Many futures, many voices: AI-powered conversations with the future

In the atmospheric “Machine Room” of the Flagey Cultural Centre, filled with disused electronic equipment that once powered broadcasting operations, we invited participants to engage in an unusual exercise: a conversation with young EU citizens from the year 2040. 

The workshop began with a provocative prompt: four backpacks, ostensibly left behind by future citizens. Participants were invited to explore their contents. 

You may rightfully think that no policymaking effort justifies rummaging through another person’s belongings, as some of our participants kindly pointed out. And they were correct. The intention, however, was not to pry, but to reconstruct, like an anthropologist of the future, to collectively imagine who those backpacks might belong to, so that we could return them. As you can see, our intentions were pure. 

Soon enough, participants were examining notebooks, task ledgers, books, cross-species communicators, synthetic identity keys…

Gradually, an idea of the owners of these objects began to emerge, along with possible interpretations of items that looked unfamiliar to our contemporary minds. This part of the session was devoted largely to speculative discussion - the objects themselves left considerable room for imagination and could be interpreted in multiple ways. 

During the second phase, we introduced the “orbs”: objects with interfaces enabling participants to interact with the owners of the backpacks, four future personas: Zane, Rowan, Nova, and Cypher. Each character had distinctive characteristics, experiences, and ways of living. Guided by a set of predefined prompts, participants explored questions such as:  

Who are these individuals? What do they care about? Which policies could support them? What could already be done today? 

However, the orbs, and the “connections” they enabled with these future characters, quickly encouraged more playful interactions. Conversations soon drifted toward questions about future political governance, the meaning of life, and even spirituality. 

When prompted to consider what policies could support future EU citizens, participants pointed out that it is somewhat difficult to design policy frameworks for individuals whose values remain largely unknown. This revealed interesting tensions surrounding future-oriented policymaking. The artefacts and personas are just a first introduction of future realities and bring the right questions to the table 

What attitudes, practices, and values should policymaking support? What does responsible policymaking look like when there is little clarity about the aspirations of the future citizens, their role in society, or the consequences of their actions? 

 The artefacts themselves, such as the sensory limitation visor, emotional sync patch, or silver soap, sparked the richest conversations. The objects did not “talk back,” they left more room for speculation and interpretation. By contrast, the AI-supported personas sometimes provided answers that felt to our guests overly specific, leaving less space for alternative perspectives and collective meaning-making about the future. In some cases, the interaction began to feel slightly more like an interrogation than an open exploratory exchange.  Yet, the characters themselves were engaging, provocative, challenging (and occasionally irritating) enough to compel people to continue interacting with them. 

The session concluded with a presentation on speculative practices developed within the EU Policy Lab as a way of stimulating reflection on future realities relevant to contemporary policymaking. This conversation is especially relevant now that the EU has launched its  Strategy for Intergenerational Fairness, in which intergenerational dialogue is indicated as a crucial tool for connecting with future individuals.  

Importantly, the personas and artefacts created for this session were not purely imaginative constructs. They were grounded in a horizon-scanning exercise focused on identifying weak signals - emerging phenomena that may reveal important shifts in our future political, technological, and social environments. The exercise was therefore rooted in concrete examples of how future societies might evolve and interact, rather than relying solely on unrestricted imagination. This grounding proved essential. Even within a speculative setting, participants sought reassurance that the futures presented were not arbitrary but rooted in shared and plausible trajectories. 

The session is part of the Futures Garden project. If you’d like to speak with Zane, Rowan, Nova, and Cypher you can do it via Coming of Age 2040.