AI Futures Literacy

When we are thinking about the ethics of AI and the ramifications for selfhood and society brought about by technologically enabled modes of modern indentured servitude, we are thinking about the future. We are anticipating future risks, imagining potential disruptions and disruptors, considering the balance of harms and benefits, assessing their probability and their scale, and planning mitigation strategies to deal with them. This article proposes some new ways through which we might better understand the scope (and the limitations) of this mode of anticipatory thinking and so develop a stronger sociotechnical capability in what we might characterize as “ethical AI futures literacy.” It also suggests some first steps toward developing this new approach by highlighting some of the cognitive biases and deficiencies which particularly affect such futures thinking and which shape the anticipatory dynamics of both human and artificial intelligence [1] .