commercialize artistic AI tools. A website and app called Wombo can generate images in a variety of styles in response to a text prompt or an existing image, and it sells prints or NFTs of the results. Midjourney, an independent research lab that has made its technology available to beta testers, can turn text prompts into vivid, sometimes abstract illustrations.”

When AI Makes Art, Humans Supply the Creative Spark
https://www.wired.com/story/when-ai-makes-art/
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“But we haven’t just been wrong about things we thought would come to pass; humanity also has a long history of incorrectly assuring ourselves that certain now-inescapable realities wouldn’t. The day before Leo Szilard devised the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, the great physicist Ernest Rutherford proclaimed that anyone who propounded atomic power was “talking moonshine.” Even computer industry pioneer Ken Olsen in 1977 supposedly said he didn’t foresee individuals having any use for a computer in their home.

Obviously we live in a nuclear world, and you probably have a computer or two within arm’s reach right now. In fact, it’s those computers — and the exponential advances in computing generally — that are now the subject of some of society’s most high-stakes forecasting. The conventional expectation is that ever-growing computing power will be a boon for humanity. But what if we’re wrong again? Could artificial superintelligence instead cause us great harm? Our extinction?”

Opinion | How AI could accidentally extinguish humankind
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/31/artificial-intelligence-worst-case-scenario-extinction/
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“Leyden also makes the case that most people are underestimating the positive potential of a dozen driving forces he calls The Inexorables that will play out in the coming decades and could help solve our biggest challenges. He ends with acknowledgments for the 25 world-class experts and innovators who he interviewed for this ambitious project.”

Stories — Peter Leyden
https://www.peterleyden.com/stories
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https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/global-emotions-report/

• Tired of surveys predictably putting Scandinavia at the top of "happiest country" lists? Here’s a similar poll with some surprises. 
• The region with the highest reported levels of positive experiences? Central America. The country with the least negative experiences? Kazakhstan. 
• Some certainties can’t be avoided: Afghanistan is top in negative experiences, bottom in positive experiences

https://bigthink.com/progress/the-great-progression-peter-leyden/

“Kurt Vonnegut, the great observer of the horrors and ironies of 20th-century civilization, once said that his ‘prettiest’ contribution to culture wasn’t his novels, but his Master’s thesis in anthropology for the University of Chicago. His idea, which was rejected because “it was too simple and looked like too much fun” was that stories have shapes, and that the shape of any given civilization’s stories are as interesting as the shape of its arrowheads or pottery.


To illustrate his point, Vonnegut plotted the story of Cinderella on a graph, charting misery versus ecstasy over time. The arrival of the fairy godmother kicks off a step by step climb in fortune, leading to a high point at the ball, followed by a sudden reversal at the stroke of midnight. The good times come roaring back though, thanks to that glass slipper, leaving our protagonist even better off than she was before. This arc, said Vonnegut, is evident in some of our favourite stories, from the New Testament to Jane Eyre and Frozen. It’s immensely satisfying, hence its enduring appeal.”

Collapse, Renewal and the Rope of History
https://futurecrunch.com/collapse-renewal/
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“In Indonesia, one of the world’s biggest palm oil growers has announced a plan to rehabilitate an area half the size of New York to atone for its past clearing of rainforests and peatlands. In Bolivia, a massive new two million acre reserve has been established on the Amazon’s deforestation frontier, thanks to a partnership between indigenous communities and private donors. Last month, the United States restored protections for the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world, home to thousands of watersheds and fjords, and more than a thousand forested islands. The new protections will end large-scale old growth logging and support restoration, climate resilience, and recreation.”

Collapse, Renewal and the Rope of History
https://futurecrunch.com/collapse-renewal/
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“Ultimately, we are moving toward “extended producer responsibility,” which forces companies to cover the costs of their activities’ negative impacts. But, of course, we need to go further.”

An interview with Paul Polman - Project Syndicate
https://www.project-syndicate.org/say-more/an-interview-with-paul-polman-2021-10
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