COMPASS – Co-creating Meaningful, Positive Scenarios for Swiss Society with AI

Beschreibung

In recent years, and especially since the advent of Large-Language Models such as ChatGPT, is has become evident of how fundamentally Artificial Intelligence (AI) will change our lives and the fabric of our society. The discussions have reached the public sphere as well as the political agenda: It is clear that we, as citizens and as society, need to actively shape our future
with AI.

However, the dominant public narratives surrounding AI are overwhelmingly dystopic: extinction risks, mass unemployment, surveillance, manipulation. Scenarios describing concrete ways of how AI might lead to a world still aligned with our core values (democracy, human autonomy, freedom, equal opportunities, …) are largely missing. This is not merely an intellectual deficiency as “we can only create what we can imagine” (Lucille Clifton). Narratives will shape the way of how AI is being implemented in the tension between societal/legal guardrails and space for positive innovation.

The goal of our project is to empower the Swiss society to shape our future with AI by complementing existing dystopic narratives with realistic alternative scenarios which lead to positive outcomes instead of catastrophe. We believe that such scenarios exist which are not only thinkable but also plausible (technologically, economically, politically and socially). COMPASS develops different such plausible scenarios in an interdisciplinary approach, for enabling public discussion to include concrete and realistic positive visions rather than resting in a defensive stance.

To this end, we will convene a structured, one-day expert workshop in Zurich (with a second workshop in Geneva and a third in Cambridge, UK, planned as follow-on activities based on the pattern established here), bringing together invited experts from technology, economy, industry, civil society, media, and policy to collaboratively draft realistic, attainable, positive scenarios for a liveable future society with AI (outlook: the next 10 years). The workshop methodology combines structured foresight techniques with narrative co-creation, drawing on recent advances in hope-oriented scenario research.

The project is grounded in the conviction that it is necessary to spell out concrete future scenarios and turn them into lively and understandable narratives to show positive alternatives to the prevalent stories pushed by tech executives and lobbyists. As Emmett “Doc” Brown said: “Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one.” COMPASS offers a replicable, scalable methodology and a high-visibility starting point for a national conversation about which futures Switzerland wants to build, at a time when the world looks to Switzerland to solutions due to the AI Impact Summit 2027.

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